Why take a risk?
Personal note
These last two weeks have been filled with many opportunities to meet new people and to share with them the exciting things I am doing.
As I did so, I reflected upon my past, when I was so shy that the patterns on the wallpaper made more impact on a group than I did. Now I circulate confidently, smiling, chatting, finding out about other people, making friends, and yes … actually talking about myself.
All of this didn’t happen by accident: it was part of a calculated plan at self-improvement that I started in 1983, and worked through step-by-step.
Today’s article is about that first step: recognizing that you may stay in a prison of your own making forever if you don’t act. I’ll make it easy for you.
Don’t forget:
On May 19, I am proud to be a presenter at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation’s FREE heart health screening. If you are in or near Minneapolis, please join us for this value-laden event, featuring
- Heart health presentations at 9, 10 and 11 AM
- Stress management (THAT”S ME! – at 10 a.m.)
- Heart-healthy eating
- Exercise for every body - Nordic walking demonstrations
- Healthy living resources and displays
- Prizes and more!
Saturday, May 19, 2012
8 AM – 1 PM
Richfield Community Center – Nicollet and Augsburg Rooms
7000 Nicollet Ave. S
Please join us.
Why take a risk?
Some people take risks more readily than other people. And risks can be a little scary, whether they involve making a major career change and/or cross-country move, asking for a promotion or a raise, declaring your affection to someone else when you’re not sure how that person feels, or when it necessitates speaking up to someone whose behavior has been making you unhappy. Risks come in all sizes and shapes.
The first thing to remember is that it is impossible to avoid risks - life is full of them.
First of all, there are Imposed risks: things that happen to us that we can’t avoid – floods and tornadoes come to mind – with the possibility of leaving you feeling helpless and victimized, as do financial disasters, broken relationships, and any situation you can’t control.
That sense of a loss of control is what makes stress so stressful – in fact it is the key factor in determining whether we view an event as stress or as a challenge.
Then there are Chosen risks: Actions you deliberately take to get something you want or to get away from something you don’t want. With a chosen risk, there is always the possibility of embarrassment, failure and loss.
Why would anyone choose to take a risk when it may be accompanied by lots of anxiety?
It can result in a rich reward and – think of this, you will never know whether you could have gotten what you wanted if you never try. Even if the outcome isn’t exactly what you want, the long term consequence of that risk-taking act can be positive because you become more resilient and able to deal with imposed risks more easily.
Do you feel safer when you don’t take a risk? Research indicates that, at the end of their lives, people don’t worry about what they have done. They worry about what they have not done. As John Greenleaf Whittier said, “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been.”
Here’s a little exercise to get you started:
Think of a risk you would like to take. What is the worst thing that could happen?
This is called the “worst case scenario.” Why would you want to think of that?
Because it is the bogeyman that is keeping you from even thinking deeply about taking the risk. Facing it is necessary if you want to move forward.
On a scale of 0 to 100, what is the probability the worst will happen? Take a minute to think about this. You may find, to your surprise, that the probability isn’t really all that high, but you have been acting as if it is 100%.
If the probability is less than 50% that it will turn out badly, you are in a good position to go ahead. It is probably a lot less than 50%.
Finally, can you handle the feelings, or are you undermining yourself by saying, “it will be soawful if this doesn’t work out?” Will it really, or are you being dramatic?
Risk-taking doesn’t have to be scary or dramatic; it’s a skill, and it can be learned and practiced, just like any other skill you might want to acquire in order to enrich your life.
Next week, we will look at how to set up a risk so it is not so risky at all.
Watch How You Tell Your Story!
Personal note
Watch How You Tell Your Story!
When bad things happen to good people (you), there is an irresistible urge to share the load by talking about it. This can have two good results:
You relieve yourself of some of the pressure by sharing
You may have insights into a problem when talking with someone else.
It feels comforting to rush to friends or loved ones to tell them all the bad things that have been happening to you, but it can backfire. Along the way, you may mentally rehearse everything you’re going to tell them, making sure not to omit any details. It can be calming to see the look of sympathy in the eyes of someone else, and to hear their consoling words.
When you tell your story in all its intensity, you are reliving the event. If it was stressful when it happened, your recounting of the story may bring back the same physical stress. Even your mental rehearsal may do that.
The fact is, an estimated 10% of our stress is due to what happens to us; the other 90% is due to how we think about what happens to us, or how we habitually react to what happens. So for one real stressful event, you may experience the same reaction many times. It’s like getting a lot of bang for your buck, except it’s much less desirable than a buck. Each time you go through your story, you are undermining your physical health and your happiness, too, by putting your body through the same raised heart rate and blood pressure, muscular tension, troubled digestion, and mental confusion.
How can you get the release of telling your troubles to others in a way that is healthy?
First, position yourself as a problem-solver, not a victim
Instead of saying something like, “Why ME?” or “Things like this always happen to me?”, try something like, “This was a real test of my ingenuity.” Or “Once I calmed down, I figured it out.”
Find some humor in the situation – particularly when you’re in the middle of the situation. When my garage door froze shut, I cobbled together all the extension cords in the house, plugged my hair dryer into the end, and trudged out through the snow to warm up the lock. No power! I had to giggle when I realized that I had to go back in and plug the other end of the cords into an outlet in the house, and I giggled even more when I had to make another trip to push the re-set button.
Which brings me to the next point:
The joke’s on you It happens to everyone, at one time or another – stress leaves us feeling so confused that we overlook simple details and make obvious mistakes. I like to say that Stress Makes Us Stupid. It’s not the fickle finger of fate poking us once again; it’s a fairly natural and predictable process – but it can be avoided.
When you find yourself blocked at implementing a simple solution during a stressful period, pause, take a deep breath, and think the whole process through before you make a move. Don’t rush because you want to the stress to end – it’ll just make it worse.
Determine in advance whether you’re asking for advice or help
Be careful who you choose as a listener. Some people just have to jump in and solve your problems. Other people (often, but not always, men), see the disclosure of your feelings as a call for help
Tell your listener what you want. Say, “I’m not asking for help in finding a solution at this time/ I really just need to get this off my chest right now.”
Express gratitude to your listener for listening to you
“Whew, it’s great to have a friend like you. Thanks for listening.”
Make it a two-way street
Needless to say, being a good listener who doesn’t make judgments or give unwanted advice when other people tell their stories is a great way to get reciprocity.
When you tell your story the right way, other people will be willing to listen to you again and again rather than avoiding you
Regarding that frozen week of minor crises that I mentioned at the start; I figured I must have told my story right when the friend I e-mailed wrote back, saying, “That’s the funniest story I’ve heard all day.”
Stress and Your Health
In my last article, I talked about “stress stupidity” and how it causes us to make mistakes and lose time. It actually does more than that:
A recently released Yale University study, published online the week of January 9, 2012, in the journal Biological Psychiatry, shows that stress causes the brain to shrink because the stress hormones eat away at brain tissue, literally making holes in your brain.
One highly-stressful episode, such as our remote ancestors suffered when they ran from ravenous beasts, doesn’t necessarily produce the “holes in the brain” phenomenon. Instead, it’s the steady daily diet of stress with which many people live in the 21st century that causes the problem.
This steady onslaught of stress, which may be low-level but persistent, is similar to drops of water dripping onto stone: a slow wearing down.
Lack of focus, concentration problems, inability to set priorities, and difficulty in making decisions are more behavioral signs that signal the presence of “stress stupidity.” The very qualities that we need in order to be successful in life are impaired; you may come to believe that there is no way out of your stressful life.
Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman describes this psychological state as “learned helplessness”; the inability to find the “way out” of your dilemmas. Not only do your problem-solving skills suffer, but so does your motivation.
The dogs in his initial experiment, who were given shocks that they could not escape, and were then put in a box where there was an escape route, failed to see the escape route, even when shown! They simply lay down and absorbed repeated shocks.
“Learned helplessness” has been identified as a psychological pattern associated with many of the most severe illnesses. It does not start as a result of the illness; it is in place years before the illness develops.
Here are some ways to avoid developing learned helplessness.
Take frequent mini-breaks during the day during which you take a deep breath and ask yourself, “In the long run, what really matters here?”
When you make mistakes, learn to laugh at yourself instead of getting more stressed. Use the phrase “Stress makes you stupid.”
And when you feel blocked, say to yourself, “There is a solution. I just can’t see it right now.”
Then take a break, take a walk, talk to a friend, spend a few minutes planning to do something special for yourself later on. Because a brain is a terrible thing to lose.
Highly-educated, highly-intelligent people can do incredibly stupid things…
Personal Note
It’s time for Spring cleaning – mental and physical. Clearing desks and files feels good and motivates you to get back to work, especially after being closed up indoors for the winter. Best of all, clearing surfaces allows your creativity to spring forward – that same creativity that seems to disappear sometimes under stress.
Stress makes you stupid!
Stress can make even intelligent people screw up, look slightly crazy, and even undermine their health and well-being.
It’s true: even highly-educated, highly-intelligent people can do incredibly stupid things under stress. Take the woman, who upon finding that her house was on fire, grabbed what she believed to be two important objects before she rushed out- of- doors. They were an old issue of Time magazine and one slipper.
I myself have loads of empirical evidence to support this statement. And so have you. Have you ever rushed to get to the post office before it closed, only to discover the important package was still on your desk?
Here are some of the ways “stress stupidity” is expressed:
Losing things: How many times have you had to search for everyday objects such as keys, shoes, or your car in a parking lot?
What was happening just before you “lost” them? Your attention was probably fixed on the goal you were pursuing, rather than what you were doing when you put those items down.
Solution: Stop leaping ahead into the mental future and learn to pay attention to what you are doing when you are making transitions: leaving the house or office, parking, or going to the market. Pause and make a mental note of where you are going and what you will need when you get there or what you need to leave behind. When arriving at home or work, don’t immediately rush to solve a problem – children’s quarrels, a broken down appliance, etc.- before paying attention to where you are putting things (unless, of course, the house is on fire.).
Forgetting things you know perfectly well: While working with a marketing expert who was being paid by the hour, I had great difficulty getting the spacing right on a computer document we were designing together. Finally, I struck myself on the side of the head and said, “Stupid me. Hold down “control” while pressing the “enter” key.” This is an action I perform many times every day but had forgotten because I was hurried.
Solution: Time to take a break and take a breath. Do a stretching exercise. You will actually save time in the long run if you do so.
Brushing aside important information as a kind of “overload” that you can’t handle right now. For example, you may resolutely decide not to learn or implement a process that would make a job easier because you are too stressed and hurried to take the time to learn it. So you continue in your old, less effective but familiar way.
Solution: Take a break, take a breath, and find someone capable of helping you learn the new task, or just do it for you. Ask for help from people you know, being careful to select people who do not raise your stress level by displaying scorn for your “stupidity”. With the communication possibilities on the internet today, you can find someone easily who understands or can do what you cannot.
Brushing aside suggestions from other people, because you are too busy and harried to listen. You may even hear helpful suggestions as criticism, and feel more stressed.
Solutions: Take a deep breath, and just say “thank you.” That momentary pause may help you evaluate quickly whether the suggestion will save you time and stress.
Stress can make you temporarily stupid, until you come to your senses and regain your sense of humor and sanity.
So, stay in present time, alert to people, objects and action around you. Breathe deeply often, particularly when starting or finishing a task, or coming or going.
And above all, keep your sense of humor. Smile slightly as you remind yourself, “Stress makes you stupid!”
