The myth of stress

By Natasha Swerdloff

It is as if we have, to a certain extent, accepted stress as a normal consequence of living in a modern society, and that we simply need to increase our tolerance so that we can achieve more and perform better in our work and projects. The word resilience has become the new "black," and courses and lectures on the subject are selling well.

Many people experience chronic stress, overwhelm, low energy, lack of creative ideas, and a kind of "get through the day" mentality on a personal level every day. 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 that 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 million-dollar industry, but despite our good intentions to reduce stress in our workplaces and projects, there is a widespread misunderstanding about what causes stress. One must ask the question: if stress management worked, why are so many people still affected by stress?

Stress has not just one, but several definitions. Stress is most often defined as a state of strain, which depends partly on 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 stress lay elsewhere?

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

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

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

Let me start by saying that stress is real. Anyone who has experienced it themselves or been close to someone who has suffered from stress knows this. The experience of stress is very real. What I am 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 is quite common to hear things like it is the boss, the steering group, project participants, time or stakeholders that cause stress. Chantal Burns (author of the book: Instant Motivation) research points out that it is rare for people to see how their own state of mind influences their feelings 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 if external factors are the cause of stress. But what if stress is not necessarily something that we modern humans just have to put up with? How can it be that not everyone reacts in 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 leads us to believe that the cause of stress is how we interpret and think about a given situation, not the situation itself. 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 is quite common to believe that our feelings tell us something about our surroundings and our lives, but in reality, our feelings only tell us something about how we think. In the same way that pain in the body can be feedback about a problem in our body, our feelings are feedback about what we are thinking at the moment. The experience of stress is therefore feedback about the way we think. It is our thoughts that create a state in the body that we can call stress. When we experience stress, we typically start looking for the cause, and then we search our surroundings until we find what seems most likely to be the cause of our state. 

Myth 3: Stress is motivating and can be healthy

When you perform 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 the state we are in. Many project managers find that deadlines motivate them, and they perform their best work when there is a little pressure. Stress is never healthy, but there are healthy and optimal states we can be in that enable us to perform our projects better and faster. So there is a difference between being under pressure and feeling stressed. The difference comes from how we interpret the situation we are in. Both experiences are created by our thoughts, but in one situation it gives us energy, and in the other it drains us. There is no doubt that many project managers experience difficult circumstances surrounding their projects, but it can be liberating to discover that the experience of stress is not created by the situation, but by our thoughts about the situation. If a situation could create feelings in us, everyone would react the same way to all situations, and that is far from the case.

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

Tips for understanding how your mind works:

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

• We cannot experience something as stressful unless we first think it is stressful.

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

• There are good thoughts and bad thoughts. They are all just thoughts, and it is only when you take them seriously that you experience the consequences in terms 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!