How to Turn Your Stress Into More Success

5 Steps You Can Take to Handle Challenging Situations Better

5 min readDec 14, 2018

Being able to turn everyday stress into more success can be a huge advantage as we go through our day.

Depending on our lifestyle, we experience different levels or types of stress. Living with stress is very common today.

Most people will admit they experience some type of stress daily. This may include dealing with home responsibilities, managing work obligations or handling everyday situations.

It’s unlikely stress will ever go away, therefore we have to learn to deal with it better.

The Causes of Stress

We experience stress when we believe there is a threat to our normal way of being. It also can come about if we have to operate differently than we ordinarily would need to.

Whenever something causes us to go into either fight, flight or freeze mode, that’s an indication we’re experiencing stress.

Typically, three areas of our lives generate the most stress, and they are:

Our health and well-being.
Our relationships, both personal and professional.
Our finances.

If these three areas aren’t going the way we’d prefer, it’s very likely we’ll experience high levels of stress. This will affect our ability to create the results or success we want.

Symptoms of Stress

Here are some common symptoms of stress that usually shows up as some type of mental, emotional or physical discomfort.

Mental symptoms can include feeling disengaged, overwhelmed and not ourselves.
Emotional symptoms can include being nervous, anxious, irritated or angry.
Physical symptoms can include feeling tired, experiencing headaches or migraines, or unable to sleep well at night.

There are other symptoms of stress that may not be so obvious and these can include:

Resorting to unhealthy behaviours to ease the discomfort. This may include alcohol or substance abuse, and overeating.
Developing coping mechanisms like a nervous switch or cough, or biting fingernails.
Unwilling to face a challenging situation because of the discomfort it may cause.
Being aggressive towards others without even knowing it.
Not doing what needs to be done.

It’s highly unlikely we’ll make good decisions or create more success if we don’t cope well with stress. Knowing how to turn stress into more success will help us deal with things we experience a lot better.

Three New Mindsets for Dealing With Stress

We tend to experience stress when our reality doesn’t meet or match our expectations. Here are three new mindsets that will help us deal with stress better.

Acknowledge and accept what cannot be changed.
Change what can be changed.
Avoid or let go of what’s unacceptable.

5 Steps to Turn Stress Into More Success

Here are five things that will help turn stress into more success.

Acknowledge and assess the stress. Usually something happens for us to experience stress. If we pause and assess, we’ll be able to find a message in how we’re feeling. For example, if we experience stress being in rush-hour traffic, the message could be to find an alternate route or a different time when we travel.
Identify whether you’re experiencing good or bad stress. Good stress can spur us into taking focused action, like meeting a deadline. Bad stress can cause us to do something out of character like yell or abuse someone. Our aim should be to channel good stress into a positive outcome, which will lead to more success.
Evaluate what’s working and not working. The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over, hoping to get a different outcome. As stress is generated when something doesn’t go the way we believe it should, we have to be able to pinpoint what’s not working for us.
Identify the outcomes you want. We have to know what success means to us. Having clarity on what we’re moving towards will support us in dealing with stress. As part of our plan to achieve the outcomes we want, we can identify the obstacles or challenges that may come up. Knowing these ahead of time will enable us to deal with any stress we may experience.
Keep your long-term vision front-of-mind. Most of the things that cause us stress don’t really matter long-term. If we’re experiencing stress, a question we can ask is, “Will this move me toward the success I want?” A follow-up question is, “Is it worth my time, energy and effort to deal with this right now?” Having belief in our ability to deal with anything that comes up will lead to more success.

Conclusion

Stress isn’t something we have to resist. It’s about learning to use it to our advantage and turning it into the success we want.

If we take the steps to deal with stress better, we’ll transform how we cope with it and achieve more success. If we struggle to deal with stress, we won’t create the success we want.

Action Step: Reflect on the last time you experienced a high amount of stress. How did you deal with it? What did you learn from it? Decide how you’ll use an experience like that in the future to create the results or success you want.

Question: What are other things that can be done to turn stress into more success?

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