“Never too soon to panic”. S.J. Hepworth
My friend Sheila gets the credit for one of my all time favorite quotes. It always makes me laugh which is the best stress buster around but it also packs a powerful truth, our stress responses can be engaged pretty fast and they aren’t always helpful! How you react when something goes wrong in your life can significantly affect your health.
Sooo, a mega giant computer software company bundles software with an item that you install. Then it crashes your whole system, disables your email and your ability to read, edit or open any documents with out resorting to a $700.00 software upgrade. To make matters worse your adorable tech support guy is in China on business and the tiny person he leaves you in charge of, misses him so much she wakes at least an hour early all week and holds a moratorium on napping all together! This is the kind of situation that usually shows off my superior “fly off the handle” skills. Through the grace of some divine intervention I opted to shelve my ability to worry, rage and panic and the following surprisingly worked better!
Take a breath
When you start to feel that familiar stress sensation, heat in the face, heart beat beginning to race, sweat and panic, your thoughts about the situation are engaging your sympathetic nervous system. The system that protects you from danger (fight or flight). When this system is engaged it’s as if all of your resources either power down to send more teamsters to the front lines, or rev up in order to deal with the danger. Deep breathing engages your parasympathetic nervous system which calms the nerves and signals them to return to regular function. Doing this gives you access to your higher level functioning, like you know, rational thought?
Talk yourself down
Brainstorm possible solutions to your problem, even if you don’t think they will work or be effective. When we panic nothing but running or freezing seem like viable options. Use positive and confident language, “I can figure this out”. “This seems really bad, but before I lose it, I’m going to see if it can be fixed”. “Getting more stressed out is not going to help me get through this situation”.
Seek help
Become a person who looks for someone to help rather than someone to blame. Justice and punishment are actions that should be left to law enforcers. Unless you absolutely have no other choice the stress response that goes along with say, seeking out the president of a multi billion dollar software company and suing him for your lost day of work and accompanying emotional distress is like winning more pie in a pie eating contest!
So I’m back on line, thank you to my friend Chris who never seems to get freaked out when something technical goes wrong and he certainly doesn’t waste his time pointing fingers and assigning blame. His calm, strategic, problem solving even made me forget I was mad. Bill who?
“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for it to kill your enemy”. Nelson Mandela
