stress management course

The core conclusion that this course can give you is never to teach you how to completely eliminate stress, but to help you find a dynamic balance point to coexist with stress - you will neither be overwhelmed by overloaded pressure, nor fall into a lack of motivation and burnout because there is no pressure at all. There is no universal formula that is universally applicable. All methods must match your personality traits, the situation you are in, and the specific stressors to be useful.

It's interesting to say that when I was doing internal training for a major Internet company two years ago, I was stopped by a little girl who was doing operations as soon as I entered the conference room. She was holding a blank notebook and her eyes were red. She said, "Teacher, just give me the most effective three-step method to reduce stress. I will follow it strictly when I get back." Later, when we started chatting, we found out that during that time, she had to meet the GMV KPI of 618, and she was also preparing for the teacher qualification exam. Her boyfriend of three years was breaking up. Last week, she had a physical examination that showed grade 3 breast nodules. She even slept with her phone clutched in her hands for fear of missing news from her boss. You see, too many people’s expectation for stress management is “one trick to save lives”, but when they really fall into the stress whirlpool, there is no universal antidote?

When it comes to the current mainstream stress management methods, several schools actually have their own fans and disputes. The school of mindfulness was the first to become popular. Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy (MBSR) is now almost the standard for employee benefits in major factories. The core is to be aware of the present without judgment and cut off the chain of stress rumination of “ruling over old scores and worrying about the future.” There is indeed a large amount of clinical data proving that long-term practice can reduce cortisol levels, but the problems are also obvious – the threshold is high, time-consuming, and almost useless for acute stress. Think about it, if you have three to-dos on your hands at the same time, and your boss comes every ten minutes to push for progress, and someone says to you, "Just sit down and meditate for 15 minutes," would you want to throw the keyboard in his face?

Another widely used method is the cognitive behavioral school (CBT). The core is Ellis's ABC theory. To put it bluntly, the stress source itself does not cause stress. Your perception of the stress source is the key. Adjusting your cognition can relieve stress. This method is very effective in dealing with stress caused by long-term irrational beliefs. For example, people who always feel that "I must do everything perfectly" and "others are better than me" can slowly overcome the cognitive bias, and the pressure will naturally be much less. However, they are also often criticized for "standing and talking without pain" - if your boss has no bottom line PUA every day, and the company does not even pay overtime, no matter how you adjust your cognition, you cannot regard oppression as a blessing.

There is also a more down-to-earth action-oriented method, such as exercise to reduce stress, food to reduce stress, and travel to reduce stress. The essence is to counteract the negative effects of cortisol through the secretion of dopamine and endorphins. It is really refreshing, but the problem is also very realistic: most people who are overwhelmed by stress simply cannot spare the time to run 5 kilometers three times a week. They have no energy to save money to travel to distant places. After get off work, they just want to slump on the sofa and watch short videos without nutrition for ten minutes. This is the normal state of ordinary people.

I have come across an extreme example before. He is a CEO of a start-up company that provides enterprise services. He is in his early 40s. His company's annual revenue is several hundred million. He always looks energetic when he appears in public. Everyone around him thinks that people like him are not stressed at all. As a result, he suffered a stroke last year and was hospitalized. When he woke up, he talked to me and told me that he had to take two sleeping pills every day for six months in order to fall asleep. He always felt that he had strong willpower and could bear it. It was not until he collapsed that he realized that stress is a physiological reaction in nature and cannot be suppressed by willpower. The emotions you hold back will eventually turn into nodules, ulcers, and high blood pressure in your body.

In fact, you really don’t have to think too hard about stress management. I have seen a student who is a high school teacher, who is overwhelmed by complaints from naughty children and parents every day. Her way to reduce stress is to sit in the car for 5 minutes after get off work, peel a sugar orange and eat it. While peeling, she doesn’t think about anything, just smells the fragrance of the orange peel and feels the sour and sweet taste of the pulp in her mouth. With this 5-minute "buffer zone", she has not lost her temper with a student for half a year. I have also seen audit students who don’t even have time to eat when they are busy with the annual review. When they are so stressed that they shed tears, they do 3 sets of the 478 breathing method - inhale for 4 seconds, hold the breath for 7 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds. Their heart rate will drop in less than a minute, and they can continue typing the manuscript.

The little operations girl who asked me for a "three-step method to reduce stress" didn't sign up for a high-end stress reduction class worth tens of thousands of yuan in the end. She first postponed the teacher qualification certificate exam for half a year, and explained the recent situation to her boyfriend. The two of them calmed down for a while. They did not stay at the company after get off work every day, and walked for 10 minutes in the small park downstairs before going upstairs, and bought their favorite ice cream on the way. Last week, she sent me a message saying that during the reexamination, the breast nodules were reduced from level 3 to level 2, the KPI of 618 was also exceeded, and the two of them have reconciled. Now, even the product manager who is in contact with the operation praises her that she has a much better temper recently.

You see, pressure is actually like sand in your hand. The tighter you hold it, the faster it leaks out. You really don’t have to force yourself to be a “perfect stress manager”, and you don’t have to imitate other people’s methods. When pressure comes, don’t always think about “Why am I so useless that I can’t handle this little pressure?” Ask yourself: What is the smallest thing I can do now to make myself more comfortable? Just do it, that's enough. After all, when we learn stress management, we never learn to become emotionless robots, but to live a good life, right?