At times, I have noticed in myself and in others, a tendency to gravitate towards stress or anxiety almost as a default reaction to problems or challenges.
I used to ask a question at interviews: ‘What sort of situation takes you from healthy pressure (where creative ideas often flourish) and into unhealthy stress?’ There were some very interesting answers to that which were of benefit to the future line manager to understand.
How about you? Are there areas where you get knots in your stomach and lose sleep at night over things that you find are not so bad in the light of day? I wonder if you might have slipped into a habit of responding to challenges in a stressful way.
How might you change your response?
A helpful initial approach would be to take some time to review what seems to trigger a stress reaction in you. If you find that there are a whole range of things, both important and trivial, it might just be that a stress reaction has become a habit. Habits can be broken, so that is good news!
On the other hand, you might find that it is one particular area of life that brings about stress. In which case it is time to bring about a change. It could be a person or responsibility at work or some problems in personal relationships or the area in which you live – etc., etc.
Here is some more good news – these situations can all be changed – or your response can be. You just need some support to find your way through and having some coaching sessions could be just what you need.
