Stress Rx: Building Business Biceps and Dodging Distress

Building muscle is hard. 

 Stressing the muscle beyond its current capacity through heavy weights and repetition, followed by rest and refuelling, will accelerate growth. 

 Gym-goers have shifted their mindset to embrace the physical struggle, knowing it will lead to coveted strength gains. 

 Do business leaders need to take a similar approach? Should they reframe their perception of stress and embrace it as a necessary ingredient to growth?

 Difference between Eustress and Distress:

Drawing inspiration from Jim Lohr's "The Power of Full Engagement," which focuses on energy sources—Spiritual, Emotional, Mental, and Physical—the analogy between gym workouts and leadership becomes clearer.

Top tennis players excel in micro-recovery routines, refreshing emotional, physical, and mental energy. Lohr translates this to corporate life, advocating a sprint-and-recover mindset. Building executive muscle, like physical muscle, demands intentional stress and recovery.

There are two types of stress: distress, associated with negative feelings and anxiety, and eustress, a positive form benefiting health and well-being. The power to determine how stress affects us lies within our grasp.

Physical Energy is the Key to Stress Management:

Physical energy, the foundation for all humans, involves preparation for your day (sleep, diet, exercise) and energy management during the day. Effective management of your physical energy will determine your mental and emotional capacity at work.

Here is a simple example. Back-to-back meetings elevate cortisol levels, causing negative physiological processes and depleting physical, mental and emotional capacity.

A curious, empathic and creative leader in the morning can quickly turn into a negative, closed-minded, blame-seeking micro-manager by the afternoon.

Embracing Stress for Capacity Growth:

The better physical, mental and emotional management systems you have in place, the more often daily stress will be embraced as eustress rather than feared as distress. 

As leaders, we have the superpower to determine how stress affects us, setting an incredible trajectory for our business.

Here are a few recommended physical management strategies:

Break up your day

• Carve out thinking, doing and meeting time and block your calendar

• Thinking time should be at your most productive times of the day

• 90 minutes is about the limit of human concentration; make sure you insert renewal every 90 minutes

• An incredible hack is to end every 1 hour meeting 10 minutes early, use that 10 minutes to reset (all modern calendar systems have this setting)

Insert Rest and Renewal

• Plan to move every hour - it can be as simple as standing and stretching, going for a quick lap around the house or office, doing ten pushups.

• Eat healthy natural foods and drink water throughout the day

• Manage caffeine intake; caffeine is linked to increased cortisol levels

Try Something New

• Dr. Weils box breathing method (an emotional reset in under a minute)

• 5 Minute seated meditation (Spotify has a fantastic guided example)

• Solues Pushup (deep muscle in the calf associated with distance running; search Huberman labs soleus pushup) 
  

Remember, like in the gym, stress is vital for growth. Embrace it, recover well, and watch your leadership muscle strengthen.

Wishing you a stress-positive and growth-filled week!