This week I delivered a short talk to a group of Doctors in training about how to manage stress at work and home. I deliver this talk to Foundation Year 2 Doctors on a fairly regular basis. It started life as a straight up signposting session, telling them where to get help if they needed at and a brief description of the signs that they might need help. From an Organisational Development perspective this felt a little reactionary rather than discussing and sharing how we can effectively manage our stress to reduce the risk of needing the offered support. Therefore I have changed the hour long session to a quick guide in recognising our own protective qualities and how we can be more intentional in deploying them during more heightened times of stress. The point of the talk now is, that we live and work in a stressful world. It always has been and it always will be. We can try to get rid of the stressful elements of our life, but the fact is leading a fulfilling, purposeful life involves a certain amount of stress. Our exposure to stress is inevitable, therefore attempts to avoid stress will compound the issue.
I don’t want to go into the detail of the hour long talk. To be honest you can find most of the content in previous blogs on identifying what brings you joy in a day (Hour of Happiness). I want to talk about another subject that I do bang on about a lot in my blogs which is the relentless pursuit of positivity. Yes I know I have mentioned the Hour of Happiness blog. Acknowledging what brings you happiness in any given day is not the same as relentlessly pursuing happiness and positivity and ignoring the difficult, stressful and upsetting aspects of our life. It is quite simple avoiding sadness and discomfort can be massively unhelpful. In the short term it can feel convenient. “I haven’t got time to face this at the moment.” I hear that every week in fact I have heard myself say it plenty of times. Sometimes the problems and issues we face are inconvenient and stop us from getting where we wanted to go, so we ignore them and plough on regardless. Putting your head down and carrying on might work for a short time, but it wont last for ever. It will always end in burn out, you might think this sacrifice and persistence is professional and honourable, but all you are doing is creating more problems further down the line. In fact it is an incredibly risky strategy not just for you, but for friends, family, colleagues and the organisation you work in.
If you are a regular reader of my blogs you will have read about the three elements of organisational resilience originally written about by Diane Coutu. She suggests that the first element of resilience is having a sense of realism. If you and the organisation you work in wants to remain resilient you will have to be realistic about what you are facing and will be facing in the future. That includes the challenges and problems you face as well as opportunities. That includes emotions, and you and others are emotionally is a vital part of the reality we face. Instead of framing everything either positive or negative constantly it can be more helpful thinking in terms of helpful and unhelpful. This can help us wean of the obsession with either being relentlessly optimistic of persistently pessimistic. Pointing out barriers can be helpful as can visualising success, but focussing on one to the detriment of the other results in us missing vital information that will help us. The same is true of our emotions, constantly focussing on either negative or positive emotions means ignore large parts of our lives and are not able to focus on what is important to us. I found Dr Susan David’s book “Emotional Agility” really helpful in understanding the importance of acknowledging all aspects of our thoughts and feelings. If you want to know more, it is well worth a read. She has also done a few talks on this subject the link to her TED talk is below.
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