Lidia Dols: «People with a lot of stress make more mistakes»

For a long time, what we know today as work-related stress problems were seen as something completely natural, just another element of work.

Fortunately, there is now a growing awareness of issues related to mental health and it is no longer assumed that being overstressed at work is something we should normalize. In this interview we talk about it with Lidia Dols, creator of Gurumind.

• Related article: "Types of stress and their triggers"

Interview with Lidia Dols: How to reduce work stress

Lidia Dols is the creator of the meditation and Mindfulness content app Gurumind, as well as the stress management training program of the same name. In this interview, Lidia tells us about the effects of work stress and what can be done to "tame" it.

Is it assumed that stress is something that is totally beyond our control and that we must resign ourselves to suffering?

Unfortunately, the word stress has become too normalized in our vocabulary and without realizing it we have adopted it as something normal, without thinking about the serious consequences it can have.

In prehistory, when man was hungry and went out in search of food, the fact of having to confront animals or enter unknown places caused him stress, but that stress helped him find a way to survive and return home with the reward of the meal

Thus, stress is an automatic response of our body to circumstances that we feel difficult or threatening in our day to day.

In our current lives we do not have to face beasts, but our environment and way of life has evolved so fast that it has not given us time for our brain to adapt to the changes. Anything we perceive as stressful, our brain translates as: Danger! Danger! And at that moment our stress begins!

But it is not something that is beyond our control, nor do we have to resign ourselves to suffering it. Quite the contrary.

Why is work stress so normalized?

At one time, it was believed that people performed better with a certain pressure and subjecting them to a certain level of stress. On the other hand, the current circumstances are not helping us either. The rhythm of these times is very intense and frenetic.

Luckily, today, stressing the staff has been totally out of place, because it has been shown that the opposite is the right thing to do. You begin to be aware of reality and know that stress is synonymous with blockage. People with a lot of stress make more mistakes, and because of that, they feel more awkward. When they notice the loss of concentration capacity, they take more time to complete a task, so they automatically become less productive.

What are the main characteristics of discomfort due to the accumulation of work stress?

"Bad stress" leads us to feel anxiety, anguish, fear, burnout, insomnia, hatred, impatience, nervousness, anger, bad mood, feeling of inadequacy, lack of assertive communication... these are the first symptoms that are untie

And when making decisions, people with stress problems do not react adequately to external stimuli, they do not gauge the repercussions of the problem, and they do not value the problems in their fair measure, which causes these problems to intensify and join with others, increase the intensity or repeat themselves. All of this leads us to experience inappropriate or parasitic emotions, which are constantly repeated.

The person acts contaminated by his emotions, which form a chain and mix with other emotions existing, causing you to feel distorted reality that do not correspond to the intensity of the stimulus real.

If you don't pay attention to these symptoms, physical somatizations come later... And sick leave.

What are some of the lifestyle habits that, according to your perspective, allow you to manage work stress?

I work on seven aspects, but without a doubt, for me the most important is knowing how to breathe.

It may seem silly, because we all breathe, but when we are stressed, we change our breathing without realizing it. account and this leads us to modify ways of acting and feeling reality and ends up affecting our psychic health and physical.

Once we learn to breathe, we can move on to the other fields that, from my point of view and experience, need to de-stress.

At that moment, the work of training people to work without stress and be happier begins. Working: the mental, the creative, the physical, the emotional, the social, time management, and self care. Each one of them is essential to achieve the objectives to balance body, mind and environment, and to be able to face stress from all angles, as well enough to have some good tools that can be applied at any time, when detecting the slightest start of stress in our lives or in our environment

People who currently incorporate these trainings have a clear advantage in their quality of life and in their jobs.

Why meditation can change the way we experience work

Because it teaches us to put distance to see and observe things with perspective, so we can search much more decisive solutions than if we are blocked by stress and entangled with our own emotions.

We can observe our emotions without them dragging us like rag dolls…. We manage to feel more secure in our lives.

Beyond the individual benefits in the well-being of the person, what are the advantages of creating a company culture that helps workers to manage stress?

Stress directly affects productivity both in quantity and quality, and in possible sick leave of people. When a team is subjected to high levels of stress, its members automatically become less productive.

To understand it, when people's stress is managed, the happiness of each one increases. We feel happier, since that predisposes us to have more enthusiasm in our work, our life, our projects... To get more involved

It helps us to be more productive, decisive and creative… It helps us reduce bad moods. Work flows differently, communication is assertive and motivation is much higher. In addition, it potentially reduces the burnout of people and the "drain of talent" of companies.

And of course, physical somatizations decrease: muscle pain, headaches, vertigo, insomnia... And with it, sick leave is reduced.

So work teams where stress is managed work totally differently compared to teams where stress has never been managed.

Does it take a long time to learn how to handle work stress?

Generally, I teach how to remove it with eight hours of training, but then people have to apply what they learn. In general, they always do, because their quality of life improves qualitatively.

Just as we train our body, we must train our way of regulating stress, our breathing, our mind and our emotions... It is true that it helps to be proactive and start training as soon as possible! before!