There is a popular belief that the body responds to stress in one of three ways: fight, flight, or freeze.
For much of my own career, I’ve found myself in the fight category.
Whether it was growing frustration with a challenging boss, standing my ground with an unsupportive colleague, or speaking my mind with rampant disregard for the actual impact of my words, I tended to be considered a bit of a “hot head.”
At the time, I told myself I was being principled, but the truth is much less flattering.
While I didn’t always pick the fights, I rarely walked away from them. And when I did, I’d carry the stress of the situation home with me, finding myself lying awake at night winning imaginary arguments in my head.
Finding the Flow
It took me many years, but over time I realized there was a fourth “F” that was absent from that classic idiom, flow.
Unlike its counterparts, flow isn’t about running towards conflict, nor running away form it, and it’s not about standing still in the face of stress or anxiety either.
Flow is about finding our away around an obstacle by finding the path of least resistance, like water around a rock.
Unlocking the Art of Surrender
The first step to finding flow is to embrace the art of surrender.
Surrender means accepting the things we can not change and changing our own expectations instead.
In the case of our careers, that means giving up the ghost on a whole host of painful practicalities.
After all, is it really reasonable to expect that terrible boss to stop being so terrible? Or that difficult colleague to suddenly turn over a new leaf?
The truth is, when we fight immovable objects, we’re not actually fighting immovable objects, we’re fighting ourselves.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, Flow
I’m not preaching pacifism here, but rather trying to shed a little light on one small change that I made that made a world of difference.
When I accepted the constraints of my own situation, I was liberated from much of the stress that derived from it. That weight I carried around constantly? It genuinely was lifted from my shoulders.
I guess all I’m saying is, maybe work would be a lot less stressful if we just accepted what stressed us out about work.
Editor’s Note
Kanahoma is an education marketing agency based in San Diego, California. We live, work, and play at the intersection of beautiful brand creative and effective direct response marketing.
You can learn more about what we do and how we do it at Kanahoma.com.
Wishing you all the best,
Seth