Serenity Now, Insanity Later
Looking back at it now, I’m amazed at how much stress I was able to manage. Any given day or run down the bobsled track could lead to significant injury or even death. It’s something that is so extreme that if you thought about it every day, there’s no way you could function. Lastly, we looked at any stressor on the physical or emotional state of our bodies - which meant we needed to factor in a massage, travel, training, relationships, etc - literally everything we went through was part of the equation and monitoring.
At the same time, I really, really, really wanted to win and the pressure I put on myself could have cratered me like it does for a lot of athletes/entrepreneurs/leaders/anyone.
But I couldn’t let myself get stressed out, because stress could prevent me from getting better. Simple as that.
When you pile on the stress, you increase cortisol levels. And that means a decrease in testosterone, which means less strength and longer recovery time. And that could be the difference between winning and losing. So I treated stress like just another thing I needed to weed out in order to keep getting better.
Of course, when you’re in the “real world” (as we athletes call it), things are a little different.
For one thing, it’s unavoidable in the real world. When you’re training, many of life’s stressors are pushed aside. You’re protected, or you protect yourself… often with plenty of collateral damage.
Having a disagreement with your significant other and it’s bedtime because you need eight hours of sleep? Sorry, I care more about my sleep than our relationship’s current problem. Family Christmas? Not if it means travel and lesser training facilities.
(Shockingly, I was single, along with two of the other three guys, when we won our Olympic gold medal.)
But in real life, there’s lots of stressful stuff you can’t or shouldn’t avoid. Plus, sometimes stress does make us better. There are good kinds of stress that require us to act. (That’s why deadlines are a thing, after all.)
And then there’s the whole “Serenity Now, Insanity Later” thing. Remember that from Seinfeld? Pushing down the stress and pretending everything’s a-ok? Well, we saw how that turned out. (if you don’t remember - here ya go.)
So, the big question: how do we manage our stress better? Here’s what I’ve found useful.
First, I focus on the present. If something good happens, I try not to skip over it and immediately start worrying about the next problem. Because there are always going to be more stresses in our lives, and worrying about the next thing won’t help — but revelling in the good definitely will. If we can focus on the here and now, a lot of the stress and anxiety dissipates. This is very much against my nature, but I’m getting materially better at it and it makes a difference.
Second, I try to draw a line with myself around what stress I’m willing to take on, and what stress I’m not. I use my athlete mindset here: is this stress helping me get better? If not, I try to let it go. This means at times deciding I won’t touch work past 8pm and ensuring I have at least an hour+ of wind-down time.
I don’t do either of those things perfectly by any means, but they do help. Of the two, I find that returning to the here and now (over and over again) really helps.
Worst comes to worst, if you find yourself really stressing out over the holidays, you can always give George Costanza’s method a try and yell out “Serenity Now!” (But I wouldn’t recommend it, and neither would Loyld Brahn.)
- Steve
