Stress: Is it derailing your relationships
Joe is a 34 year old IT specialist working in a high pressure environment. He has had a negative experience with a boss who “did not really like him”. He reacted with nervousness , feeling edgy and with no feedback loop, lost the motivation to be his best. In his current job, he is careful to cultivate a more personal relationship with his boss. He is able to express a genuine interest –a connection—and he feels that has helped their professional relationship.
So, I want to remind myself, that underneath the positional power and roles we are all human. And the simple acts of attention, kindness and listening can bring us more long term benefits than a quick banal superficial exchange of words.
Ultimately, all workplaces are about relationships. And emotions are the building blocks of all interpersonal interactions and have a profound influence on all communication. If we are not in touch with our emotions or we allow emotions to rule our reactions, we will find ourselves losing the very thing we desire the most.
Life coaching is often not so much about gaining knowledge, skills or wisdom but about learning how to manage our emotions and thinking to support our goals. As a Life Coach, this is the basic and foundational goal of all impactful conversations. What makes stress so well… unhelpful?
The ability to handle stress in the interpersonal area is crucial to building and maintaining healthy relationships.
Stress creates a kind of tunnel vision where we are unable to have a 360 degree view of the situation. In neuro scientific terms, signals usually go to the thalamus, then to the cortex for interpretation, then to the amygdala for action. Under stress, the stimuli goes directly to the Amygdala and we turn to a reactive rather than a response mode. Long term goals are sacrificed for short term gains and a kind of tunnel vision is created, This in turn adversely impacts our ability to be creative and use our problem solving abilities,
However, with good self management skills, our ability to stay out of emotional dramas is significantly increased.
So, how can we show up in a way that is beneficial to a positive interpersonal outcome? A foundational skill is self awareness—Emotions predispose us to behave in a particular way. Being empathetic helps as does opening out with trust.
Some practical tips to practice self awareness:
Tune in to your heart, mind and body for a few minutes everyday. Ask yourself what feelings or sensations do I have now?
If I choose to intentionally- act out of “curiosity” what would I do? or ask?
Add the word “yet” to a negative statement
Ask yourself “Is this a factual issue or a relationship issue?
Self Coaching skills are necessary and unfortunately are not taught in schools. That is why finding a Life coach who can be your partner is so important. It is a small investment with a very large reward.