STRESS

Stress seems to be a natural part of life today. But does it have to be? As a manager of people, I wanted to learn all about it and how to get rid of it.

I learned that two people experiencing the same event can respond differently - one can be greatly stressed , the other not at all. Does the person decide to be stressed? Definitely not! So who is running the show? IMHO, the one who was stressed had learned and practiced that response in the past and had gotten very good at it. In short, that person has programmed his/her subconscious brain to respond with stress to the event in question.

Think of a high jumper who has tried to "program" the sub-conscious to produce that perfect sequence of muscle actions which will result in jumping over, not touching, the bar. Think of the sheer number of different muscle actions that must be directed by the sub-conscious almost simultaneously. Think of learning from the coach over a period of years all the little things that must happen to be successful. Think of the fact that the jump itself is over in a couple of seconds and that conscious brain speed is far too slow to direct the thousands of required actions in the correct sequence. But the sub-conscious can do it all if the conscious brain takes the time to program and practice action, build muscle strength, program the sub-conscious and practice, again and again and again!

The significant conclusion is, in order to meet the needs of speed in execution, the conscious brain creates a program, a specific set of instructions in the sub-conscious. And only considerable repetition allows the program to become more and more complete and to eventually include an automatic initiator feature. Automatics are a prerequisite to achieving excellence in high jumping where time is a real problem.

However, automatics and speed are unnecessary and, in fact, totally inappropriate for business interactions between humans. Because we didn’t understand this, we programmed our sub-conscious to conduct some of our routines in life. This is a source of dysfunctional behavior, our problems in dealing with other people and events.

Now for one of my own experiences with stress to illustrate how to fix dysfunctional behavior.

By the time I got to my third naval ship assignment I knew that correcting and reprimanding people was a real emotional negative. I disliked it. It turned me off even to think about doing it. I knew it had to be done and forced myself to do it, but it made my stomach boil and I didn’t want to continue boiling.

Although no one knew or could tell from my actions that I had such strong emotions, because of them I decided the Navy might not be for me. While contemplating a return to civilian life, I realized I would want to be in a managerial position as a civilian and would still have to correct and reprimand subordinates. I soon recognized I could only escape this responsibility by becoming a laborer responsible for no one else or living on a deserted island. I didn’t have the money for the island and, as concerns being a laborer, I wanted to be the one giving the orders rather than the recipient of them.

So I decided to analyze whether my negative emotions were proper. I made one list of all the reasons which supported my liking correction and reprimand and a second list of reasons which supported disliking it. I tried to look at it from every possible approach -- Navy, man, family, shipmate, country, God, taxpayer, as well as law, religious, ethical, Gut and, of course, value standards. I forget exactly how the first cut effort stacked up, but it was about 60% supporting like and 40% dislike. After considerable review and objective analysis, however, all the reasons ended out supporting like, none supporting dislike. I realized that if I disliked doing it, I would not do it as well as could be done and everyone would suffer, including myself and the person in need.

Armed with such overwhelming evidence, I carried the list with me on a 3x5 card and reviewed it every time the bad feelings emerged. I told myself repeatedly what a dummy I was for boiling, how I had emotions which made no sense and must be changed, and how I almost left the Navy over such an error. I also thought about each and every reason on the card. I never damaged my morale or self-esteem, but talked firmly to my sub-conscious.

The more I talked to my sub-conscious, the less my stomach boiled. Little by little the boiling disappeared, most of it in six months. About 2 1/2 years later I reprimanded a very senior person. Afterwards I realized I had felt very good about the whole thing; the planning, the doing and the aftermath. In essence, I had thrown out the prior program and reprogrammed to be able to enjoy the considerable satisfaction of another job well done. I had changed what I first perceived to be me, granite rock, my birth right, but which only turned out to be the hard packed earth and gravel mixture of a sub-conscious directed response, a program I had built and could therefore change.

How had I learned such a dysfunctional emotion/response? The truth is, attempts to find a cause or someone to blame will not solve the problem. Once we are adults it is our job to find our faults objectively and give a good go at correcting them before they do too much damage to others and ourselves. We should expect to be judged by our correction of error and not by the error itself. "To err is human, to forgive divine."

Bennet Simonton, author of "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed", managed people for over 30 years and effected four successful turnarounds including a nuclear-powered cruiser and a 1300 person unionized group. Ben now helps executives and managers to improve their skills of managing people. His website is http://www.bensimonton.com