AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF STRESS

About 400 million years ago (give or take 5 days) our ancestors’ veins were pumped with adrenalin and stress hormones every time a dinosaur wandered into their backyard. With these stress hormones in their veins, they were able to respond quickly and run like crazy. The fact that you are sitting there today reading this newsletter is thanks in part to those stress hormones. You owe them a debt of gratitude.

Flash forward 400 million years (give or take a 40 hour work week) and you are sitting in your office. Your boss, lovely person as he is, walks in. Those same stress hormones enter your veins. But this time you don’t run. Instead, you sit there and smile. Then when he leaves, you do what he asks. While you are doing it, you worry that you won’t get it done and that you will have to stay late. The stress hormones stay with you as long as you think these and other troubling thoughts. As you do, more stress hormones enter your veins. If you build up stress hormones for a long period of time and have no healthy way to release them, those stress hormones which are the reason you are alive today, could actually kill you.

The key is to avoid long periods of negative stress because it wreaks havoc on the immune system. In fact, we now know what we always knew: stress is linked to many diseases the way the White House is linked to the Pentagon by a red phone. Everybody stay calm, but the evidence is pretty high that if everybody doesn’t find a way to relax soon, somebody is going to get hurt. Staying well is impossible without a pulse. Being ‘up’ is easier if you are not ‘six feet under’.

This week, remind yourself to take some time out for you. Find time to exercise, even if it is not as much time as you would wish.

Text modified from a chapter I wrote for soon to be published book: Awakening the Workplace, (Experts Who Speak, April 2006.)

Have a great week!