What's the connection between motivation and stress?

From Mark Terrell at The Reluctant Leader Academy

Yesterday I noticed a post by a connection on Linkedin that was talking about the things that cause us stress in our business. It got me thinking about the connection between stress and motivation and in particular how we can avoid stress.

Firstly I think it’s important to recognise that we do need a bit of stress to make us take action, it becomes a problem when we have too much of it and it becomes debilitating. Having a strategy to manage stress will help to prevent it becoming overwhelming.

Motivation is our driver to take action, the word is a fusion of motive and action. Motive is our reason and action is the thing we do as a result of our reason, so understanding our motivations is important to our business and to our long term wellbeing.

From my work with motivation and in particular with business owners, a top motivator for many is freedom and autonomy. Having a control over their time and the way they do things gives them energy and when it’s missing it can lead to a feeling of stress.

In this case having a strategy to manage time is going to be important, I often suggest a Stop/Start review. This is a simple but effective process to look at the things you are doing and what you need to do less of, more of, stop doing, start doing and not forgetting continue to do.

This can also happen in reverse when we end up spending a lot of our time doing things that don’t motivate us, I call these our energy sappers. This can creep in when we are good at something and more of it but actually don’t really enjoy it.

This was my biggest problem when running my retail business where I ended up spending most of my time managing people and resources. I was quite good at it because I’m a people person but inside it was sapping my energy and causing me a lot stress.?

One of the motivators that’s often creeps up and bites us because it’s not often regarded as important is belonging. This can often be a problem for those motivated by freedom and autonomy because it the opposite to what they are moving towards.?

We all need to feel we belong in some capacity, It may not be being part of a team, just having a connection to our clients can make all the difference. Making sure that we aren’t inadvertently isolating ours is important to aware of as we all need a support network to help us when things aren’t going to plan.

So next time you are feeling stressed, think about what really motivates you and make sure you are taking action to fulfil those things in your business. If you aren’t sure what they are, my “How To Stay Energised At Work” is a short course that will identify, describe and measure your current motivation and you’ll have an action plan to keep yourself motivated. https://www.thereluctantleader.academy/how-to-stay-energised-at-work

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