Stress: The Aroused State that Can Be Recognized, Understood, and Managed (Excerpt)

by Harold M. Davis III ’69, MD

Download Davis’ full article “Stress Management Strategies” (PDF).

Outlined below are some stress management and “go with the flow” techniques, attitudes, and behaviors that you, coworkers, and family members can use to achieve and maintain happier, healthier, and more productive lives:

• Develop an appropriate attitude concerning stress. Stress does not have to lead to “distress.” When managed appropriately, stress can be that burst of energy and creativity that allows you to perform at your peak.
• Don’t sweat the small stuff. When looked at clearly, the majority of life’s challenges are small stuff.
• Develop a positive and loving attitude about yourself. Become one of your best friends.
• Take responsibility for your life and be the prime determinant of what happens in your life. Increase your internal locus of control and discontinue deterministic, fatalistic, or magical thinking.
• Develop self-control and learn to modulate your responses (physical, emotional, and psychological) to potential stressful situations. Why give all when some will do? The challenges of life do not all require an all-or-none reaction; some effort in the middle zone might do just fine.
• Determine your priorities and values.
• When you cannot say “No,” try, “Not now.”
• Develop a positive attitude about challenges and change demand situations in your work, home, social, and community environments as opportunities for growth.
• Increase your awareness of yourself—physical, emotional, and spiritual.
• Develop mutually beneficial support systems within the various “significant environments” that you function in. Remember that no one should be an island unto him/herself, and that a functioning support system is probably our most important means for stress management.
• Put LOVE in your life. Love in your family, friends, coworkers, career, community, and, most importantly, yourself.
• Structure stress interactions—avoid stress clustering. Pick the size, number, and timing of your battles!
• Minimize unpredictability in your life. Plan today to take action against ambiguous roles, role conflict, and overload-underload situations. Maximize your person-environment fit!
• When confronting a potential stressor, perform stress analysis. The situation may not be that bad. Give yourself time to think before you enter a stressful situation because you might not be able to do so while in the thick of the problem.
• Learn to be comfortable with the decisions you make. Take the burden of always having to be absolutely right and perfect off your back. When you make a mistake, live with it and learn from it. Remember, genius is a storehouse of mistakes.
• Practice focusing on the present and not on the dim past or unknown future. The past has taken care of itself and we have time on our side to deal with the future.
• ldquo;HOT REACTOR” Type A personalities: beware! Take some time out to smell the roses.
• Develop mental discipline and apply yourself to the task at hand.
• Develop effective time-management skills.
• Don’t rely on drugs as a strategy to deal with life. Drugs lead to blurring of reality, decreases your ability to use prior knowledge to help solve current problems, and decreases your ability to grow from the experiences of life.
• Avoid negative reinforcement groups and “stress-guard” yourself against stress carriers
• Bridge the relationship gap. Get to know your coworkers, family members, and renew friendships with people in your community.
• Be honest and forthright, but diplomatic, in your interactions with others. Let others know your true feelings, desires, and aspirations. You have a right to be yourself.
• Don’t bottle up your anger because the container could be your heart.
• Have an open mind when dealing with others. Learn to listen.
• Have an open mind when dealing with others. Learn to listen.
• Do something that will enhance your organizational, family, social, and community stature. Develop yourself!
• Take time out to relax and enjoy the world and people around you. Give yourself a treat everyday!
• Learn relaxation techniques such as meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, etc. Listen to music or read that book you have been putting off until your next vacation.
• Take all of your allotted vacation time. You deserve it and need it.
• Develop an appropriate work concept. Remember that our work roles have a great deal to do with our sense of self, goals, and purpose. Performing satisfying work is a very healthy thing for all of us to do.
• Develop realistic goals for yourself, and take the necessary steps to accomplish them.
• Resolve any differences between what you want and what you need. A large gap in these areas can lead to a continued state of dissatisfaction and frustration.
• Develop good health habits. Get appropriate amounts of sleep, eat a balanced diet, and incorporate regular exercise into your life. Establish a meaningful relationship with your doctor.
• Do not use stress as excuse to fail but a stimulus to grow.