The Myth of Stress

By Natasha Swerdloff

It’s as if, to some extent, we’ve accepted stress as a normal consequence of living in a modern society, and that we simply need to increase our tolerance so we can accomplish more and perform better in our work and projects. The word “resilience” has become the new “black,” and courses and lectures on the topic are selling well.

Every day, many people experience chronic stress, feeling overwhelmed, low energy, a lack of creative ideas, and a sort of “just getting through the day…” mindset on a personal level. This means that many people perform their tasks far below their potential. People who feel stressed may also have chronically elevated levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. This means their bodies are constantly in a “fight or flight” response. In other words, they are constantly on guard. 

Stress management and mental well-being have become a billion-dollar industry, but despite our good intentions to reduce stress in our workplaces and on our projects, there is a widespread misunderstanding about what actually causes stress. One has to ask: if stress management worked, why are so many people still affected by stress?

Stress has not just one, but several definitions. It is most often defined as a state of strain that depends partly on the source of the strain (which may come from the environment or from the individual themselves) and partly on the individual’s sensitivity and tendency to react.

But what if the cause of the stress lay elsewhere?

According to the Stress Association, approximately 430,000 Danes—equivalent to 10–12% of the population—experience symptoms of severe stress every day. And as many as one in four sick-leave cases in Denmark is due to stress. This amounts to 35,000 Danes on sick leave every day.

What could it mean for individuals—and also for our society—if we were to dispel the myths about what causes stress? What would that mean for well-being and job satisfaction in our projects?

My purpose in writing this article is to dispel some of the myths about what shapes our experiences of reality. In her book *Instant Motivation*, the English researcher Chantal Burns has examined the most common misconceptions people have about what causes stress. 

Let me make it clear right away that stress exists. Everyone who has experienced it themselves—or has been close to someone who has suffered from stress—knows this. The experience of stress is very real. What I’m trying to highlight here is that, until now, we have mostly overlooked and misunderstood what triggers our stress response. 

Here are the three myths about stress that I hear most often, and what research says is the real cause.

Myth 1: Life is stressful

It’s quite common to hear people say that it’s the boss, the steering committee, project participants, time constraints, or stakeholders that cause stress. Chantal Burns (author of the book *Instant Motivation*)’s research indicates that people rarely recognize how their own state of mind influences their sense of stress. The connection between how we think about a situation and our state of mind remains invisible to most people, which is why it seems as though external factors are the source of stress. But what if stress isn’t necessarily something that we modern people just have to put up with? How is it that not everyone reacts the same way to situations that others find stressful? Once we start looking for the signs, we can see that not everyone reacts the same way. This begins to point us toward the idea that the cause of stress has to do with how we interpret and think about a given situation—it’s not the situation itself that causes stress. Otherwise, everyone would react the same way to “life’s stresses,” and clearly, not everyone does.

Myth 2: Negative emotions are a sign that something is wrong

It’s quite common to believe that our emotions tell us something about our surroundings and our lives, but in reality, our emotions simply tell us something about how we’re thinking. Just as physical pain can be feedback about a problem in our body, our emotions are feedback about what we’re thinking at that moment. The experience of stress is, therefore, feedback about a way we think. It is the thought that creates a state in the body that we can call stress. When we experience stress, we typically start looking for the cause, and so we search our surroundings until we find what seems most likely to be the cause of our condition. 

Myth 3: Stress is motivating and can be healthy

When you’re doing your best work, do you feel stressed or worried? Of course, we can work even when we feel stressed, but the quality of our work—and often the time it takes us—is frequently influenced by our state of mind. Many project managers find that deadlines motivate them and that they do their best work when there’s a little pressure. Stress is never healthy, but there are healthy and optimal states we can be in that allow us to complete our projects better and faster. So there’s a difference between being under pressure and feeling stressed. The difference stems from how we interpret the situation we’re in. Both experiences are created by our thoughts, but in one situation it gives us energy, and in the other it drains us. There’s no doubt that many project managers face challenging circumstances in their projects, but it can be liberating to realize that the experience of stress isn’t created by the situation itself, but by our thoughts about the situation. If a situation could elicit the same emotions in everyone, then everyone would react the same way to every situation—and that’s far from the case.

Fortunately, a growing number of companies are beginning to understand the true source of stress and how it can be overcome surprisingly easily and quickly through an understanding of how the human mind works. Through this understanding, project managers can operate from a state of complete clarity and well-being—and when they do, every part of the organization is positively impacted. 

Tips for understanding how your mind works:

• There is nothing outside of yourself that can cause you stress. It is your thoughts that create the experience of stress within you.

• We can't perceive something as stressful unless we've first thought of it that way

• Fear and anxiety tell us something about the way we think; they tell us nothing about our lives.

• There are no such things as good or bad thoughts. They are all just thoughts, and it’s only when you take them seriously that you experience the consequences in the form of how you feel.

• Mental clarity, calmness, and energy are our natural state. The only thing preventing you from being in that state all the time is what you think!