STRESS Made Easy - 4.

Smile, just smile. Another simple thing in this series of stress buster techniques that you can do to manage stress is as easy as, smiling.

When we are under the pump for too long, our brain tends to focus on the negative of everything. Our response to this is to keep busy and as a result the pressure becomes worse. One of the first 'human' things to go is eye contact, we don't want to look at other people. The second thing to happen is that we isolate ourselves from those around us to protect ourselves.

Another 'human' act we dispense with is our smile. Apart from the fact that our brain tells us that there isn't much to smile about, all of our energy is focussed on survival. Essentially we shut off and shut down. We do the very things that make it worse for us. I often tell people to do the opposite of what your brain tells you when you are under pressure.

Let's talk about smiling, why is it so beneficial to our well-being?

Smiling releases neuropeptides which are tiny molecules that allow our neurons (brain bits) to communicate. They send messages to our entire body when we feel emotions such as happy, sad, angry, depressed, and excited. Additionally, the 'feel good' neurotransmitters of dopamine, endorphins and serotonin are released when we smile.

The immediate benefit not only relaxes us, it can lower our heart rate and blood pressure, act as a natural pain reliever, and serves as a quick anti-depressant. (Before you get too excited, those who are on anti-depressants should continue with them).

How does smiling work? There are two sets of muscles - one set on either side of your mouth and another set around your eyes - that are unique to smiling. If they aren't all engaged at the same time, then smiling won't change your mood.

Your smile must be as genuine as possible, or at the very least your brain must think that your smile is genuine. If you cannot bring yourself to produce a genuine smile, any smile is at least a start.

There is another technique related to smiling that has been proven to be very effective. Place a pencil sideways between your lips and bite down on the pencil. This will engage the relevant muscles associated with smiling and simulate a genuine smile. Yes, you can trick your brain. You may want to do this one at home rather than when out in the public.

Another fact, did you know that women smile more than men? Perhaps this is just another reason why women are under-represented in depression and suicide compared with men. That, and they talk about their issues more openly than men do.

I hope that made you smile!

STRESS Made Easy - 3

"Slow down or you will get hurt" she said, "Take your time or you'll make a mistake" he said, "Less haste, less waste" they said. "What do these people know about me" I said. Parents, they know nothing about today's busy life. Probably not, but their advice stands the test of time.

It is all great advice to get up early and exercise to start the day, to have a list of tasks so that you can remain focussed, to have a diary of your day's appointments, to have a coffee date with a colleague, to be involved in a club or committee, to volunteer for a community group, and the list goes on.

The busier we get the busier we get. No, that's not a grammatical error, the busier we get, the busier we get. A classic example; those people who get up early to go to the gym or to meditate or to do some recreational activity before work. Ever noticed how you tend to wake up earlier and earlier each day? I did it, I was going to the gym at 6am, then at 5.30, then at 5. All the time telling myself I can cram more into my day.

The busier we get the better we feel. Why, adrenaline. Our adrenal glands produce adrenaline by transforming tyrosine into dopamine. What's dopamine, a 'feel good' chemical that is associated with our reward system. The bad side of dopamine, it destroys your health with overuse.

Suddenly, the list of tasks that we made becomes obsolete, our appointment schedule is out the window, when we have coffee with a colleague we talk solely about work or maybe cancel it altogether, we start to skip club meetings or arrive late, and spend less and less time in our passion, community work. Does this sound like you?

As we get busier and faster we start to do many things at once and often it takes us longer because we make mistakes or do them badly. As we make mistakes we work harder to correct the errors and so more mistakes occur because we are rushing. Slow down, just slow down.

If you need to get something done quickly, by all means go for it. But don't rush it, control yourself. I was fortunate enough to have worked with the most elite tactical groups in the police, military, prisons, and with the FBI. They all used the same mantra - "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast". Say this to yourself when you an urgent task to take care of, watch how fast you get it done.

It is important to break the 'busyness' habit. How, mindfulness. Not mindfulness in the traditional sense. In our topic of 'busyness' this means concentrating on doing one thing at one time and doing it well. Keep your brain focussed on the one task at hand.

What else can you do to slow yourself down? Have 30-minutes of 'you time'. Spend just 30-minutes doing what you want to do, doing something that makes you happy. Try not to have any external stimulation such as a phone, music, driving, or some other distraction. Just you, in your own thoughts, for thirty minutes.

I am sorry to have to tell you this, the world will keep going without you for that thirty minutes. It's all about perspective.

STRESS Made Easy - 2

"Why am I so hard on myself?" I caught myself saying. "Why are things so hard", Why does it always happen to me", "Why do I worry so much", and "Why is the world against me?" These are things that we often ask ourselves, or worse, ask of others.

The reality for most of us is that the world isn't against us, we are simply looking at the negatives rather than the positives.

During the fight or flight response, our sympathetic nervous system is engaged and all hell breaks loose in our brain and body. If this happens often enough our brain will get into a pattern of behaviour and react negatively more and more often.

We then start to look continuously for negatives as our body goes into panic mode. It becomes a habit, a very bad one at that.

It is easy to say "All you have to do is to change your thoughts", and as we know it is much harder to do. The best way that I have found, as do many others, is to breathe correctly.

So what is a good breath - it is a long slow deep quiet intake of air to fill your lungs completely and then slowly release it taking the same time to breathe out as it did to breathe in.

In meditation, they will teach you breathe in for five seconds, hold your breath for five seconds and breathe out for five seconds. But we aren't doing meditation, we are learning how to breathe again.

Breathe in and out like this whenever you feel yourself getting angry, after a nervous event, when you feel uptight or anxious, and when you find yourself talking negatively.

Be careful not to take too many long, slow, deep, quiet breaths - you may become dizzy and in some people it can have the opposite effect. Just three of these long, slow, deep, quiet breaths is enough.

As you breathe like this, it much easier to change your thought patterns as a result. When you change your thought process you begin to engage your parasympathetic nervous system which opposes the sympathetic nervous system used in fight or flight mode.

If all of this breathing stuff sounds a bit too much for you, you could always use the tried and true method of changing your thoughts through a bit of NLP - every time you catch yourself in negative self-talk or worrying, flick a rubber band that is around your wrist. The pain will disrupt the pattern of behaviour. Many, many people have found this option helpful, but unfortunately they still need to learn to breathe properly.

It takes between 60 to 80 days to change a habit from the old to the new so you do have to work at learning to breathe properly again. But isn't everything good worth working for?

STRESS Made Easy.

Over this week I will talk about stress - the what, the why, and the how as well as simple ways in which to deal with stress.

It has been said that pressure leads to stress, but does it really?

Pressure, in a workplace context, is usually workload and time-frame, too much work and not enough time to do it in. Pressure is good for you provided you manage it appropriately, your brain likes to be excited and to use as much of it as possible. We can operate effectively under pressure and we get a real buzz when we are productive while under pressure.

Stress on the other hand is bad for you. It used to be that the only cause of stress was real and present danger, i.e. being attacked by an animal. This danger triggered our fight-or-flight response so that we could cope with the danger.

The most common causes of stress these days however is; a hostile boss, angry people, rude customers, stuck in traffic, and a myriad of personal demands such as balancing family activities and other life's challenges.

Research has determined that events which are either uncontrollable or unpredictable cause us the most amount of stress in our modern world. And believe it or not most of it is made up inside your head as your brain tries to figure out what the real and present danger actually is when in reality it isn't there.

The well-known saying - "If you think that you are stressed then you are" - is a reminder that our thoughts cause the fight-or-flight reaction to occur, not the situation itself.

I have heard it said many times, "My boss is stressing me out!" No they aren't, they are putting you under pressure, yelling at you, demeaning you, bullying you, or just being a dick. It's your internal reaction to their external action that causes you to feel under stress.

Therefore, the first technique to control stress, other than to deal with the situation head-on, is to control your thoughts. Change what you tell yourself. Do not 'think' to yourself that you are stressed, you aren't. You are 'busy', you are 'excited', or you are 'challenged'. Tell yourself that it is not you that has the problem, it is the situation that is the problem.

You can only control what you can control so when faced with an uncontrollable or unpredictable situation that you have little or no control over, other than to plan for contingencies as much as possible, is to change your thoughts.

Thoughts do make a difference, so what are you thinking about?

More Public Relations Errors.

Contemplating on PR errors as I have been recently, I noted a few common mistakes that companies make when issues are brought to the attention of the media. And there have been many over recent times.

The most common errors are: the CEO not fronting he media or fronting far too late; using sentences such as "There is no need to panic, we have this under control"; using jargon or large words in an attempt make you sound like you know what you are doing (it actually makes you sound arrogant); or not prepared to answer questions from the floor.

For most of us, focussing on the negative is how our brain operates. Recent studies indicate that the only long-term positive memories that we retain in great detail are memories of our holidays. The reason seems to be the heightened emotions and senses involved when we are on holiday which work to imprint the memory. These same two factors are involved when we face something adverse.

Because of this continued pattern of behaviour, our attention is drawn to finding the negatives in any situation, we tend to look for faults as a way of protecting ourselves. And when we find fault, we may experience a sense of satisfaction. (This may be the reason behind the 'tall poppy' syndrome although I suspect that it is more around jealousy than anything else).

So let's look at what good PR looks like;

1. Own it - if a mistake is made, acknowledge it and the damage (hurt) it caused.
2. Explain it - tell people what happened and the possible cause.
3. Fix it - what have you done to make it right.

Do not try and defend the indefensible. People can tell when you are trying to put a spin on a message, when you are trying to deflect responsibility by finding fault in something else, or when you are just making excuses.

Our brains will always do this, defend our position, because it is trying to help us. That's why many of us argue, we are simply defending our position even if we know that we are wrong.

The most important factor in all of this - be sincere. Stop reading from a piece of paper that has words written on it that was prepared by your PR team. Talk from the heart, not the script.