What are your ways to handle, disconnect and recover from stress?
Knowledge
- The evolutionary function of stress is to help us get out of physical dangers, like running from a tiger. Adrenalin and cortisol increases our breathing and heart rate, which sharpen our senses and makes our muscles ready for fight or flight. While being under attack, our focus is not on sleeping or recovering from our cold. Therefore stress decreases our sleeping abilities and immune system.
- Today we don’t experience many physical dangers. Instead we experience psychological threats. We ask ourselves: “Am I safe?” “Am I loved?” “Am I good enough?” This activates a stress response. And these thoughts just keep on spinning and we find it increasingly difficult to relax and recover.
- Stress is not dangerous. But, the lack of recovery is. When we cannot let go of our fears and anxiety. Therefore, we don’t get stressed by working too much. We get stressed by our fears and we get ill by not disconnecting and recovering from our fears.
- As the cortisol level increases and stress emerge, we on one hand become more focused and engaged, which the Yerkes-Dodsons law argues, illustrated below in an inverted U-curve.
- On the other hand, stress makes us more selfish and we start losing our sense of togetherness and empathy for others. Stress also decreases our ability to regulate our emotions, to memorise, to process new information, to evaluate risks, and to shift strategy. We become more fear driven and repetitive, and worse in changing our decisions and actions. This decreases our ability to change, our resilience and long-term performance as an organisation.
- The U-curve goes from good to bad when we go from being in control to out of control, from predictability to uncertainty, from being the hunter to being hunted.
Our business reality risk increasing fear and stress
- Our new business reality carries a wealth of opportunities, for us as individuals and for us as an organisation. But, as we work in an increasingly complex, network-based and uncertain environment, it also can make us feel out of control and threatened, which can create a stress reaction.
- Continuous stress risk producing behaviours that takes us away from a strong and living IKEA culture where trust, entrepreneurship, collaboration, caring for each other and the bigger picture is at heart.
-
- To decrease the negative effects of stress as individuals, it is key to disconnect and making sure we get time to recover from our fears. In short it’s about: to sleep, to exercise and to increase the hormone Oxytocin (= to care for and feel loved in our relations).
- To decrease stress in our organisation, it is key to create a safe and predictable working environment, where co-workers feel included, acknowledged, empowered, in control and allowed to make decisions.
Copy link Copied Link Successfully copied link
-
- As an individual, what are your ways to disconnect and recover from stress?
- As an organisation, what enables and prohibits people to feel safe, acknowledged and empowered?
Copy link Copied Link Successfully copied link
-
Purpose: To show that some of the stress reactions we experience is mainly in our thoughts, and by learning to re-frame some of our thoughts we can reduce some unnecessary stress reactions.
Time: 15 min
Group size: Any
Equipment: NoneInstruction
- Ask the participants to think about something that makes them stressed.
- Ask them to think of the various consequences and reactions that might take place.
- Ask them how they feel.
- Ask – “Has anything of what you thought of happened?”
Debrief: We get stressed only by thinking. So, how we think effect our experience of stress. What are your ideas and methods on how to re-frame some of our thoughts and behaviours to reduce unnecessary stress reactions?
Copy link Copied Link Successfully copied link
Sources
- Robert Sapolsky, Why we behave the way we do, 2018
- Malin Trossing, Dare to lead with the brain, 2016