How do you manage stress?

April is Stress Awareness Month. Stress is like a tasty meal – a small portion makes us positively alert but too much dulls our senses and gives us heartburn. I first got interested in stress and anxiety in the mid 1980s, when I was investigating how people chose what issues to bring to a coach or mentor. Of course, there was a great variety, but they almost all fell into the category of “things I need to get my head around”. People rarely mentioned goals. Rather, they referred to anxieties. Even ambitions and opportunities contained a level of anxiety – for example, am I going to miss out or not get the benefits I should from an opportunity?

From this emerged the concept of an SUI – a Significant Unresolved Issue. Over decades, I experimented with thousands of people, getting them to list the things they needed to think or work through and the level of anxiety they felt about not yet having done so. After a while, I scaled these, with 10 for being in a total panic and 1 being something you’d like to have time to attend to but where the consequences of not doing so are minor. Attempts to create a working index – for example, a general average score that people could use to recognise when they needed to step back and find time to think – proved impractical. However, I found that most people can benefit from regularly listing their SUIs, with levels of anxiety for each item, and observing the patterns that emerge. These patterns are different for everyone, but being aware of them allows us to pause and create reflective space – either on our own or with a trusted other, such as a coach or mentor.

To a large extent, coaching and mentoring, when done well, replicate the natural conversation people have with themselves when they reflected on an SUI. What emerged from individual and group interviews was a very consistent pattern of what happens when we “have a good conversation with ourselves”.

The first lesson was that such conversations require a level of tranquillity – the time and space to devote quality thinking time to an issue. People find this time in all sorts of ways – driving home, walking the dog, in the gym or swimming pool, in the shower, ironing and so on. The second was that, when we allow it to and have the right external conditions, our brains automatically select one of the most pressing anxieties, or SUIs, for us to silently chew over. We begin to ask ourselves questions about this SUI, to Frame it. Why is it important now? What am I concerned about? What’s different? Who else is involved? What am I afraid of? 

Framing gradually gives way to a deeper level of reflection. Who else shares responsibility for this? What assumptions am I making? What am I not noticing? What am I avoiding? We call this stage Implications. 

Toing and froing between Framing and Implications eventually (like rubbing two sticks together) produces a flash of Insight. Suddenly, we see the issue differently and more clearly. That allows us to Reframe, seeing the issue in a different light. That in turn generates new possibilities or Options; and, having resolved the issue in part or whole, we are motivated to Action, deciding what we are now going to do differently.

If you do your deep thinking walking or running, you may notice that the closer you get to Insight, the slower you move. You may even stop entirely at the point of Insight; then gradually pick up pace again as you process your new understanding. This is because the closer to Insight you get, the harder your brain is working and taking from your blood the oxygen that would otherwise be going to your legs. As your brain drops down a gear or two, the blood oxygen can return to your muscles. Clearing anxieties in this way makes you more effective, less stressed and more focussed.  

© David Clutterbuck 2022