How to deal with work stress successfully before it causes burnout and problems?

When your mind is in turmoil, it reacts fast and often inadequately. Work stress is your own adverse inner reactivity. You experience a considerable amount of stress when you face stimulating external pressure. Intensive pressure that you fail to handle.

Your stress can be negative or positive. However, in both cases, something gets triggered within your mind. And when this inner triggering is constant, you experience chronic stress that can lead to burnout, mental health issues and even physical health problems. We describe the outcome of this in this blog post, it is opening up stress and burnout statistics.

Are you aware that all outside stressors are merely triggers? What gets triggered is within you.

When you wouldn't react inwardly and lose intrapersonal control, stress wouldn't represent a problem for you.

It's your own mental and emotional overload that makes you incapable of dealing with your inner reactions.
 

INNER REACTIVITY VS AWARE RESPONSE

When you experience an inner reaction that leads to stress your heart starts to pound, and you breathe faster and more shallowly. As a result, your muscles become tense and you become ready to "fight-or-flight". Such an automatic inner reactivity is a subconscious response that we needed as a survival mechanism when life-threatening situations around us were part of our daily routine.

Today we don't need to flee to safety very often, at least not outside the war zone. However, when we look at the TV war or experience work-related tensions we subconsciously behave like back in the cave days.

It isn't wise. We have traffic safety, work safety and flight safety measures. Most of our risks are mitigated and there is no need to fight or run away.

It is about time everyone in our modern workplaces or home offices learns how to replace subconscious inner reactivity with the aware response.

What is an aware response?

An aware response has several components:

1. First, we need to know what is awareness. It isn't your thoughts or your emotions. It is the inner silence behind thoughts and emotions. Ingvar Villido has said well "We all use awareness to notice things around us, but most of us fail to notice what we use for noticing those things. This connector between us and the object is our awareness and we should study it." Learning to know our awareness allows us to direct our awareness at will. 
2. Second, to respond means our ability to take responsibility. Individual responsibility = ability to respond. It is your choice and you are responsible. It is accepting your choice to choose how you respond. Responding demands pause, this pause allows inner silence to appear and thus to disconnect from your automatic thought and emotional patterns.
3. An aware response then is the combination of the two. You, with the application of your awareness, now have the power to intentionally choose your response. 

Intrapersonal education is beneficial as it allows you and your team members to step out of the automatic reactivity that our subconscious mind has learned.

Why do you need to reduce your stress levels?

Stress is the dominant pathway to burnout and causes physical and mental illnesses and reduces our immunity. We have revealed this in several of our previous posts.

You as an individual win from stress reduction the most, you avoid different mental health issues and serious health problems, keep healthy relationships and can work productively. However, also employers win from stress reduction as stress numbers are sky-high.

Learning to respond adequately saves time, money and improves life quality. You become less afraid, more flexible and enjoy inner wellbeing.

We are sure that by now you have a question about how to achieve that.

The solution here is systematic intrapersonal education. When you start to understand how your inner domain operates, you become freer to focus on what you do as you are present in your current situation, thus you now can observe calmly what needs to be done.

In case you can't keep your focus as long as needed, take a personal stress test!
 

The efficient stress reduction strategy

Regardless of what triggers your stress, your stress reduction strategy is always the same:

1. Notice your inner reactivity arising and take a pause;
2. Become aware of your own awareness;
3. Observe your realistic choices and respond awarely.

What happens around us is beyond our control. None of us can control the world and events in it. However, we can control our own inner activities. What we feel, think and how we choose to respond. All those external stress triggers become powerless without inner reactivity.

Our minds reactivity sees subconsciously more problems than there are as we transfer our past negative experiences and fears into the future. We expect the worst and then become stressed and anxious. Often needlessly. When we remain calm and observe the actual situations we can respond adequately in our inner domain. 

As Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has demonstrated, you can remain calm even under extreme pressure. However, it becomes possible when you accept your responsibility and become grounded in the moment ad focus on doing what you can with the resources you have.

We hope that none of us have to face such stressors that he has seen. However, regardless of what happens next, he has demonstrated the ability to be a true leader ad deal with problems.

If you would love to be calm and always respond adequately you need practical intrapersonal skills. Inner skills you can easily apply in all work and life situations.

CONCLUSION

Your inner ability to respond adequately and take personal responsibility for your actions is the foundation of your freedom and professional skills.

By noticing and leading different intrapersonal processes you can choose how to respond and this gives you a positive power to solve any challenge. It enables you to make the changes around you so that your business and team can thrive even in crises.

Improved stress awareness and reduction of your inner reactivity will enhance your personal and work relations. You can thrive in situations where others fail or are afraid to act.

When employers provide access to stress and burnout prevention trainings, people become equipped with skills that support dealing with external pressure.

Training our minds isn't a campaign issue, it should be regular and systematic. Only then people and employers will see lasting results and a drop in work-related mental health issues.