Tips and Techniques

1. Caffeine: A surprisingly subtle stressor
2. Sleep: Don't leave home without it
3. How to stop unwanted thoughts
4. Do you have trouble making decisions?
5. More ideas for making decisions
6. What did you expect? (Managing your expectations)
7. Be careful what you say
8. Long distance worrying
9. The art of reframing
10. Attitude is everything
11. Reframing: The upside of a "crisis"
12. If you can't "optimize", then "neutralize"
13. Reframing other people's behaviour
14. Dealing with difficult people
15. Stop giving power to other people
16. Stop giving power to abusive people
17. How I learned to meditate
18. Relaxation techniques
19. The importance of social support
20. Social support: Why and how?
21. Communication aggravation
22. Communication aggravation (part two)
23. The power of permission
24. Good health - It's your choice

Take me back to the Resource Centre index

In the 1970s there was a postal strike that went on for several weeks. Businesses couldn't send invoices, people couldn't send birthday cards, and in Oakville, doctors couldn't mail letters to one another.

One day, someone had a brain wave. "We all have mailboxes at the hospital for our lab reports. Why don't we just bring our letters to the hospital and pop them in each other's mailboxes until the strike is over?" That creative solution worked very well. But guess what happened after the strike? Nobody went back to using the mail. To this day, Oakville doctors exchange letters at the hospital - same day service and it's free.

The strike had forced us to find a temporary solution that turned out to be better than the system we were using. We weathered a crisis and found an unexpected benefit.

In English, "crisis" is a negative, stressful word for most people. If you hear that someone's having a crisis, you don't say, "Hey, that's great. Can I come over? I'll bring pretzels and beer and we'll have a crisis together." You're more likely to say, "Gee, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope things work out. Let me know if I can help."

But in Chinese, the word crisis is written with two characters and each stands for a different concept: the first for "danger," the second for "opportunity." So while the English word, "crisis," has a negative connotation, in Chinese it invites you to see both the down side and an up side. It doesn't deny the negative. But it suggests a positive aspect as well. It encourages you to reframe the situation - to acknowledge the downside, but also to explore the possibilities and opportunities - just as we did during the postal strike.

Overload is probably the biggest problem in today's workplace. In fact, it has reached crisis proportions for many people. Everyone seems to feel they have too much to do and not enough time. I ask participants in my seminars to articulate why having too much to do is stressful for them. This goes back to the premise that situations are rarely stressful in themselves. As Dr. Robert Sapolski says in his wonderful book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers; "Our lives are filled with events that are ambiguous in meaning." It is our interpretation of these events that produces the stress. In analyzing why having too much to do is stressful, participants come up with many self-statements:

I won't be able to finish
I'll let other people down
People will be angry with me
It will affect my performance appraisal
It could affect my career path
I feel inadequate
It isn't fair
They're exploiting me
I feel out of control

I then ask the group to reframe the same situation in order to reduce the stress. Strikingly, the list of positive ways to look at "too much to do" is always longer than the list of negative interpretations. Here are some examples:

The time will pass quickly
I won't be bored
They must think I can do this (i.e. it's an implied compliment)
I must be important
It gives me job security (when there's so much to do)
It's a chance to shine and profile my skills
It's an opportunity to practice delegating and prioritizing (necessity forces us to develop better skills and to work smarter)
It's an opportunity to learn new skills and information
It's an opportunity to contribute to the company's success
It's a chance to earn overtime income or get free time in lieu of
It's a challenge ("I'll roll up my sleeves and dig in")
I'll make it a game ("I'll see how much I can get done by the end of the day")

Reframing a crisis is a practical, valid way of looking at things. It's not a con job or looking through rose-coloured glasses, or pretending to be Pollyanna. It's an acknowledgement that there are different ways to look at the situation, but some feel better than others. If the situation is happening anyway, then your best way to reduce stress is to choose positive ways to look at it. As Dan Sullivan, who mentors entrepreneurs in his "Strategic Coach" program, says: "Some of our best opportunities in life come to us cleverly disguised as problems."

Several patients have told me that their heart attack was the best thing that ever happened to them. Sounds like a stretch, doesn't it? But they're very clear about the fact that it woke them up to a destructive lifestyle they'd been ignoring for years. So when a crisis arises in your own life, look for the blessing in disguise. You might be surprised at what you find.

All material copyrighted, David B. Posen M.D.