Running Out of Gas
/‘Surge capacity’, ‘adrenal fatigue’, ‘burnout’, are buzz-words and phrases that have no physiological validity. There is no evidence that feeling tired is a sign of adrenal malfunction: the adrenaline that facilitates action just keeps on being produced. The real meaning of surge capacity is in fact the reserve of hospital health care resources that can be called upon in emergencies, when up to 50% more patients than normal might need treatment.
The desire to describe quite simple things in a more trendy way seems insatiable – have you noticed that it’s no longer sufficient to just be excited, you have to be ‘super-excited!’ – but hijacking concepts and transforming them into yet more psychobabble is not helpful. A way to resolve the confusion is to draw a clear distinction between practical and physiological processes on the one hand, and emotional responses on the other. Sustained demand uses a lot of energy, which does need to be replenished – after a hard game of rugby, you need to eat, drink and sleep – but just stick with the game metaphor for a moment. The losing team is despondent, the winning team has expended just as much energy, but they’re elated!
The difference between the teams is emotional, not energetic, but that emotional effect is significant. It also varies from player to player. Those amongst the losing team who have to win at all costs will be grudging and critical, those who’d prefer to win but love playing the game won’t be. Being a bad sport is toxic, and the principle applies to work teams too: in the Challenge of Change Resilience Training®, those we call toxic achievers see any means as justifying the ends, and get angry when things don’t work out the way they’d like them to.
Being a good sport also means developing another of the Challenge of Change skills, which is letting go. Remember the last time you had an argument that you lost, then spent the next week or so re-running it over and over in your mind, magically ending up winning every time? You lost. That’s how life is, win some, lose some, time to move on. You can learn from the experience, but churning isn’t learning.
In the Challenge of Change we call churning rumination, and this is what stress is: endless what-ifs and if-onlys, what Mark Twain called the worst things in his life that never happened. This is not problem-solving. All it leads to is feeling angry or upset again and again, caused by nothing more than negative thoughts.
The training programme distinguishes between pressure and stress. Pressure is a demand to perform, and starts the moment you wake up. Pressure provokes the adrenaline needed for action, sustained action uses energy and we eventually feel tired. Take a break or sleep on it and you’re ready for more, but if you transform the pressure into stress by adding rumination there is no break: the activity just continues, driven by worry.
Our research has shown that rumination can have serious consequences for your health, not because you can ‘run out of adrenaline’ but because you can’t: rumination continues to provoke fight-or-flight, even when you’re supposed to be taking a break. Rumination overrides the break, preventing your body from recuperating and repairing. Here’s a good question to ask yourself when you wake up from the nightmare of rumination: did it help? This is a first step towards developing a resilient mindset.