Master Stress|Mental Toughness| Stress Management Tips
Feeling Anxious? 3 Pitfalls You’ll Want to Avoid
How to stop stress from sabotaging your success
Mental Toughness is a great way to handle stress without sabotaging your success.
And learning how to overcome your anxieties is why you’re here, right?
Great! So here are 3 pitfalls to avoid and what to do instead.
3 Pitfalls You’ll Want to Avoid When Anxiety Strikes
In this column, you’re going to discover how to quickly and easily override your destructive natural reactions to stress.
When dealing with difficult situations or people that make you feel anxious, “In-stinks” are not your best first choice when responding to negative stress. Instincts are like icebergs. You are hard-wired to react before you ever see the full picture.
#1 Natural Reaction to Stress: You F.O.L.D. — Fall Asleep, Opt-out, Lie low, Disengage
This reaction to stressful situations is the most common and a huge waste of talent and time. If you do nothing, then the source of stress won’t go away and often grows. The chances are good that eventually you’ll either explode or implode from the build-up, and it will happen at a time you don’t control.
What can you do instead? A change in attitude can change your day. Reframe your perspective to look for opportunities in the same situation that will help you achieve your goals. Otherwise, you allow others or incomplete knowledge of the situation to control how you respond.
Before this column is complete, I’m going to show you how to turn anxiety-filled situations into opportunities for greater success, but first let’s look at the #2 Natural Reaction to Stress.
#2 Natural Reaction to Stress: You F.L.E.E.— Fly, Leave, Escape, Exit
In order to avoid stressful situations, you may feel an urge to FLEE. The trouble with running away is that the problem is still there. The longer you avoid dealing with it, the more difficult it becomes to achieve a good outcome. The problem is almost always easier to deal with sooner.
What can you do instead? Gather as much information as you can. Review your situation. Even if you are confident you have your facts straight, what you do next may be totally wrong for the outcome you seek.
As I coach my MTW students in our, “How to Handle Extreme Stress” online course, I’ve learned you can handle a lot more stress than you think you can. Using special tools and skills, like the waterfall breathing technique we teach, makes all the difference — especially under extreme anxiety. So let’s take a closer look at #3 Natural Reaction to Stress.
#3 Natural Reaction to Stress: You call a C.A.B. — Confront, Argue, Blame
While CAB is a natural reaction to stress, confronting, arguing, and blaming others rarely leads to a positive outcome for anyone. Whatever you want to accomplish, this reaction will make everything else more difficult. It will steal precious time and energy. When words are spoken, they can’t be taken back and you may not have another chance.
What can you do instead? Pause & just breathe. Give yourself some time to think. Now you can reconsider your situation. Look at your situation from a 3rd-person perspective. It determines what you will see.
Top Suggestion: When you’re feeling anxious and start to automatically react, choose to A.R.R.R.F!
What’s ARRRF, Deb?
I’m so glad you asked!
ARRRF = Always Reframe, Review, Reconsider First
Without better strategies, insights and tools, each of these three natural reactions is guaranteed to sabotage your success. Instead of relying on hard-wired reactions, make better choices. One of my strategies for using stress to my advantage is shifting my focus in any difficult situation. When you do, you’ll confidently face whatever life throws at you and hit it out of the park!
Bonus Tip: When you want a better response to stressful situations, build better stress skills. Get started now by visiting www.MentallyToughWomen.com/freegift and claiming your free pdf, Stress Mythbusters with its 3 key ways to turn stress to your advantage.
Bottom Line?: You want to be more successful. This will make it easy to understand, and it’s pain-free.
You’re invited to get your free instant access to our Stress Mythbuster when you visit www.MentallyToughWomen.com/freegift where you’ll gain insights and tools that will transform your life.
Your Next Step: Take your next success step right now by visiting www.MentallyToughWomen.com/freegift and get started on improving your outcomes to stress with our combat-proven Stress Mythbuster tool.
Action Questions:
1. What’s your natural reaction to stress?
2. What will you do instead?
3. What’s your plan to improve your stress skills before your head hits the pillow tonight?
4. How would you like to use my proven Stress Mythbuster tool ? Go get it! www.MentallyToughWomen.com/freegift
To learn more about me and my life’s journey, check out my bio and why I believe learning is a lifelong process.
And for even more tips and tools on handling stress, connect with me on LinkedIn.
