UK Edition
Forget relaxing - use your stress to become a high achiever
Take a slow deep breath, puff out your chest like Superman and read this story. It might just save your life.
For one of Europe’s most eminent neuroscientists has devised a simple, four-point plan for channelling stress and turning it to one’s advantage.
Professor Ian Robertson’s “four-step brain hack to harness stress” is, he insists, based on scientific research beginning with step one: tell yourself you are excited rather than stressed.
Step two is breathe in slowly through the nose for five seconds and then exhale for six; while step three involves posing like a superhero, puffing out your chest and standing up tall.
Wearing a cape is not vital. Step four requires you to squeeze your right hand shut for 45 seconds, open it for 15 and then shut it again. Simple.
Prof Robertson, chair of psychology at Trinity College Dublin, founder of the university’s Institute of neuroscience and author of The Stress Test: How Pressure Can Make You Stronger and Sharper, said channelling stress into a positive energy can radically improve performance and creativity, making people brighter and quicker.
“Stress is a kind of energy that we can harness, “ said Prof Robertson.
His viewpoint is at odds with current thinking which has demonised stress, blaming chronic anxiety for everything from obesity to cancer and premature ageing.
Most psychologists and self-help guides encourage people to chase happiness, and steer clear of too much pressure. But Prof Robertson believes stress is important for achievement and teaches that it is possible to ‘hack’ the brain and hijack ‘fight or flight’ hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, before they cause problems.
His four-step guide, he says, is underpinned by science. Even step one in which a person feeling stressed should simply say out loud, perhaps only once or twice: “I feel excited.”
Prof Robertson said: “When you are facing up to a difficult situation and feeling anxious, it’s enough to say ‘I feel excited’ once out loud and that tricks your brain. It changes the mindset from ‘threat’ to ‘challenging’.”
Step two requires the person to control their breathing.
“By controlling breathing you can control the critical part of the brain and in that way exercise control over the emotional stage you are experiencing. When we are anxious, we forget to breath,” he said.
One tip: breathe in through the nose, nice and slowly.
The idea of step three - of striking a Superhero pose - might look odd in the street but, according to prof Robertson, it has been found to increase testosterone levels in both men and women.
That in itself is enough to make you feel more confident in the face of a stressful challenge.
The fourth and final tip is to squeeze the hand and then release it and repeat.
“Squeezing the hand gives a little boost to the brain. It increases activity in the left side of the brain. I always do it a few times before nerve-wracking presentations.”
Prof Robertson explained: “The stress hormone cortisol is a symptom of anxiety, but also excitement. When you are anxious or excited you can feel your heart going bang, bang, bang, and the same hormone affects you differently only depending on the context that your mind imposes upon it.
“If you are anxious cortisol will impede performance, but if you are excited, we know that it boosts performance. “There are so many little mind hacks we can use on the brain. It’s a programmable machine.”
According to Dr Robertson, stressful situations and life traumas can trigger incredible feats of creativity which allow people to achieve far more than they would have in happier times.
It is no coincidence that many of the greatest artistic endeavours emerged from bleak periods in an artist’s life.
It is thought that emotional upsets which trigger an emotional retreat in the mind activate the left side of the brain which allows for greater creative thought.
Conversely, people who never experience setbacks are often low achievers or become depressed.
Research has shown that people who grew up in buoyant economic times, with the assurance of a good education and job, tend to be more narcissistic and less happy than people who grow up during a recession.
“The wider economic and political environment moulds the personalities of people at this crucial period in their lives when their adult personalities and values are being formed,” said Prof Robertson.
“Tough economic times create people who tend to be more cautious, risk-averse and grateful for what they have got. The challenge of making a living in difficult times means they are less restless and more content with their lot.
“Good times can breed a restless striving for more of the same. Easy times create more unhappiness.”
Studies in the US have shown that the depression among young adults was far lower in the Great Depression of the 1930s than in the prosperous America of the 1990s in spite of high employment and good standards of living.
Over the past ten years the number of people taking antidepressants has rocketed, with prescriptions doubling to 61 million a year since 2005.
But Prof Robertson believe that it is possible to take back control of the mind.
“I want everyone to believe that they can control the most complex organ in the known universe, the brain.
“I do worry that we are over-medicating people because of a belief that we can’t control what is happening in our minds. We can impose the emotional state on a minds so that we can achieve what we want to achieve.”
