Why is it when two people experience the same event, one person is overwhelmed and stressed, yet the other person is fine, and might even grow from it? What are these two people doing differently?

Now more than ever, as we grapple with the incredible disruption of Covid-19, people are raising the question of resilience – can we come out the other side of trauma changed for the better?

Leadership consultant and author Nick Petrie has spent 30 years studying the power of adversity to promote growth. Petrie’s interest in the subject largely stems from a recurring cancer diagnosis, one that he still lives with today. Over the years, Petrie developed a convincing protocol to manage stress.

Obviously, we all experience stress in different ways. The top five stressors are death, divorce, injury, marriage and retirement. We cannot simply avoid stress. It’s the nature of life. To engage in life, then, is stress inevitable?

Petrie teaches two fundamental truths:

1. There is a different between pressure and stress. Pressure is defined as an external demand in your environment. Everyone has pressure. But not everyone feels stress.
2. We negatively convert pressure into stress by ruminating about it. Ruminating is over-thinking events of the past or future, and then attaching negative emotion to the thoughts.

Ruminating releases a high level of two specific hormones in our bodies – cortisol, which puts us in a state of fight or flight; and adrenaline, which speeds up our heart rate. Both have negative effects on our health, including heart disease and immune system suppression.

As well, when we ruminate, we are less productive and left feeling anxious, exhausted and miserable. When you put all this together, we see there is nothing useful about stress.

We all know people who claim to love stress, but they are really thriving on pressure. We can thrive on goals, challenges and progress – that is pressure, not stress. By ruminating on that, we cause stress. Simply put, if we don’t ruminate, we won’t experience stress.

Petrie teaches simple and useful tools to overcome our stress response, and come out the other side with a positive growth mindset.

Rather than ruminating, reflect. Of course we should review the past and plan for the future. The key is doing so with positive or neutral emotion. If we look back with regret or guilt, or worry about the future, that is rumination.

We can catch ourselves and stop the process of rumination. We do this by waking up, from a state of “waking sleep.” Waking sleep happens when we aren’t engaged in the present and our mind wanders. Nearly 70% of our day is spent in waking sleep. To “wake up” we can make a physical change, like standing up and going outside, or we can increase attention to our senses – what do we see, hear, feel and smell in that moment? These tricks help us be present. Literally all stress happens during waking sleep.

We most often ruminate about things outside of our control. By refocusing on what is within in our circle of control, we acknowledge our triggers, and can detach a bit. We should focus only on what we can control.

Lastly, put things into perspective – essentially shrink things down to size. By comparing something really big and important in your life, like a health issue, to the thing you are ruminating on, that latter will seem very small in comparison. And write down what you are grateful for. Gratitude is an amazing buffer against stress.

By asking yourself the following questions, you can acknowledge and improve your stress response.

• Are you a ruminator? Rumination is just a bad a habit. Change the habit by practicing the tools above.
• Do you bottle up or express your emotions? Find the happy medium between sharing and ruminating.
• Are you impatient? Are your requests hostile or demanding? Try a different approach.
• Do you avoid coping and hope the problem will go away? We do best when we deal with issues head on.
• Do you crave perfectionism and control? If so, refocus your circle of control.
• Are you able to put things in perspective? Create appropriate boundaries and don’t personalize everything. Don’t take on other’s feelings.

We can apply these coping skills to highly disruptive events, such as Covid-19. In major events, some people get so overwhelmed they succumb to enormous stress. Others survive the event but come out the other side impaired, and they do not recover. Both of these examples cause post-traumatic stress. While some others do recover and show resilience, they come out the other side of the event exactly the same as before the event.

Our goal in a major event is to come out the other side thriving, having grown and learned. This is referred to as Post-traumatic GROWTH.

Learning to manage your stress is invaluable. Do things differently if you want a better result, and set a new growth mindset for 2020.

Ruth Easterling is managing director of member services for Family Office Exchange (FOX). In her role, she works with family and advisor members to understand their objectives and provides guidance to help address their unique needs through the resources available at FOX. Ruth also moderates the Private Trust Company Network and works with the team at FOX to develop programming and insights for the Network. Ruth has held multiple roles at FOX including leading FOX member services, supervising the delivery of learning programs, and overseeing marketing to drive the redesign and brand initiatives that differentiate FOX today. Area of Expertise: Family Office Best Practices Read More →