Shipulski On Design

Posts Tagged ‘stress’

Emotional stress is similar to physical stress. Both are exhausting, depleting, distracting, and physically limiting. But with physical stress, the cause is clear; the cause of emotional stress can be invisible.

When you go to the gym and lift weights, the physical stress is clear. You can see the dumbbells move up and down; you can see your arms connected to the dumbbells as they move; and you can feel your muscles do their work.  And after the workout, you know why you are tired, and you expect to feel sore the next day.  Action-response. Input-output. Cause-effect.

When you go into the office and do your work, the emotional stress is less clear.  You can see what must be done, but sometimes you are too busy to do it. You want to do it, but you cannot.  And that mismatch between what you want and your inability to get it done creates emotional stress.  You take no action, yet you still experience emotional stress. There is input but no output, yet there is stress.  There is a cause you cannot affect, and you create emotional stress.

With physical stress, you generate stress through movement.  With emotional stress, you can generate stress through a lack of movement or progress.

If you forgot you went to the gym yesterday and woke up this morning tired and with sore muscles, you’d be confused about what was going on in your body.  Why am I sore?  Why am I tired? I don’t get it.  What’s wrong with me?  But, in truth, there would be nothing wrong with you.  There would be a reason for your bodily tiredness and soreness, but the cause would be invisible to you.  Emotional stress is like this.

Many situations can cause you to create emotional stress.  For example, emotional stress can come when things don’t go as planned, when someone treats you poorly, or when the outcome is different than your expectations.  But because your day is busy and you are juggling projects, the cause of your stress can be less than obvious.  You feel more tired than you should, but you don’t know why.  You are irritable, but you don’t understand what’s behind it.  And maybe you ask – What’s wrong with me?  And maybe you’re confused, and you judge yourself negatively.

I think we can reduce our emotional stress if we are more aware of its causes.  What if we saw our workplaces as a gym?  What if we saw our workdays as physical workouts?  We could label our meetings as emotional bench press exercises.  We could declare our conversations are dumbbell curls.  We could see our deep work as an aerobic activity.

Why not give it a try? You may be more relaxed when you get home after your eight-hour “workout.”

Image credit — Joachim Dobler