Stress is natural, right – right. Stress management used to be quite trendy. Today it almost appears to be a given that people will be stressed. Just look at the coffee and energy drink market. That is actually, kind of, good news. Perhaps we have grown up over the last couple of decades when we thought all stress was bad. Well all stress is not bad. In fact some stress is actually good. A few years back, someone coined the term, eustress. Eustress is taken after the word euphoria. Eustress is standing in the line at your grad-school graduation just before you receive your diploma with honors. You are stressed about all those people out there, but you are also proud and excited about starting your new job. If you get the whole good cholesterol –bad cholesterol idea then you should get this. If eustress is the good stress then distress is the bad stress.

So what is distress? Distress is one’s perception of physical or emotional threat. Physical or emotional threat can come in any form. Think about it. Winning the lottery should definitely be perceived as good, right? Not if your relatives and friends from far and wide show up at your door like a swarm of spring time carpenter ants. All of them buzzing and munching, just trying to get their greedy little pinchers on your loot.

One thing you are experiencing during distress is a release of the thyroid hormone in your bloodstream. Back in caveman and cave-woman days there was an original benefit to this hormone rush. Thyroid hormones speed up the body’s metabolism. The body thus burns its fuel faster, to provide extra energy, much as a turbocharger helps your car.

The drawback today is that at our level of distress, we often overuse the thyroid. As such we may experience an intolerance to heat, shaky nerves to the point of jumpiness, guaranteed weight loss under distress (if food intake remains constant), insomnia, and ultimately exhaustion or burnout. While some obese people react to stress by gaining weight, this is only because they actively work at overwhelming their thyroids with extra calories.

One outcome of excess thyroid being exhaustion or burnout encourages people to try to artificially stimulate themselves. Note they are trying to stimulate the overly stimulated. Hum, do you hear a crash coming? While it is well to note that the term energy drink is actually a misnomer, what we really want to be aware of is what causes the energy drain in the first place.

What is your balance of eustress v. distress?

Here’s to Growth,

Tim

If part of your role in life is to effect change then your simply must become familiar with the book Influencer (www.influencerbook.com). It is a must for anyone in the business of change – and of course that is most of us. As formal or informal change agents we come in contact all the time with negative or neutral behavior. The authors of Influencer suggest two powerful and ethical ways of helping humans change: creating new experiences and creating new motives. This blog will focus on the first approach while our next blog will focus on the second.

Contrary to popular opinion we usually prefer continuing with our behavior even if it is deemed negative. If we REALLY didn’t wish to maintain the behavior we would change. Yes we would like to get more exercise, stop smoking, or spend less time proofreading the legal brief. The fact is, we either don’t want to change bad enough or we don’t know how. Most of us come to the point that we don’t think that kind of change is possible. The challenge before the change agent is to help create new experiences. A smoker finds it hard to imagine a life without cigarettes and ends up thinking about are all those cravings. Cancer-cravings; cancer-cravings; …CANCER! People often have a difficult time imagining life without the negative behavior.

In order to create new experiences people must eventually try the new behavior. Most people are poor at predicting what would make them happier. When most do imagine the new behavior they make typical errors. They think the new behavior will actually be very much like the old behavior minus the fun. The fact is, however, if people actually try the new behavior they typically end up liking it.

One of the best ways of getting people to try a new behavior is to have them make a game out of it. After all, face it; some who actually do try the new behavior will simply not like it. Let’s say you are trying to get your computer-game-driven pre-teen to get more outdoors exercise. How successful will you be in getting him to run up and down a field for a hour or so? Yeah right. Even though you might be able to convince him that the exercise would improve his performance on the computer game, your chances are pretty slim of pulling this off. Now, however, place a goal cage at each end, a soccer ball in the middle, some umpires and several of his best friends, and the kid is flying. So much of what can be done to transform unpleasant behavior into enjoyable behavior is to turn it into a game.

Ok, so let’s get personal. The common cry of corporate and professional types is that my work forces me to be imbalanced. However, much of life/work imbalance occurs because of the attainment of personal goals, that is, I am a better person for over working. The imbalanced worker is often also striving for the next level of achievement. How might we make life/work balance a game? What is your experience?

Here’s to Growth,

Tim

Those of you who already know us are aware that we focus on helping people make positive changes in their lives. As such you are also aware that we use fly fishing as a vehicle to jump-start the change process. Of course those who have experienced our services either in an open enrolment retreat or in a customized coaching assignment know the benefits of combining coaching and fly fishing during the change process. You have first hand experience with applying the metaphors on the water with your personal and professional life.

As an unfamiliar reader, however, you may be wondering if something’s fishy (pardon the pun)! Change is difficult. Our job is to help you find the most success in the shortest amount of time, with the most lasting results. That is precisely why we combine coaching and fly-fishing. It works! We have found that fly-fishing (whether novice or expert level) mimics life. Spending time on the water will not only tell us how you fish, but especially how you work and do life. Fly-fishing is a highly informative metaphor for life.

So …we pair state-of-the-art psychological methods with the experience of fly-fishing to help high level performers (i.e., corporate leaders, professionals, media/entertainment personalities, and athletes) make positive change. Since we strongly believe in the power of metaphor we would like to hear from you regarding your experience using metaphor to enhance the change process. In the past you may have used golf, sailing, or even chess to aid you in the change process. Chances are we have all had these change experiences, what are yours?

Here’s to Growth,

Tim