How to use stress to your advantage

Your lack of stress is keeping you mediocre.

Im not talking about negative stress, but the positive kind… the kind that pushes you to be more.

In this article I am going to teach you how to utilize and create positive stress to your advantage.

If you want to grow, you must challenge yourself. Without positive stress, you are more likely to stay in your comfort zone and miss out on being the epic human you are capable of becoming. Avoiding stress leads to stagnation.

Also, there is a relationship between positive stress and performance. We know that a flow state is achieved when there is an optimum balance between challenge and skills.

We can create that challenge to force ourselves to grow.

By incorporating positive stress, you will develop new skills, expand your comfort zone, and grow into a higher-functioning human.

What is stress, anyways?

Stress has a negative connotation. We tend to think of stress as that negative feeling of overwhelm and burnout. But it doesn’t have to be.

Stress is simply the feeling of being in a space where you are uncomfortable. The physiological state of stress is when you are out of homeostasis. Your body is literally “stressed” and is working to get back to baseline.

The emotion of stress is due to your perceptions, which results in a sympathetic nervous response in the brain and body. Your mind perceives a threat and your physiology responds accordingly to ready you for action.

Stress is the feeling that you need to act. What you do with that feeling is up to you. You can be crushed by it, or you can rise to the occasion.

Stress is required for adaptation. Chronic stress will crush you. Positive stress will make you grow. Just like muscles will not grow without being challenged, you will not grow without adequate positive stress.

Let’s talk about 5 ways to create positive stress so you can build your tolerance, increase your stress capacity, and better manage it overall.

First, let’s look at the way you evaluate stress.

Change your perceptions

When we think of stress, we often think of the emotional stress that comes with life.

We have lots to do, and not enough time.

Pressure is on from the boss to get work done.

There are struggles with your work peers that you need to navigate.

You have expectations on you that you’re not sure you can meet.

All of this stress comes down to your perceptions about 2 things: your skills and resources.

To paint a picture: imagine all of your life requirements placed upon a 16 year old kid. They would surely feel more stress than you, right?

What if we put all your life requirements on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (minus his existing responsibilities). Would he feel more stress than you? Maybe… but probably not.

When we evaluate a situation, we assess our level of skills and available resources to solve a problem. The amount of stress we feel follows this evaluation.

If I asked you ensure your household had clean water to drink, you would likely NOT feel any stress about it.

If I asked you to put a team together to solve a water-cleanliness crisis for a village in Africa, you may be incredibly overwhelmed.

Would you know where to even start? What do you know about water cleanliness in Africa? Have you ever put a team together? What are the possible solutions to this problem? How much money would you need? What are the obstacles you need to overcome? Do you have people to help you?

If you do not have the skills to tackle this, you will feel overwhelmed (stressed). If you do not have resources (money and people) to help you with this, you may also feel overwhelmed (stressed).

But, let’s say you work for the Water Project (waterproject.org), these skills and resources may be in your wheelhouse. Your feelings of overwhelm would be significantly decreased.

When you catch yourself feeling stressed, take a moment to evaluate your skills and resources. Simply ask yourself:

• Do I have the skills to accomplish this?
• Do I have the available resources, like people, tools, or time, to accomplish this?

If the answer is no, then ask yourself how you can gain the skills or resources to complete the task.

If the answer is yes to both, and you still feel stressed…. GOOD! You are on track to turning this into a positive stressor.

With the skills and resources in place, you should only be battling time as your main adversary. There may be other challenges, too: maybe it is a novel problem you are solving, or maybe you have to create a product strategy for your team, etc. Regardless, we are looking for the feeling of positive pressure, not the feeling of overwhelm.

Pay attention to your perceptions. Identify your skills and resources that will help you accomplish your task.

If you have skills and resources, what can you do to stretch yourself and get that feeling of positive stress? Set lofty goals.

Set lofty goals

There is a saying that everything you could ever want is just outside your comfort zone.

Only way to push yourself forward is to reach out of your comfort zone and force yourself to grow.

But how far our should you push?

If you set a goal way outside your comfort zone, you will not have the skills and resources to accomplish it, therefore leading to negative stress.

If you set goals just outside your comfort zone, you will have most of the skills and resources needed, and are more likely to feel the positive pressure of stress.

So what do you do? Both.

Set big audacious goals first. These should be clearly outside your zone of skills and resources.

Then, work backwards to identify steps you can take to achieve that goal. What skills do you need to learn? What resources do you need to gather?

Then chip away.

Start with the items just outside your comfort zone and continue to work outward until you learn all the skills and gather the resources needed to hit your goal.

There is one thing you need to add to promote the positive stress to grow: a Deadline.

Time limits and time boxes are crucial.

Time-Box your effort

Urgency adds pressure.

Not only do you need a target date to complete your goal (or your phase of growth), but you need a time-box for your current effort.

For example, you may have a goal to grow your business over the next 12 months. That is so far out you may not feel the pressure to act immediately.

Set a shorter term goal to grow by a certain percentage over the next month. This will add urgency to your tasks and will create the pressure to act.

Also, set time limits each day.

If you only have 3 hours of daily focus time to work on this goal, you are more likely to get after it than if you had unlimited time (all day).

Time limits add urgency. Also, as time is a resource, limiting time creates scarcity which will add to the feeling of stress. If you had zero time, the stress may be overwhelming. But with just enough time, you can force yourself into action.

These tactics are great for taking action, but you need to be physically and mentally prepared to act. Therefore, you must train.

Challenge your body

You cannot be a peak version of yourself without taking care of your physical self.

Working out will do may things for you. In regards to this conversation, it will do three things:

1. Increase your focus via improved brain health
2. Increase your energy via improved physical health
3. Confirm your ability to handle stress you willingly place upon yourself

Your body will not make physical adaptations unless you challenge your musculoskeletal system. Your life will note make improvements unless you challenge your actions.

The gym is a safe place to practice stressing your system and seeing how you respond.

You can train yourself to be more resilient, handle discomfort, and manage physical stress.

The pain you feel in the gym is intentional and temporary. Just like the pain you feel while pushing your skills to new heights.

You should be doing some kind of exercise every day. As you workout, notice how you respond to the accompanying discomfort. Do you quit early? Do you finish your sets?

I am willing to bet how you react in the gym mimics how you react in other situations.

Build your toughness in the gym and you will build your toughness in life.

There is one more way to build your toughness. Take risks.

Take more risks

Is there something you want to do that scares you? Do it.

Is there a conversation you are avoiding? Initiate it.

Is there a thing you want to try but are waiting? Try it.

As you take more risks, even small ones, you become comfortable with discomfort. Also, you learn that the result of the risk is often a positive outcome. At least, a bad outcome is nearly never as bad as you imagine.

When you take a risk, you willingly put yourself in a stressful situation. This builds confidence and improves your ability to take action in the face of fear.

Let’s recap

Stress is not bad. It is simply a signal.

Your brain wants to protect you from danger and the feeling of stress is one of anxiety, prepping your body for action in a situation with a risky outcome.

You can use this system to your advantage.

Take risks.

Train your body.

Set goals.

Set time limits.

Mind your perceptions.

Go crush it, and discover what you are capable of.

Whenever you are ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

• Keep reading these articles and implement what you learn
• Coaching - If you want personal help in leveling up your leadership, reach out to me at [email protected].