Work stress is as old as the job itself. And so are the ways we respond. You can imagine the leader of the first cave clan spending sleepless nights counting stalactites, worried about how he was going to break the news to UG and the other hunters that the declining wild beast population meant they would have less to eat.
Stress has always gone, and probably always will, go hand in hand with work.
Unfortunately, stress seems to be on the rise. In a study conducted earlier this year at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, Diana Fernandez, MD, found that job stress not only makes workers unhappy but also harms their health. In their study of 2,782 employees at a large manufacturing plant, Fernández and her team found strong links between job stress and cardiovascular disease, depression, burnout and weight gain. After a tense day of pink ballots circulating the office, many workers told Fernández’s team that they couldn’t wait to go home and “vegetate” in front of the television. In the American Psychological Association’s 2009 Stress in America Survey, 42% of Americans said their stress levels had increased since the previous year. A tepid economy and high unemployment suggest that the 2011 numbers are not going to improve.
But what if you could reduce stress without having to wait for the economy to improve? A promising stream of research linking emotional intelligence (EQ) to stress reduction offers exciting new insights into beating stress despite financial woes.
A team of Belgian researchers led by Dr. Moira Mikolajczak found that levels of emotional intelligence (a person’s ability to understand and manage their own and other people’s emotions) determine how effectively people cope with stress. Mikolajczak found that people with high emotional intelligence report better moods, less anxiety, and less worry during times of tension and stress than those with less ability to identify and manage their emotions.
But emotional intelligence isn’t just about naive optimism or disguising negative emotions by forcing yourself to put on a happy face. Emotionally intelligent people actually feel less stress. Emotionally intelligent people have improved their ability to engage their emotions and rational thought simultaneously. This results in a more contained and comfortable reaction to stressful circumstances. As your EQ increases, you actually feel less stress. Without consciously trying to control their stress reactions, people with high EQ show fewer physical signs of stress reactions, such as sweaty palms, elevated heart rate, and increased secretion of certain hormones and brain chemicals. When faced with a situation that sends most people climbing the walls, a high EQ person approaches the stressor with the same calm composure that most people demonstrate only in the most trivial of circumstances.
In other words, emotionally intelligent people not only report experiencing less stress, they also experience less physical and mental stress.
Why emotional intelligence is important:
Belgian researchers discovered two main reasons why emotional intelligence limits stress. First, they found that emotionally intelligent people assess their environment differently. In the words of Dr. Mikolajczak, “They are particularly inclined to look on the bright side, to invoke pleasant thoughts or memories to counteract their current emotional state, to think about what steps to take to manage the problem, and to put it into practice.” in perspective. On the contrary, they seem less likely to catastrophize or blame themselves for the occurrence of the problem and/or for their inability to solve it.”
Second, and perhaps most important, people who are good with emotions are more likely to choose a “problem-focused” coping strategy. Every problem we encounter presents us with two options: either tackle the problem head-on or bury our heads in the sand, hoping the problem will resolve itself. People who use a problem-focused coping strategy devote their attention to solving the problem, rather than ignoring it. This adaptive approach to problem solving works to squash the cause of stress and decreases the amount of stress experienced because just making a plan makes you feel more relaxed and in control. People like challenging jobs, crossword puzzles, and sudoku for the same reason: problem solving is mentally stimulating.
By contrast, less emotionally intelligent people let fear and anxiety drive them into a “problem avoidance” coping strategy, which only prolongs the stress. As you might guess, these two strategies become a self-fulfilling prophecy: they confirm the belief that led the individual to think that way in the first place, and they further their conviction that the problem is too difficult to handle. The habit of avoiding problems does not make you forget them. Instead, it keeps you wallowing in the negative emotions that accompany an overwhelming challenge. The problem itself remains a perpetual source of stress, amplifying bad feelings that make stress difficult to deal with.
In theory, it would seem that you could take a shortcut by skipping the emotional intelligence piece and just learning the adaptive coping strategies. The only problem is that people who are not good with emotions are also bad at using a problem-focused strategy. Only the emotionally intelligent group, who knows how to fend off the distractions created by fear, sadness, anger, jealousy, shame, and the like, can effectively implement a problem-focused approach.
EQ Training: The Gift That Keeps Giving:
Fortunately, virtually anyone can develop emotional intelligence with training. The Belgian team demonstrated that emotional intelligence can be significantly improved with just a handful of short training sessions. In a series of four 150-minute trainings spread over a month, participants significantly increased their ability to identify and manage emotions. The trainings included basic training elements such as short lectures, role plays, group discussions, reading assignments, and a daily journal entry about an emotional experience.
Most surprising, however, is that people who received emotional intelligence training not only maintained their new emotional intelligence skills six months after the training ended, but also showed a slight improvement in their EQ at the six-month follow-up. . We can only imagine how much better they would have been if they had been given a brief reminder to practice their emotional intelligence skills every few days.
How to beat your stress:
To start reducing your stress by improving your own emotional intelligence, there are two basic steps.
1. Get an EQ education. The best way to educate yourself is with the help of a reputable, certified emotional intelligence coach or coach. If you check with your training department, you may already have access to such a professional within your organization.
2. Practice. Once you have developed the correct foundation of emotional intelligence knowledge, you need to practice using it. You can do this with the old-fashioned system of sticky notes on your nightstand and bathroom mirror, or you can be a bit more precise with an automatic reminder system.
In short, the research you’ve just explored means that people, all people, are quite capable of eradicating stress with a relatively small amount of emotional intelligence training. A little emotional intelligence training goes a long way in helping you reduce stress and manage the obstacles that life inevitably throws your way.
