Solopreneurs, Do You Want to Conquer Stress? Walk Away!

T his was written by Jen Waak, who pens a monthly health column for The Solopreneur Life.

Twenty minutes until you have to leave the house, and you HAVE to get that proposal/report/design/copy over to your client. You can feel yourself getting agitated, and you know you are no longer doing your best work. What is an overstressed solopreneur to do? Walk away!

While completely counterintuitive, standing up and walking away from your work relaxes the body and calms you down.

In just minutes you’ll be able to return to your desk in a more relaxed and productive frame of mind and be ready to finish up.

Structurally, the body’s response to something unpleasant is to curl up to protect itself. Think about how you would react if you think someone or something is going to hit you. You put your hands up to protect your face and head, slump your back a bit and probably bend slightly at the knees and hips. Your body goes into flexion when “survival mode” kicks in.

Along with the structural response, there is the systemic and physiologic response: your heart rate goes up, your breathing rate increases and your blood pressure climbs. Among other things, survival mode also decreases blood flow to the rational part of your brain—which is the opposite of what we want to have happen! While a looming deadline isn’t the same as a physical threat, this response is left over from the caveman days—and the body isn’t smart enough to know the difference.

Now, think about the position your body is in while you are at the computer. Most likely you are sitting, so there’s hip flexion, knee flexion, elbow and shoulder flexion, and, if you are slouching in your chair, spinal flexion. It sounds like the structural survival response, doesn’t it?

Eliminate the “Under Siege” Signals

So, now you are stressed by the deadline AND your body is in a position similar to the one we go in to during survival mode. By sitting at the computer and worrying about the deadline, your brain continues to think you are in a crisis, so it continues to release more of the hormones that decrease blood flow to the brain, and the problem gets worse.

By standing up and walking away, the body reverses the physical response, eliminating some of the “under siege” signals. Movement also does all sorts of great things for your creativity and productivity that I will talk about in future columns, but any sort of stretching or getting out of the chair is going to change the body’s physical response to the deadline.

Just remember, you will still need to come back and finish your work. But when you sit back down, you will be much more focused and finish the work considerably faster than if you had sat there the whole time.

If you are ready to dig in to being a healthy solopreneur, jump over to my site for early-bird notification of my eight-week “Being a Super Productive Keyboard Athlete” teleclass–starting next month. You’ll be the first to know the course details and have the first opportunity to register (I limit the class to 10). I know some people want more guidance than I can provide in a monthly blog post, so my teleclass has Q&A time, worksheets, 1:1 coaching, and a limited class size to make sure everyone gets their questions answered. Not ready for that? Totally cool. Stay here and get lots of great content for free.

Jen Waak is a Seattle-based Health and Movement Coach who believes that having a healthy, pain-free body is the critical first step towards being a happy, successful individual. She does small group and one-on-one coaching with health-focused individuals around the world who understand that being healthy is more than eating right and exercising. When she isn’t helping others achieve their physical goals, she can be found traveling the globe (summiting Kilimanjaro in September 2010 is next), hanging out with her dog, and reading just about anything she can get her hands on. You can read more health and fitness tips from her at www.movefitfun.com/blog.