Stress: listening for lightbulb moments

In light of Stress Awareness Month, Olivia Moore, our Careers and Wellbeing Manager, puts stress into perspective by highlighting the importance of listening to the lived experience of others. Olivia shares the conversations that have shaped her worldview and improved her resilience and reaction to stress.

I always appreciate recommendations, be it a podcast, book, restaurant or TV series. We are flooded with too many options in our world, so sometimes the act of someone doing the heavy-lifting of research is just what I need.

This Stress Awareness Month I have been listening to inspiring podcasts all focused on stress and resilience, with the aim of learning from the experiences of different people, reflecting on my own life, feeling motivated to make changes and think practically about how that could look.

These three podcasts are my recommendations to you. Hopefully at least one will encourage you to spend some time thinking about your own reaction to stress, levels of resilience and how your stress impacts others.  

E112: ROB BAXTER — High Performance

Best for… leaders and managers/ people who can apply the metaphor of sport to business/ understanding how to build a team culture in a challenging environment
Playing time: 57 mins

If I want a big hit of inspirational thinking, I always listen to this podcast hosted by Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes. This episode with Rob Baxter encourages us to approach stress and resilience from the oblique angle of sport. Rob Baxter is the Director of Rugby at English Premier League team Exeter Chiefs. As someone with a sporting background, I find the subject matter particularly easy to connect with, especially when it comes to performance, graft and resilience in a competitive environment. Even if you aren’t a sports fan, the parallels between the sporting and business worlds speak for themselves.

This episode covers a lot about building a high-performance culture, which in turn increases resilience and decreases stress. Rob talks about how to get people to work really hard consistently and feel invested in something bigger than themselves, non-negotiable behaviours for a team and how to lift people up from a knockback and look forwards. From a leadership point of view, he talks about how he has built his own resilience and manages the stress of a team, intense pressure of performance and feelings of being judged by others.

At just under an hour, it’s the perfect length to go out and listen on a long lunchtime walk.

How To Feel More In Control Of Life: A Revolutionary Approach to Stress, Relationships & Inner Peace with Mel Robbins
Feel Better, Live More / Stress & Anxiety / Dr Chatterjee 

Best for: people who have perfectionistic tendencies/ suffer from overwhelm/ understanding the symptoms of control issues and benefits of overcoming them
Playing time: 2h 10 mins

This an episode of my go-to podcast for anything health and wellness-related. The conversations are always deep and meandering and guests are always excellent, and this episode with Mel Robbins is no exception. She’s a straight-talking ex-lawyer who draws on the philosophical roots of some seemingly basic concepts but presents them in such a practical way that I couldn’t help feeling like I was being hit with lightbulb moments as I listened to this.  

One of the big themes is ‘radical acceptance’ which Mel explains is critical to our ability to regulate our own stress levels and maintain resilience. It’s often our overreaction to stress that causes a rollercoaster of hormones and emotions, which if left unchecked, means we can stay far too stressed for long periods of our life. While we can’t always control the outside factors, we can always control our own reactions. Mel argues this ability to stop ourselves being constantly buffeted around by stresses and emotions is an adult skill which many of us haven’t managed to adequately develop. For a leader or a manager whose reactions often have a heavy impact on others, stress regulation is particularly important to cultivate otherwise it will undoubtedly lead to poor relationships and colleagues that find it hard to work with you.

For me, the length of the episode is a plus, as it means there’s so much time for self-reflection. I’d almost liken it to a guided meditation to reflect on your own behaviours – something that can’t be rushed and ultimately, is really worthwhile.

How to Alleviate Stress in a S–The Legal Lounge from LBLaw.co.uk – Apple Podcasts

Best for… those wanting an introduction to stress, with a specific focus on the legal world.
Playing time: 40 mins

I came across this podcast by chance as I was looking for something that dealt specifically with the legal world. For anyone who is fairly new to thinking about stress in the workplace and wants some practical tips to take away, this is a good place to start.

This is a conversation between a Learning & Development Manager at a law firm and a Wellbeing Coach. In the episode they cover the stress-response in detail and give some practical advice on how and why you need to ensure you come out of the fight/flight/freeze reaction. They also talk about the fact it can be hard to recognise stress in ourselves especially if we become accustomed to it, but it’s critical to identify it and then find the right intervention to empty your ‘stress bucket’.

As this has a legal focus, they also speak about the natural response to taking on the emotional burden of complex cases as a solicitor but cautioning how to manage this and reminding us that we can only provide the best level of support and service to our clients by ensuring we look after ourselves first. With a practical note to end on, the episode includes a guided breathing exercise at the end to encourage you to get back into your body.