Five Steps Leaders Can Take To Overcome Stress

Are you wired to survive or thrive?

Do you feel a continuous level of anxiety or stress in your daily life? A need to constantly perform whether it be at work or in your own home? That if you let any of those balls you are juggling fall to the ground, things might just unravel?

If you have had these thoughts, you are not alone. You are wired to survive.

As Shirzad Chamine describes in Positive Intelligence, the mind is predisposed to maintain hypervigilance against threats to our survival. An instinct that initially evolved to help us evade short-term danger has morphed into a persistent state of fight-or-flight for most of us.

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, right?

Not so fast!

When in survival mode, we are wired to say no and maintain the status quo. Why? As Chamine puts it, “saying yes to something new and unknown could lead to death”…literally or metaphorically. 

Over time, we become conditioned by our inner critics and those who critique us. As a result, we seek security and predictability over curiosity and exploration. The voice of our wide-eyed inner child is eventually drowned out by that of a weathered and worn adult with narrower focus.

Whether it’s low-grade or in full gear, these feelings of perpetual anxiety and distress degrade our health, happiness and performance in the long run.

We really are our own worst enemy!

Amazingly, we have the ability to rewire our brains. It requires us to recognize that our concerns in life, professionally and personally, are self-generated.

"All your worries in the form of anxiety, disappointment, stress, anger, shame, guilt - ALL the unpleasant things that bring you suffering are generated by your inner judge and his accomplices."

As much as our inner critics want to convince us that they are there for our benefit. They live in the past or an unrealistic future. Constantly passing judgment and projecting their fears. They are never satiated and no matter what we accomplish in life, their need for more is unrelenting. The inner critic convinces us that their goal is to keep us safe but in reality they limit our growth and ability to realize our full potential.

So, how do I thrive?

By doing the following, we can minimize the negative impact of our overactive survival instinct by activating our INNER SAGE. 

Step 1: Identify your inner critics. Whether it be the judge, the pleaser, the restless, the hyper-achiever, the controller, the victim, the avoider, the hyper-rational, the hyper-vigilant or the stickler. Your critics take on many forms and have multiple accomplices.

Step 2: Develop awareness of your critics. Notice their distinctive voices and give each one a name. In doing so, we externalize their voices and minimize their ability to diminish us or prevent us from moving forward.

Step 3: Acknowledge your critics without enabling them. You’ll never eliminate your critics but responding to them with compassion and not self-judgment will allow you to reframe threats as opportunities. What is my critic trying to tell me? How can I turn a negative into a positive? It may even help to thank them for the warning as you activate your sage.

Step 4: Build up your inner SAGE and ENGAGE. Strengthening your SAGE, requires becoming aware of and at ease with your present. Practicing daily mindfulness in the present moment calms the inner critics and allows your five SAGE super powers to surface. 

1. EMPATHY - for yourself and others - connect with your inner child and that of others.
2. EXPLORE - the ability to observe and experience the world from innocence, purity and fascination - what can I learn about myself through this experience?
3. INNOVATE - unleash your creativity by challenging the status quo, assumptions and old habits that hold us back - how can I do this in a completely new and different way?
4. NAVIGATE - using your purpose and core values to guide you when reaching an intersection - what does your wise future SELF tell you about the crossroad you are at now?
5. ACTIVATE - this power moves you into pure action, where all your emotional and mental power is in action and you are not distracted by your inner critics and their accomplices. The key here is that you anticipate your critics; put yourself in their shoes while disarming them by maintaining empathy and navigating using your internal compass. This is when you are truly operating “IN THE FLOW”.

Step 5: Celebrate your wins, losses and ties. Pushing yourself outside your comfort zone regardless of the outcome, is cause for celebration. Doing so acknowledges growth and learning while lessening your inhibitions in taking on new challenges.

We actually achieve better outcomes when we don’t judge ourselves on the outcomes we achieve.

Rewiring ourselves to thrive vs. survive serves to remind us that true joy in life has much more to do with the journey than the destination.

What changes can you make in your leadership of self and others to calm your inner critics and unleash maximum potential?