When stress creeps up on you without you noticing
Have you heard the tale of the boiling frog? The story goes that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump out. Whereas if you put it in lukewarm water and gradually heat it up, the frog won’t notice the danger and will get cooked to death.
It turns out that this is a myth – a frog finding itself in this situation will try to escape when the water gets too hot for it*.
But it makes me think about how the leaders I work with experience stress. Like the mythical frog, stress creeps up on them until they get to a point of mental and physical overload. A point where they can barely function, let alone lead.
I know more than one leader who has considered quitting their job or had to take time out because they felt burned out.
It’s normal to experience stress when we face demanding situations, but it’s not good news if we feel stressed all the time.
Riding the stress elevator
In her book Heal your nervous system, Dr Linnea Passaler shares a model called the Alertness Elevator to help explain the different states of stress we go through as we respond to circumstances in our life and work.
The elevator stops at different “floors”. The bottom two floors are the blue state, when we’re in deep rest like deep sleep, and the green state, when we’re focussed and engaged, but relaxed.
As the elevator rises to the next floor, the yellow state, stress starts to negatively impact how we’re thinking and feeling. We’re getting into cognitive overload. This is where you might feel like your mind is racing and you’re consumed by worry and self-doubt.
And then there’s the top two floors : the red state, full-on fight or flight response, and the purple state where we freeze – maybe you’ve experienced this when you’ve been put on the spot and your mind goes blank.
When we don’t go back down
It’s normal for us to travel through the yellow and red floors in demanding situations. The problems start when we “live” on these floors, like a lot of the leaders I work with.
I’m thinking of Stefan**, a senior director who is “on” from the moment he gets up and dives into emails to when he closes down at night. Back to back meetings all day, no breaks, no time to think. A late finish if he has a meeting with the US. Then waking in the night worrying about something he hasn’t done or something coming up the next day.
When we don’t go back down the elevator to recover, this is not only bad news for our health but also means we become more sensitive to perceived threats like volatile colleagues and pressing deadlines.
And the more stressed we feel, the less productive we are. You can’t think straight. Things take longer to get done. One leader tells me she gets to the point where she can’t string a sentence together – her brain feels like treacle.
Playing detective
If we’re not aware of how we’re thinking and feeling, we can’t stop stress creeping up on us and taking hold.
The trick is to notice the signs that your stress levels are rising so you can take preventative action. A bit like the warning lights on a car dashboard.
For one leader I work with, it’s a tightness in their chest. For another, it’s increased mental noise and difficult thinking clearly. For another, it’s obsessive phone-checking.
For me, it’s being busy being busy and finding it hard to stop myself.
Once you know the signs, going back to the boiling frog, you can choose to get out of the metaphorical water – or take the elevator back down. Pause, step back, breathe, ground, reframe the negative thoughts in your head.
What about you? What are the signs that stress is creeping up on you?
*Thanks to fellow leadership expert John Milsom for pointing out that the boiling frog story is a myth
**Stefan isn’t this leader’s real name, and the details of his situation have been altered slightly for confidentiality.
