Hi everyone. I’m Maggie, a health and wellness coach. Miriam invited me to talk about something I often encounter as a coach, so I chose to talk about the ‘S word’. Ehm no, not that S word. I’m talking about Stress.

Stress is a curse word so popular nowadays that it might as well replace the F word. 100% of my clients feel incredibly stressed. One hundred percent. Sure, you’ll tell me that “Of course coaching clients are generally stressed”. But when we look at the numbers we can see that the numbers for stress and burn-out, which is caused by chronic work stress, are globally on the rise.

So let’s explore this phenomenon a little more.

What is stress really?

First things first, what is stress and how does it manifest? Stress can be defined as “any type of change that causes physical, emotional or psychological strain. Stress is your body’s response to anything that requires attention or action” (World Health Organisation).

Chronic stress commonly presents itself like in the following fictional situation:

Ben has been working his ass off putting out fires at work since he got promoted to Senior a year ago. The past few months he has been moody, feeling overwhelmed and depressed.

Ben also has been getting diarrhea ‘attacks’ every time there is another emergency situation at work. He’s stopped going out with friends, and this is only partly because he doesn’t want to be a shitty friend to be around (pun intended).

Because he can’t stop thinking about work, he barely sleeps four hours per night. Ben is having a really hard time trying to focus and even temporarily forgot the name of his partner which was… problematic. Trying to keep himself focused he ends up drinking five cups of coffee per day, but aside from giving him heart palpitations it doesn’t seem to do much.

Sounds familiar? Same. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. It’s not a great place to be. But luckily, there are a few things we can do about it.

Basic stress management

What we know from research is that the following very unsexy things help to manage stress. Ready?

• A good sleep: on average 7-9 hours of sleep per night.

• A nutritious diet: as varied and as little processed as possible. But please, still have your treats. As far as my people (Belgians) are concerned, chocolate should be its own category in the food pyramid.

• Moderate physical activity: you don’t need to be killing yourself in the gym, some activity which gets you a little out of breath goes a long way!

• Breathing exercises, yoga and other relaxation techniques.

Yep, simply taking care of your basic needs helps to be stress resilient. Simple, but not necessarily easy. Aside from working on that, I use the tool below and have gotten amazing results from it with my clients.

Stress relief tool: The 4 a’s of stress management

They call it the 4A’s for stress relief. Not really sure who ‘they’ are, either way, this tool is pretty great. The idea is that you take a particularly stressful situation, and then see what you can do to Avoid, Alter, Adapt or Accept it.

Let’s have a look at it together based on Ben’s work situation and how he has managed to improve it.

Avoid the stressor

Ben started saying no to putting out fires which are not part of his job description. He also avoids talking to that one annoying coworker who complains about life all the time.

Alter the stressor

To alter the stressors at work, Ben had a heart-to-heart with one empathetic manager. He told her he feels overwhelmed, and asked for a solution. The manager then appointed someone else in the team to help him with some tasks. Ben also restructured his work day so rather than doing random small tasks whenever they pop up, he does them in bulk.

Adapt your standards or expectations

Being a perfectionist, Ben often spent hours on reports which technically could be done in half the time. He learnt to say to himself “This is good enough“. He also started asking himself “How important is this really? Will this matter in a month, a year’s time?”. 

Accept the stressor

Of course there were things Ben couldn’t change. He learnt to accept them and now handles the stress it generates by venting to his partner (whose name he no longer forgets) and regularly doing breathing exercises.

He also learnt to reframe situations so they turned into something positive. For example, rather than thinking “Great, yet another bug and no one has fixed the previous one I flagged”, he reframed it to “This gives me the opportunity to show management that there are serious issues with our software and that we need support”.

Conclusion

Stress is a magnificent beast which can be tamed. It only takes some self care, some tools and sometimes, some help from a coach to keep it in check. I hope you enjoyed reading my rambling and it helps you next time you are in a stressful situation!

HOHOHO - Happy & Healthy Holidays discount!

Attention folks! Maggie is offering a 50% discount for a one-off session + a free health and wellness assessment. To book in:

 - Send Maggie a message or email which mentions 'painoutsidethebox' to get your discount code.

- Then book yourself in before the 25th of December 2022 to have your session any time between now and the 7th of January.

You can get in touch directly by contacting her on maggie@wellnessbalancestrategies.com. Make sure you quote ‘PainOutsidetheBox’ in your email or Subject line to get the discount!

About Maggie

Maggie is a qualified social worker, a certified nutrition, health and wellness coach and a very ADHD serial expat. Aside from anything health related, she specializes in working around career/life purpose, stress and work-life balance. Psychology is her jam. Also, dad jokes.

To connect with Maggie and get her decision-making tool, you can sign up on her website here.