Written by Marty Seldman, Ph.D.

Recently I wrote an article on “Robust Self Care” outlining the benefits of creating a plan to manage your stress and focus on your well-being. Today I am going to continue to nudge you in that direction but I’m going to try to tap into fear motivation.

I’ve often found that alerting people to impending peril, i.e. their hard work and achievements can be muted or erased by career mistakes, will quickly get their attention. First I want to describe and distinguish between different kinds of stress. My goal is to clarify what types of stress have the potential to help us grow, and what stress conditions put us at risk.

1. Eustress

If you stress your muscles in a certain way through resistance training they will grow stronger and bigger. In a similar way when we have mental, emotional or physical experiences that push us to and sometimes beyond our limits, our potential can be revealed and unleashed.

2. “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger” – Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888

Even Nietzsche did not believe that all suffering leads to strength. We know the long-term negative impact of early childhood trauma or exposure to war and forms of violence (PTSD). His premise that suffering has the potential to transform us in a positive way has been found to be valid.

Post-traumatic Growth (PTG) is defined as positive psychological change experienced as a result of struggling with highly challenging, highly stressful life circumstances. These changes could include:

• higher appreciation for life
• new sense of purpose
• greater motivation
• improved relationships due to receiving meaningful support

3. Distress

Each of us will vary to a considerable degree regarding what stresses us, and how we react to, and recover from, stress. However, there are some components of chronic stress that impact almost everyone.

• “trying to put 10 pounds of ‘you know what’ into a 5-pound bag”
• over-committed – whether we do this to ourselves or the company piles things on, when we believe our commitments to deliver exceed our resources (people, time, capacity), we start to live with constant pressure and anxiety.
• internal pressure – this source of stress is “between our ears” but for some of us, it is the biggest pain point. This can be a combination of putting tremendous pressure on yourself to succeed, and being harsh with yourself when you fall short of objectives.
• little to no relief rest or recovery – chronic stress is absolutely exacerbated by workplace norms of not taking breaks. So if we are scheduling back-to-back-to-back meetings, blurring (or in some cases obliterating) the lines between personal and professional life, and have no time set aside for our brains and bodies to recover from our hard work, stress management is not possible.

A Coaching Perspective

You probably could have come across the previous suggestions I’ve offered about health, happiness, and self-care from longevity doctors, neuroscientists, or Deepak Chopra. But the guidance I’m providing here is based on the career insights I’ve gathered as a long-time executive coach.

“Right time, right place” definitely describes my start in 1986. Coaching was in its early stages, and Dot Bolton gave me an assignment with PepsiCo International. PepsiCo and General Electric were the top companies who routinely invested in developing their leaders through coaching, Before long, thanks to the opportunities and guidance provided by John Fulkerson, John Pearl, Hilary Eaton, Mike Peel and Mike Feiner, I was coaching one or two PepsiCo leaders a week.

So over the last 37 years I’ve had 2,000 individual engagements and was able to work for many companies (PepsiCo, General Mills, T. Rowe Price, Disney, Becton Dickinson, YUM) for 10-30 years. This gave me a chance to follow the career trajectory of many leaders, not just the ones I coached. I was able to track who “maxxed out, who “topped out” and who “derailed” and why. So what I’m about to share about the potential of chronic stress to negatively impact careers is based on patterns I’ve repeatedly observed, and in some ways more prevalent today than when I started in 1986.

The Risks to Your Career of Chronic, Unmanaged Stress

1. Weakened Immune System/Deterioration in Overall Health

Medical researchers estimate that 60-70% of illness is stress-related. In addition, many people who overcommit also:

• neglect fitness activities
• develop poor eating, drinking and sleeping patterns
• fail to keep up with medical and dental checkups

So health issues that keep you away from work (stroke, heart attack, pneumonia, migraines, getting sick more often and taking longer to recover) become more likely.

2. Addictions

Human beings are very prone to forming addictions. In fact, it’s rare to meet someone who isn’t at least mildly addicted to something. In addition to alcohol, drugs, gambling, there are many stimulation addictions including spending, pornography, and “screens” (iPhones, computers, social media, etc.). What’s the connection to chronic stress?

• stress is pain and anxiety. We can quickly get attached to anything that takes away that pain or distracts us.
• stress breaks down our discipline – it makes it harder to resist urges. There is an expression about Las Vegas that can also apply to chronic stress. “If a person has a weakness, Las Vegas will find it”

3. Difficulty Managing Emotions

Crying too often at work, displaying signs of anxiety and tension, and erupting in anger will very likely hurt your chances of getting promoted and may even put your current role at risk. In particular not managing your anger could cause you to quickly cross the line into being disrespectful or worse. A good phrase to remember is “In business your friends come and go but your enemies accumulate.”

4. Decision-Making – “Stress Makes You Stupid”

This is why you get paid “the big bucks”; making, individually or with a team, good, practical decisions. This often involves listening, information gathering, and a mix of logic and intuition. If you are experiencing too much stress, this process can be hindered because:

• you are an impatient listener
• you make an emotional, impulsive decision
• you “freeze” and find yourself not able to make any decision

5. Urgent vs. Important

In “Time Management 101” you probably came across the concept of “Urgent vs. Important.” Sometimes this is referred to as “The Tyranny of the Urgent.” The main messages are that activities that are “urgent” – a phone call, a text/email, someone coming into your office, a meeting or conference you are attending – may capture your attention,  but may actually not be as “Important” as other activities that pay off over time.

For example, Strategic Thinking, setting aside time for reflection and creativity, “top to top” meetings, networking, “listening” tours, studying the competition etc., may be more important for your career and for the organization but may get NEGLECTED. I have often seen leaders get so busy that these high payoff activities don’t become routine parts of their schedules.

6. Unfavorable “Optics”

“The difference between reality and perception is that people make decisions based on perception.” If you are seen as overwhelmed, scattered, scrambling, or anxious, do you look like you are ready for a promotion or more responsibility? If it seems like you are “always available” or doing things that are better done at levels below you, people will question your ability to delegate, or prioritize.

7. Leveraging Your Intuition and Creativity

Corporate life has changed in many ways during the past 5-10 years. Due to the pace of change, increase in complexity, and rise of different types of competition, every leader in important roles needs to be creative, access their intuition and foster innovation. Chronic stress diminishes those capacities. Our focus narrows to the point that we don’t even see possibilities. Just when we need flexibility and agility we become more rigid.

8. Burnout

This is the end of the road. If you have ever gotten close to this state you know that your brain and body want to quit, shut down. You start daydreaming about laying on a far-away beach, or you find yourself humming the song, “take this job and shove it.” By the time you reach “burnout” it’s also likely that work and stress have negatively impacted your relationships. At this point you may be in a vicious cycle where there is stress at work and at home.

Well, I did warn you that I was going for fear motivation. Hopefully you have read previous articles where I emphasized that focusing on your health and happiness delivers many career and performance benefits too. Those articles contain the practical tips which I won’t repeat here. Hopefully reading about these risks raises your sense of urgency to put some of these positive practices into your daily routine.

Related Resources Book:

Seldman, M., & Seldman, J. (2008): Executive Stamina: How to Optimize Time, Energy, and Productivity to Achieve Peak Performance. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Articles: 

Robust Self-Care: https://martyseldman.com/2023/04/29/robust-self-care-how-to-preventburnout-perform-at-your-best-accelerate-your-career-and-save-time/

Clearing a Path Towards Health and Happiness (Nurturing vs Toxic People):  https://martyseldman.com/2023/03/19/clearing-a-path-towards-health-and-happinessnurturing-vs-toxic-people/

Clearing a Path Towards Health and Happiness (Nurturing vs Toxic to Yourself): https://martyseldman.com/2023/03/19/clearing-a-path-to-health-happiness-2-0-nurturingself-toxic-self/

Self-Assessment: online Resilience Self-Assessment (contact Merry Cohen at merry@optimumassociates.com for ordering information).