4 Ways to be 1% Less Stressed Each Day

It’s 6:05AM. Your alarm screeches as you slap around to silence it.

With bleary eyes you glance at your phone beside your pillow.

Yikes, 37 new messages.

Before your feet even touch the cold floor, you hastily scan through overnight updates on patients, shift change updates from coworkers and a slew of other pending issues demanding your attention.

Stress clenches your stomach before the day even starts.

You sigh thinking, “And so it begins.”

Sound familiar? Chances are, this is your reality.

Unfortunately, you’ve normalized feeling overwhelmed. The pressure builds from nagging unease to pervasive anxiety to full blown distress and burnout.

Digging Out of Burnout

Studies suggest up to 60% of doctors and nurses report symptoms of chronic stress and emotional exhaustion (Shanafelt, 2012). This persists as ACCEPTABLE, yet carries devastating personal and professional consequences.

Luckily, there is a way out of the dark hole of burnout.

The solution lies in skillfully managing your emotions and mental state. And emotional intelligence (EQ) offers a powerful set of tools to transform your stress overload into a calmer you.

1. Self-Awareness
2. Emotional Self-Regulation
3. Empathy
4. Relationship Management

Boosting your emotional intelligence reduces your stress and compassion fatigue.

Train Your Brain to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence

You can deliberately counter negative emotional reactivity with new responses — essentially sculpting new neural pathways in your brain through repetition.

For example, when receiving harsh words from an irritated patient, instead of reflexively becoming defensive or avoidant, you could:

• be more self-aware by better understanding your emotional reactions and how they are perceived and interpreted by your patient.
• be more emotionally regulated with ways to stay calm and clear-thinking even when patients are acting irrationally or disrespectfully.
• purposefully tap into some empathy by considering extenuating circumstances contributing to your patient’s emotional reaction.
• challenge your own distorted thinking by asking “How might others see this situation differently?”
• master active listening as an intentional way to allow your patients to express their views and feel seen and heard.

Become 1% Less Stressed

Now journal all of the things that stress you out during your day.

What is there, like 100 things that happen daily — both personally and professionally — that stir you up emotionally and drain your energy?

Each day, choose just one thing that stresses you out and become more emotionally intelligent about it.

Become more self-aware, emotionally regulated, empathic, and master healthy communication to strengthen your relationships. Just on that one stressful thing.

And then the next day, find one more thing that stresses you out and become more emotionally intelligent about that.

With practice, boosting your emotional intelligence in small daily doses becomes automatic and you’ll feel your stress disappear.

Embrace Accountability

It’s simple, but not easy, to change your emotional reactions to things to reverse your compassion fatigue and bounce back from burnout.

Having an accountability partner helps you stay focused and be able to become emotionally smarter each day.

Together, you can boost your EQ and become 1% less stressed each day.

Or you can work with a coach. Together you target the emotions, thoughts and behaviors most responsible for your stress.

Sculpting more regulated, empathic and conscious responses in high pressure situations is challenging to do alone. But with consistent guidance, you can reduce your feelings of burnout quickly.

So are you ready to start chiseling away at your stress overload one small, empowering change at a time?

Join 577 other healthcare professionals and caregivers working to reverse compassion fatigue and bounce back from burnout.

Get your FREE guide — 5 Unique Ways to Avoid Burnout and Reignite Your Passion