Stressed?

Seems like stress is the new normal these days, true?  Stress at home; at work; in the media; I think we’re surrounded.  The good news is we can handle stress regardless of the cause:

Stress is caused by being "here" but wanting to be "there".

Eckhart Tolle

At work, companies have been stressing us with unrealistic performance expectations for years.  I get it. After rising to the top, many executives want to leave their mark.  It’s not the business goals that cause us stress; it’s the extremes our leaders want us to go to reach them:

Goals...Business school professors suggest they should come with their own warning label: 

Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation.  Use care when applying goals in your organization.

Daniel H. Pink            

It can be difficult to get motivated when one of our leaders sets an unrealistic goal.  It’s OK though.  There are many skilled and experienced employees at our companies who know better:

Or as Fred Brooks, the droll engineering genius from North Carolina who led the project, once wrote, “the bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.”

Thomas J. Watson Jr.

Truthfully though, we are capable of raising our level of performance to match the challenges of our time.  We come from generations before us who succeeded.  We may not all be entrepreneurs like Phil Knight was when Nike was a fledgling start-up, but we’re up to meeting our challenges – we have no choice:

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way.  That leaves us…

Phil Knight

So here’s to raising our level of performance while keeping stress at bay.  Someday we will be “there” where stress will be merely a mile marker memory on our path to success.   

GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.