For many workers, simply getting an email from their boss after hours is enough to spark anxiety.
Physically tensing up or emotionally reacting to small stressors could mean your mind and body are processing minor events with as much energy as you’d need to respond to major stress, according to Jamie Wood, CEO of biotechnology company Autonomic.
But Wood — whose company offers users “neuroscience-based coaching” and technology to help people analyze their daily habits and work toward goals like reducing stress or improving focus — says you can decrease work stress and free up your mental energy by remembering a simple, five-word phrase.
Next time your anxiety begins to bubble up, ask yourself — either out loud or in your head — “Is this truly life-threatening?” Wood recommends.
“When you ask yourself this reflective question, then what happens is your brain moves from automatic reactions to calm evaluations,” Wood says. “It makes it easier to relax,” she says, and can help you “think clearer, solve problems and manage your emotions.”
Calmly asking yourself questions can shift your thinking into your prefrontal cortex, your brain’s rationale center, and out of your amygdala, where you process emotions, Wood explains. Taking that conscious step is important, because it can also help you save up more mental energy for other goals or obligations later in your day, she adds.
“By asking [that question] what we’re actually doing is challenging ourselves to really ask, ‘Does the situation warrant me to exhaust myself?’ Likely, no, it doesn’t,” Wood says. “‘Does the situation warrant me to react in the same way I would if I saw tiger walk across the street?’ Absolutely not. Let’s save your energy for actual tigers.”
If you notice you are regularly having to redirect your thoughts to quell your anxiety, it may require some deeper thought or practice to change your behavior long-term, experts tell CNBC Make It.
Don’t try to talk yourself out of feeling badly, and instead, take time to figure out what your nervousness could say about your values, says David Rosmarin, an associate psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School. You may be nervous about a mistake you made at work because professionalism and growth are important to you.
To process your anxiety, try writing about the problem, how it makes you feel and any resulting behaviors to build self-awareness, adds Luana Marques, an associate psychology professor at Harvard Medical School. If you’re anxious about that error at work, you may be obsessively rereading or avoiding an email from your boss.
After writing about how the situation has made you feel, take small, actionable steps to move forward, like responding to the email or reaching out to your boss for feedback on how to improve, Marques says.
Wood founded Autonomic after her own experience with mental health challenges, she says. After early stints working at a bank and an investment fund, she says she “suffered from a significant burnout” in her late 20s that prompted her to change the course of her career.
“I dealt with insomnia, [felt] lots of fatigue, then experienced a real lack of drive, which was really new to me,” Wood says. “I was so used to having a goal, working toward it,” she says. When she was burning out, “it felt like somebody took the dial on my life and turned it to grayscale.”
Learning mindfulness tactics, like redirecting her thoughts and being more intentional about where to focus her mental energy, helped her recover, she says. Now, she has a stringent morning routine, which includes not looking at her phone for at least 30 minutes after waking up, having a warm glass of water with lemon or peppermint, then lightly exercising for five minutes to prepare her brain for the day.
Her other favorite method to destress at the end of a long day: Wood lays with her back on the floor with her legs up on the wall at a 90-degree angle, she says.
“It’s actually one of the quickest ways to activate the parasympathetic nervous system,” she says, adding that she likes to do it for six to eight minutes without looking at her phone.
“A lot of times people don’t realize that you don’t need a lot of time, you don’t need to go to a special class, you just need the intention to [take care of yourself] for a couple of minutes,” she adds.
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