The next step is to practice your personal anti-stress scene. Once again, begin at home after relaxing. Add to your scene, making it as vivid as possible. Practice the anti-stress scene until it becomes a familiar, soothing ally. Then you can call on it to combat your mental stress. Practice during your daily routine until you have made this scene part of your spontaneous behavior. Periods of "dead time" (riding the bus, waiting for an appointment, or standing on line) are a perfect opportunity to do this.
Using Your Anti-stress Scene
Your goal is to purposefully call to mind your anti-stress scene in order to disrupt stress-producing thoughts and images. Of course, the major hurdle is stopping the thoughts long enough to switch on your anti-stress scene. A method called thought-stopping can help. A simple experiment demonstrates how this works: Call up a stress-producing image and dwell on it for about 10 seconds, then pause for a moment and shout out "Stop!" Now repeat the experiment, only this time silently say "Stop!" If you are like most people, you will have probably lost your train of thought temporarily. This momentary disruption is what you want: You have created a brief blank period during which you can switch your attention to your anti-stress scene. You must do this purposefully, because if you don't, worrisome thoughts will probably return. The more you have rehearsed your anti-stress scene, the easier the switch will be.
When you first begin using thought-stopping during your practice sessions (and later during your daily routine), the stressful thoughts may intrude on your relaxing scene. Expect this-old thought habits are difficult to break. As soon as you become aware of the unwanted thoughts, shout "Stop!" again and return to your anti-stress scene and experience it actively.
Mentally Preparing for a Stressful Event
As I mentioned earlier, research studies have shown that mental rehearsal has an impact on performance. Consider the person who, in anticipation of an important promotion interview, imagines all the blunders he or she could make. Not only do such individuals generate stress (which is certain to be inhibiting), but they also mentally re hearse just those behaviors they least want to perform. With this in mind, you should mentally rehearse behaviors that maximize your chances of performing the way you want to. This kind of rehearsal is called the coping fantasy. Prepare yourself for stressful events by purposefully overcoming setbacks and performing adequately in your fantasy scenarios. For example, candidates for promotion should imagine themselves as being relaxed and making impressive responses to difficult questions during the interview. They should hear specific troublesome questions and hear themselves making actual responses.
Whenever you face a pending stressful encounter, use the thought-stopping procedure to close out images of failure. Then switch to a scene in which you cope with the event and perform the way you want to. Here, too, active participation is important. Hear the words you want to say and see the actions you want to perform.
Inoculating Yourself against the Stress of Unavoidable Losses and Setbacks
Every day, managers face decisions that involve potential costs and risks. Anticipating these losses, making a commitment, and then coping with the losses when they do materialize creates stress. The more critical the decision and the greater the potential loss, the more stress the decision maker is likely to experience.
Many managers cope with decision-related stress by refusing to think about unpleasant decisions that promise to bring future losses. They procrastinate or pass the responsibility for the decision to someone else. When these options are not available, they select the most acceptable solution and exaggerate its positive aspects. By doing this, they reduce stress temporarily, but later it will only become more intense when the feared negative consequences materialize. Too late the decision maker sees what could have been done to prevent or offset a serious setback. Irving Janis and Leon Mann, two decision making researchers, call this post-decisional regret. Ruminating over what you should have done creates stress and undermines self-confidence and esteem. In using your fantasies, you can develop foresight, by doing the following:
In the theater of the mind, project yourself into the future and imagine the positive and negative consequences of each decision alter native. When doing this you will probably notice an increase in tension, Use this helpful tension now to motivate yourself to seek out more information and better alternative actions that you can perform. Bring the post-decisional regret into the present before the decision.
For example, at 82, Frank’s father found that his health was declining rapidly, and it was obvious that he would soon die. Frank found this thought intolerable and avoided thinking about it. "He's a tough old bird. I know he'll get better. He'll pull through. He always does. There's nothing to worry about. I’ll see him at Christmas."
When Frank's father died five weeks later, Frank was distraught. For months he regretted his inaction. "If only I had gone home for my vacation," he thought. "I could have gone to Hawaii any time. I could have told him how much I appreciated all he did for me. Why didn't I write to him? He was alone and had only my letters to look forward to." Frank's depression interfered with his work dramatically, and he nearly lost his job. If Frank had projected himself into the future when he had first learned of his father's illness, he might well have made different vacation plans. And had Frank allowed himself in his fantasy to become familiar with the inevitable loss of his father, he would have been able to cope better with the event when it actually happened.
Often people make poor decisions because they are not sufficiently motivated to seek out better alternatives. As soon as they find an acceptable choice, they seize upon it without forethought about the possible negative consequences. Then, when faced with the real con sequences of poor decision making, they are tempted to renege on their commitment and reverse the decision. For instance, although Sally liked her job and her co-workers, she was impatient for promotion. When she began considering other positions, she received an immediate offer at a substantially higher salary. Elated, Sally accepted. She didn't think much about the fact that she would have to relocate. "I've always wanted to see the world. I've lived in this town all my life. Living in a big city will be exciting!" she told herself. But soon after starting her new job, Sally suffered intense regret. She was alone and friendless in a strange city and felt alienated from her new co-workers. In desperation she asked her old employer if she could return to her former position, but it had already been filled. Had Sally used mental imagery to explore her new job, she might have decided to continue her search until she found a suitable position in her home town.
This kind of "stress inoculation" procedure can improve the quality of your decisions and help you to adhere to your commitments. The procedure is particularly effective for any decision requiring you to suffer a short-term loss before you reap the long-term gains that constitute the main incentive for adopting that course of action. For example, Sally could have prepared herself for the social isolation she was about to experience by mentally rehearsing for it and developing a concrete plan of action to build a new social circle. By already experiencing in her mind the kinds of problems that would face her, she would have been more able to cope with the loss of her friends and probably would have suffered considerably less stress.
Of course, there are times when you must make a decision you don't want to make. By mentally rehearsing the consequences you can develop a plan of action for coping with unavoidable losses. A voter-mandated property-tax reduction meant that the community health center that Josette directed would suffer a dramatic drop in operating capital. Josette felt that she had no choice but to terminate several free services and to authorize staff salary cuts. She anticipated an outcry from clients and staff, and inoculated herself by mentally anticipating how she would handle them. She worked out a plan for presenting the cuts to the staff and community and for dealing with their anger. She then rehearsed this plan mentally. She reported that while she found the confrontations very unpleasant, she did not experience the magnitude of stress she had suffered in the past when she had to make other disagreeable announcements.
When you try this procedure, don't overdo it-remember, immunization is achieved through small doses. Restrict your stress inoculation session to only a few minutes, and at the end of each session use the thought-stopping procedure and your anti-stress scene to reduce your purposely induced stress.
