Category: Applied Mindfulness

With breathtaking speed our world has been turned upside-down by the COVID-19 pandemic.  We are bombarded by an unremitting stream of bad news.  Uncertainty, fear, anxiety, sadness, and stress abound. 

But we can’t let this get the best of us because, if left unchecked, fear undergoes its own contagion, spreading faster than the virus itself.  Collective stress ramps up and awful implications follow:

• • Stress weakens our immune system.  Enough said.
  • Sustained stress can lead to compassion fatigue, just when we need to care for each other the most.  
  • Stress impairs access to the wise part of our brain, our frontal cortex.  This is the locus of our executive functioning:  emotional control, impulse control, and creativity.  To think clearly, and to be at our best, we need to remain calm.

Mindfulness Toolkit for Calm

Here’s how we’re going to get through this together:  each of us is going to take personal responsibility for our own psychological health.  Our combined calming presence will in turn have a calming effect on those around us.  Together, we can initiate a ripple of calm throughout society.

“I like to use the example of a small boat crossing the Gulf of Siam. In Vietnam there are many people, called boat people, who leave the country in small boats. Often the boats are caught in rough seas or storms, the people may panic, and boats may sink.

But if even one person aboard can remain calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat survive. His or her expression – face, voice – communicates clarity and calmness, and people have trust in that person. They will listen to what he or she says.

One such person can save the lives of many.  You are that person.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk

The practice of mindfulness is more than up to this challenge.  Numerous studies attest to its efficacy to reduce stress and anxiety (as well as providing numerous other health benefits).

Below I provide a compendium of pertinent mindfulness practices and miscellaneous insights designed to help nurture sound mental health.  My guidance is to make use of these whenever you feel yourself becoming anxious or stressed:

Deep Breathing

Slow, conscious, deep breathing activates our calming parasympathetic nervous system, thus helping to shut down our stress reaction.

• • Sit comfortably, gently close your eyes, breathe in slowly to the count of four, hold for seven, breathe out to the count of eight.  Repeat at least three times.  You may also wish to silently repeat the words “calm” on the in-breath and “peace” on the out-breath.

Smile

Smiling, even if forced, has a calming effect and helps to counter the over-seriousness we feel when stressed.  It is known to promote the release of such helpful hormones as serotonin (calming), dopamine (positive feelings), and endorphins (natural pain killers). 

• • In my practice I sit comfortably, close my eyes, relax my body, and then bring to mind the semi-historic Chinese monk, Budai, colloquially known as the “laughing buddha”.  He never fails to bring a smile to my face.  You can, of course, use your own cue for smiling, like a dear friend or a family pet.

Body Softening Scan

Because mind and body are interconnected, consciously relaxing your muscles automatically relaxes your mind, choking off the stress response.

• • Sit comfortably, close your eyes, breathe naturally, and begin to turn your focus of attention to each part of your body in turn.  I usually start from the toes of my right foot moving on to my sole, upper foot, ankle, etc., over to the toes of my other foot and on upward to the top of my head. 
  • As you focus on each body part in turn, consciously soften the muscles there, perhaps bringing the image of melting wax to mind.
  • As a tool to aid focus, try imagining that you are physically breathing into and out of each body part that you bring into focus.

Nature Walk

If physically able, take a slow-paced stroll through a forest or other natural area and really pay attention to the sights, sounds, scents, and feel.

• • Focusing intently on our senses brings us into the present moment.  Doing so has been found to make us feel happier and more at peace.  Confining our attention to the present moment calms an otherwise anxious mind that is all too often fretting over an unchangeable past or fearing an unknowable future.

Gratitude

For evolutionary reasons designed to keep us alert to potential danger, it is built into us to focus more on the few bad things in our life rather than the many-times-more-abundant good things.  Needless to say, such an orientation drags us down and amplifies our stress.

• • Take a moment to bring to mind all the many things for which you are grateful, that bring you joy, and for which you are deeply appreciative.  These can be as simple as the sound of birds outside your kitchen window or as profoundly comforting as a deeply-rewarding friendship. 

Miscellaneous Mindful Moments

Make a point of inserting some of the practices outlined below into your daily routine or whenever you feel stress and anxiety coming on.  They help activate your calming system, shut down your stress reaction, and bring you into the present moment, thus eliminating thoughts of the past and future that tend to create mental upset.

If you wish to regiment these throughout your day, consider downloading a timing app such as the one I use, “Mindful Me”, that provides regular reminders to take a mental break: 

1. Pause, Breathe, Smile (PBS) – stop what you’re doing, close your eyes if feasible, take a few deep conscious breaths, and smile.  As with deep breathing mentioned above, you may wish to mentally repeat the words “calm” on the in-breath and “peace” on the out-breath. 
2. Seeing Red – for a set period of time, say the next hour, make a point of spotting things around you that are red (or any colour of choice).  Doing so forces you into the present moment.
3. 5-senses break – stop what you’re doing and tune into your five senses in sequence, noting each with heightened curiosity.  Doing so creates presence.
4. Practice S.T.O.P. – 1) Stop whatever you’re doing.  2) Take a few slow, deep breaths.  3) Observe your thoughts, feelings, and emotions but without identifying with them.  Simply observe them in the same manner you observe inputs from your other senses.   4) Proceed with a kindness to yourself – a gentle stroll, healthy snack, or casual conversation with a friend.
5. Find your feet – stop what you’re doing and focus full attention on the sensations in your feet.  This practice shuts down anxious thinking and brings you back into the present moment.  Why the feet?  Because stress makes itself felt in places like our belly, chest, shoulders, and face but not our feet, so focusing there moves us away from stress.
6. What will my next thought be? – this practice is from spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle.  Close your eyes and focus intently on what your next thought will be.  Be like a cat crouched and alert just outside a mouse hole.  If my experience is any guide, you may  have to wait a while!
7. Random noticing – close your eyes, turn your head in a random direction, re-open your eyes, and then intensely study whatever comes into view.  Be like a scientist encountering a strange new phenomenon.  Note absolutely everything about the scene engaging all your senses to take in colours, textures, feel, scents, sounds, shapes, light, dark, shadows ….
8. Mindful accessory – wear a colourful band on your finger or wrist and each time you notice it, practice PBS – pause, breathe, and smile!
9. Recovery Period – after finishing a task, don’t immediately plunge into the next.  Instead, take a mini break and do something kind for yourself.
10. Task focus – whatever you’re doing, just focus intently on the process of doing it, not on the end result.  Doing so keeps you in the present moment.

Limit News Intake

Like the guidance I used to provide my clients urging them not to pay attention to the stock market, it is equally prudent to limit your intake of COVID-19 news. 

Immersing yourself unduly in the tragedy serves only to make the challenge of stress management all the more difficult – akin to purposely exposing yourself to a virus over and over and over again.

Managing Troubling Thoughts

Anxious thoughts often get stuck in our minds, lowering our mood and triggering our stress response.  Here are a couple ideas that may help:

1. 1. In your mind’s eye, picture your thoughts inside a soap bubble that is floating in the air around eye level.  Watch it rise slowly upward and upward and then ‘pop’ – gone.  Then turn your mind and focus on to something else.
   2. In your mind, speak directly to your thought – “Hello fear, hello anxiety – I see you“.   Bringing troubling thoughts into conscious awareness often has the effect of diminishing their stress-inducing impact.

Meditations on Compassion

When we’re troubled it often helps to reverse roles.  Rather than be the sufferer, you turn yourself into the healer, extending good wishes out to all those suffering, just like you.

1. Tonglen meditation – On each in-breath, imagine you are breathing in the pain of others – all of it.  On the out-breath, imagine you are sending them (and yourself) ease of being and relief from suffering.  Imagine a feeling of lightness, brightness, and cool accompanying each out-breath.  Breathe in suffering, breathe out relief and good wishes.
2. Loving-Kindness meditation – in a variation on this type of meditation we voice the following phrases in our mind several times, sending out good wishes to all those who may be suffering:

• • • May all be happy and content
    • May all be healthy in mind, body, and spirit
    • May all be safe from mental and physical harm
    • May all have ease of being

Selected Teachings of the Buddha

The Buddha taught his followers to face reality head-on and not to look away in fear.  He also encouraged them to confirm the truth of his teachings for themselves and not to take his or any one else’s word for it.  Some 2600 years later, his guidance remains pertinent, especially in these difficult times: 

• • Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.  We experience suffering when we make a fuss over life’s inevitable troubles.  Resistance is futile in the face of something that already is.  The alternative?  Calm acceptance: whatever troubles come your way, just see them as part of life and deal with them matter-of-factly.
  • Impermanence – everything in the entire universe is in constant flux, nothing is unchanging.  Good times come to an end, but so do bad times.
  • Realistic Options – when faced with troubles we have three sane options:  1) Change the situation if possible.   2) Remove ourselves from the situation if possible.   3) If neither change nor removal is possible, the only sane response remaining is acceptance – to face reality with equanimity and deal with it with wisdom rather than unintelligent and futile resistance.
  • Our thoughts make our world –  “We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts we make the world.” – Buddha.  In other words, change the channel on your thoughts if you wish to change the program from tragedy to comedy – it’s always your choice.

Maintaining Perspective

In the midst of a crisis it is all too easy to lose perspective and become overwhelmed by the unremitting bad news.  Seeking out alternative story lines can help balance the scale, raise your mood, and give cause for hope. 

In this regard, here are some positive thoughts to ponder related to COVID-19:

• • A recent article in the Economist magazine reports that there are seven existing drugs thought to hold promise in treating the symptoms of COVID-19.  One, Actemra, is already being put to use in China.
  • Clinical trials on potential COVID-19 vaccines are reported to already be underway in China and the United States.
  • The world’s best and brightest are toiling away 24/7 to bring this virus under control.
  • The virus cannot survive simple soap and water, giving us all some degree of control over infection through rigorous personal hygiene.
  • Ultimately, if despite social distancing, not touching your face, and frequent hand washing you are still unlucky enough to contract the virus, then you can take a measure of solace from the fact that, according to the World Health Organization, roughly 8 out of 10 people will experience only mild symptoms.  Of course, the elderly and those with certain existing health conditions need to take extra precautions, but for the majority of people this virus does not pose an existential health threat.
  • On the economic front, governments around the world are turning on the money taps and implementing corporate and personal financial support programs to soften the blow to the global economy.
  • On the human front, heartwarming stories of compassion are increasingly on display.  People are reaching out to their elderly neighbors with offers to buy essentials for them.  Those in self-imposed quarantine are being tended to by friends and family.  Stay-at-home moms and dads are helping their working neighbors with offers of free childcare.  We are pulling together to get through this.
  • I firmly believe there will be a silver lining to this tragedy and can envision the following:
    • Pandemic preparedness and global cooperation will be better going forward.
    • Commercial supply chains will be designed with greater flexibility and resilience in mind.
    • World leaders who manage this crisis poorly will be turfed in favor of more competent individuals.
    • Stronger social programs will be put in place (such as paid sick leave and universal health care in the United States).
    • This crisis will bring people together and help them appreciate our shared destiny, interdependence, and interconnection.

Tend to Your Well Being

As U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said in his stirring inaugural address delivered at the peak of the Great Depression in 1933, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself“.  I agree with him wholeheartedly.

But to be of help to others during these difficult times we first need to look after ourselves, mentally and physically.  I hope this guide goes some way to providing you with the tools for tending to your own mental well-being.

Keep safe everyone, look after yourselves, and spread your calm presence widely.

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life 

“Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time.”
Juliet Schor, author of “The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure”

I consider myself very fortunate to have been in the employ of a very caring company for the final 22 years of my career as a personal financial advisor.  I felt listened to, supported, respected, and appreciated.

None of this, however, left me immune to the challenges of work-life balance.  Despite already being a seasoned advisor at the time I joined the company in 1997, I struggled to keep up with the heavy workload. 

As a result I found myself staying later than desired most weeknights and going back into the office on many a weekend.

After enduring a year of this with no end in sight, I realized that something had to change, because:

1. I was begrudging the extra time spent at the office.  Time I would have preferred to have spent with my spouse or engaged in my favorite leisure activities was being curtailed to fit in more time at work. 
2. My job satisfaction was waning, and this despite truly loving my advisory role.
3. Despite being a generally happy, easy-going individual,  I found myself feeling bitter and humorless. 

Of course, my story is hardly unique.  Indeed, for most Canadians and much of the rest of the world, this has become the norm.

For example, in a comprehensive 2012 study of 25,000 working Canadians it was found that:

• the typical employee works more than 50 hours per week, this representing an extra full day of work each week.
• 54% took work home with them to do in the evening and/or on weekends.
• the typical employee spends an hour each non-work day checking work-related email.

And this pace is leisurely compared to work-life balance in the Chinese tech industry where ‘996’ work regimes are currently the norm, this being a start time of 9am, a finish time of 9pm, and six days a week spent at the office.  

Of course, all of this extra time working comes with serious consequences.

The Hazards of Working Too Many Hours

Beyond job dissatisfaction and less time to devote to life’s many joys and passions, chronic overtime can have very serious physical and mental health implications:

• Mental burnout.
• Significantly-increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
• Working long days leaves less time for sleep and can also impair sleep quality.  Lack of sleep can result in reduced productivity, impaired judgment, increased irritability, increased risk of high blood pressure and other chronic diseases such as diabetes, a compromised immune system, increased risk of fatigue-induced accidents, increased risk of anxiety and depression, and weight gain. 
• Increased stress (with all of the hazards this entails).
• Vision problems (typically from staring at a computer screen for too long).
• Impaired cognitive performance.
• Too much sitting at a desk increases the risk of back problems, cancer, heart disease (irrespective of maintaining an exercise regimen), chronic illnesses like high blood pressure and diabetes, dementia in later life, and varicose veins.

When Long Hours Don’t Impact Work-Life Balance

A distinction needs to be made between two categories of overtime:

1. The extra work we do because we want to.
2. The extra work we do because we feel we have to.

I personally toiled thousands of extra hours over my career delving into investment journals and creating my own financial planning tools, not because it was expected or because I felt obligated to do it or because it increased my income – I just found it fascinating and professionally rewarding.  As a result, it wasn’t a burden to me and so not a work-life balance issue. 

Of course, many willingly toil well beyond a 40-hour week for other reasons, such as:

• They truly love what they do.  Work is more akin to play than to work.
• Their income is directly linked to hours worked and the extra money means more to them than extra leisure.
• They have performance targets and believe that long hours will help them reach those targets and so enhance their annual bonus, again the extra money meaning more to them than extra leisure.
• They believe that being seen working long hours enhances their status within the company – a ‘team player’ – perhaps leading to future promotions.
• It’s an expected part of the job at their firm and they accepted this fact going in.
• They have few outside interests so work is pretty much it for them.
• Their family life is a disaster so it’s better being at work.

Therefore, willingly working long hours is not the problem, it’s the work we grudgingly feel we have to do that upsets the apple cart of work-life balance.

Why is There Always More Work to Do Than Time to Do It?

Before we get to this question, let me make it clear that this post assumes employee and managerial competency:

• Well-trained, motivated staff who know how to do their jobs efficiently and have been provided the necessary tools to do it.
• Competent managers who limit their roles primarily to providing clear guidance on expected results, removing any pointless roadblocks that impede achievement of those results, and then getting out of the way to let their people get on with it.

So, with these points taken as a given, what are some of the key reasons we never have enough time to complete all our assigned tasks?

Two are often cited:  1) Office productivity killers.  2) Unrealistic workloads. 

Productivity Killers  

Certainly the impairment of productivity is an important and widespread issue.  Tragically, this often involves self-inflicted wounds that cumulatively conspire to decimate workplace productivity, such as:

• Open-concept office noise and distractions.
• Interruptions by colleagues.
• Email diarrhea.
• Meetings, meetings, meetings, …

Without doubt these do impede getting one’s actual work done in the time allotted, but are not responsible for poor work-life balance.

Unrealistic Workloads

In short, unrealistic workloads are inevitable.

Why so?  Because organizations need to keep costs under control to ensure their survival.  No company wants excess staff on its payroll, so efficiency dictates that head count always be kept just below what is actually required.

Simply put, if your competition can make the same product as you do at a lower cost by being more productive – doing more with less – then they could end up putting you out of business.

CEOs spend much of their time worrying about this very issue – how to marshal resources in the most efficient way to seize opportunities and maximize profit.

But it’s not just publicly-listed and other for-profit companies that are impacted. Even not-for-profit organizations face pressure to deliver value-for-money to clients, funding bodies, and donors.

In other words, where competition exists, survival of the fittest applies pressure on firms to do more with less. 

On the other hand, in the absence of competition (e.g. unionized public sector positions) there is some evidence that employees tend to have better work-life balance, generally working to  fixed schedules (and quitting times) and putting in less overtime than private sector employees.  Anecdotal evidence, in the form of personal friends working in the Canadian public sector, supports this finding.

So, neither workload nor productivity impediments are to blame

What this means is that, where competition exists, even if we all suddenly became that much more productive, either head count would shrink or work demands would expand to fill the time saved – the problem of work-life balance would remain firmly intact.  

My own experience corroborates this. I got my first full-time job back in 1980, a time when neither desk-top computers nor email yet existed, both unquestionably boons to productivity.

However, their widespread adoption (computers in the mid-80s and email in the early 90s) failed to banish work-life balance issues.  Indeed, the term ‘work-life balance’ really didn’t make into the lexicon until the late 80s, making this a clear case of productivity-enhancers rendering the workplace more onerous, not less.

Smart phones are another case in point.  Wonderful tools for productive communication and information access but with the insidious downside of being able to remain work-connected 24/7 and the implicit expectation that comes with this.  Is it any surprise that, in its day, the once-popular Blackberry was only half-jokingly known as the “Crackberry” for its addictive powers.

And as for staff numbers adjusting to economic reality, I was a mining engineer at the time of the 1981 recession and a financial advisor at the time of the 2008 financial crisis.  In both instances, as profit declined, staff were fired to bring costs back in line with revenues – but the workload didn’t decrease. 

So, no, productivity issues are not at the root of the work-life balance issue and corporate survival ensures that workload will always exceed staff capacity to complete all of it.

Why Do We Grudgingly Work So Much?

So, faced with more work than can realistically be done in a normal work day, why do we feel compelled to try to get all our work done knowing it’s an impossible goal? 

I believe there is only one reason – fear – both corporate and personal:  corporations fear being competed out of business and individuals fear  being competed out of a job.

The Work-Life Dilemma

Because of these fears, resolving the work-life balance issue is akin to resolving the nuclear arms issue – no company and no employee wants to be the first to cut back hours because they believe they will be put at a disadvantage.

It is for this reason that employers are conflicted when it comes to this issue: having their staff put in extra hours for no extra pay helps them do more for no extra cost, but not taking work-life balance seriously can make it hard to attract and retain quality employees.

Little surprise then that employers tend to send mixed messages, espousing work-life balance on one hand while generally turning a blind eye to its absence in practice.

But employees also feel conflicted, desperately wanting work-life balance but fearing they’ll be sacked if they try to make it happen.

Indeed, I witnessed this type of fear first-hand during the closing years of my career. Some of my colleagues, though putting in significant overtime, chose not to submit requests for validly-earned overtime pay for fear of being seen as the only one unable to keep up with the workload – no one wanted to be the first-mover. 

So, What’s the Solution?

What, then, will it take to eliminate this scourge on working life? 

Because of it’s near-global presence, it is clear that work-life balance is a societal issue, and such issues typically only get resolved if enough brave individuals begin to stand up for themselves and demand change. 

Their example can quickly unleash a tidal wave of support when the issue they agitate against touches so many lives, as work-life balance does. 

This is how brutal autocrats worldwide are toppled and decency brought back into blighted societies. And it is how common-place work-life balance will eventually be achieved: through individual effort snowballing into widespread cultural change. 

And It’s Already Happening!

The good news is that some enlightened societies, like the European Union and the Scandinavian countries, have already decided that enough’s enough and so have imposed legislation to soften the impact of capitalism.

This is reflected in the list below that shows the average number of hours worked per year in 2021 by full-time employees in various countries: 

• 2300      China
• 1970      South Korea
• 1790      U.S.A.
• 1690      Canada
• 1610       Japan
• 1520      Finland
• 1490      France
• 1440      Sweden
• 1360      Denmark
• 1350      Germany

Remarkably, as outlined in this article, despite already posting the lowest annual working hours among OECD countries, German companies are having to become even more beneficent toward their employees as cultural and demographic changes (i.e. a declining number of working-age people – a near-worldwide occurrence) increasingly shift bargaining power to employees and so push work-life balance high up the agenda of job-seekers. 

Even China’s downtrodden tech workers are speaking up against their punishingly-long hours. 

So, change can happen, but until then, it’s up to you to speak up for yourself.

It’s up to You, and You, and You, ….   

Mr. Kai-Fu Lee (one of China’s best-known entrepreneurs and former President of Google China) recently revealed his lymphoma diagnosis in a message to his 50 million followers on Sina Weibo. But what has resonated far wider is his repudiation of the work-comes-first mentality that drives so many Chinese business people.

“It’s only now, when I’m suddenly faced with possibly losing 30 years of life, that I’ve been able to calm down and reconsider,” wrote the 52-year-old founder and CEO.

Excerpted from Todayonline magazine, 15 Sept 2013

Sadly, it often takes just such a tragic circumstance to get us to re-evaluate what’s truly important in our lives, wake up to the self-inflicted insanity we have brought upon ourselves, and regain balance. 

But here’s the rub – we don’t need an excuse.  If we can do it under tragic circumstances like this, we can do it any time we choose.

And therein lies the solution: 

Work-life balance is a choice – our choice, our collective choice – but it all starts with You.    

Thoughts on Achieving Work-Life Balance 

Choosing to say ‘no’ to a chronic work-life imbalance, to actually get up the gumption to advise your employer that you’re no longer going to work the hours you have been, may sound scary.

But it shouldn’t be if dealt with mindfully, openly, honestly, realistically, and in the spirit of goodwill that usually exists between employee and employer (and if it doesn’t, you’re working for the wrong company).

So, if you’re ready to take concrete steps to regain work-life balance – and do your part to drive societal change – here are some things to consider:

Take charge

Only you know what work-life balance means to you and only you can make it happen.  No one is going to come up to you and say, “Here, let me help you achieve work-life balance.”

Keep the End-Goal in Sight  

As you negotiate your way toward work-life balance, always keep in mind what’s at stake – all the life-enhancing moments that collectively contribute to helping make your life great – all the things you will regret not having devoted more time to at life’s end.  After all, what’s life all about?  Work?  Partly, of course, but there’s way more to life than work.

You’re likely worth way more to your employer than you think you are.  

Assuming you’re a capable, self-starting, congenial, positive individual, replacing you comes with significant costs:

1. The cost of hiring your replacement.
2. The cost of bringing that person up to your level of knowledge and experience.
3. The cost in lost productivity and increased errors in the meantime.
4. The negative impact your termination has on morale and, hence, other potential departures.
5. The cost associated with the loss of your future higher productivity that would have resulted had you been retained, but this starting from your already high skill level that may be many years ahead of your replacement.
6. The financial cost of compensating you for termination.
7. The potential cost of making a hiring mistake and having to go back through the entire hiring process again, with yet more cost.

Your employer is espousing work-life balance.  You’re simply following through on it. 

Being a professional entails having open, honest conversations with your employer about what work-life balance means to you – what your boundaries are and what your commitments are. 

This obviously is a very individual issue – your definition of work-life balance may be quite different from that of your colleagues, and that’s to be expected. 

In the end it all comes down to give and take between you and your employer.  They justifiably expect results and you justifiably expect a life beyond work.  Almost assuredly there is common ground between you and your employer.  And if there isn’t, then you still have a choice – find a better employer.

Happy employees are more productive employees

Your value to your employer increases if you’re happy at work because it’s been shown to enhance productivity.  Accommodating work-life balance is a powerful means to impact employee happiness.

Of course, we’ve already covered the negative mental and physical harms of over-work, all of which impede productivity, so avoiding over-work benefits both staff and the company. 

Companies with work-life balance can attract and retain better staff

Imagine you’re looking for a job and have narrowed your choice down to two otherwise identical employers. Without question, you are going to choose the one that has a reputation for treating its employees better – the one that actually cares about its people’s work-life balance.  

Such a company has the luxury of being picky about who it hires and so can preferentially select superior workers who are more creative and productive.

Being more productive, the company need not compete head-to-head on compensation to remain competitive.  It’s the uncaring company with the less productive staff that needs to offer more pay in order to try to compensate for the longer hours that would be needed to compete with the more productive company.

And if the caring company does match compensation (which it could given its higher productivity)?  It’s easy enough to see how the uncaring company could enter a death spiral, unable to compete on productivity, working conditions, or compensation sufficiently high to offset those awful working conditions.

The good news on this front is that this is already starting to happen. Unlike us old Baby-Boomers, today’s younger workers are increasingly asking prospective employers about work-life balance, and opting for those companies that actually take it seriously. 

Life is precious, short, and could end much sooner than anticipated.  Do you really want to fritter away a big chunk of it toiling in misery?

We tend to live life as if we’re immortal, our eventual death an event that’s going to occur in some far-distant future.  But we all know this isn’t reality.  Even in my limited social sphere I can think of dozens of friends, relatives, former classmates, and former colleagues who died young. 

I myself could have died on 24 March 2017 when I was involved in a serious head-on car accident.  Had I been hit by a larger vehicle that day I seriously doubt I would be around to write these words.

It shouldn’t take a life-altering health scare or other tragedy to wake us up to the preciousness of life.  Yes, work is a fulfilling and necessary part of our lives, but its importance truly needs to be kept in perspective.  And only we can make the choice to ensure that it plays its fair role, but no extra.  It’s all a matter of taking responsibility for our own lives.  

Flexible work arrangements may make work more pleasant, but do not directly address the problem of grudgingly-worked long hours.

Take the increasingly popular flex-hours idea – giving staff the ability to come and go as they choose to better accommodate their lifestyle, provided they still put in at least the contracted amount of time. 

This obviously is of no help resolving work-life balance if you’re still begrudging the number of hours you have to toil, even if they are put in flexibly.

Work-from-home is another trend gaining acceptance by employers (and materially boosted by the Covid-19 pandemic).  But once again, if you simply replace long hours at the office with long hours at home, nothing has been accomplished (indeed, there is evidence that those opting to work from home actually put in even more hours than those working from the office).

What about equal time off in lieu of those grudgingly-worked extra hours?  On the face of it, this sounds a fair trade because your total hours worked now mathematically fits your concept of work-life balance.

But there are two problems with this arrangement.  First, it is almost never the case that the extra time off comes anywhere close to the extra time worked.

Second, even if it is a one-for-one swap, all those extra hours spent at the office mess up your life over an extended period of time whereas the extra time off is concentrated into a day or two. 

For example, let’s say that work-life balance to you means going home at 5pm each night but the workload is such that you feel compelled to work to 6pm most days.  So, over a two-week span let’s say you accumulate eight hours of grudging overtime.  Then, in lieu of this, you get an extra day off.  

Would this feel like a fair trade-off?  Two weeks of misery, followed by an extra day off, followed by another two weeks of misery, reprieved by another extra day off?  I don’t believe so.

On the day you retire, no one is going to remember or care about all those extra hours you grudgingly put in over the years. 

All those years spent putting in extra time at work, depriving yourself of other pleasures, and what do you get?  If you’re lucky, a party, a card, a gift or two, a smattering of applause, and then you’re gone; replaced and quickly forgotten.  Does this sound like a trade-off you really want to make? 

Setting clear boundaries and then sticking to them is essential

Work-life balance is not a one-size-fits-all concept.  Just because your colleague Johnny (or, even worse, your boss) is willing to work crazy hours doesn’t mean it should suit everyone else, because we’re each different.

As a result, only you know your work-life boundaries.  It is essential that you know these boundaries, be able to verbalize them to your employer, and then stick to them, because in their absence you will end up saying ‘yes’ to requests to which you should have said ‘no’. 

And if a request isn’t actually a request but an order?  Then you owe it to yourself – for the sake of truth, honesty, and reality – to advise your employer that taking on that new task necessarily means that others on your to-do list will either be delayed or, indeed, dropped entirely. 

Achieving work-life balance requires realism.  If your employer doesn’t wish to face up to reality, then it may be time to find another employer.

We already have boundaries – we just need to choose better ones

All of us eventually choose to stop working at some point each day, meaning we all have chosen boundaries; we’ve just settled on ones that don’t provide us with work-life balance.

So, bearing this in mind, choose a better boundary that does.  You still won’t get all your work done regardless, but you’ll be a happier, healthier, more productive employee as a result. 

And, as mentioned above, in the end, no one’s going to remember or care  how much time you put in or how many widgets of production you contributed toward the welfare of humankind during your time on this earth.  You’re way more important to you than to the collective – so keep this firmly in mind.

Setting work-life boundaries shows you to be a thoughtful professional 

Were I a manager, I personally would be impressed by someone who had taken the time to be able to clearly verbalize the following:

1. Based on my strengths, here is how I see myself contributing to the betterment of this company.
2. Here is my plan to achieve the performance targets I’ve been assigned.
3. Here are the boundaries within which I plan to work in order to achieve work-life balance.

As a manager, I know I would appreciate having clearly-defined work parameters from each member of the team rather than possessing only a vague sense of each one’s expectations and plans. 

If no one can keep up with the work, it’s not you, it’s the job 

When we’re always behind at work we start to question our competency and have a tendency to feel that we’re the only one who can’t cut the mustard.  But here’s the thing – if all those around you doing the same role are also struggling, then it’s not you, it’s the job. 

You must be prepared to quit if work-life balance is unattainable

In the end, if you are unable to negotiate a suitable work-life balance with your employer, then you must either be prepared to quit and find another employer that is more accommodating or accept that your life is going to be less than you had hoped it would be – your choice.

Final Word

Living a mindful life is all about making wise choices.  And making such choices necessitates facing up to reality – head on – and not shying away from situations we fear.

Given its prevalence, achieving work-life balance is clearly a fearful situation for just about everyone.

However, if dealt with openly, honestly, realistically, and with goodwill and calm confidence, I believe it to be within everyone’s reach. 

So, time to do your part for this obviously much-needed societal change!

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life

Choosing Work-Life Balance:  My Own Story

At the outset of this post I referenced my own lack of work-life balance. Here is what I did to bring sanity back to my own job as a personal financial advisor:   

• I found that my days were scattered, doing whatever happened to hit my desk at any given moment; quickly responding to email, always answering the phone whenever it rang …….   In short, I was reacting to the job rather than being proactive.  Of course, working in this manner is stressful because you feel like you’ve got no control – you’re always at the mercy of external events.  So, to regain control, I made a list of my duties, prioritized them, estimated how much time each would require, and then built a fixed weekly schedule that blocked off specific times each day of the week to deal with my most important tasks.

• In doing so I acknowledged and accepted that the less-important tasks may never get done – how could they if I could barely keep up with the highest-priority items? Achieving work-life balance means facing up to reality, and reality is that there’s always more work to do than time available, so if I was going to get home at a reasonable hour, something had to give.

• I ran my plan by a senior executive to gain their approval, which was granted.

• I stuck to the plan vociferously and faced whatever consequences arose, which proved to be near nil. Yes, my assistant initially had difficulty saying ‘no’ to clients who wanted to see me right away. However, she soon discovered that clients were more accommodating than she had imagined – after all, they too were busy professionals who understood the need to take control one’s schedule.

• I began making more realistic promises to clients, pushing off fulfillment sufficiently far into the future to ensure I could get it done without having to put in overtime.

• And, most importantly, at the end of a normal work day, I went home. Was all my work done? Of course not!  But then, it never would be regardless of how late I stayed.

And the outcome? I was proud of the service I provided my clients and, with the exception of one target, all of my results proved excellent – client satisfaction, client retention, new-client acquisition, new investment deposits, new insurance policies issued, financial planning value delivered, etc.

And the one target I consistently failed at?  Well, that was the one dictating how many clients I was expected to meet with each year; I met with far fewer than my employer wanted.

However, that particular target was incompatible with my new way of working and my goal of maintaining work-life balance.

Nonetheless, given my success on the many measures that actually contributed to the profitability of the company (which hitting a meetings-per-week target doesn’t), this proved more than a reasonable trade-off, for me and the company.

What my experience illustrates is that there’s almost always more than one way to achieve success. After all, we each have unique skills and experience, so a one-size-fits-all approach to most jobs rarely makes sense.

In the end, I was able to be successful, achieve work-life balance, regain job satisfaction, and maintain a level of professionalism that I was proud of.

Now, I include my story not because I believe it can be blindly applied to every job out there, because it clearly can’t. However, my point is that you almost assuredly have more control over your situation than you believe, so I truly hope you take whatever steps are necessary to achieve your own work-life balance.

Best wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life 

 

“Research has linked even moderate levels of stress to lower life expectancy“

Economist magazine, 25 April 2015

Stress: What it’s good for

The human body is beautifully adapted to dealing with acute stress – getting blood, nutrients and energy to those muscles most needed to get us out of imminent danger – quickly!

Picture yourself at a beautiful Polynesian resort lolling about on a surfboard a couple hundred feet offshore – the sun is shining brightly, your family is frolicking happily on the beach, you’ve not a care in the world – life couldn’t be better.

And then, without warning, a siren blares out, shocking you out of your peaceful bliss – there’s a SHARK in the water!!!!

In a split second your body kicks into action:

• Your sympathetic nervous system, the one responsible for quickly mobilizing the body, kicks into action. At the same time, your parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for calming the body, shuts down.
• Epinephrine (aka adrenaline) is pumped into your blood stream, triggering a rapid cascade of escape-assisting activity. It’s quick release gives you that “kicked-in-the-stomach” feeling.
• Your heart starts racing, pushing more blood and nutrients to your shoulder, arm, and leg muscles so that you can start motoring like a paddlewheel on a Mississippi steam boat.
• Your blood pressure rises as a result of your pounding heart.
• Under the influence of the extra epinephrine, your platelets (blood cells that promote clotting) start clumping together more readily, thus thickening your blood, helpful should you suffer bodily injury.
• Your breathing quickens to suck in more oxygen for those hard-working muscles.
• Insulin secretion is suppressed and fat cells’ sensitivity to insulin is reduced – no point removing glucose from the blood when it’s urgently needed.
• Glucose, proteins, fats, and “bad” cholesterol are sucked out of your fat cells, liver, and non-essential muscles and dumped into your blood stream to provide your shoulder, arm, and leg muscles with immediate fuel – no time to wait for that bacon-and-egg breakfast to digest! In fact, digestion comes to a halt to re-direct energy to where it’s needed right now.
• Your colon contracts making you involuntarily soil your bathing suit – and it’s the runny diarrhea kind. No point wasting energy removing water from faeces or carrying around excess weight.
• To conserve energy, non-essential activities like appetite, digestion, bone growth, pain sensation, and sex drive are all suppressed.
• With digestion and stomach acid levels temporarily decreased, renewal of the stomach’s acid-resistant protective lining is minimized .
• The immune system is temporarily boosted in readiness for a short-term danger.
• Your senses become more acute.
• More blood and nutrients are directed to your brain, enhancing your ability to remember facts (such as how to escape from a shark)!

And then, after you make it to shore safely, the whole process reverses: the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in to calm you down, your heart rate and breathing slow, your blood pressure drops, nutrients begin to be re-deposited to your fat cells, epinephrine levels go back to normal, and routine bodily activities like digestion and cell growth re-start; beautiful!

Stress: What it’s bad for

Unfortunately, this wondrous system for keeping us safe in the face of imminent, life-threatening danger cannot distinguish between real danger and things that are merely upsetting.

It also kicks in over situations like discovering a big scratch on your car door, or being overwhelmed at work, or having to rush home to feed your daughter and then get her to her 6pm soccer practice on time – across town and through rush-hour traffic.

When chronically triggered over life’s little stuff, our stress reaction turns from saviour to annihilator, leading to:  

• A five-fold increase in the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
• A suppressed immune system.
• Increased risk of anxiety disorders and depression in later life among children born to chronically-stressed mothers.
• Increased risk of diabetes and greater difficulty keeping it under control.
• Increased junk food craving and fat storage.
• Increased sensitivity to stressors and an impaired calming system.
• Increased risk of gastrointestinal disease such as an ulcer.
• Increased risk of osteoporosis.
• Increased risk of reproductive problems.
• Increased risk of memory impairment.
• Increased impulsivity and emotional swings coupled with impaired decision-making ability.
• Sleep impairment (and the many harms this brings on).
• Increased risk of depression and of anxiety disorders.
• Among the elderly, an increased risk of memory impairment and compromised ability to generate new neurons.
• More easily fatigued.
• Greater risk of substance abuse.

Our Ugly Side

Aside from the physical and mental damage caused by chronic stress, it also turns us into the person no one wants to be around.  When stressed, we tend to exhibit the following traits:

• We feel there is an urgent need to fix whatever appears to be the problem, but this at precisely the moment stress has taken our wisdom “off-line” (this by compromising our ability to access our prefrontal cortex, the locus of our executive functioning).
• We raise our voice.
• We lose our sense of humor.
• We act in an abrasive manner and lose our kindness and compassion for others.
• We lose the ability to concentrate.  We are quick to judgment and blame.
• We say and do things that damage relationships. 
• We are unpleasant to be around which further strains our relationships.

As covered at the outset, our stress system evolved to protect us from acute, short-term, imminent danger and it still serves this purpose – put your hand on a hot stove and you will automatically react, no need to consciously think about what to do.

However, our stress system has yet to evolve to the point where it is able to discern the difference between true danger (which is rare and short-lived) and those things we merely find upsetting (which are numerous, frequent, and often drawn out).

This latter type of stress is referred to as “psychological stress”, the kind we totally make up in our heads.

So, subject the stress system to numerous, frequent, drawn-out, troubling thoughts and we put ourselves at risk for all of the ills outined above.

In short, being chronically stressed is awful for us – physically, mentally, and socially – with implications that have the potential to extend into the future, affecting our children and grandchildren.

The Future Nature of Stress

By its very nature, psychological stress is rarely about things that have already happened (unless what happened in the past has potential future consequences, in which case, stress and anxiety are still about the future).

So, when our body is here, in this present moment, but our mind is in the future, we will inevitably experience anxiety and stress.

For example, picture yourself starting a beautiful day with a nice warm shower, joyfully breathing in the scent of your favorite shampoo, smiling inside and feeling terrific when, suddenly, into your head pops your day’s very long, very arduous to-do list: goodbye good feelings, hello stress. Your body is in the shower, but your mind is already at the office.

Whenever we do this we can immediately feel the stress reaction in our body – our muscles tighten, our stomach begins to churn, a sense of grim despair settles over us – and all because our body and mind have just entered different time zones.

A second factor that contributes to stress is the sense that we are not up to dealing with the future. After all, if our to-do list were completely manageable, we wouldn’t be stressing about it.

Such self-doubt appears to be a common human frailty, as evidenced by this snippet of wisdom from almost two-thousand years ago:

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason that today arm you against the present.”
Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor, 161-185 AD

Factors That Accentuate the Harm of Stress

Four factors often cited for making it more likely that a stressor will inflict harm include:

1. Lacking a sense of control over the stressor. Work in a job where you have little or no control of your work load, the way you work, or your working conditions and you are at greater risk of the job’s stressors making you sick. Even having the perception of control is better than feeling you have zero control.
2. Facing a stressor that is unpredictable. Even if you lack control over a stressor, knowing things like its timing, duration, or extent are still going to help lessen its impact.
3. Lacking healthy mental coping techniques or physical outlets to deal with the stressor. Mindfulness practice is one example of a healthy outlet for dealing with stress. Another is exercise because it mimics what the stress response was created for – physical exertion to escape danger.
4. Lacking perspective about the stressor. One person’s stressor is another’s interesting stimulation, only the thought about the stressor differs; change the thought, change the perspective, and the stressor ceases to be stressful.  This is empowering.

Stress Management

Here, then, are some techniques and perspectives on managing stress:

Techniques for Managing Stress

1. Change the situation or remove yourself from it, if you are able. If this is not possible, then full and total acceptance is your only other sane option. Once accepted as your reality, some of the other coping techniques can then be brought into play.
2. Practice P.B.S.:  1) Pause and close your eyes to block out sensory distractions and facilitate a calming inward focus.   2) Breathe slowly and deeply two to three times, in for four, hold for seven, out for eight.  This activates your calming parasympathetic nervous system.  3) Smile, inwardly or outwardly, even if forced.  As discussed here, this releases feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins.
3. Practice S.T.O.P.:  1) Stop whatever it is you are doing. 2) Take a few slow, deep breaths. 3) Observe your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, becoming consciously aware of them and naming them (“I’m feeling anger”, “I’m feeling frustration”, etc.) which has been found to diminish their ill effect. 4) Proceed to do yourself a kindness; take a stroll, have a friendly chat, go grab a healthy snack, etc.  
4. Take a moment to sense which muscles are tight due to stress. Next, breathe deeply and slowly while consciously relaxing those muscles. Because body and mind are intimately connected, it is not possible to be stressed and completely relaxed at the same time.
5. If feasible, increase your exercise regimen. It is important to burn off all the extra energy released by your stress hormones.
6. Practice insight (vipassana) meditation (see this post). Notice the feelings underlying your stress – anger, frustration, fear, guilt, envy, embarrassment – whatever they may be. As per the S.T.O.P. technique, mentally call them out.
7. Practice Tonglen meditation (see this post), a technique that changes your focus away from “woe is me” to one of concern for all others in similar straits, mentally taking in all of their suffering and, in its place, sending out good wishes for them to be at peace.
8. Re-double commitment to your mindfulness practice (see this post) to keep your focus on the present moment and so stop your anxious mind’s troubled wandering.
9. Slow down everything you do, otherwise your rushing will send a signal to your stress system that danger is afoot. And don’t be concerned that slowing down implies that your productivity will suffer. If anything, by calming a scattered, rushed mind, your enhanced clarity of thought will make you more productive. It is no coincidence that our best ideas typically come to us when we’re relaxing in the shower or are snuggled in our bed half awake in the pre-dawn of morning; in other words, times when our minds are still – the only time our subconscious intelligence is able to reveal itself.
10. Related to the previous point is to also slow down your life – say ‘no’ to those things you really don’t wish to do so you are able to say ‘yes’ to those things in life that bring you joy (including the joy of doing of absolutely nothing)!
11. Seek out quiet. Noise is a stressor and so best avoided. For example, near the end of my career my employer changed to an open-concept office layout. For the sake of my sanity I invested in a good set of noise-canceling headphones.  From a stress-management perspective this returned control to me.  It also replaced the unpredictability of office noise with the predictability of my favorite classical music.
12. Seek out soothing music and sounds.  Related to the previous point, meditative music or just gentle sounds aid in accessing your calming parasympathetic nervous system and turn off its high-alert sympathetic counterpart.  A walk in the woods to simply listen to the forest sounds also works in the same manner (with the added benefit of exercise).
13. Seek out social support. There is a link between social isolation and having an overly-active sympathetic nervous system. As a result, staying close to family and friends not only makes you happier but also helps manage stress.

Perspectives on Managing Stress

1. Keep things in perspective. As outlined in this post, we often place great importance on issues that, in the big scheme of things, are little more than trivia.
2. Change your thinking. Remember that it is not external circumstances that cause your stress but, rather, your perspective about such situations that does. Change your thinking, change your perspective, and your take on the situation changes as well; a stressful situation is suddenly seen as tolerable. Remember that you are always the master of your thoughts, they are not the master of you. If you do not feed negative thoughts, if you do not give them your continued attention, they will dissipate of their own accord and healthier thoughts will take their place. Psychological stress is nothing more than troubled thoughts. Remember that thoughts cannot hurt you, they are merely ephemeral biochemical reactions going on in your brain, they have no physical existence of their own.
3. Remember than pain and impermanence are an inescapable part of life and that resisting this reality leads directly to needless suffering, making an already unpleasant situation even worse.
4. Have confidence in yourself and know with certainty that you already possess the innate wisdom to deal with whatever life throws at you – because you do. Remember that to access that wisdom (i.e. your prefrontal cortex) you must be in a calm state of mind as otherwise you will be thinking with your decidedly-unwise amygdala. Think of it this way; even if the future turns out to be painful, you will assuredly handle it better if you approach it mindfully, using the calm, wise, responsive, and creative part of your brain rather than the unthinking, reactive part. With mindfulness practice, you get to choose.
5. Think of stressful situations not as problems to be gotten rid of but as opportunities to strengthen your mindfulness practice. After all, it’s easy to be mindful when things are going your way. It’s only when life throws up challenges that you truly get to put your mindfulness skills through their paces.

“The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can’t handle whatever is happening.”
Pema Chodron, from her book, “When Things Fall Apart“

“… the things we all find stressful – traffic jams, money worries, overwork, the anxieties of relationships.  Few of them are “real” in the sense that a zebra or a lion would understand.  In our privileged lives, we are uniquely smart enough to have invented these stressors and uniquely foolish enough to have let them, too often, dominate our lives.  Surely we have the potential to be uniquely wise enough to banish their stressful hold.”

Dr. Robert Sapolsky, from his book, “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers“

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life

Appendix A:  The Health Risks of Stress

Cardiovascular Disease

The stress system was designed for acute, short-term stressors which lead to  a temporary increase in your blood pressure.  However, when chronically stressed, your blood pressure becomes chronically high.

Higher blood pressure and blood flow cause your artery muscles to thicken in order to handle the higher pressure and to control the higher flow rate. In doing so, they become less elastic which serves to further increase blood pressure – a vicious cycle has begun.

The left ventricle of your heart, the one being buffeted by the high-pressure returning blood flow, also experiences a thickening of its muscles, creating an imbalanced heart which increases the risk of an irregular heartbeat.

Chronic high blood pressure also damages the interior of your arteries at branching points, creating rough spots. As a result, inflammation-suppressing cells start congregating there. In addition, these rough spots trap things like fatty cells, “bad” cholesterol, clumped platelets, and miscellaneous fibrous crud. In this manner, an artery-blocking plaque is formed which can lead to heart attack and stroke.

Finally, there is a reason that high blood pressure is known as the ‘silent killer’ because much of the damage it wreaks occurs without symptoms. It is often under an episode of higher-than-normal stress that all the damage suddenly makes itself known and results in death.

It has been found that ‘Type A’ personalities (i.e. those individuals characterized by impatience, hostility, and hyper-competitiveness) are at greater risk of cardiovascular disease due to the fact that stressors have an amplified impact on such people.

Disease Susceptibility

While the immune system is boosted in the short-term, prolonged stress begins to suppress it.  White blood cell and antibody production decline and white blood cells already in circulation are subjected to removal and destruction by stress hormones. As a result, when stressed, you become prone to catching whatever illness is making the rounds such as the flu or common cold.

In addition, frequent stress also increases the risk of developing an autoimmune disease (e.g. lupus, celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriasis).

Generational Harm

The offspring of chronically-stressed mothers have been found to have greater “bad cholesterol” release when under stress, so your poor reaction to stress today may also harm your children.

For example, a fetus exposed to high levels of maternal stress hormones is at heightened risk of obesity, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and Type II diabetes. Further, its own children may also be at greater risk of these illnesses.

There is also some evidence that such children are at increased risk of both chronic anxiety and impaired brain development.

Juvenile Diabetes

By suppressing insulin production and the sensitivity of fat cells to insulin, chronic stress promotes insulin resistance, potentially increasing the risk of getting juvenile diabetes and making its control more difficult.

Junk Food Craving

In between chronic episodes of stress your body attempts to reverse the stress reaction process. The resulting stress hormones (known as glucocorticoids) stimulate appetite to begin replacing the energy stores that it expected you to use while fleeing from danger – danger that never happened.

And the foods these hormones lead you to prefer? That’s right, the starchy, sugary, and fatty stuff. And because these food types make you feel good (by temporarily reducing the stress response) they make you crave even more of them, leading to yet more gunk in your blood stream to amplify the arterial damage caused by chronic stress.

Further, in the presence of high insulin (remember the insulin-resistance angle), these hormones also increase the storage of this junk food.

And just to make matters worse, they preferentially pack it away in fat cells around the abdomen. This is a dangerous location because fat released from abdominal fat cells more readily finds its way into your liver which then turns it into glucose.  This leads to even higher blood sugar levels and greater insulin resistance.

Impaired Calming Ability

By chronically shutting down your calming parasympathetic nervous system you become less able to calm down after upsets.

Digestive Tract Diseases

Chronic stress-related colon contractions can lead to Irritable Bowel Syndrome, a thoroughly unpleasant illness whose symptoms include cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, and diarrhea, constipation, or both.

During the recovery periods between episodes of chronic stress, stomach acid levels return to normal and are greeted by temporarily-reduced stomach wall defences, resulting in ulcers.

Osteoporosis

With the growth of new bone and the uptake of calcium restricted, stressed adults are at increased risk of osteoporosis.

Impaired Child Development

A child subjected to stressors may experience stunted growth, impaired intellect, and personality issues making it difficult for them to fit into society.

Reproductive Issues

By reducing testosterone levels in men and estrogen levels in women, stress reduces sex drive.

Further, the achievement of a male erection requires activation of the calming parasympathetic nervous system. Given that stress triggers the exact opposite – the sympathetic nervous system – impotence often results.

In females, stress reduces the secretion of key reproductive hormones leading to reduced ovulation and insufficient uterine lining changes to support the implantation of a fertilized egg.   The result is an inability to achieve pregnancy.

Memory Impairment

While short-lived acute stress enhances explicit memory (i.e. the ability to recall facts), chronic stress impairs it.

So, if you’re stressing about that big exam tomorrow afternoon, it’s likely that you won’t be able to remember all the things you studied.  Well, at least until you’ve calmed back down which, unfortunately, likely won’t be until after the exam is already over.

Executive Functioning Impairment

Stress negatively impacts the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, the locus of our executive functioning – emotional control, impulse control, and creativity. Wise decision making is compromised. 

Sleep Impairment

Stress impairs both the ability to get to sleep as well as the quality of whatever sleep you do get. This results in diminished attention, slowed working memory, an impaired ability to create new memories, reduced cognitive ability, a depressed mood, and an inflammatory response from the body (which, in turn, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer).

In what becomes a vicious cycle, sleep deprivation itself is a stressor, resulting in elevated levels of stress hormones making you prone to all of the troubles outlined previously.

So, back to that big exam: pull an all-nighter studying and the resulting lack of sleep will impair your ability to recall all those facts you worked so hard to cram into your head.

Depression

Exposure to repeated and frequent stressful episodes increases the level of stress hormones which, in turn, increases the chance of developing depression (i.e. an inability to experience pleasure).

In part this is due to the fact that stress hormones can mess up the neurotransmitters that work on triggering the brain’s pleasure pathways (i.e. dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine) .

Women are more prone to depression than men, this thought to be due in part to their greater tendency than men to ruminate about their problems (unlike men who have a greater tendency to ignore their problems).

Stressors over which we believe we have no control can induce a feeling of helplessness, one of the symptoms of depression where sufferers give up on life.  They assume it will only get worse even in the face of contrary evidence.

Diseases of the Elderly

As humans age their ability to return to a calm state becomes impaired due to the fact that dissipation of stress hormones takes longer.

In addition, the elderly often have higher base levels of stress hormones even in the absence of stressors. These elevated stress hormones lead to all of the problems listed previously, including impaired memory and reduced production of new brain neurons.

Fatigue

Under acute stress your body taps into its existing stores of energy and postpones new deposition. If the stress is repeated and chronic, your energy level becomes depleted and you fatigue more easily.

Anxiety Disorders 

Severe stress can both damage the hippocampus (thus impairing the ability to lock away memories for future recall) and make the amygdala permanently more reactive (thus making an individual yet more sensitive to stressors). The result is anxiety over a stressor without any conscious understanding of why you are feeling anxious.

Substance Abuse

Drugs like cocaine directly trigger the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that activates the part of the brain that creates the feeling of pleasure. As a result, if stressed, such drugs take away the pain of stress.

However, three problems occur. First, dopamine levels afterward drop below where they were prior to taking the drug. You feel even worse than before and so crave another hit to feel better again.

Second, the brain has a mechanism to limit the impact of excessive dopamine by becoming less sensitive to it. The result is the need for even more of the drug to get the same ‘high’.

And third, in the absence of getting more of the drug, stress hormone levels in the brain increase greatly, leading to activation of the amygdala which triggers feelings of fear and anxiety.

Addiction is the unsurprising result – an ongoing need to make the pleasure come back and make the fear and anxiety go away.

Income Inequality

While living in abject poverty is stressful and leads to many awful health outcomes, in most Western societies it is relative poverty that predicts ill-health.

In other words, it’s not about how much money you have but, rather, how much money you have relative to others that generates stress.

As a result, the greater a society’s income inequality, the worse the health of those on the bottom looking up.

Best wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life