Article Details

Personal pressure points

What you will get: A change to reflect on the connection between awareness, pressure, stress and performance

 

“So Where’s Your PPP (Personal Pressure Point)? ”

 

Human beings need pressure.

 

Without pressure we get bored.
Without pressure we lose motivation.
Without pressure we are not pushed to learn and experience new things.

 

But be warned – too much pressure is dangerous.

 

You see…

 

We all have a Personal Pressure Point (PPP).
And when we reach this point and pressure continues to build, we start to see negative consequences.

 

We start to get irritable.
We start to lose concentration.
We start to forget things.
We make promises we can’t keep.
We lose patience.
We have trouble “switching off “ from work
Our sleep suffers.
We get digestive problems.
Headaches and back pains start to appear.
Our decisions become more black and white.
We start to lose creativity.
Motivation drops.
Energy drops.
The list continues…

 

And here’s the tricky party…

 

All have us have a very different PPP.
It depends on your personality, your culture, your values, your emotional intelligence, your emotional resilience, your fear of change, your levels of flexibility, your sense of perspective and much more.

 

So what can we do about this?

 

Well the first step for is to develop self worth.

 

Without self worth, even when you realise you are suffering from stress (or too much pressure), you may do nothing. At a deeper, subconscious level you may feel “I am not worth it”

 

So ask yourself, “how much do I truly, like, value and accept myself?”

 

Then you need a high level of self awareness.

 

An awareness of how you are feeling psychologically and physically. If you don’t develop this, you will miss the warning signs our body and brain send you, telling you that you have gone past your PPP and are creeping into the danger zone.

 

For example…

 

Have you ever been typing so hard and so focused on an urgent task, then you finally finish and realise your back or fingers are aching?

 

You probably had low self awareness during the task – your back has been aching for a while!

 

OK, so you develop your sense of self worth.

 

You develop your self awareness, becoming more conscious of how you are feeling more of the time.

 

Now and only now are you ready to become a master of your own work life balance and stress management.

 

Now you can take action, and change things, when you start to go past your own PPP.

 

And remember – you ALWAYS have a choice to change things, even if it may seem that you don’t

 

And what’s this got to do with leading teams?

 

Well first of all, there’s awareness.

 

You see…

 

If you are going to become more aware of others, first you have to become more aware if yourself.

 

Why?

 

Because when assessing how others feel, we use ourselves as the diagnostic tool. So unless you are familiar with the signs of stress in yourself, it is highly unlikely you will be able to read those signs well in others.

 

And then of course there is Gandhi.

 

What was it he said?

 

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”

 

So there’s no point in in telling your team to manage their work/life balance, energy and stress if you don’t do that yourself.

 

It’s like telling someone they are a coward for not taking a parachute jump, even though you are too scared to do it yourself.

 

So now it’s over to you. You are the only person in this world that can become a master of your PPP and keep yourself in the optimal performance zone.

 

Are you ready for peak performance?

 

Your success partner

 

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Steve Neale
“Europe’s Leading Expert on Personal and Professional Growth”

 

Psychologist, Executive Coach, EI Practitioner, Award Winning Trainer, International Author, Psychodynamic Therapist, Hypnotherapist, Mindfulness Instructor, International Speaker, Creator of the LPS, Creator of the Accredited Masters in High Performance Leadership

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