If you feel stressed more often than you’d like, you’re not alone. 78% of Americans feel stressed at least one day a week and 15% are stressed EVERY DAY, according to a recent study.
With so many people experiencing stress, you’d think we’d be really good at managing it, right?
The market that focuses on stress management exceeded $17B in 2019 and is forecasted to pass $20 billion by 2024 (source).
And yet, as a species, we are more stressed than ever. So many of the developments that were meant to make our lives easier have become stressors that make our lives harder. Smart phones were originally thought to create convenience by having immediate access to information wherever you go. Now, they can feel like handcuffs to the demands of life that never let you go.
Back in 1930, An economist John Maynard Keynes evaluated the impact of technology on the working lives of Americans, and he determined that we wouldn’t work so much in the future. The previous decade had produced the instant camera, the automobile, the assembly line, the garbage disposal, frozen food, and many other technologies that were designed to make our lives easier.
He expected that we would use the technology to maintain productivity while creating more free time. He predicted that by the early 2000’s, we would work only 15 hours/week, enjoying a 5-day weekend.
That’s true right? You only work about 15 hours a week?
(I’ll pause here for the ruckus laughter or the indignant sneer.)
Not so much. Keynes missed something very important about human behavior in his predictions. And it’s the same thing that leads a lot of the stress-management industry to fall short in truly improving the level of stress across society.
Here, I’ll outline 5 reasons typical stress management techniques fall short.
1. You’re looking for a quick fix.
“A quick fix for a long-standing problem only works for the short term.”
Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana, PhD, MBA
Ahhh… meditation. Raise your hand if you have tried it. Keep your hand up if you feel like you suck at it. This is one of the most common things people say about meditation. That and: “Yeah, I really should do that more….”
Stress is often a result of feeling like there isn’t enough time in the day to get all the things done. So, the idea of spending time doing something like meditation, which only checks something off your list if you wrote “meditate” on your to do list (you did, didn’t you?) can feel hard. On top of that, you probably expected, or at least wanted, meditation to feel like an immediate sense of relief. But while you were meditating, your self-talk was going crazy.
Am I doing this right? What am I supposed to be thinking about?
I have to make sure I respond to that email from John, and connect him with Raquel so that they can – oh wait. Stop thinking.
How do I stop thinking? The thoughts are constant. Ugh. Ok. Breathe. Just breathe.
This position hurts my hip. I wonder if I’ll need hip replacement surgery when I’m older. My mom needed it, but it wasn’t so bad for her. I gotta call her, I don’t talk to her enough. Oh! Shoot. I’m thinking again. Ok – stop thinking.
Does something like that read as familiar?
You had a hard time really focusing or doing whatever it is that you thought you were supposed to do, and you didn’t feel more relaxed after. In fact, you almost felt more stressed because you started thinking about all the things on your to-do list, while feeling like you were failing at the practice of meditation. So maybe you tried it for a couple days, but didn’t stick with it. Then you declared that it didn’t work.
Meditation is just one example – you could apply it to many practices like breathwork, or using apps like Calm – but too often, you’re looking for a quick fix. And a “quick fix for a long-standing problem only works for the short term.”
Most of us don’t reasonably expect that we can brush our teeth once and then feel like we have a clean, cavity-free mouth forever, or even for a day.
Most of us don’t think we can go to the gym once and declare ourselves forever fit.
But something about practices associated with stress management makes us want something that helps right now! And if it doesn’t help right now, we give up on it.
Which leads me to reason #2.
2. You’re not managing stress, you’re focusing on productivity.
“Your worth is not measured by your productivity.”
Often stress management techniques turn into time management tips, which usually amount to you trying to jam more things into the day.
How many times have you suggested to yourself that if you just stayed late this week, then you’d feel “caught up” and the stress would go away?
When I was finishing my PhD while working full-time at NASA, I found myself constantly playing that tug of war game. I’d say, man if I could just take a couple days off from work, I could really get momentum on finishing this dissertation. And then when I was at work, I’d think, man if I could just work straight through the weekend, I could really catch up on all these tasks that are bogging me down.
And fortunately I’m smart enough to realize how ridiculous that was. One of my clients had internalized the idea that: “If everything is important, then nothing is important.” We used that to help her prioritize in a meaningful way and help her say “no” to more things.
One day she came to me and said, “What do you do when everything is important, and it’s still too much?”
“It’s possible you’re just doing too much,” I said.
Whew. Kind of a frustrating answer. But true. Sometimes we simply take on too much, and we feel stressed from taking on too many things, and wanting to meet our obligations. So we focus on improving our “time management” or we focus on learning productivity tips, working to jam more things into the day.
So strange that it doesn’t actually reduce your stress…. What it does is increase your feelings of exhaustion, reduce your time to relax and replenish, increasing the likelihood that even small things will be experienced as stressors moving forward.
Becoming more productive is not the answer to reducing your stress. In most cases, it’s merely a band-aid that you hope will stop the bleeding, but doesn’t.
3. You apply incomplete “advice” or mantras.
That’s not what Elsa meant when she said “let it go”
“Just let it go.” Even as I type that, I feel my brow furrow in irritation. What that hell does that mean? So many things about that “advice” are flawed. One of the biggest problems is that many of you think that it should be enough.
Just let it go. Why can’t I let it go? Just let it go. Breathe.
Nope, it’s still there. Shit! What am I doing wrong?? Am I broken??
“Just let it go” – like most advice, is well-intentioned. I talk to many people who find themselves stressed out by situations that they have very little control over. Like the global pandemic. Like the presidential election. Like Russia invading Ukraine.
Choosing to feel stressed over situations that are largely outside your control often leads to that advice of “just let it go.” And I agree with the premise. The premise aligns with the serenity prayer.
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I do think there is a lot of power there. And it can lead people to give you advice about accepting a situation: “It is what it is.”
But just like “let it go,” “It is what it is” is incomplete. It isn’t how our brains work. Sort of like Tarzan swinging from vines, just letting go isn’t enough.
Tarzan will let go when he’s got the next vine to grab onto. So you’ll want to replace the thought that is creating stress with a thought that is less likely to create stress.
Which means you’ll want to figure out what thoughts feel true and simultaneously create less stress. This means a combination of thinking AND feeling.
4. You (think) you’re avoiding the stressor.
“You’re dealing with it whether or not you’re dealing with it.”
“Just ignore him.”
Ha. Your co-worker is stressing you out, and the helpful advice to help you reduce that stress is to “just ignore him.”
First of all, if it were that simple, you probably would have tried that. But surely, you have a ton of reasons why you can’t just ignore this person. You work together.
But you do find ways to reduce this person’s impact on you – by avoiding him. You have a question about the work you’re doing together, but you anticipate that when you ask him, he’ll act frustrated and be unkind about you having the question. So, what could take just 2 minutes to clarify through direct conversation – instead, you spend 20 minutes researching on your own trying to find out. And then it’s still a bit of a guess, because you didn’t go to the source.
And that’s exactly why you’re dealing with it, whether or not you’re dealing with it.
When you have things in your life that are stressing you out, employing tactics to avoid the stressor usually just create other stressors, like time (see #1 and #2 above).
Even if you think you’re skilled at compartmentalization, you are a whole human. And if something is bugging you or stressing you in one moment, avoiding that stressor or trying not to think about it will affect you in lots of ways, many of which you don’t even fully understand.
So, when you notice a stressor, regardless of what you choose next, you are dealing with it, whether or not you’re dealing with it.
The invitation would be to deal with it in a way that increases your effectiveness while decreasing your stress.
And many of us make mistake #5 in our attempt to deal with it.
5. You’re focusing on external shifts.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi
I have absolutely been guilty of this. When I experience a situation as stressful, part of my brain blames the other people involved in the situation for my stress. “Things would be better here, if only you…”
Do you ever find yourself thinking your stress would go down, “If only this person would…”?
Be honest now…. 😉
It’s human and common for us to focus first on the external. In some ways, this is like shortfall #1 (looking for a quick fix). But it hides…
Let’s say for example you are really stressed out in your job. So you decide to change jobs. You dust off your resume, you look for positions, you apply, you interview, you mull over the decisions to make, you select a new role, and you change jobs.
You likely experience a honey-moon effect straight away; feeling better about things because your brain is primed to look for all the reasons you made the “right” choice in changing jobs. But before too long, you find yourself noticing stressors creeping up again. Your calendar is filling up. The to-do list is growing. These co-workers are annoying you, too.
And even though it was not a “quick fix” (it took a lot of time to change roles!), you were focused only on changing things outside yourself. Which means you were making all kinds of choices (consciously and subconsciously) to land you in the same emotional place you were in before.
Stress is exceedingly common, and so many of us want so badly to find a way to feel less stressed and enjoy life more.
But to really do that, you have to understand stress on a different level. That is why I’m so excited to tell you that I’ll be offering a powerful, digital course called “Stress Detox for High-Achievers”.
Click here to join the waitlist and find out more!
Life is too short to feel the level of stress you feel. If you’re ready to make a different choice for yourself, check out my Stress Detox for High-Achievers digital course, coming soon!
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