Career Stress Management: Moving From Stress to Balance
The Stress Cycle. How do you recognize it? What does it look like?
See if this sounds familiar.
You never stop. You work hard, maybe at a job you used to enjoy, but these days you get very little enjoyment out of it. There’s never enough money, never enough time—certainly never time to stop and consider making a change. You have an uneasy feeling that something is missing, but you can’t even pause to think about what it might be, because you’re too busy rushing to the next project, the next appointment, the next meeting.
Every day, the cycle repeats, and every day, you wish for something more.
If you can relate, there’s a good chance you’re caught in the Stress Cycle.
Elements of the Stress Cycle:
- Short-term focus
- Status-driven goals
- Outer-directed priorities
- Reactive decision-making
How Do We End Up in the Stress Cycle?
No one would knowingly sign up for the Stress Cycle, and yet why is it so pervasive? Why are so many people caught up in it?
The truth is that most of us were pulled into the Stress Cycle before we even realized what was happening.
It starts with school, usually the first place where we feel a strong pull to take the next step. When we are in high school, that next step is college. When we’re in college, the next step is securing a job. So we graduate and get a job and earn as much money as possible, because success means a bigger house and more and better things. Then we keep earning more money to improve our status and secure the next promotion. Even if we don’t like our jobs—even if we hate what we do—we keep moving because we can’t stop.
But by learning to resist the pull, and stopping to recognize and use our most powerful talents, we can better manage our careers and their stressors. We can move from the Stress Cycle to the Balance Cycle.
What is the Balance Cycle?
The Balance Cycle is when you are looking ahead to the future through the positive lens of a Personal Vision. Instead of reactive, you are proactive. Instead of being upset by change, you expect and even embrace it.
Elements of the Balance Cycle:
- Long-term focus
- Meaning-driven goals
- Inner-directed priorities
- Vision-based decision making
You are more creative in the Balance Cycle, less threatened. You have a strong idea of what will lead to the greatest happiness and satisfaction in your life, and you pursue it. You are more resistant to the pulls of systems because you are empowered by internal navigation.
How do you move from the Stress Cycle to the Balance Cycle?
By creating a Personal Vision Statement with the Highlands Don’t Waste Your Talent: Your Personal Vision to Life & Career Fulfillment Coaching Program.
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