Stress is something we all have at some point, the difference is in how we deal with it. While it’s definitely easy to let stress slow us down or even cripple us when it comes to completing tasks. This week Fast Company published a story on stress and made a few great suggestions for dealing with it, one: navigate stress like a pilot.
The advice comes from Terry Lyles, who coaches professional athletes and people like NASCAR drivers on how to handle stress.
He argues that stress itself isn’t bad, instead it all comes down to how you interpret it.
For athletes, instead of “stress” he says they see “competition.” As for the pilot analogy, Lyles told Fast Company “A pilot takes off even if there are chances that the wind direction might change. They course correct to go from point A to point B. The same concept applies to any situation that can cause stress.”
That’s to say that you’re not going to be able to eliminate stress from your life, the key is figuring out how to navigate it. If you instead turn stress into a challenge then you can use it “like rocket fuel” to propel you forward rather than hold you back.