THE SCIENCE OF STRESS HANDLING STRESS
P’s” we tend to focus on after a negative event:
Personalization: thinking that the event is all
your fault.
Pervasiveness: thinking that the event is going
to ruin every aspect of your life.
Permanence: thinking that you are going to feel
like this (e.g., bad) forever.
Don’t give the P’s a chance! If you fi nd yourself
pessimistically obsessing, reframe your thoughts.
Here are some ideas:
Personalization: Instead of immediately think-
ing “I’m the reason we lost the client,” try to look at
what happened more objectively. On any project, is-
sues will come up that are beyond your control. Own
up to your mistakes, but don’t needlessly blame ev-
erything on yourself.
Pervasiveness: If you realize after a meeting that
you accidentally called a colleague by the wrong
name, try not to become consumed by anxiety. A
tiny mistake is unlikely to start a chain reaction that
ends in complete disaster.
Permanence: The words “always” and “never”
are usually indications that your self-refl ection has
turned self-destructive. Say your boss isn’t happy
with a one-pager you created. Instead of thinking
“I’ll never be a good designer,” focus on the single
event and your ability to do better next time: “This
wasn’t my best work, but I can learn more skills
and improve.”
Stressors fall into two categories: those you can
do something about (the Withins) and those out-
side your control (the Beyonds). If you’re anxious
because of Withins—unanswered emails or an im-
pending deadline—the easiest way to feel better is to
complete the thing that is stressing you out. As the
American painter and writer Walter Anderson noted,
“Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.”
How do you stop stressing about the things you
can’t control? First, you have to be diligent about
recognizing what you can’t control. If you feel re-
sponsible for the Beyonds, you’ll never be able to
confi dently say you’ve done enough and relax.
Remember that your thoughts are simply that:
thoughts. Acknowledge them, but recognize they
are not inevitable truths (even if they feel true). We
all have many voices in our heads, but we also get to
decide which ones we listen to and how we respond.
With practice, we can start to develop a mental im-
munity to stress by staying in the present and taking
care of the things within our control. □
THE MOST
STRESSFUL JOBS
BY MARISA ROFFMAN
If you think your job is stressful, try being
in the military. For the third straight year,
enlisted personnel ranks in an occupation
study as the most stressful job in America.
The study, which has been conducted by the
jobs website CareerCast.com annually since
1989, rates more than 200 occupations
based on an evaluation of 11 stress factors,
including deadlines, hazards encountered,
physical demands and level of interaction
with the public.
The rest of the top 10: fi refi ghter, airline
pilot, police offi cer, broadcaster, event
coordinator, news reporter, public-relations
executive, senior corporate executive and
taxi driver. Common threads in these careers
including being directly in harm’s way and
interacting signifi cantly with the public.“There
are thousands of people who drive taxis or
are fi refi ghters who aren’t injured, but there’s
always that possibility,” says Kyle Kensing,
CareerCast’s online content editor.
On the least-stressful side, diagnostic
medical sonographer tops a list that includes
hairstylist, university professor, jeweler and
massage therapist—most of which have high
growth outlooks. But, Kensing cautions, even
though those jobs are on the list, “nothing is
ever going to be 100% stress-free.”