Stress and well-being are huge talking points in businesses right now, and yet so few people seem to know what they are dealing with, let alone how to manage it.

In nature, if an animal is under a perceived threat from a predator, chemicals are released by the brain to elicit the ‘fight or flight’ response. The animal then becomes super aware of three things: its body, its environment, and the time it has to get away or fight.

Most perceived threats are created in our mind

The human brain responds to perceived threat in the same way; the only difference is most of the perceived threats are created in our mind. We worry about what has happened and what might happen, rather on what is actually happening. We are scared of losing our job, the presentation we have to do, the car breaking down, getting deeper into debt, or our children not succeeding at school. We are literally triggering our stress response and throwing ourselves into a state of overwhelm. We are letting fear dictate how we live our life, and how it affects our work.

Stress isn’t actually the problem; after all it is just the body’s response to survival. The issue is our perception of danger. There isn’t actually a sabre-toothed tiger in the office or classroom, but the brain doesn’t know that. We are telling it there is a life-threatening problem when there isn’t.

If we keep going into stress mode, we flood the body with chemicals and force ourselves into a state where we are not functioning at our best. This, in turn, can create greater levels of fear and distress. Over time we literally hardwire these stress triggers into the body and start seeing more symptoms of frustration, irritation, anxiety, anger, confusion, weight gain, weight loss, heart problems, etc. We may even start labelling these symptoms as depression, chronic anxiety, post-traumatic stress, dyslexia or OCD.

Live with a ‘creator’ consciousness

So, what is the answer? What we need to do is stop being so scared of what might happen, and rather decide what we want to happen, and then become the person who makes that happen. If we believe we are at the mercy of our life, we are living with a ‘victim consciousness’ and what we really need to do is live with a ‘creator consciousness’.

Our thoughts and beliefs literally shape our lives, so we need to be able to identify what we believe and then consciously change our beliefs one at a time. Instead of reacting to life and feeling like a victim, we need to feel like a creator. Instead of looking to the past we need to look to the future, and become the person who makes it happen.

We need to stop focusing on symptoms and start looking towards what we want to achieve and then get the help we need to start changing our thoughts one belief at a time.

It’s time to let the sabre-toothed tiger go, so we are free to create something better.