Pull the Plug on Stress

MGMT 443 Report, Due: September 16, 2014

Article

“Pull the Plug on Stress” By Bruce Cryer, Rollin McCarty, and Doc Childre. This article appeared in the July 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review pp. 102-107.

Overview of the Article

At the very beginning of the article, they talk about how stress has increased in work environments in the last 30 years, thus causing health care costs to increase for those who are stressed or dressed. These health care costs exceed the cost of those who have diabetes or even heart disease (both stress-related illnesses).

The authors tell a story about a guy named, Nigel, and how he learned special techniques for decreasing his body’s stress response within a few minutes. Basically Nigel was an older gentlemen who worked as an engineer for a global oil company. The company was going through a lot of pressure and they were also facing internal challenges, which was causing Nigel to become stressed and to have a negative effect on his performance. Nigel had a history of high cholesterol and high blood pressure, his physician told him that in order to treat his symptoms he needed to reduce his stress.

Freeze-frame is what Nigel was taught to do, to decrease his stress levels. When a scene in life becomes stressful, this technique allows you to freeze that particular point in time and isolate it so you can observe. There are five steps to the freeze-frame technique. 1. Recognize and disengage- take a time-out, sit back and disengage from your thoughts/feelings- like stressful ones. 2. Breath through your heart- shift your focus to your heart, feel yourself breathe in and out of the heart. 3. Invoke a positive feeling- take yourself to a happy place, a positive feeling. 4. Ask yourself, “Is there a better alternative?”- What would be an efficient/effective attitude or action that would decrease the stress in your system? 5. Note the change in perspective- Sense any change in perception/ feeling and sustain it as long...