To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and stress!
But here’s a great question. How much stress do you need to perform at your full potential? Hint: The answer is not zero.
We are constantly bombarded with a seemingly endless stream of articles reminding us how bad stress is for us. Pharmacists are not alone in citing workplace stress as a genuine concern. This information is usually followed by a plethora of stress-busting tips promising a stress-free life. But should we always want to get rid of stress, or could we find better ways to manage, or even harness it for our good?
Despite a lifetime of messaging that stress is always bad for us, the reality is that stress is not always the problem. Stress is essential for us to perform at our best, and the right amount of it can be enhancing and lead to peak performance. Stress is the body’s natural response to a difficulty or challenge either physical or mental. But challenges can be good as well as bad, and appropriate levels of stress can motivate us to perform at our best. A little bit of stress increases our engagement and motivation, whereas too much can limit our effectiveness, as becomes obvious to us when one of our team call in sick and we are short staffed for the day. Examples of beneficial stress include working to a deadline, learning something new, or competing in sports.
Of course, in reality a stress-free life is an unattainable goal, and a stress-free pharmacy only exists after closing time. Sure, stress can be harmful and is associated with many common illnesses, including heart disease, headache, gastrointestinal issues, depression and anxiety. But it’s also a part of life that’s impossible to avoid, and there’s the paradox. We are built to experience stress, and just the right dose can lead to peak performance, whereas too much stress is detrimental to our health. How we deal with it is vitally important to its effects on us, and a belief that a certain amount of stress is helpful, should be accepted, utilised and even embraced, can shape its impact on our performance and wellbeing.
Stress prepares us to meet challenges by creating changes in our bodies and our brains. These changes include storing or mobilising energy resources, increasing our alertness, and preparing us for action. Stress enables us to focus, to increases memory functioning, to learn from challenges, and gives us a burst of energy that helps our bodies function and remain in balance. These changes are mediated through our stress response.
The stress response evolved to deal with short-term exposure to danger and difficulties, where the stress chemicals released are used up, after which our bodies and minds returned to normal. This is the typical fight or flight scenario. However, our present lifestyles mean that we can be in a constant low state of stress, resulting in stress hormones circulating in the medium to long-term leading to chronic stress. Chronic stress has been associated with storing fat around the abdomen, higher blood pressure and impaired cognitive functioning. It can also lead to anxiety and depression. But it turns out that the way we think about stress might have a major impact on how harmful it is, and that our beliefs about it can shape its impact on our performance and wellbeing.
” Stress is essential for us to perform at our best, and the right amount of it can be enhancing and lead to peak performance. ”
A national survey in the US asked over 28,000 people how much stress they had experienced in the past year, and also how much they perceived that stress had an effect on their health. The results showed that either experiencing a lot of stress or believing it to be harmful had a negative relationship to health outcomes. But a combination of both was worse, with those who scored highly for having a lot of stress and believing that it was very harmful having a much greater risk of dying prematurely eight years later.
In another study, psychologist Alia Crum and colleagues found that people who saw stress as being enhancing and necessary for peak performance, showed fewer negative health outcomes than those who saw it as being debilitating. The practical advice from this seems to be that instead of always trying to eliminate stress, which is impossible, we are better served by, yes, attempting to minimise it, but also by viewing it differently.
Crum suggests these three steps:
Changing your mindset doesn’t mean taking a Pollyanna view of the world. The key isn’t to deny stress, but to recognise and acknowledge it and then to find the upside. Sometimes it’s not so easy, for example where stress is prolonged and constant. In times of chronic stress finding ways to take action to take care of ourselves, however small, is important. Every little action helps and can enable us to feel a bit more in control. For example, taking a few minutes to focus on our breath, getting outside for a brief, brisk walk or confiding in someone and asking for help. Techniques, such as progressive muscular relaxation, where we scan through our bodies, slowly tensing each part in turn and then releasing it, can also help us switch off from our problems.
As Hans Selye the grandfather of stress research is quoted as saying ‘Complete freedom from stress is death’. So, let’s be honest, the stress-free pharmacy does not exist, nor should it. What is key is getting the balance right between not too much stress that limits our effectiveness, but enough to motivate us to perform at our best.
Séamus Ruane is a community pharmacist and Positive Psychology Practitioner. Visit www. iThrive.ie for more information.
Séamus Ruane
Community Pharmacist and Positive Psychology Practitioner
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