The Stress Test

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

I’ll have to say that this is one of the best stress management books I’ve read, “The Stress Test: How Pressure Can Make You Stronger and Sharper” by Ian Robertson.  Ian Robertson is considered one of the world’s leading researchers in neuropsychology.  The book is essentially a scientific test of philosopher Nietzsche’s maxim “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”  And here are the fascinating ideas the author has discovered that we could apply in dealing with stress.

Stress as a Double-Edged Sword

How you perceive stress determines how it will affect you. If you think stress is harmful and threatening to break you down, it will. On the other hand, if you think stress is enhancing and challenging you to step up and give your best, it will help you do exactly that.  That’s why in my stress management seminar I point out the many benefits we can get from stress.  Problems in life have many purposes, and if you know these purposes, then you won’t be stressed that much in facing them. You can even enjoy being challenged by them.  We should be like Tiger Woods who would say when playing in a high-stakes golf tournament, “The day I’m not nervous is the day I quit.”  Tiger Woods sees anxiety before the game as a pre-requisite to winning the prize, which is one of the many purposes of stress.

A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind

A survey was made to two thousand people with questions, “What are you doing right now?” and “Are you thinking about something other than what you’re currently doing?”.  The answer to the first question was of course the usual things we would do in our day, working in the office, at home, some people relaxing, etc.  And the replies to the second question were No, Yes – thinking something pleasant, Yes – thinking something neutral, and Yes – thinking something unpleasant.  The intriguing result was half of the sampled population was wandering half the time while doing something.  Regardless whether they were doing a routinary home chore like cleaning the bathroom, or sipping cocktails on the sun-drenched deck of a yacht—minds were equally likely to wander to good, bad or neutral things whatever the activity.  And not only that, the research found out that a wandering mind was almost always less happy than a mind focused on what it was doing even if on a vacation sipping wine on a yacht daydreaming.  People are no happier during pleasant daydreams than when their minds are focused on scrubbing the lavatory.  A wandering mind, then, is an unhappy mind.

This finding tells us the importance of focusing on what we are doing.  The bad news is we’re being inundated with more distractions in a single day (social media, TV, movies, etc.) than our 15th century ancestors were exposed to, in an entire lifetime!  No wonder many of us are unsatisfied.  To help us focus, we need to do some meditating and if you are a Christian praying silently to God.  Reading books could help as well.

I Feel Excited

In an experiment by Alison Brooks of the University of Pennsylvania volunteers were divided into 3 groups and were put into various nerve-racking situations: singing karaoke in front of strangers; public speaking; doing ‘IQ-test’ arithmetic problems under time pressure.  Before the activity, these 3 groups were to speak out loud to themselves.  One group says, “I feel anxious”, the second group would say, “I feel calm”, and the third group had to say, “I feel excited.”  They all wore heart-rate monitors in order to make them aware of their bodily symptoms, as to how fast their hearts were beating.

The results of this experiment were exactly in line with what Tiger Woods said: people who told themselves that they felt excited not only felt more self-confident but also performed better, objectively measured, at all the tasks—singing, public speaking, even arithmetic. The opposite was true for those who said ‘I feel anxious.’ And saying ‘I am calm,’ on the other hand, had no effect at all, either on performance or self-confidence.

So, the next time you are put on a nail-biting and daunting situation where your talents and capabilities are going to be tested, instead of getting anxious or just trying to calm yourself down, speak out loud to yourself: “I feel excited!!!” Then go have fun crushing it.