executive stress and 5 great tips to deal with it

Stress comes with the territory for most CEOs and managers. Being in the lead position in a workplace means a frenetic swirl of cognitive activity that can be difficult to navigate or at times even hold onto.

When stress piles up, leaders have to find ways to deal with it so that they and in turn their employees don’t burnout. In a seminal paper Ed Hallowell talks about leaders who experience “overloaded circuits” (http://bit.ly/1yW62mV) where CEOs either push away or hold onto stress, often letting it store into the body until the dam breaks, resulting in a panic attack or even a stroke-before this the leader is often caught in his or her own fight or flight mechanism, where a threat saturated headspace becomes a stressed out workplace and peak performance is effectively disabled.

So, all of this is pretty much what-we-know-about-what-we-know-about stuff, and there is a plethora of books and helpful/unhelpful manuals out there to encourage CEOs and business leaders to discharge stress (check out https://groomandstyle.com/breathing-techniques-guide-science-methods/ ).

The big problem is that the instructions are often too long and laboured to make sense.

The CEO under stress requires something else to rebuild and restore their resilience.

Here are 5 easy to deploy strategies

1. 4×4 breathing™: breathe in to the count of 4, breathe out to the count of 4. Repeat 4 times. Feel the sense of your breath as it both fills your lungs and lower torso, and empties again. Unless you have breathing problems (and if you have, don’t do this) this will oxygenate your system, exchanging carbon dioxide for fresh air, which in turn revitalises the brain and the human system in general
2. Pause: just stop. Now notice where you are and how you are, really becoming more aware of your surroundings, the textures and colours around you-the sounds from the environment. Many managers spend so much time thinking, planning, strategising that they lose themselves in thought itself. This simple practice brings a sense of presence, of “you” back to you
3. Get back to the body: when lost in thought we can feel ungrounded and tight, frazzled to say the least and lacking in attention. Two simple ways of getting back into the body are a walk-literally walking from one floor to another, to the car parking garage and back, or stretching a little; stretching (without pulling a muscle) sweeps happy neurochemicals such as endorphins-small neuropeptides produced by your pituitary gland-through your body, making you more somatically based (see also http://bit.ly/1upAdhJ for tips on progressive muscle relaxation)
4. Get some therapy: whoa! this is the last thing that most CEOs would ask for, yet I’ve found that CEOs that come to my therapeutic sessions report a huge benefit in attendance; they spend a focussed hour twice a month and discharge conflict, tension and stress that would otherwise be left stored or taken to the workplace or family: money well spent!
5. Take a nature nurture: this is easy- put elements of nature into your workplace environment; plants, paintings or pictures, bowls of fruit, have an iPod that plays tranquil music, make your laptop background a nature based one. It brings you out of your head and into the world.

www.mindful-counselling.com