A lot of my consulting time last year was spent helping teams handle the stress of our fast paced, ever changing, globally connected lives.
One of the resources I often turn to is a book titled Performing Under Pressure by Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw-Fry.
You may not have noticed the difference but the first paragraph talks about stress, the second one speaks to pressure. As explained in the book, therein lies one of the keys, distinguishing between pressure and stress.
Here are the quick definitions:
- Pressure: You perceive that something at stake is dependent on the outcome of your performance and there are good and bad consequences.
- Stress: Stress refers to the situation of too many demands and not enough resources to meet them.
Pressure vs Stress
I learned the difference between these early in my career. My first real job out of engineering school included walking steel 200 feet in the air. This was prior to modern day safety devices. No safety straps, no nets, just 20 stories up with the wind in your face and utter fear and panic in your head.
If you can imagine standing with your back tightly against a vertical steel column, perched on a steel “I” beam with a top flange that was either 6 or 8 inches wide. That is your sidewalk. As you gaze out horizontally your mind can create the illusion of a floor using the grid of horizontal beams spaced 20 to 40 feet apart. But it’s a true illusion. If you lower your eyes even a few degrees below horizontal, you see nothing but vast openings all the way down to the concrete slab 20 floors below.
But I couldn’t just stand there and contemplate my fate, I had to move about the building to do my job. The only way I could move around the building was to put that illusion of a floor to work for me. So I would stand with my back securely pressed against the vertical column, start to slow my heart rate, breathing and thoughts while I visually searched for a distinguishing mark on the destination column 40 feet away. Once I locked on that mark, the illusion of a floor remained while I kept my gaze totally horizontal. Then with one last deep breath, I took the first step and didn’t stop until I reached the other side. All well and good except for my “friends” the ironworkers who thought of me as amusement.
The veteran Ironworkers who seemed to scramble around the structural steel like it was a gym set on a playground were always watching me with amusement.
I’m on my way. First step. The wind is a bit stronger than I anticipated. Stay focused, keep walking. About a third of the across my beam my focus is completely interrupted by an Ironworker, sliding down the column I was concentrating on and walking toward me. I stop and concentrate completely on maintaining my balance.
As we are taught, the Ironworker walks up to me and stands toe-to-toe. He grasps my wrists as I grasp his, encourages me to lean back until our arms are completely extended and our weight becomes balanced, suspending each other at about 30 degrees from vertical. Once we are balanced we begin a tiptoe dance on the beam, keeping all four sets of toes as much on the beam as possible as we swivel 180 degrees together. We regain our vertical positions and the Ironworker walks off casually chuckling.
I, on the other hand am left using every fiber of my being trying to maintain balance, calm my heart rate and slow my breathing while I search for a new focal point on the column in front of me while facing the WRONG DIRECTION!
Stress? That’s easy. Too much demand with too few resources. Stress is easy and meaningless when put into perspective with real pressure.
Will Stress Kill You?
A 10-year study including tens of thousands of subjects was completed a couple of years ago.
At the beginning of the study subjects were asked if they had been exposed to any of the major stressors (death, divorce, job loss, etc) in the year prior to the study. At the conclusion of the study, those who had experienced the major stressors had a much higher fatality rate. But, all subjects had been asked another question, “Do you believe stress is harmful to your health?” Those who said “No” to that question had no greater fatality rate than the norm even though they had experienced one or more of the major stressors. But for those with major stress experiences who also believed stress was harmful to their health, their fatality rate was the highest.
Stress won’t harm you. Believing stress will harm you can be fatal. Relax, it’s only stress.
