The 4-Step Process to Conquering Stress for the Rest of Your Life

The following excerpt is from Dr. Nadine Greiner ’s book Stress-Less Leadership . Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | IndieBound There’s no magic bullet for eliminating all stress symptoms and preventing all stress, so it’s important to keep experimenting with what works for you. Over time, you’ll find you can wave goodbye to stress. Over the years of working with leaders and companies, I’ve found that a leader’s ability to conquer stress depends on four steps. These four steps will give you a springboard for action. I call them the Four “I”s: Ignite, Initiate, Implement and Inspire. 1. Ignite It’s easy to think of stress as a natural part of life, an inevitable and uncontrollable force. But you must strive for positive change. You must be willing to be vulnerable and make a conscious effort to look deeply within and outside yourself. In your quest to become an effective leader, you should aspire to address stress at the individual and organizational level, recognizing that the former must be tackled before the latter. You must ignite your exploration of the role stress plays in your leadership life. 2. Initiate Once you’re willing to address stress, the next question is, “How do I start the effort?” Dealing with stress requires a multipronged approach. At the personal level, you must identify your internal stressors, such as pessimism or perfectionism, and your external stressors, such as disgruntled customers or insufficient resources. At the organizational level, a similar degree of awareness must exist. You can diagnose stress using assessments, surveys, interviews, and other means to truly understand the nature of the problem. To initiate a successful stress-management effort, acknowledgment is critical. Techniques such as asking yourself “What’s the worst that can happen?” can motivate you to take […]

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