The Four Things You Need To Do To Better Manage Stress
“It is not the events in our lives which stress us, but how we deal with them which does.”
Mo Gawdat
If stress is the sum of the challenges we face, divided by our ability to perceive and deal with them, then - the way I see it - we have three levers to pull to better manage stress:
Exposure: reduce the number of stressors which we are exposed to
Mindset: upgrade our mindset to improve how we perceive the stressors we face
Capability: improve our ability to deal with the stressors which remain, by:
a. Developing “in the moment” stress management tools, and
b. Raising our stress threshold
Now, knowing me, you’ll know that I don’t believe we should (nor are we capable of) eliminating all challenges from our lives. It is through challenge that we grow. But, some stressors are unproductive and should be minimised - checking email as soon as you wake up, being late to meetings, constant bombardment from push notifications throughout the day. Other stressors are productive, stretching us and enabling growth - a HIIT workout, a cold shower, delivering a high-stakes presentation.
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So, the first lever is about reducing exposure not to all stressors but specifically to unproductive stressors. By, for example, leaving your phone outside the bedroom, making sure your meetings don’t overrun, turning off push notifications. And simultaneously, ensuring sufficient, deliberate exposure to productive stressors - finishing your warm shower with 30 seconds of cold, pushing your body beyond the point of discomfort, putting your hand up to take on challenging new projects at work.
After Exposure, the second lever is Mindset. Here, I want to introduce two ways of seeing stress: through the Threatened Mindset lens and the Challenge Mindset lens. Do you see stressful situations as threats to be avoided, or as challenges you can rise to and as opportunities for growth? A Threatened Mindset lowers your capacity to deal with stress. It will lead to poor performance under pressure in the short-term and, if left unchecked, negative health consequences in the long-term. A Challenge Mindset, on the other hand, improves performance under pressure and builds resilience, as research by Dr. Alia Crum, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the Principal Investigator of the university’s Mind & Body Lab, has shown.
Finally, there’s our Capability - how we deal with stress. And now, this is where most people think too narrowly. They focus only on “in-the-moment” tools, without seeing the bigger picture. You’re about to walk into a high-stakes meeting. Your heart is racing, palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy (if you know, you know). You do some box breathing. Your heart rate slows, your mind clears, and you step in feeling ready. Great execution of an “in the moment” stress management tool.
But what about our capacity to handle stress in the first place? This is where I introduce Stress Threshold Raising Activities (STRA). Each of us has a stress threshold - the point at which challenges become overwhelming. Some people’s thresholds are naturally higher than others, but we all have the ability to raise them. Think of your capacity for embracing stress as like a bucket and stress as the water. The bigger your bucket, the more stress you can hold before you overflow and become overwhelmed.
A small bucket means minor annoyances - a sideways glance on the tube, an unexpected email, a delayed meeting - can push you over the edge. You’re too busy fighting unproductive stressors to have the energy to embrace productive ones. Growth stagnates at best and you regress at worst. If you have a bigger bucket and a higher stress threshold, however, those same stressors barely register and you now have the mental space, energy, and calm to take on productive stressors. In this way, you are able to embrace the challenges which will enable you to grow.
So, how then do we increase the size of our bucket? By intentionally engaging in STRA.
This isn’t new. The Stoics were masters of this. Seneca slept on the floor, embraced scarcity, and invited doses of discomfort into his life - physical, emotional, and mental - to build resilience. He knew that life would throw unexpected hardships his way, and that it certainly did: exile, political turmoil, personal loss - to name a few. But by engaging in what is called “Stoic Training”, he increased his stress threshold, preparing him to be able to better deal with those challenges which the imperfect world threw his way.
Today, life is remarkably comfortable. Too comfortable, for many. Which makes STRA even more critical today than they were in ancient Rome. Deliberately challenging ourselves - physically, mentally and emotionally - strengthens our psychological immune system, expands our buckets, raises our stress threshold and equips us to not only navigate life’s inevitable challenges, but to rise to and grow from them.
The key is to sit in discomfort longer than you initially thought you could, within a controlled environment. And then, to increase the stimulus each time, either through intensity or duration. Thirty seconds under a cold shower, once more manageable, becomes 40 seconds and then a minute. The length of your intervals in your HIIT workout or the size of your weights increase. Once you become comfortable speaking in front of 10 people, you find opportunities to speak in front of 20.
The beauty of STRA is that it’s a win-win. Cold exposure raises your stress threshold, whilst boosting immunity, amplifying focus, and increasing energy. HIIT workouts raise your threshold while improving your cardiovascular health. STRA and “in the moment” tools work hand-in-hand: the former builds long-term resilience, the latter keeps you effective in real-time.
Now, ask yourself: how often do minor annoyances pull you off course? How often do you feel drained by challenges you could have handled better? Imagine, now, having the capacity to face those same challenges and remain steady, focused, and confident? Raising your stress threshold gives you that capacity. It enables you to embrace life’s challenges to take on what matters, and not be crushed by what doesn’t.
And so - to better manage stress and, in this way, supercharge your growth - you need to:
Eliminate unnecessary, unproductive stressors
See potentially stressful situations not as threatening but as positively challenging
Have an “in the moment” stress management tool in your arsenal
Engage in STRA to increase your stress threshold.
Life will always challenge us: unexpected setbacks, brought forward deadlines, difficult conversations. We cannot control that. But with these four things we can.
