How to Make Stress Work for You

How to Make Stress Work for You

More Stress Today

We are all feeling stressed to some degree lately, whether it’s due to loss of a job, COVID health fears, becoming teachers to our children, caring for parents, social unrest or general concerns about the future. 

Recent reporting in Healthline from a 2020 study in the journal American Psychologist shows: 

“Americans between 45 and 65 years old are experiencing more stress today than people their age did in the 1990s. Experts believe changes in technology, family and relationship dynamics, and economic hardship are some reasons for this.” 

For mid-career professionals, there are unique challenges that may be affecting stress levels. From the Healthline article, these may include:

  • More demands and pressures placed on you
  • Entering/continuing management roles
  • “Sandwich generation:” Caring for parents and nurturing teens/young adults; grandchildren too sometimes 
  • American culture deemphasizing the importance of the older generation
  • Technology connecting people all of the time
  • Work from home = always connected
  • Divorce/separation later in life affects economics for women who need to catch up in the workforce

Current coping mechanisms are not working

If you have been feeling that life is more stressful, you are correct and you are not alone. Add to the list above our current stressors in 2020 and it’s difficult to see how to bring peace and calm to our lives. Our current coping mechanisms do not seem to be working. Go on social media, read the latest articles and you’ll see everyone is talking about this, but we’re not finding relief. It’s like running in a hamster wheel, but not getting anywhere.

What can we do to deal with feeling overwhelmed and stressed out? Is it possible to make stress work for you, not against you, in these turbulent times?

Change your mindset about stress

What if instead of reacting to the stress around us, we could be proactive and use it to our advantage just by changing the way we think about it? Instead of trying to dodge stressful thoughts and situations, it is possible to learn how to harness stress and come out stronger. 

On NPR and the TED Radio Hour, Kelly McGonigal, research psychologist at Stanford University and the author of The Upside of Stress, touched on this in her talk “Can We Reframe the Way We Think About Stress?” Dr. McGonigal says that adjusting the way you think about stress can actually change the way your body responds to it. “Normally, we interpret these physical changes (breathing faster, breaking out into a sweat) as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure. But what if you view them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge? That pounding heart is preparing you for action. If you're breathing faster, it's no problem. It's getting more oxygen to your brain.”

Imagine having this perspective when you get the call for an interview: with your senses heightened and brain pumping on all cylinders, you are able to think through the interview prep strategically and go into the interview energized and ready to perform well. In this posture, Dr. McGonigal would say you are using stress energy to take actions towards what matters most to you. 

Some more interesting findings about stress from Dr. McGonigal’s studies:

  • If you appreciate that going through stress makes you better at it, it gets easier to face each new challenge.
  • The expectation of growth sends a signal to your brain and body: get ready to learn something, because you can handle this.

Stop fighting stress – make yourself immune

Did you know that even “observing someone who is stressed – especially a coworker or family member – can have an immediate effect upon our own nervous systems?” In “Make Yourself Immune to Secondhand Stress” (Harvard Business Review) Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan emphasize how hyper-exposed we are in our highly connected world. Especially now that we are staying at home more in the time of Covid, our levels of togetherness can make even the best relationships challenging. How can we find ways to improve our emotional immune systems and avoid the negative effects of secondhand stress? 

Achor and Gielan offer these tips:

Change your response - Instead of fighting and being frustrated at negative people around you, take it as an opportunity to feel compassion or a challenge to help that person become more positive.

Create positive antibodies - We need behaviors that can neutralize the negative effects of a stressed person. The first comment in a conversation often predicts the outcome. Try to start your phone calls not with “I’m swamped” or “I’m so busy.” Instead, start with a breath and calmly say: “It’s great to talk to you.”

Build natural immunity - One of the greatest buffers against picking up others’ stress is stable and strong self-esteem. Remind yourself of the positive things in your life and use self-talk to remember you can handle whatever transpires. Exercise is one of the best ways to build self-esteem. 

Inoculate yourself - Start your day with these 5 positive psychology habits from Achor’s TED talk: 1) writing a 2-minute email praising someone you know; 2) writing down three things for which you’re grateful; 3) journaling about a positive experience for two minutes; 4) doing cardio exercise for 30 minutes; or 5) meditating for just two minutes.

Feel a stressful situation coming on? Try using these tips and see if you can improve your own mindset and those around you.   

4 Wellness Resources for Midlife Professionals

4 Wellness Resources for Midlife Professionals

Pre-pandemic, the New York Times wrote about wellness for all of us midlifers and offers some interesting advice.  For example, they recommend creating a midlife mission statement which I think is brilliant.  In order to get started, they recommend asking yourself the following questions: 

  • How do you want to be remembered?
  • How do you want people to describe you?
  • Who do you want to be?
  • Who or what matters most to you?
  • What are your deepest values?
  • How would you define success in your life?
  • What makes your life really worth living?

They also included a “7-Minute Workout for Real People” complete with a chart on what to do and how many reps.  It’s already pinned to my wall in my she-shed - now let’s hope I don’t just stare at it. 

Here are additional resources we found for midlifers:

Losing COVID Weight Gain

We’ve all heard of “covid cush” or “the quarantine fifteen” referring to a few too many visits to the fridge.  When it becomes a rare occasion when you choose to wear real pants with a zipper (not stretch fabric), no wonder we’re feeling a bit off our game.

As the New York Times covered recently, there are some excellent tools to get yourself back on a more normal routine.  Whatever you do, don’t beat yourself up if a bit of weight gain has happened in the last five months.  It’s normal but keep in mind that focusing on it does not help. As Christy Harrison, a nutritionist said, “Fearing weight gain and feeling bad about your body takes you away from what really matters and being able to participate in this cultural moment,” Ms. Harrison said.  And right now, many of us in midlife are looking more closely at what really matters.  So a few more LBs have shown up?  Meh.

Meditation

Meditation in midlife can be an effective way to release a ton of anxiety. Some believe it’s too “woo woo” but science backs up it’s benefits - especially during uncertain times. Some people recommend saying exactly what you want out loud. Having a meditation or calming routine in the morning has changed so many people’s lives.  One friend said it has made such a huge difference in her personality that her daughters can tell if she has not meditated that day. So here is A list of meditations and affirmations from Us Anderson, a well-known mystic to get started.

Research says there should be no screen time before bed because of the blue light that delays the release of sleep-inducing melatonin, increases alertness, and resets the body's internal clock (or circadian rhythm) to a later schedule.  However, watch this meditation an hour or two before you go to bed and you’ll never be the same. The scenery and music are lovely.

If you only want to listen to the music, here is their sleep playlist that I highly recommend before dozing off.  

Yoga + HIIT 

Yoga with Adriene is excellent and she’s had her YouTube channel since 2012.  Her goal is to connect as many people as possible through high quality free yoga videos.  All levels, bodies, genders are welcome.  If you happen to be new to yoga, check out her “Yoga for Beginners” and “Foundations of Yoga” series. If yoga is not your thing, you can find a variety of work out classes on the PopSugar Fitness channel on YouTube.  If I can try hip hop dancing, so can you.

Overall Midlife Advice

James & Claire are a husband and wife team from England and started a podcast in 2019 called Midlife Mentorsand in addition to their lovely accents, they are humorous and tackle many of the things that concern midlifers and offer advice and solutions.  The first one is about health and happiness and it’s a great conversation about getting uncomfortable in order to gain confidence and move forward.  They encourage people to try new things - especially if boredom sets in.  They believe that is a sign that you’re not stretching yourself and taking risks.  

Another good resource is the Midlife Mentors collection called “Surviving Fear” from March 19th.  For the male midlifers and overall podcast advice, “Midlife Conversations with Jeff and Carlos” is funny.  They have some serious topics but most of the time it’s great to hear them laugh at each other.  Podcast #51 called, “Spring Cleaning for the Soul” talks about the mental health benefits of tidying up.

We hope you find these wellness resources helpful. Have an amazing weekend!

-Emily & Nick

Reviewed & Recommended: Midlife Mixtape

Reviewed & Recommended: Midlife Mixtape

Midlife Mixtape

Episode 81: What Do You Wish You Could Tell Your Younger Self?

First, I have to say that I love Midlife Mixtape’s tagline: “For the years between being hip and breaking one.” With that out of the way, on to the first podcast I listened to which provides a list of answers to one of the questions host Nancy Davis Kho always asks her guests: “What do you wish you could go back and tell your younger self?” Now, admittedly this isn’t an original question, but listening to the different answers brought home to me how useful an exercise this can be.

When I hear multiple guests, ranging from an artist, an author, and an MTV VJ, the thing that stands out is the value in answering this question isn’t about regretfully yearning for your younger years or a chance to avoid all the mistakes you made along the way. Instead, try your best not to censor yourself, and listen to your own response. Valuable lessons can be learned that you can and should apply to your mid-career self.

For example, one of the guests, the former MTV VJ Martha Quinn, says she would tell her younger self to “pay a little more attention”, and to “live in the moment”. Sure, I can see offering my 20 year-old self that same advice, but it applies equally today. In this insane reality we live in, it is far too easy to get caught up in work (or finding work), dealing with our kids’ school situation, making sure we’re being safe yet finding personal connections outside our nuclear family. But if you don’t take stock of where you are, and what you have experienced over the last week or month, you can’t learn from that experience and adjust how you move forward.

“You live life looking forward, you understand life looking backward.”

Soren Kierkegaard

There is a proven pedagogical tool called ‘reflective practice’: the act of looking back over a previous time frame and thinking through what you have learned, how to apply that learning, and how you may have put what you learned into practice. That simple task improves decision making and practice across disciplines. So I’ll take Martha Quinn’s advice to her younger self, and I’ll extend it: Live in the moment and reflect on the moments you have experienced over the last few days or weeks as you contemplate how to approach the next few moments.

Here’s a link to the Midlife Mixtape podcast. I highly recommend you check it and their other episodes out.

Top Takeaways: 6 Job Seeking & Mental Fitness Tips for Midlife Professionals

Top Takeaways: 6 Job Seeking & Mental Fitness Tips for Midlife Professionals

On August 13, illume hire hosted our first Happy Hour event with Dorianna Phillips and she provided some great tips to help mid career professionals cope during this time.  

She was the Director of Talent Acquisition for Stoel Rives law firm which is one of the largest law firms in the Pacific Northwest and now she has her own consulting and coaching firm called I.N. SPIRE Consulting. She coaches teams and empowers people to identify their strengths, build their mental fitness, and achieve peak performance. 

During our live interview, she provided tips from a talent acquisition perspective when hiring someone in mid-career. She also talked about different ways that a mid-career professional can take control of your mind using mental fitness tips. The following are some of the tools she shared to help people during a job search in a pandemic.

  1. Operate from Your Strengths: Embracing what you know you’re good at and enjoy is a start.  This takes self-awareness and the willingness to ask friends what they believe are your strengths.  These strengths can be illustrated using storytelling during an interview when it aligns with the job description.
  2. Daily Gratitude:  Having a journal and writing down every morning three aspects of gratitude will set the tone for your day. Those three things are the following: gratitude about something in your personal life, gratitude about something in your professional life, and gratitude about something in your environment.
  3. Self Saboteurs (Self Sabotaging Voices): Everyone has doubts and fears but when we focus on something terrible, we aren’t doing ourselves any favors. Dorianna said we have the power to change that ongoing voice in our heads. She recommends calling out our fears and negative thoughts out loud. By doing this, she says, it removes the power they have over us.
  4. PQ Pinch: There was a point in the interview when we all stopped, closed our eyes and pressed our thumb to our index finger in order to think of something calming. She calls it the “Positive Intelligence Pinch” or “PQ” for short. “Positive Intelligence” is a book by Shirzad Charmine that she highly recommends. Sometimes our minds get hijacked and when we’re filled with overwhelming thoughts, she recommends redirecting our mind by doing this simple exercise. It’s research-based and she said it works for people who get overly stressed. Something I think we all need during a pandemic.
  5. Know your Why:  This is your key for knowing your personal brand and will give you clarity when looking for your next gig.  Simon Sinek wrote a book called, “Start with Why” which talks about this as the main differentiator for yourself and for your business. Know your purpose, your cause, and your beliefs and this will guide you in life and it will also inspire others along the way.
  6. Grace:  Dorianna referred to grace as being easy on yourself.  We’re all going through different challenges now and it can be difficult. She talks about giving yourself grace as you learn new things and as you face obstacles.  

Our next event is on September 17th at 5:00 pm PST and the focus is “3 Tips to Find Your Hidden Strengths” by Amy Krakowski, an executive coach. Space is limited so reserve your spot here:

https://www.illumehire.com/events/

 

The Layoff

The Layoff

Getting laid off can feel devastating and personal.  It can cause anyone to succumb to an emotional roller coaster. Even if it’s no fault of your own, oftentimes it brings up issues that you never thought you had.  Here are some steps to take if you or anyone you know has been laid off from their job as a result of the pandemic.

Circle Slash Your Inner Critic 

Reflection and being honest with yourself about what happened are all good things.  However, take care not to spin yourself down a negative path.  Your mindset and how you frame the situation will be key to how you decide to move forward. Remind yourself that there’s a global pandemic going on right now and loads of organizations are restructuring in order to stay afloat.

Susan Peppercorn wrote Harvard Business Review’s, “How to Silence Your Inner Critic After a Layoff”. She recommends creating mental habits to get you through the layoff process and explained, “after a layoff, it’s completely normal to find yourself in the grip of anger and self-doubt, and these feelings can linger. Yet while it’s important to acknowledge what happened and the feelings that go along with it, it then becomes critical to pay attention to what you are telling yourself and determine whether your thinking style is helping or hindering your goals. By questioning your inner critic, you can stop the negative cycle of self-blame that’s holding you back from taking positive steps forward.”

Remember Previous Wins

Ask yourself three questions that address a time you overcame a difficult work situation.  Envisioning wins from the past will help get you out of a negative tailspin.  What strengths did you use to resolve a problem? What did you learn about yourself in the process? How can you use these strengths in your current career transition?  Recalling those situations can help you move forward and realize you’re capable of overcoming obstacles.

Prioritize Evolving & Reinvention

One way to stay relevant is to reskill or take a course that has always interested you.  As a mid-career professional, it will help psychologically and will build confidence over time.  When you face an obstacle, you’ll be able to power through it more easily because you’ve already tackled challenges along the way which helps to increase resilience.  MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses) are a great way to lean into your curiosity and test your interest level. Search for the free ones available and make a list of what you want to learn (more to come in a separate article dedicated to online courses for upskilling).

Give Time

Set up video calls with people through your network who may need your help.  When you reverse the situation and provide your expertise for someone else, it helps to build yourself back up.  It’s also a great way to expand your network (and create more fans).

And finally, know that if you’re willing to learn and adapt to change, companies will absolutely need your help.  Technology innovation is constant and if you’re able to keep up on trends and learn how to use the latest business tools, you’ll be in a better position to get hired. When the upturn in hiring happens, you’ll be prepared.  

Below are a few resources we thought might be helpful.

Reviewed & Recommended:

Career Tools Podcast: 

COVID - How To Be Ready For A Hiring Market Upturn - Part 2

Tips on how to be prepared for the upturn in the market and keeping skills (including interview skills) fresh and up to date as well as updating all social media and keeping in touch with your network.

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish:

Episode 74: Embracing Confusion with Jeff Hunter — CEO of Talentism, Jeff Hunter, teaches how to rewrite damaging narratives that hold us back, how to give and receive helpful feedback, and why confusion can be a good thing. He writes, Confusion is an ever-present byproduct of growth. It’s how we deal with it that determines our ultimate success or failure. Our hard-wiring pulls us toward protection, down a path of Certainty. But it’s only through clarity that productive progress can occur.”

YouTube: Kerri Twig

Dealing with Job Loss: the first steps

A career coach in Canada, Kerri works with many mid-career professionals.  She can be nutty but that’s why we like her.  Anything but authentic feels like a waste of time right now. Here’s a recent episode that we thought would be helpful.   

Midlife and Mindful

Midlife and Mindful

As we get older and face uncertainty, we are able to gain more clarity about what really matters. For many of us, focusing on what matters also has the ability to lower stress.  With so much going on right now, it’s important to take care of ourselves.  How do we lower our anxiety in order to increase feelings of well-being? 

There are many amazing podcasts available and these are some of our favorites to help you decompress. Here’s a few DIY mindfulness ideas during the pandemic. 

Reviewed & Recommended:

Tara Brach podcast:  Listen to June 12th episode “Anger & Transformation

Tara is a psychologist, author, and proponent of Buddhist meditation.  She has the softest voice, and it makes me wonder if she’s ever been angry in her life. She says that when we get hijacked by anger, it makes us small.  This increases our suffering. However, we can awaken the awareness of anger towards transformation. She also has guided meditations. Definitely more on the woo woo side but she has great advice and is so calming. 

Model Health Show podcast: Listen to episode #417 “8 Ways to Manage Stress During Complicated Times  

Shawn Stevenson’s podcast is entertaining and educational.  In this episode, he has experts talk about different aspects of stress and the best ways to calm our system down. The first expert talks about how everyone has a stress threshold and that having the right mindset is key. He pointed out we have macro stressors (bereavement, a break-up, losing a job) and micro stressors which are a lower grade type of stress like a deadline or dealing with someone’s irritating personality.  He noted that when so many micro stressors are piled on, it can easily reach our threshold (hello, pandemic).  Shawn goes into detail about the science behind the health and how our body responds so you’re always learning something new.

Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish: Listen to episode #84 Jennifer Garvey Berger: "Creating Routine in Chaos"

The Knowledge Project is my favorite self improvement podcast.  His background is in cybersecurity from a top Canadian intelligence agency which may sound odd but trust me, he’s wicked smart and there’s a wide variety of topics. In a New York Times interview he said, “We are trying to get people to ask themselves better questions and reflect. If you can do that, you will be better able to handle the speed and variety of changing environments.” If you are a curious person, it’s a great way to nerd out and learn something new.  In this episode, he interviews Jennifer Garvey Gerger who is an author and works with leaders all over the world.  She writes about leadership and said that leaders need to lose their control over others during this time.  Leaders need to be able sit with someone who is scared or grieving without trying to fix or solve the situation. She goes on to talk about how to become a better listener.  She recommends getting curious about the other person and asking more questions.  She believes there will be a fundamental change in how we feel, how we consume and that we will be more interconnected as a result of the pandemic.  “We don’t want a new car.  We want to be loved and respected and the car just represents those feelings”.  My favorite line was this, “Answers are not available for the future. So what can I do today, tomorrow and next week to plant some of the seeds for a better future in some way?” I could listen to Shawn Parrish all day long.

5 Take-Aways to reduce stress:

Music: Music causes a biological response that can be calming so listen to your favorite mellow music.

Focus on helping others:  If you’re in a position to help someone, do it. It’s one way to feel better about your own situation.

A Ritual or Routine:  Set aside your own time and concentrate on three things; what to let go of, what to focus on, and being grateful.

Recovery: Make time to space out and have downtime.   You’ll be more creative and productive as a result.  Put away all technology devices for an hour and watch your life change. There’s science behind how this will help your productivity and creativity soar.  

Stay connected:  We’re all missing out on being social right now.  Skip the Zoom fatigue and have a regular phone call.  Better yet, take a social distance walk.

If you have other mindful and wellness tips and podcasts you want to share with us, let us know at hello@illumehire.com. Take care of yourself.