There is so much going on these days.  We have many demands for our attention on top of being constantly bombarded by information (distractions and attractions) on a 24×7 basis.  And I really mean 24×7!  We are “bombarded” even when we are “sleeping” (or trying to).  Think about some of your recent dreams or the “thoughts” that wake us up in the middle of the night.  A lot of it comes from our many pending list items, problems we have or imagine having, etc.   When we can’t sleep, many of us turn on the TV or start reading email on a PDA, or do something else associated with “dumping” (more) information into our brain.

We are being pulled in so many directions by so many demands from people and by the things we should, have, and/or want to do!     At “home”, the family (parents, siblings, spouses, kids, partners, relatives, etc) needs your attention.   Your friends need your attention.  At work, your boss, your customers, your employees, etc., need your attention.  Sometimes, even YOU need your own attention. Your problems need attention.   Your opportunities need attention.   Your money (investments) needs attention.  Your health needs attention.  WOW!!!  That’s what I call the “Attention Tug-of-War”.

Imagine being in the middle and being pulled by not two but by many ropes tied to your waist in a 360 degree fashion.  Depending on what day or time it is, one of those ropes is pulling harder than the others.  Sometimes two or more are pulling with the same force.  That is when we feel that we are being torn apart.  OUCH!!!

So what can be done about this “challenge”?   How can IT Managers win these personal and organizational “tugs-of wars”?  How can they assist their teams/team members win their own “tug-of-wars”?

In my experience, the best approach to alleviate this tug-of-war feeling is through the development of what I call “Intention Clarity”.  I have found that when I become certain about what I want to accomplish, when I know what I want, I can easily adjust my focus and pay better attention to the people and things that matter most relative to my (clearest) intention.  I must tell you that the “tug-of war” does not necessarily end as a result, but it does become less “stressful” for lack of a better term.  It makes it much easier to choose what to attend to out of the many choices that we face.  It makes it easy to say “NO!” to the unrelated things and “YES!” to the things that align with our clear intention.  I have found there is nothing more powerful than clarity and conviction!  It helps us become more aligned and attentive. Less conflicted!  And that conflict is what produces most of the “tug-of-war” stress in the end.  When we are not sure of what we want to do or are supposed to do, we have a harder time.  We become torn between two, or sometimes several, choices.  However, when we know what we want to do or are supposed to do, it is a piece of cake.  We are comfortable and feel energized.  The stress we may feel under this situation is better stress, not bad as I talked about last month in my post “The Stress Paradox”.

In his book Secrets of Personal Mastery, L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. posed that many individuals diagnosed with “Attention Deficit Disorder” (ADD) really have what he calls “Intention Deficit Disorder” (IDD).  I believe Dr. Hall is right on!  He is not only right from an individual standpoint, but from an organizational one as well.  You could say many organizations operate as if they had some form of ADD, but I suspect that what they really have is IDD!

If you, your organization, or any of its members are involved in a “tug-of-war”, try to find some clarity — Intention clarity, or clarity of purpose.  Once you do, I promise the tugs-of-war that can end up killing some will subside. They will become less harmful to your health and to the quality of your life and to that of others.  I am clear of that!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

In this final step, you will develop strategies to help you reduce and eliminate bad stress from your life.  Stress has many short and long term negative connotations.  It has been shown to affect your mood, looks, intelligence, and immune system.  Stress has a big impact on relationships, wealth and health.  It kills people in many ways!  Mastering it should become (if it isn’t already) a top priority for you.  I propose six strategies for mastering stress.

Stress Mastering Strategies

• Knowledge: Learn as much as possible about yourself and others close to you.
• Awareness:  Become highly aware of your own and others’ personality, strengths, weaknesses, intentions, etc.
• Acceptance: Accept yourself and others as you/they are and focus on positive attributes
• Expectations:  Validate your expectations of yourself and others, as well as those others have of you.
• Proactivity:  Focus on your “Circle of Control” (a term coined by Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)
• Meaning: Clarify/validate the meaning of all stimuli.

Is it Worth It?

One final thought about ways and means to master stress.  Sometimes we get all worked up about things that may not be worth the stress they produce.  The following questions can go a long way in helping you and others explore stress worthiness.

• What happens if I do?
• What happens if I do not?
• What will not happen if I do?
• What will not happen if I do not?

As I said at the beginning of the post, IT managers have one of the most stress-full jobs out there!  I truly believe that a lot of the stressors affecting you can be mastered, in some cases, with very little effort.  These aforementioned four steps can be your “launch pad” for stress reduction and mastery.  And in addition to mastering your own, I suggest you can also use them to assist others under you manage, mitigate and eliminate a lot of their stress.  This can ultimately make you and your team more efficient, effective and healthy!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Now that you hopefully have a better understanding of the stress dynamics, we can move to the next step of identifying your “vital few” bad stressors.  In this phase you need to make a list of whom or what makes you most stressed most often.  Once you have developed that list, you can move on to the next step where you will validate each of the stressors.

Step 3:  Validate Each of Your “Vital Few”

In this step you will take each of your stressors on the list develop in the prior step and you will validate each of them.  The idea is to evaluate each stressor to ensure they are worthy of your attention and the negative impact they are currently producing or will produce if not addressed promptly and properly.

Here you will leverage the new awareness you gained earlier about the role of meaning-making on bad stress. The idea is to ensure that the stress you are getting is valid and not “made up” by your mind and thus unnecessary.

Reframing

The best way to get you going is to illustrate the process using an example.  Let’s say that one of your big stressors comes from your Boss asking questions all the time.  In such case, you would have to explore why that causes you stress.  What does it mean to you?  Why do his or her questions bother you so much?  Let me tell you a quick related story.  I am an inquisitive person by nature.  As a CEO, I ask lots of questions to all of my employees.  A few years ago, I had one Director who always reacted very poorly to my questioning.  One day, after I could tell he was very upset about my questioning, I confronted him about it.  I explained to him my rationale for questioning him so much and I shared with him examples of my inquisitiveness in many situations and with others throughout the organization.   I helped him reframe the meaning he was giving my questioning from “I did not trust him or think he was competent” to “I am just a curious and inquisitive person trying to learn and do my job as a CEO” — What a difference that made for him.  In a few minutes, he went from literally hating my questions to loving them.  His responses were no longer short and defensive-sounding.  They became much more substantive and informative.  More importantly, his blood pressure and heart rate dramatically improved!   It was amazing!  That is the power meaning has on us.

So what I suggest you do now is to make sure you explore each of your top stressors to make sure that stress is not coming from your meaning-making process.  If you discover a stressor is coming from this process, you need to work with yourself and others to reframe the meaning(s) assigned and reduce the stress those meanings are producing.

Do You Really “HAVE TO”?

Another area you can use to explore your meaning-making process is what Psychologists call “The Four Modal Operators of Necessity”: You “MUST” — You “SHOULD” — You “HAVE TO” — You “NEED TO”.   These operators have been shown to cause significant unnecessary stress.  These operators function as habitual modes inside us.  They “make” us (and sometimes others) think that we must, have to, need to, or should do something.  That can, in turn, cause undue stress.  Becoming aware of your use of these operators and/or questioning others when they use them can go a long way in mitigating and eliminating unnecessary stress from your life.

Continue to Mastering the “Stress Paradox” – Part 3

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

The goal of this post is to help IT managers master their “Stress Paradox”.   The process I recommend to help you accomplish this goal requires four steps:

• Understand the “Paradox” and its related dynamics.
• Identify your “Vital Few” bad stressors.
• Validate each of the bad stressors.
• Devise strategies to handle the validated stressors.

Step 1:  Understand the Paradox and its Dynamics

All good understanding begins with a good definition.  Thus, let me start this post with my definition for stress.  From my perspective, stress is a physiological response that is triggered by our interpretation of various stimuli (what we think, see, feel, hear, taste, etc.).

I consider stress as a paradox because it can be both good and bad.  Stress is essential to our survival and helps us thrive as human beings!  In small doses, it can help you perform under pressure and motivate you to do your best. Yet, it can also make you languish and cause lots of harm if not managed properly.

Let me give you a little more of a scientific perspective.  The process of homeostasis (internal equilibrium) is at the essence of human survival.  According to Maslow’s theory of human needs, survival is our number one priority!  When equilibrium is threatened by our interpretation of certain stimuli (“Stressors”), our body’s natural defense mechanisms kick-in with a “Stress Response” to compensate the imbalance and keep us in equilibrium.

As part of this dynamic, any perception of “a threat” triggers the release of hormones (i.e., Adrenaline).  These hormones can help us in the short term, but can also hurt us if and when they persist in our system.   Thus, stress helps us survive, but it can also hurt us.  That is why it is a paradox.

The Meaning-Making Process

Humans are meaning-makers.  Our “reality” (the way we see things and what they mean to us) is based on our interpretations, and our interpretations (perceptions or meanings) are based on our past experiences and the values and beliefs those experiences have produced over time.

Our meaning-making process is informed by three natural human mental processes.  These processes are designed to help us cope with billions of bits of “data” bombarding all our senses every moment as we attend to life’s many inputs.  So in order to make sense of all the information we perceive through all our “sensors” (our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) we tend to delete, distort, and generalize.

That is why we all have unique perspectives and personalities, even if we are twins and live under the same roof (with the same parents, teachers, etc.) for the critical formative years of our life.  It is amazing!

My Theory of Stress Triggers

Because our mind and body are inextricably connected, the thoughts produced by the meaning we make trigger a physiological response (as illustrated by the figure below).  That response can be either positive or negative or stress-producing.  Furthermore, the intensity and duration of a response is directly associated with the meaning you assign to the stimulus.

This means that our leverage point to manage stress is our meaning-making process.  The better we can manage our meaning-making process, the better we can manage the “Stress Paradox™”!

Keep in mind that some stress is good.  What we need to manage is the intensity and duration of “bad stress”.  The following  figure shows “stress zones” that need to be managed by our meaning-making process.

Continue to Mastering the “Stress Paradox” – Part 2

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO