Unhealthy stress costs companies untold billions of dollars in sick time, lost productivity and staff turnover. At the personal level, stress causes us to sabotage relationships, overeat, underperform and die young.

No wonder hundreds of scientists, psychologists, doctors and other professionals study stress at both the macro and micro levels.

One of the key factors in someone’s ability to manage stress is their perceived level of control in the situation. Someone who feels like they can either control the outcome or their own response to the outcome is usually much better equipped to handle higher levels of stress than others.

Yet, most of us are actually quite bad at recognizing what we really can control and what we cannot. And even though we intuitively know we can’t control others, we try to anyway.

That’s where we get messed up.

So, I’ve tried a different tactic. On days when my sense of control is completely out of whack, I engage another level of my personality, and that is the level of curiosity.

When I’m feeling stressed about what I think is going to happen next and cannot find my way to personal control, I simply say “I don’t know, lets find out.”

These six words, succinctly explained in the book “Embracing Uncertainty”, create a very powerful phrase that dismisses control and engages our natural state of curiosity. It releases the need to manage a situation, that is often unmanageable anyway, and simply allows us to be inquisitive.

Action
– How will this technique work for you next time you feel stressed? I don’t know, let’s find out!

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