CHAPTER 1
Stress: What's All the Fuss?

"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another."

-William James (American philosopher and psychologist)

Belinda had been preparing for this day weeks in advance. Her team was counting on her to fly to their head office in New York to present their new plan for the year. It involved a substantial increase in funding and a new direction for their division that would trigger many questions from the senior managers. Belinda could justify the new plan better than anyone, as she was most responsible for putting all the pieces together.

She woke up fresh and alert. She would take her kids to school on her way to the airport. She chose a flight that allowed her some relaxing time in the lounge at the airport. However, after looking out the window, she realized there was an obstacle she hadn't considered. Her driveway was completely covered in snow, and the snow removal guy she hired hadn't arrived yet. She suddenly felt a mild panic. Her heart started beating faster, and her face became a bit flushed.

She counted to five, and then told herself she still had lots of time.

"Be positive," she thought. She could work this out.

She woke her kids and got them to help her start shoveling the snow in the meantime. The snow was heavy and deep, and the clock was ticking. She hoped school would be cancelled, but unfortunately, the school district sent a text notifying parents that all the city schools were open.

By the time they got the driveway half cleared, she started getting anxious again, realizing she was losing valuable time. She then decided she would back out of the driveway by putting her foot to the pedal on her SUV with a force that would get her over the unshoveled snow and onto the road. The car suddenly lurched back and got caught at the end of the driveway, with the rear barely on the road. The snow was too deep. Her rear tires started to spin. She wasn't moving.

She began to shift from reverse to forward, back and forth, stepping on the gas each time. She asked her kids to push the car, but it wouldn't budge. They started shoveling again, then rocking the car. She was completely out of breath from shoveling and the fear of missing her flight. She felt like she might faint.

After 10 minutes of panic, she didn't know what to do. Could she leave her SUV partly on the street, should she call a cab or Uber, what next?

Suddenly she jumped out of the car and looked up and down the street for snow removal trucks. Finally, she saw one turning the corner and breathlessly ran towards it, stopping the driver in the middle of the street.

She asked if he'd help out by clearing the back of her driveway with his plow so she could get her car onto the road. He explained that he had dozens of driveways to clear and was already behind on his schedule. Her breathing, at this point, was so deep, she almost fell to the ground with exhaustion. She begged him, telling him she had to make it to the airport and how it was really important. He finally agreed and cleared the bottom of the driveway.

With her kids pushing her back she was finally able to make it onto the road. By now she had lost almost 40 minutes. She dropped her kids off at school and took off to the airport. The highway was completely jammed as the snow caused massive traffic congestion.

Sitting on the highway, she started sweating profusely. Her heart was racing once again. She had to make this plane. She finally got to the airport and decided to leave her car at the valet parking where she grabbed the ticket from the attendant and ran to the departure gates.

When she got past security and to the gate, she was told the plane was delayed because of the snow. This caused even more anxiety because she knew all the senior team would be there waiting just for her. As she was waiting to board the plane, she got a call from the school telling her that her youngest son was sick and throwing up. By now her hands were sweating even more, and she began shaking. She had to try to reach her mother and ask her if she could pick up her son.

The flight finally took off an hour and a half late. When she arrived, she was able to get a cab and slowly made her way through New York traffic to get to the head office. As she was rehearsing her presentation in her mind and trying to keep calm, she suddenly realized she left behind the handouts that she had prepared for each of the senior team. Now she was in total panic. There was nothing she could do. She never prepared for this many things to go wrong. She now felt completely powerless.

How would you feel after a morning like that? Would you be stressed out, or would it be just another day at the office for you?

Can you remember the last time you were stressed out? Did it involve a major life event-like an illness or death in the family? Was it work or school related-being judged on a presentation, performance review, or exam? Or financial-not having enough money to meet your goals? Or maybe a relationship problem-not being treated fairly by friends who should know better? Perhaps just the everyday demands on your life are enough to stress you out.

How is it that some people are overwhelmed by the slightest disruption or change in their lives, while others seem to make it through catastrophes relatively unscathed? Or that two people, experiencing the exact same event, such as the breakup of a relationship or a serious illness, can react in completely different ways? A colleague of ours, having gone through a similar experience as Belinda's, had a totally different reaction. As Cathy encountered each new obstacle, she saw it as a challenge, something to problem-solve her way through. She wasn't worried about failing, but just kept plowing through each new challenge.

Perhaps getting a better understanding of stress, and how it works, can help us begin to understand these questions. Once we do, we can begin to learn how to better manage the stress in our own lives, and even turn stress into an advantage!

Stress: It's Unavoidable

Stress is a necessary part of life. As the early stress researcher Hans Selye once said, the only stress-free person is a dead one (Selye, 1978). Every day we experience challenges that are more or less stressful, causing our bodies and brains to react in characteristic ways. And although this has been true for as long as humans have walked the earth, modern life only seems to be getting more and more stressful. Novel and changing technologies have shifted the way we live and do business. New systems and approaches are appearing at a fast pace, forcing changes in how many jobs get accomplished (Thack & Woodman, 1994). The internet alone has vastly expanded the information available to us, while at the same time opening the door to misinformation, cybercrime, and loss of personal data (Aiken, 2016).

Jobs and relationships are less stable. Increasing globalization of operations for many organizations means that employees must learn to function and communicate in strange cultures. Changes are coming more often, and futures are harder to predict. At the same time, stress-related diseases and other problems continue to rise, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and, yes, suicide. Stress can make you sick, unhappy, and not a very good employee, partner, or parent.

Bad Stress, Good Stress: How Knowing the Difference Can Help You Live Longer

In today's environment, knowing how to cope effectively with stress is more important than ever. Much of the early research on human responses to stress focused on the ill effects of various major life events, such as divorce, a death in the family, or losing your job (Holmes & Rahe, 1967). We hear a lot about the negative effects or the results of "bad stress."

New research, however, is teaching us that not all stress is necessarily bad. One major study, reported in 2012, comes from data collected over a dozen years earlier. Nearly 186 million adults participated in a U.S. National Health Interview in which they were asked dozens of questions about their habits and how they coped with life. These data were later linked to the National Death Index to see if there were any relationships between people's habits and how long they actually lived. While there are many different causes of death, it was thought that by mining such a large database we could at least provide some clues and perhaps connections between people's lifestyles and their longevity.

It may not be that surprising to learn that 55% of the participants reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress during the year they were interviewed. If we look at many of the people around us, both at work and in our social and family lives, we'd probably come up with a similar finding. Upon further probing, the researchers discovered that 34% described how this stress had negatively affected their health to some extent during that time. So, while over half of the people surveyed were experiencing high levels of stress, only about a third of them felt it was negatively affecting their health in some way.

Later on, the researchers did a follow-up, examining death records and matching them to the people who were interviewed. They made a surprising discovery. Of the people who reported high stress levels, those that said the stress negatively affected their...