“Good” stress
Posted by Felix Enescu on January 16th, 2007
How many times when we think about stress we think only about negative events? How many time times when we think about resistance to changes we think only about bad changes?
Wikipedia define stress as “the sum of physical and mental responses to an unacceptable disparity between real or imagined personal experience and personal expectations”.
I reminded the hard way about the stress involved in good events. I recently move to a new house. The whole week I was very stressed. In the beginning I don’t understand why: nothing bad was happening. Only the end I realize how much the stress such an event can produce.
We tend to help our people to cope with stress. We design workplaces that minimize stress. We develop change management programs for restructuring or outsourcing projects.
How about helping a coworker who just married to cope with stress? This a case of stress caused by a good event, but still a strong stress. How about helping someone to cope with stress induced by a promotion?
Usually we tend to ignore this kind of events: after all they are good events.
Try this: next time when one coworker passes a major event (especially a good one) apply all that you have learned about copping with stress and change management.
You may be amazed by the results.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:43 am
There is one change happier than the marriage that produce even more stress – this is having a baby
September 5th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I have alwsys purported that there can be negative and positive stress. Such as enjoying and thriving on a pressurised work enevironment can be somebody’s positive stress and yet for someone else it can be negative. Maybe it’s down to our perceptions of what happens around us that brings stress in a negative way or excitement as a form of positive stress.