Chapter 3: A Measured Approach

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” – Peter Drucker

As I mentioned previously, our bodies thrive and grow through stress. Sometimes called Hormesis or eustress or the more popular saying “whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” In almost every book on wellness or study based on stress, it is said that stress can be beneficial in small amounts, but harmful if there is too much stress for too long a period of time.

This idea never sat right with me.

What is too much stress? Stress thresholds change from person-to-person. Thresholds can even change from year-to-year for the same person. Case in point, my son, who is just learning to swim, gets more stressed in the pool than my daughter who has been swimming for a few years. For me, there is no stress at all outside of worrying about my kids. Similarly, when I first learned to drive, seeing a yellow light at an intersection at just the wrong time could be panic inducing. Do I have enough time to get through the intersection before it turns red? Should I stop? Are there cars right behind me? Should I speed up and potentially run a red light? Now, those moments barely stress me out.

So, what is too much stress?

Well, I can’t answer that for you (nor can anyone else). You need to figure that out for yourself.

However, I can share an exercise I created to find out for myself. (This is where the project manager/director part of me comes through.) I hope this is as insightful for you as it was for me.

First, I mapped out on a vertical Y-axis from 1-to-10 to showcase my personal gauge of stress in my adult life up to this year. I don’t believe in having no or 0 stress as the baseline. I believe, as an adult, there is always a bit of stress no matter what. Even when “stress free”, we subconsciously think about time, food, drink, what to do next, etc.

Then I wrote out the lowest stress I could recall having in my adult life in a few words and placed it by 1, then I wrote down what I remembered to be the highest level of stress I’ve ever had and put it at 10. I tried to fill out the other numbers as best as I could, but for the purposes of this example, I will show what I remembered to be a 5.

Lastly, I mapped out current stressors with dots and descriptors and placed them accordingly based on what I had just created. For example, finding out I had a 10.3 A1c was an 8. Monthly bills, stress from work, relationship stress also went on the chart. I then added +1 to any monthly recurring stresses such as the mortgage and bills. I added a +2 to anything daily such as work or relationship stress. Maybe you are already accounting for the frequency as you follow along with this exercise and your personal stressors and don't need to add those modifiers. Knowing myself, I tend to minimize the frequency aspect, but as we read earlier, its the small consistent stressors that affect us the most.

Once you do this, you will have a better understanding of how much stress you currently have based on your personal threshold. I found this to be a very enlightening exercise because it helped me determine what I needed to address first so that my eustress doesn’t turn into distress. Luckily for me, I didn’t have much higher than a 6 with exception to the A1c. Make sure you are at a point in your life where you can safely add the right kind of stress for growth. In addition, I believe this will help more people with “self-care”. In my personal experience working in a high stress environment, most people do just enough “self-care” to still be stressed and thus not really in a state of mental health.

I didn't just stop with measuring my stress levels.

My time researching Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (which is ongoing) meant that I would occasionally go to the local bookstore, library or scour Amazon, Audible, TEDx, YouTube and LinkedIn for content. One area I often gravitate to is the “self-help” content, as I want to help those in inequitable situations learn how to give themselves an advantage. Hint: Don’t wait for your company to provide the things you need. It can take too long, and as I mentioned earlier, too much stress for too long is bad for your health.

I gained so much insight from the self-help content and created something I call “the Web of Fulfillment.” By my guess, over 80% of self-help books & videos cover one or more of the topics I have listed. It is also surprising just how much these topics are actually tied to each other. I decided to also measure myself against these major factors in my life as well. Note: I consider money/wealth to be a resource and I also consider things like the ability to influence others a cognitive skill that affects your relationships.

I will quickly go over each of these topics. (Depending on interest, I might write additional chapters covering what I've learned regarding each of these topics.)

Sleep – Are you getting enough rest? I’ve found this topic appears in many books whether its based on work productivity, cognitive capability, stress management, physical/mental health and relationships.

Environment – This has to do with where you work, sleep, exercise, eat. Is it clean? Is there a lot of noise? Can you get proper rest? Are you required to commute long distances daily?

Diet – What are you eating? What are you not eating? How often are you eating? What supplements/medications are you taking? Are you caring for your microbiome?

Physical Health – How often are you exercising? How much Zone2 & Zone5 are you getting weekly? How is your stability and posture? Are you addressing inflammation? ?How much Cardio and resistance training do you do?

Cognitive Health – Cognitive health has to do with learning and focus, recall and memorization, adaptability and agility in thought. Not just learning, but also applying it in daily life with action.

Mental Health – This has to do with stress management, reframing challenges into opportunities, building resilience against external factors.

Relationship to self – Are you your own bully? Do you forgive yourself too much? Do you express self-gratitude? Is your inner dialogue a friend or foe?

Significant others – This includes friends, family, spouse, children, etc. anyone that is not a stranger or acquaintance. How would you rate your relationship with them? This doesn’t always mean spending more time together – especially for an introvert like myself.

Community – Do you serve the community? When was the last time you did something nice for a stranger? Do you serve a purpose that is greater than just yourself and your significant others?

Belonging – Do you feel you can be yourself at work? Do your values align with your company values? Does your team value and respect your work and opinions? Do you, as a person, feel you belong in the company?

Role – Are you satisfied with your role? Do you have the leadership or lack of leadership responsibilities you want? Is what you do day-to-day aligned with what you want for yourself?

Work/Life Balance – Are you working too much? Are you unemployed? Do you work a gig job based on commission? Do you feel satisfied with the amount of time required of you to do your job well?

This chart has given me insight into which areas I need to develop and focus on more and which areas I can be more relaxed in. It is my personal belief that if I can get to an 8 or higher on all of these areas, I will feel like I am leading a fulfilling life. That is what I am currently aiming for at least. As you can probably guess, my numbers were low in Sleep, Diet, Physical and Cognitive Health and I needed to focus on those aspects of my life.

As you will see in coming chapters, and maybe in some of the previous ones, many of topics are linked together and an improvement in one area can often lead to subsequent improvement in others. For some examples, go back and read Chapter 1: Courage where cold shock therapy has multiple physical and mental health benefits.

NOTE: When it comes to measurement and Type-2 diabetes, I have found a glucometer, fitness tracking watch and a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) as well as regular blood draws really helped me. However, these are not without monetary costs. If you cannot afford them, I will attempt to present various ways to determine you are on the right path without those tools in future chapters.

Action Items

1.?????Create and fill out your own stress threshold chart

2.?????Determine if there are any current stressors you need to address before adding any new stress.

3.?????Create habits and build courage to help address those stressors – refer to previous Chapter on Kaizen.

4.?????Fill out the Web of Fulfillment sheet.?