How to Easily Reduce Stress and Become Happier as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Feeling overwhelmed by stress? What if you could stop it from spiraling out of control before it even begins?

In today's episode, we dive into a profound Buddhist parable that sheds light on how we often magnify our own stress. We explore how the initial stressor, or "first arrow," can be compounded by unnecessary worries and self-judgment, creating multiple "arrows" that intensify our suffering. This episode is particularly relevant if you're grappling with workplace challenges, personal setbacks, or simply seeking ways to manage stress more effectively.

By listening, you'll discover:

• How to identify and address the additional layers of stress you impose on yourself.
• Practical steps to break free from the cycle of amplified suffering by focusing on what you can control.
• Effective techniques for cultivating self-compassion and reducing self-judgment, leading to a more resilient mindset.

Tune in to learn how to keep your stress in check and reclaim your peace of mind!

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

 Full Podcast Transcript:

How you are compounding your own stress levels and what you can do about it on today's quick quote episode.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello and welcome my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leaders. I hope you're having a wonderful week. I have been getting a lot of requests lately for episodes around how to decrease stress levels. How do I become more resilient? How do I manage my own stress? And so I thought this would be great for today's episode because I found a Buddhist parable, which I think really captures how sometimes we are our own worst enemy when it comes to our stress. How sometimes we actually amplify our own stress and we may not even be aware of it. So this particular parable in Buddhism is called the second arrow parable. And it was supposedly told by Buddha himself.

So it goes like this.

You are walking in the woods and suddenly you get struck by an arrow. Someone fires an arrow at you and it hits your arm. And it really, really hurts. It's very painful. And you feel that physical pain in your arm and it's bleeding. And then immediately your mind starts to think, oh my goodness, what's going to happen.

What if I bleed to death? What if this is infected and I can't walk back properly? Or I lose the energy and I can't get back to my family? What's going to happen to my family? What's going to happen to my husband, my wife, my children, what's going to happen to me or what's going to happen to their future?

How will they be doing? That's the end of the parable. And how does this apply to you? I mean you're probably thinking, oh my gosh, what is this story about an arrow and walking in the woods and what? So basically, the first arrow. Is the actual physical arrow that strikes us, right?

We're walking in the woods. We get struck by an arrow and we feel pain. We feel physical pain and it hurts. But what the second, third, fourth, maybe fifth arrows are that happen is all of the thinking and suffering that we compound or re add to that by starting to think about what's going to happen now?

What about my family? What if I bleed to death? Like all these things that haven't even really happened yet. But that our brain tends to offer us in these types of situations. We start going into all the different things that could happen because of this one moment that we don't even know will happen. But is a kind of a natural, sometimes reaction to something bad, quote on quote, bad happening to us. So in your work or your life, this might be something like as a leader things that happen such as maybe your best team member resigns suddenly, or there's a natural disaster in the area where you were doing a project. Or maybe a donor denies your funding extension request. Or maybe you are denied a promotion. Whatever it is.

There's so many things that we could label as bad. Which would be the first arrow in that scenario. Right? It would be the first thing that happens that makes us feel something bad. But what happens is a lot of times just like in the story we add many other arrows or we compound our own suffering by thinking about all the other things that could happen, which haven't happened yet.

So for example, if our team member suddenly resigns we might start blaming ourselves that that happened, thinking that we should have done more to make them happier. So they would have stayed longer. Why did I not see this coming? Might be another thought that you have. Or now, what are we going to do?

Because this is going to impact the project is going to take so long to find another person! And you see all of these thoughts. And this is something that I teach in my course, "Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader" I teach you that our thinking creates our feelings. When we have a thought, for example, Such as "this is going to negatively impact our project", that's going to create a feeling of anxiety.

And so even though that hasn't happened yet, That mere thought, just us thinking about this, just us shooting the second arrow at ourselves, is compounding our own stress levels. And so we become our own worst enemy in that sense. So we're not only reacting to the initial arrow of losing a team member, right?

The initial pain or initial point of suffering. But we amplify and shoot ourselves with so many additional arrows of all the other things that could happen or the self judgment or the blame and the shame and so on. Things that only compound and add to our own suffering, but are not necessary.

So, first of all, I just want to say that this is a very natural human response.

And it's something that I still catch myself doing, and sometimes I don't catch myself doing, but. When I realize, and this is something that you can, you know, do for yourself, but when you realize that you start feeling something negative. That you would call negative feeling and then you start thinking and obsessing about it and stressing over it and amplifying it so that the feeling gets bigger and bigger.

Your stress level gets bigger and bigger. When you notice that that is the first stop, right? It's just being aware of how you might be amplifying your own suffering by adding all these additional levels to the initial thing that happened. So that's the first step. When you start to feel really stressed or really like a really strong negative emotion asking yourself, how am I compounding this?

How am I amplifying this? What is the original point of suffering? The original arrow? And what are all the other arrows that I'm adding to this that have not even happened yet? I'm striking myself with them, but there are things that might not even occur in the future, but I'm still feeling suffering because I'm just thinking them.

And like I said, thoughts create the feelings. So the second step is then to stop and just be curious about it and really just feel whatever it is that you're feeling. And notice how it is impacting you. So stopping and noticing will help you to get out of this amplifying or spinning cycle and help you to take a step back. And really look at this more rationally and be curious about it.

Right? So when we notice our feelings. A lot of times what happens is that they start to fade. They start to decrease rather than increase. They start to decline. And the reason is because some times when we ignore our feelings or we just put them aside, it also actually is a way of amplifying them. So number one, noticing when you're feeling this strong emotion and that you might be amplifying it.

Number two, being curious about it, noticing where it is you're feeling in your body, or just sitting with it, maybe taking a walk, whatever it is that you need to do, but just noticing it, not ignoring it. And then you can be curious about how this is impacting you. Like, is it true that we could have done more to make our team members stay? Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe they would have resigned eventually anyways. And is it true that the project will now be impacted? Well, yeah, it probably will, but what can we do about that? So getting more into a rational mindset of now, what can we do rather than just spinning out and all of these things that we feel are beyond our control.

A lot of things that I tell my students and the focus of coaching is what's within your control? Let's focus on that so that you feel empowered to be able to take action. And when you feel empowered and you feel in control, you're going to naturally decrease your stress level. So maybe even writing down some of these things, these additional arrows that you have, these fears, these worries that you have and addressing them rationally can help you overcome and decrease your stress level.

So once again when something you label as bad has happened to you, that initial arrow, something strikes you, it makes you feel some kind of negative emotion or pain.

And when you start to feel stress or anxiety, this is a good time to pause and ask yourself "how many additional arrows have I shot myself with, how much am I amplifying my own pain through all the worries, all the things that have not happened yet but that I am thinking about, or even through my own self judgment?"

So the first step is to notice that is happening in the way we are amplifying our suffering. Then stop and be curious about the feelings. The feelings and the thoughts that we are having, which are causing it and amplifying it, and then rationally going through them to see which ones are valid.

And which can we do something about what is within our control? And then finally being aware of our own self judgment. This is another way that we shoot ourselves with arrows. Any time that we judge ourselves, we are compounding our own suffering without any reason to. I know sometimes you think that self judgment is what motivates you.

What's makes you take action. But there are other ways of motivating yourself, which don't require beating yourself up. I promise you it's an option if you want to choose it. So being aware of your self judgment is also a great way of decreasing your stress level. And instead of judging yourself, actually having compassion for yourself, I mean, how would you treat or approach a child that has made a mistake unintentionally? You have no control over your team member resigning. So to blame yourself in one way or another for it is not going to help you. Maybe there was something that you did or said that caused them to resign.

However, It's not going to help you to judge yourself or blame yourself for it. What will help you is to think about what you can learn from it going forward and what you want to do differently in the future. All right I want you to think about how can I over the next week, notice more when I have that negative feeling, stress or anxiety, worry, whatever it is. Stop and notice that and ask yourself am I amplifying my own suffering?

And if you are, what can you do about it to rationally address some of the fear, the worry, anxiety that you have so that you can diminish it? And even just being aware of when you're doing this will automatically make it decrease.

Notice that this week, have compassion be curious about your emotions, about where they're coming from, about how you might be amplifying your own stress levels, but don't judge yourself for it. This is a natural human response. All right. And next week I want to share a study with you which says that simply thinking about your own level of busy-ness will prevent you from being a caring leader. Until then keep evolving bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?" You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz,. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz, and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it.