Stress ManagementStress Management

Stress and Its EffectsStress and Its Effects

Managing stress and learning to 'chill out' is more than simply a pleasure - it's also vital to health and well-being. The pressures of everyday life mean we're almost constantly subjected to some form of stress. As well as the psychological effects, which can make us anxious, depressed or exhausted, stress can also cause physical problems by suppressing the immune system, slowing the metabolism and taking vital nutrients. It can also cause rapid ageing, lead to increased weight and even increase the risk of high blood pressure, digestive problems, heart disease and cancer. So

what can we do to combat stress?

BreathingBreathing Breathing is something we take for granted - but the breath is reckoned to be the key to calming the mind and relaxing the body. Many of us only use one third of our lung capacity when breathing. However, both aerobic exercise like swimming or jogging and breathing exercises can teach you to maximize your lung capacity, helping you to feel energized and free of tension.

How To BreatheHow To Breathe

Deepen your breathing. The key thing to remember is to breathe into both your lungs and your abdomen. So on the inhalation, push your stomach out and feel it expand, then carry on breathing in and fill your lungs. Exhale and push as much air as possible out of your lungs, then your abdomen. Breathing in this way for a few minutes each day is one of the best ways to help keep you calm and focused, revitalizing body and mind.

Positive ThinkingPositive Thinking The old theory that 'like attracts like' is never truer than in the case of positive and negative thoughts. Think negatively and your negative view of the world will expand. You'll attract situations and people that fit into that negative way of viewing life. But if you can break the pattern of negative thought and change your response to tough times, you'll attract positive events and people. You'll also maintain better health, because research shows that the higher your optimism, the healthier your immune system will be.

Some Ideas for Some Ideas for Programming positivity Programming positivity

Into Your LifeInto Your Life •Recognize that turbulent times can often be a blessing in disguise. Even if you can't see it at the time, tough times in your life can often create new growth and improvements

•Count your blessings. No matter how bad things may seem, there's still much you can be thankful for •Replace old, negative beliefs like 'I'm not good enough' with ones like 'I'm ok', and 'I deserve to have what I want' Be good to yourself. Take up a hobby, have a massage, do something you enjoy, even for a short time, every day

SleepSleep Good health demands good sleep. Sleep loss can make us moody, irritable and provoke health problems relating to our hormonal, immune, intestinal and cardiovascular systems. You should find that your sleep patterns improve as your fitness increases, but insomnia affects everybody at some point. However, there are steps you can take to prevent sleeplessness and promote the deep sleep that leaves you feeling refreshed and revitalized:

Sleep PracticesSleep Practices

Develop a routine, with regular bedtimes and waking, even at weekends where possible.

Avoid stimulants like caffeine, alcohol and nicotine in the evening.

Sleep PracticesSleep Practices

Exercise in the evenings - this will help burn up the day's stress hormones.

Avoid big meals late at night. Try to eat at least 2 hours before bedtime.

Avoid sleeping drugs that simply knock you out. They can leave you feeling sluggish - and they can also suppress REM sleep, important for processing our subconscious thoughts.

Stress At WorkStress At Work

There are times during our busy military careers when we fail to take care of our bodies, often neglecting the warning signs we are receiving because we are too busy with other matters. The workplace provides much of the stress that we carry around in our daily lives. It's therefore one of the most important environments in which to manage stress. Follow some of these tips and see how much difference they can make to your stress levels:

Tips For At The WorkplaceTips For At The Workplace

Set realistic goals and have clear and concise objectives to meet those goals

Keep a list and prioritize it Delegate where possible Minimize meetings, but make them worthwhile

when necessary Concentrate on only one thing at a time Handle correspondence quickly and efficiently.

Don't let them pile up During lunch or break, avoid discussing business,

eat slowly, and take your full lunch period

Tips For At The WorkplaceTips For At The Workplace

Ask for help when you need it Keep the work you have to do right in

front of you Set specific time limits on tasks Break each task down into segments Don't procrastinate Don't be a workaholic. Manage your time Say no when you need to

Common Habits FormedCommon Habits FormedFrom StressFrom Stress

•Emotional Eating

•Caffeine and Stress

•Alcohol and Stress

Emotional EatingEmotional Eating Do you eat when you’re feeling emotionally stressed? Many people do, though they’re not really hungry. The problem is stress leads most people to make bad food choices—so-called "comfort foods" like cake, cookies, chips, ice cream, and donuts. Many of these foods temporarily raise blood sugar levels, but then send you crashing back down, making you feel worse than you did before, and inviting even more eating.

To break this cycle, before putting any food in your mouth, stop and ask yourself, "Am I truly hungry or am I just feeling stressed out?" If necessary, tape up visual cues on your refrigerator door or snack drawer that say, "Are you really hungry?"

If it’s really hunger, then eat; if not, say to yourself, e.g. "I’m tired (or nervous or frustrated or angry) and I can find something better to do than eat!" THEN DO SOMETHING ELSE!

Caffeine and StressCaffeine and Stress Caffeine is America’s number one mind-altering drug. Americans brew up and slurp down half of the world’s coffee for an average of 450 cups per person per year. While giving us a temporary boost, the caffeine found in many beverages and some foods:

In high doses (over 900 mg daily), caffeine may even rob the body of minerals like magnesium and increase bad cholesterol (LDL).

Limit your caffeine intake to two or three cups of coffee or tea a day. Cut back gradually over several weeks to avoid withdrawal symptoms like headaches, fatigue, and depression. Try switching to half regular and half decaffeinated coffee or herbal teas. Substitute water whenever possible. Finally, know where caffeine is lurking (see Table). Those fancy drinks at the local coffee bar may be adding more stress than joy to your life! And remember that the grande size is often twice the dose!

Alcohol and StressAlcohol and Stress Many people use alcohol as a way to relax and unwind, both individually and socially. One or two drinks a day is not harmful for most people and may even have health benefits. However, there are far better ways to reduce stress and alcohol, like smoking and other drug use, is a perfect example of the "cure" possibly becoming the disease. Heavy drinking can lead to everything from high blood pressure and liver disease to depression and ruined family relationships. If you do drink, be careful not to use it as a sleep aid. In fact, because of its effects on the brain, alcohol will disturb the quality of your sleep and you won’t wake up feeling rested.

Alcohol can be a part of your life when not abused. But don’t start drinking or drinking more to help you get through stressful times. It has never solved anyone’s problems and there is probably no substance in history that has destroyed more lives.

Leaders ResponsibilityLeaders Responsibility Leaders have a responsibility for individual and organizational health.

Today the collected research findings and wisdom from the fields of public health, behavioral medicine, management science, and social and clinical psychology continue to make clear that organizational productivity and morale are dependent on leaders who can help minimize the distress and strain experienced by the individual subordinate within his total environment—the workplace as well as the outside world, including the subordinate’s family. We will briefly discuss in the following slides how leaders can begin to take charge of their organization’s mental health..

Become a Mental Fitness Become a Mental Fitness Role ModelRole Model

Just as it’s important to exemplify good physical health and fitness habits if you expect subordinates to practice them, the same is true for good mental health behaviors. You can hardly demand that your staff members control their anger and handle their frustrations productively if you haven’t learned to do so yourself. Also, in order to be a credible advocate for mental health resources both within and outside your organization, it greatly helps if you’ve taken advantage of and can personally speak about the benefits of such resources.

Whether it means becoming a better manager of our time, stress, anger, anxiety, or depression, we all have some psychological area in which we could stand improvement, just as we have with regard to our physical selves. Finding the right area to focus on necessitates a critical self-examination, either on one’s own or with the help of others. Of course, if your organization offers opportunities for such personal reflection and assessment, by all means utilize them. The leaders at the Army War College, for example, are fortunate to have both screening tools and follow-up programs designed for mental health promotion. If you can’ t find any useful program within the Unit, check out community, university, or church-related courses and seminars in stress and anger management. You may also wish to talk to a mental health professional such as a psychologist or social worker to find the program that best fits your needs, just as you would discuss the most appropriate exercise program with your personal fitness trainer.

Take Responsibility for Your Take Responsibility for Your Subordinate’s Mental HealthSubordinate’s Mental Health

Once your own emotional house is in order, you can more effectively address the emotional health of your subordinate leaders and those they lead. Unfortunately, too many leaders are prone to diagnose subordinates’ emotional problems and refer them for help without considering their own role in creating and perpetuating the problems .

You should do everything in your power to make certain that resources and programs are in place in your Unit or available locally to help the soldier whose anger has led to workplace eruptions and family abuse or whose depression has led to drinking, financial, or eating problems. Many staff members could also benefit from your recommendation to attend a stress management course even if symptoms of stress still lie beneath the surface. In addition, however, smart leaders will not fail to review their own role in producing stressors in their work environment.

A change in leadership style is often necessary for reducing subordinate stress. The situation may call for a leaders approach that is more emotionally supportive rather than a no-nonsense task orientation. Or possibly the reverse will be true. Likewise, a soldiers skills and expertise may flourish better when interacting with a delegating leader instead of one who micromanages. Difficulties emerge because leaders, personality-wise, naturally tend to vary in the degree of supervision they exert, their manner of expressing anger control, and the degree of trust they display. The wrong style with the wrong soldier invariably produces stress, which tends to grow more destructive and breed resentment over time. Although ideally you can achieve a balance of leadership styles that properly suits your team and its changing situations without losing sight of the bottom line (be it mission or training), achieving an ideal balance is obviously easier said than done. At a minimum, however, you must read what is going on in the minds of your followers to know if change is needed on your part. Are they angry, bitter, depressed? If so, why? As you move up the ladder, you may find that such feelings become increasingly difficult to detect, both among personal peers and in subordinates of your Unit. Surface fixes, like throwing office parties or having casual dress days, may only help to address stress symptoms instead of getting to the root of the problem.

Periodic sensing sessions (whether on or off site) which allow soldiers to openly let off steam or speak their minds can be helpful, but many important thoughts and feelings may go unexpressed in such sessions. When trust and communication have deteriorated too far, these sessions may be useless. Similarly, an open door/e-mail policy or the more anonymous suggestion box can provide clues to stress levels in the organization, but these may be unrepresentative of the whole. Better indicators and insight can come from a morale survey, provided, of course, that it is filled out honestly. If you think that potential complainers fear being pointed out and made to pay a price, you should call in an organizational consulting or survey agency to do the work. Keep in mind, though, that even outsiders may be distrusted, especially when their methods involve group or individual interviews. On the other hand, if subordinates truly believe that you care about the stress they are experiencing and want to do what you can to alleviate it, they will be grateful for the opportunity to express themselves (which helps relieve some stress in itself). In any case, always report back on the actions you have taken based on such feedback in order to encourage future candid submissions and recommendations.

It is important for your soldiers to understand what things NCO’s can and cannot control in the workplace. Whether it involves working conditions, pay, benefits, quotas, time off, deadlines, or quality control standards, some factors that influence work performance, morale and mental health lie outside your direct ability to change. The good news is that your subordinates don’t expect you to exercise godlike powers to magically create the perfect work environment. However, they do expect and appreciate knowing why things are the way they are and what the possibilities may be for change in the future. Be honest about whatever the problem or hang-up might be— senior staff politics, laws, or regulations––since you’ll have a potentially far worse situation if and when a "cover-up" is discovered. For example, a loss of organizational trust is practically inevitable if soldiers are told that there will be no Christmas leave due to manning and site personnel strength, only later to learn about senior leaders making their own schedules for the holiday break.

Most importantly, subordinates need to know that you’ll go to bat for them in making sure their interests get a fair hearing. They might understand that senior pay packages need to be increased to attract leaders in their current positions to remain for the stability of the Army, but they’ll feel better about you if they know that you’ve stood up and voiced their concerns that Christmas leave is a critical component of their moral and that some compromise, perhaps a lottery for a lucky few and incentives for those who have to stay behind, is preferable to outright elimination. It clearly takes courage to stand up to threatening forces from within ones own Unit. While it is obviously not advisable to fall on your sword on a regular basis, carefully choosing battles that will demonstrate that you are not solely motivated by your own career advancement will pay handsome dividends in trust, confidence, loyalty, and respect. Never be afraid to say, "I don’t know" or "I’ve done all I can" or even "I made a mistake." Remember that your subordinates don’t expect you to be superhuman, just considerate enough of them to tell it like it is. This does not mean that you should alert them to every possible environmental threat and fill them in on the details of senior staff gossip. Part of your job is acting as a buffer against things that would needlessly concern workers and which you can handle efficiently at your level.

A final note relates to the necessity for leaders who seek to optimize the mental health and productivity of their followers to take into account the interface of work and family. With both parents working in most families, it is a greater challenge than in the past to juggle and balance work and home life. Since job productivity, motivation, and the ability to concentrate are very much tied to how things are going at home, the leader who is also the preventive stress manager will take steps to ensure that the organization has done all that it can to accommodate and support family needs. These steps may include reviewing flextime, work-at-home and family leave policies, child and parent day opportunities, health insurance benefits, and counseling or other support mechanisms. As the military has discovered, these support systems are especially crucial when subordinates are separated from their families for significant periods of time. It takes a leader with insightful skills, not merely empathy, to factor in the need to take care of families without compromising the organizational mission.

Concluding Thoughts

Earlier this century it was said that ours was the Age of Anxiety. Given the Holocaust and the ethnic hatreds and "cleansings" that have occurred in Africa and Europe towards the close of the last century, our new century is probably best characterized as the Age of Anger. Perhaps the most important task facing mankind as it enters the 2000s is to cope successfully with our individual anger and hostility. It needs to be emphasized that the goal of the various stress control strategies that have been developed by psychologists is precisely that, the control of stress, not its elimination. If stress is an evolved biological response to pain, frustration, and situations that present a threat to one’s existence, then it is unlikely that anger can or should ever be completely eliminated. Provocations, frustrations, pain, and illness are part of the human condition. The purpose of stress-intervention strategies is to control stress so that we do not become consumed by it, to free up energies so that we can lead more productive, more creative, and more socially useful lives. Moreover, it is not at all clear that the total elimination of stress is a desirable goal, even if such total elimination could be achieved. Some measure of controlled stress can be a good thing if it motivates us to fight evil and injustice.

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