How To Turn Stress Into An Advantage
Everyone has daily stressors they must navigate. From struggling to stay on track with fitness, work logistics, travel, and the family calendar getting squeezed by the reemergence of the kids’ activities. We find ourselves in a time when these daily challenges are piled on top of an onslaught of uncertainty with covid, inflation, war, you name it. You wouldn’t be alone in feeling overwhelmed.
As a performance company specializing in helping athletes and fitness enthusiasts find success in sport and life, we see common trends across our customer base. From elite athletes, business leaders, parents, employees, and highly ambitious amateur athletes, we are lucky enough to be able to keep our finger on the pulse of performance. It is undeniable that many folks have been struggling with stress. One of my executive clients said to me the other day, “My team feels like we’re living in an endless blizzard of stress.” Somewhat facetiously, I asked this executive to clarify if his comment was meant positively or negatively, which caught him by surprise. My reply was the catalyst for a fruitful discussion. Is stress a bad thing? Is it a dirty word?
I realize stress is not comfortable or pleasant. Many people navigate traumatic events I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but does this mean that stressful situations and adversity are something we should aim to avoid altogether? I would argue not.
In this piece, I help you reposition the stressors in your life as opportunities for you to grow and develop. It isn’t about simply coping. Instead, you can build a performance mindset to leverage stressors to your advantage.
Today, you will learn 3 factors around stress and stress management:
How stress plays a critical role in growth, adaptation, and performance evolution
Lessons from high performers who leverage the discomfort of stress
How to develop a mindset and a host of practices to leverage stress to your advantage
Realize this: you are an adaptation machine. Improvement and sustained performance will only come from an environment that includes stress. So let’s dig in.
Understanding Stress
When considering the word stress, I’m sure you think something bad, corrosive, and debilitating that we aim to avoid or at least reduce. This is a typical perspective and one that is hammered into us by most health and wellness professionals. There is a whole industry built around de-stressing and stress reduction, and untold hours consumed attempting to remove or manage stress in our lives. This is understandable. Stress is complex and uncomfortable, and negative emotional and physiological results can emerge from the accumulation of too many unchecked stressors. I am a living example of just that –by severely overtraining as a young professional athlete, combined with poor eating and sleeping habits, I broke down and became chronically fatigued. My journey back to health was arduous, and it included the end of my professional triathlon career. Does my story highlight that we are powerless against the forces of stress? Are we correct to view stress as the enemy?
To answer this, let’s first unpack the definition of stress.
In physics, the word stress refers to an interaction between a force and the resistance countering that force. The second part of that sentence is important to remember: ‘the resistance countering that force.’ It is an essential part of the definition that can lead you to build a wiser relationship with the word.
The first known person to apply this word to humans was Hans Selye, famously referred to in the scientific community as the ‘father of stress,’ who described stress as a nonspecific response of the body to any demand. If we consider this for a second, it makes sense. If I label someone as ‘stressed,’ you can surely imagine someone with elevated heart rate and breathing, perhaps even sweaty hands. Sounds uncomfortable, doesn’t it? It is and can be overwhelming. Interestingly, these physiological responses we’ve all experienced have a lot to do with how the stress is viewed, as much as the actual stressor itself.
The key to managing stress is understanding why the body reacts as it does when facing adversity and challenge. The symptoms you feel are not a sign of imminent emotional collapse or physiological damage. Instead, these symptoms are your body's response to adapt to the demands being placed on it. The response should be a catalyst for growth and development.
When we realize that stress is a response to a demand, it is also essential to recognize that as intelligent as the body is, it doesn’t differentiate between stressors very well. Let’s consider sources of stress, such as travel, financial and logistical stress around family and kids, strained relationships, a return to the office, and more. How we respond to different stressors is highly individual. Our response is often related to how much we are invested in the situation and how many other stressors we are currently navigating. What creates a considerable stress response for Robert might elicit a very different reaction from Jill. The fact remains that you are an adaptation machine. You are biologically equipped to respond to stress and adapt. In sporting terms, which, typically, act as a wonderful metaphor for life, we have a model for this:
As a coach, I place a training demand onto an athlete (discomfort and challenge) from which physiological adaptations should occur (muscle growth, fitness gains), facilitating performance improvements.
What can we learn from a coach’s approach to developing an athlete? The good news is that the strain you feel is not all bad. If you want to improve as an athlete - or anything - a stressor is required to force adaptations, growth, and improvement. I build a training program for an athlete so they can mold and respond to demands placed on them, which leads to physiological improvement.
You don’t need to be an athlete to experience this. No matter your accumulated stressors, the principle of stress remains:
You face a stressor from which you can respond and adapt, leading to growth, development, and improvement.
The stark truth is that stress is the common thread of improvement in anything you care about pursuing. These symptoms we associate with stressful situations can be helpful, if not critical, to your performance. Several studies display how stress responses enhance our bodies' ability to handle and thrive in high-demand situations, including a heightened ability to focus, improved decision-making, and an improved ability to absorb and process information.
We have a perfect example of this among the family of Purple Patch professional athletes. Meredith Kessler won multiple IRONMAN and IRONMAN 70.3 races and finished Top 10 at the Hawaii IRONMAN World Championship. She was invited to participate in research with Navy Seals and professional athletes conducted by Red Bull Performance. The research group includes almost 1000 professional athletes from across various sports and a collection of special forces soldiers and instructors. The research team placed each high performer through a series of activities, simulations, and games designed to induce emotional demand and distraction. Stress responses were measured and as was the participants' ability to retain focus on tasks and their decision-making ability. While the study was not a peer-reviewed research project, we did gain insights into some of the findings and Meredith’s performance in the study.
The global finding was that the majority of participants retained or improved their performance under stress. Meredith was an outlier, along with one other participant (a Navy Seal instructor), in which the high demand/distraction placed on her led to a dramatic performance improvement. She didn’t feel good during the process, but she performed better.
The results came from folks familiar with stress as a part of life, but they were also society's highest performers. They appreciate adversity and challenge as a critical part of development and growth. This doesn’t mean they find the challenges easy, but they realize it is an essential component of evolution.
Stress is your body’s natural response to demand and is essential to facilitate improvement. You need stress. This is a paradox, as it can often result in highly negative situations, but encountering adversity on the journey to one’s goal doesn’t have to be debilitating. The body is designed to enhance our ability to navigate difficult moments.
Understanding the role of stress in our body opens the door to the most important realization, which is that you are in control. Stress isn’t something that happens to you. It is your response to demand and challenge. As you will learn later in the piece, even the most frustratingly challenging situations can often be transformed into opportunities to be leveraged for growth.
Learning from the Pros
In a recent article, I outlined some lessons that coaching world-class athletes taught me as a performance specialist. All of the Purple Patch professional athletes were united in their work ethic, commitment, coachability, and passion for the journey, but the strongest correlation that always emerged was their relationship to stress. None of my pros viewed stress as a negative or something to hide from. They didn’t necessarily enjoy the obstacles or failures that made up their journey to become world-class, but they realized that these struggles played a critical role in their success. Adversity is a fabric of the journey to high performance. Let me provide an example of such a roadblock faced by one of the more enduring and successful Purple Patch pros, Sarah Piampiano.
Sarah spent the initial few years of her triathlon journey patiently developing as an athlete, finding herself on the verge of breaking into the upper tier of the sport. As she stood on the start line of IRONMAN Texas, we had high hopes, believing she could make the podium. Unfortunately, the result was very different. Halfway through the run, Sarah felt a ping in her leg. The pain was debilitating, and she couldn't finish. Scans after the race confirmed our fears of a deep stress fracture in the femur (upper leg) that ended her race and season.
Many athletes fail to ever return from such a catastrophic injury, and those who do, typically, take at least a year. A year. A massive setback and source of enormous stress on an emerging professional desperately trying to break into the world-class ranks. The events of that day seemingly derailed Sarah’s whole plan for her professional career, with a potential impact on her earning ability and athlete evolution. The very definition of what we typically label as ‘stressful.’
Following a bit of grieving, Sarah shifted to a proactive mindset. This is what a high-performer does. Instead of wilting in frustration, she quickly sought opportunity amidst the challenge. While healing and unable to train, Sarah focused on building her relationships with sponsors and fans, developing her brand, and becoming a resource to aspiring athletes. She mentored junior athletes on their initial journeys and aimed to gain a broader perspective of the sport. When Sarah returned to training, she didn’t approach triathlon in the same way. Instead, she used the time off to reflect on her journey and completely redesign how she tackled the sport. The redesign included a ground-up approach to strength and conditioning, a heavy investment in swimming technique, and a renewed commitment to supporting habits.
The result? A whole new athlete who, while a year delayed, emerged to become one of the most successful professionals in the world. Sarah boasts multiple IRONMAN wins, the second-fastest American IRONMAN finisher in history, and several top-ten finishes at the World Championships. These results may never have been achieved without the evolved mindset and actions resulting from the vast career roadblock. The incredibly tough experience led to growth, and, while uncomfortable, it was a critical stepping stone in her professional life.
I am often asked what makes the most enduring pros successful. This example goes a long way to providing the answer. It isn’t physical gifts or pure toughness. It is the ability to navigate and thrive through adversity and stress. And, you don’t need to be a professional athlete or a special forces soldier to build a similar mindset around stress.
Take Control of Your Stress
It’s no wonder the word stress elicits feelings of discomfort. It is, typically, unpleasant, yes. However, it is not as harmful or destructive as our standard public health message tells us. But let me be clear, massive challenges are always overwhelming and tough. Navigating increasing demands across your life, including a return to the office, more travel, or kid’s activities bubbling up, can be draining. You might be trying to manage this while seeking to maintain consistent positive habits around sleep, nutrition, and training.
Each of us has our suite of challenges that accumulate and provide adversity or increased demands. You are not alone if you are feeling the strain.
However, over the years as a performance coach, I have seen individuals, teams, and athletes develop a strong ability to navigate adversity and challenge to reach great heights. While the stories of professional athletes provide great inspiration, success isn’t reserved for elite athletes.
We are all equipped to develop an antifragility that enables growth not in spite of, but because of adversity.
The busy parent, the time-starved leader, an aspiring athlete, or, quite frankly, anyone seeking to improve and achieve a goal that is meaningful to them benefits from the proper perspective when it comes to stress. The mindset and relationship you build around the feeling of stress can have a seismic imprint on how successfully you not only manage but also thrive amidst the challenge.
A host of peer-reviewed research highlights the power of mindset. Perhaps the leader in this field is Stanford scientist Alia Crum, who studies the power of mindset across many areas of life, including dealing with stress. In her groundbreaking work, Dr. Crum displayed how different attitudes toward stress produced very different physiological and performance outcomes. You can read more in the study here, but the quick comparison is among two main groups. The first viewed videos filled with authentic education about the negative aspects of stress. In contrast, the second group was shown equally authentic education that focused on the potentially positive aspects of adversity and stress. The education was anchored in the fact that we are adaptation machines, and adversity provides the conditions to produce growth and improvement.
The participants who received the empowering and positive education around stress had radically different outcomes. The positive messaging shifted their mindset and relationship to stress, helping them view it as a catalyst for positive change, but the results were not just psychological. Their physiological symptoms of stress, such as back pain, headaches, and insomnia, were reduced, and most reported an improvement in their performance at work.
You are equipped to thrive within a challenging environment.
A positive relationship to stress does not make life easier. It doesn’t make the adversity disappear or shrink, but it seems to provide physiological robustness that enables you to emerge stronger.
Elite athletes intuitively embrace this concept, which is likely why the most enduringly successful athletes tend to chase personal excellence over just outcomes. They love winning, but they also embrace the challenge of becoming the best they can be. In the workplace, a similar approach can be adopted to enable great performance.
Reframe stress as ‘challenge,’ which makes work exciting and is where growth happens.
Read that sentence again. You can quickly see how draining and frustrating build-up of stress can be repositioned as an opportunity to grow and improve. Of course, developing the appropriate mindset won’t convert you into a highly adaptable performance machine overnight. It isn’t that easy. First, you must build a performance mindset and then put the actual performance readiness into action by developing practices to help you navigate stressful situations.
4 Ways to Reduce Stress and Increase Performance
We are constantly fed reminders to try and limit stress or sold tools to reduce our stress accumulation to ‘cope.’ Instead, I recommend honing a set of practices that will serve as a performance toolkit to help you navigate and thrive (very different than coping!). If you can set up consistent habits and practices to build your adaptation energy, you are in a place to leverage stressors as an opportunity to grow and develop. So, what are some of the most basic practices and pathways to building your adaptation energy and toolkit?
Prioritizing rest (downtime) and sleep: A lack of sleep is a badge of performance regression. Every high-performing athlete or C-level executive I work with prioritizes sleep no matter the stressors and demands. In addition, it’s important to remember that rest is action. Taking time for yourself to recover will help you adapt to the demands of life more effectively.
A backbone of proper habits in nutrition: This doesn’t mean falling into a trendy new fad diet. Rather, it is building a set of practices around fueling following workouts, daily hydration, and smart eating habits at meals. Nailing this area builds a platform of health, reduces fragility, and optimizes clarity, focus, and decision-making.
Consistent training: You don’t need to be an athlete to ‘train.’ Training is simply structured exercise that progresses and aligns with the goals and needs of the person executing. Folks that exercise at random gain general health benefits but are also susceptible to random results. Adding structure to your training opens the door to reaping the full benefits of your work. Training should include consistent endurance-focused activity, higher intensity intervals, and strength and resistance training. Even if you are moving from couch potato to regular movement, training should be viewed as a non-negotiable part of building capacity and adaptation energy.
Mind revival: Regular dedicated time for meditation is valuable and recharges the proverbial battery that ultimately provides you with more adaptation energy for the demands on your time. There is a wide range of styles of meditation. The key is finding one that works for you—something you can make habitual. In truth, the effectiveness of meditation lies in its ability to amplify your capacity to adapt to stressors, an important distinction.
These are only a few habits and approaches to help you build capacity and your adaptation energy. In sport, a smart coach would build a framework, educate you on where you should focus your efforts, then hold you to account when you put the plan into action. Coaches also help you pause, reflect, and course-correct when you stray off track.
And what about leaders in the workplace? Business leaders need to walk the walk and embrace a performance mindset and a host of associated practices. The days of under-slept executives with poor habits around training and nutrition and relying on only ambition and toughness to achieve long-term success are long gone. Instead, leaders should help create a performance environment and reframe the whole team's perspective on stress. They must reinforce a culture that allows employees to balance the demands and stressors by using sustainable work practices and fostering a performance mindset for both individuals and the team.
Whether athlete, parent, leader, or employee, when you take the journey to redefine your relationship with stress and commit to building the practices that develop a toolkit to help you navigate challenging situations, something powerful can happen:
You become a highly moldable, antifragile, adaptive human. You won’t crack when the going gets tough, which it will because it always does. For all of us.
Stress is not a dirty word. On the contrary, it is an essential element required to perform in sport, work, life, and beyond.
Do you want to learn more about turning stress into an advantage?
Matt Dixon has successfully helped several leading companies and leaders carry what he calls the IRON mindset not only into their athletic training but also into boardrooms and the marketplace.
If you’re interested in 1:1 coaching or for Matt to speak at your company about the IRON Mindset in business, reach out to matt@purplepatchfitness.com to learn more!