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Take a Deep Breath

The worst thing about stress is that it can accumulate and cause a good deal of damage to the body, mind, and emotions. Can we have more control over the way we deal with it? By understanding the physical responses to stress, you can get better control of your stress level. If you're not taking care of yourself, you can't care for your customers and the manifestation of your stress with negatively affect your relationships with customers.

The plane was late, the software is malfunctioning, there's static on the phone (again.) The clerk in the store was cranky, the server got my order wrong and the train came just as I approached the railroad crossing, making me late for the appointment.

Let's face it, stress is everywhere and it's become a permanent part of our lives. The day-to-day challenges of taking care of customers, family and other obligations can take its toll if we don't have a strategy for dealing with it.

The worst thing about stress is that it can accumulate and cause a good deal of damage to the body, mind, and emotions alike. The question becomes "Do we have to be a victim of our stress, or can we have more control over the way we deal with it?"

In my own life, I have found that by understanding the physical responses to stress I have been able to get better control of my own stress level (and thereby have more energy). Remember, if you're not taking care of yourself, it's real hard to take good care of those customers!

Do you remember when someone (probably your mother) told you to take a deep breath, and count to ten before getting angry or flying off the handle? It was GOOD advice. Why is that? Our bodies have an internal mechanism that almost always overreacts to anything we perceive as "bad" or "wrong". Counting to ten and breathing deeply gives you time to slow down this mechanism, an automatic process known as the "fight or flight response."

The fight or flight response is a very handy (and life preserving) thing to have in situations of real danger because it shuts down some of your normal functions such as digestion, assimilation of nutrients, the fighting of infections and other internal processes. It rushes blood to your skeletal muscles around the arms and legs and floods your body with stimulants like adrenaline. This was mighty helpful when we lived in caves and our lives where threatened by very real danger like wild beasts each and every day.

The Fight or Flight response (named after the choice our cave brethren had - either fight the beast or run away) is an automatic physiological response to danger whether real or perceived. It's been a very essential tool to the survival of our species, those with a very weak response became dinner for the beast, those with the strongest flight or fight response ate the beast for dinner. And so we evolved...

Daily need to fight for our lives, in a physical sense, has diminished quite a bit over the years, but our bodies, so well programmed for survival in the wild, now react to almost any perceived negative occurrence (yes, even an upset customer, or missing the budget deadline) by producing the same fight or flight response and its ensuing physical chemicals and changes. This is damaging to the body, the mind, and the emotions. We don't actually have a use for these chemicals while we're sitting there in the office!

To complicate matters just a little more, when the response is triggered the mind begins to look for additional danger (like more beasts; isn't nature wonderful?) It looks for additional things 'wrong' with the situation, and it filters out what is right. It begins to literally look for "wild beasts", because our lives used to depend on us finding the beasts before they found us. Getting the picture? (If you are a police officer, fire fighter or game show contestant, it's still a pretty handy reflex, the rest of us how ever, need it less frequently)

During especially busy or challenging times when we are all prone to being a bit more stressed than usual, it's important to know and understand how to control our own stress levels. I find it very helpful to remind myself that this "short fuse" that I sometimes experience is really just a well-evolved (I always said I was a "survivor" personality) physical response. I take comfort in knowing that if I ever did have to run for my life, my body will respond well.

In the meantime, I have to remember that when I start feeling that adrenaline surge through my body, and I feel my heart beating faster, I am actually damaging my body by suppressing my own immune system, blood cell production, healing and other vital functions (not to mention aging myself prematurely.) All this because the plane was late?

I take a deep breath, count to ten, look for something positive in the situation to focus on and remind myself that I'm not fighting wild beasts today!

So, why not take 10 seconds, breathe deeply, and remember to choose your responses carefully? It's good for you, it's good for your co-workers and it's good for your relationships with your customers. Here are a few other things you can do when you feel yourself in fight or flight:

Get up and move around - burn off some of the energy go out the stairwell and run up and down the steps a few times.

Visualize yourself in a calm, serene place (I always see myself walking on a long deserted beach.) Take a mental vacation!

Drink a cool glass of clean water and feel the cells in your body getting refreshed.

Stretch your limbs. Reach high into to sky and then touch the earth. Do a spinal twist at your desk. Stretch your neck gently from side to side.

Bring to your mind a person, situation, food, place or activity that you love. Vividly remember a time when you felt love and appreciation. Feel it now. Take your mindful energy and focus it on the area around your heart when you do this.

You get the picture! Choose a better response! Break the link between stimulus (the sound of your bosses footsteps in the hallway) and response (blood pumping, heart racing.) Breathe, deeply, count to ten and prepare yourself for a calm, easy, rational response.

It takes practice, but all these things help to keep you stress level down and organs from wearing out too early in life. Want to stay young, and healthy? Learn to get stress on your side!

Take good care of yourself and your customers,

JoAnna Brandi

JoAnna Brandi is the author of books such as "Winning at Customer Retention - 101 Ways to Keep 'em Happy, Keep 'em Loyal, and Keep 'em Coming Back" and "Building Customer Loyalty - 21 Essential Elements in ACTION."

A Speaker and consultant, she is publisher of the bi-weekly Customer Care Tips Bulletin. To receive her free bi-weekly tips bulletin, sign up at www.returnonhappiness.com. You can also reach JoAnna at 561-279-0027 or e-mail joanna@customercarecoach.com.