How to Stay Cool, Calm and Collected When the Pressure's On

A Stress-Control Plan for Business People

Judith Newman

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 1993
• Print ISBN:
  9780814400401
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814424186
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Management

This book offers a systematic approach to dealing with a world that often seems a chaotic confluence of tough decisions, difficult situations, and combative people.

Pressures, problems, and conflicts are a fact of life, but the manager who can face problems head-on and deal with them calmly is way ahead of the game. Stress expert John Newman gives an antidote to stress and strain lays out a unique and powerful approach to making wise choices and taking actions that will put you in control of any situation. Once the author's "Command and Control" techniques are learned, they can be used again and again in all areas of life.

In How to Stay Cool, Calm & Collected When the Pressure's On, you will learn how to:

• destroy counterproductive, stress-producing habits
• adopt new, effective habits
• become mentally tough, emotionally in control
• communicate in a positive way

How to Stay Cool Calm & Collected When the Pressure's On provides checklists, quotes from stress conquerors, and an outline for a personal effectiveness plan. By carefully adhering to the book's principles, anyone can erase the ravages of stress and move on to a more productive attitude.

Part One

Your Current Approach: What’s Missing?

To achieve a breakthrough in how you approach problems, deal with stress, and produce desired results, it’s essential that you ask yourself these questions:

How is your current approach to dealing with problems and stress affecting your effectiveness, health, and happiness?

What is your current approach to dealing with problems and stress? What’s working? What’s not working? What’s missing?

What is the secret to being in control when dealing with problems and stress?

Once you have answered these questions, you will be in a great position to develop a Personal Effectiveness Plan that makes you far more effective, a lot healthier, and a whole lot happier. Part One helps you see yourself as a powerful person who has choices. You’ll learn that you can live in the proactive, create-your-own-life mode instead of a reactive, always-a-victim mode.

1

How Is Stress Affecting Your Success, Health, and Happiness?

They say a good scare is worth more than good advice. Pain is one way to get your attention, a crisis is another. To illustrate, here is a short story about Larry King (the radio and TV talk-show host) and the heart attack he suffered:

You have a heart attack, first thing you think is, “I gotta change my life.” You know that saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”? Well, you survive a heart attack and that’s it: the day after really is the first day of the rest of your life. What you don’t know is how long that life’s gonna be. All of a sudden, you gotta deal with the fact that you are going to die one of these days. Death becomes real. And if death is real, then you absolutely have to make the most of what time you’ve got.

In a way, if you have a heart attack and survive, you’re ahead of people who don’t have a heart attack—not that I’d wish this experience on anyone! But going through this forces you to really think about your life as almost nothing else does. It forces you to consider what’s important and what isn’t. And it gives you the chance to make changes and adjustments that you might otherwise never even realize you might want to make.*

In today’s turbulent business environment, all ambitious and hardworking executives, managers, and professionals face a constant barrage of problems and stress in their jobs and in their personal lives. Dealing with these pressures and frustrations is a major problem for most of them, including the brightest and most well-intentioned among them.

How are you handling the problems and stress in your life?

An executive once said to me, “I’m juggling about a dozen very important balls in the air. I enjoy the excitement and the challenge, but I’m working sixteen hours a day. I’m overweight. My blood pressure and cholesterol levels are high. I smoke and drink unthinkingly. I’m arguing more with my spouse, who also works full-time at a very demanding job. My teenage daughter was in a serious car accident two months ago. If I continue leading the stressful life I’m living now, it’s going to kill me.”

A manager from another corporation told me the uncertainty and insecurity of a recent merger, repeated reorganizations and downsizings, and the ever-increasing pressure to “do more with less” was finally getting to him. Formerly a strong, vibrant person, he now was experiencing health problems and was becoming disillusioned. He wanted some way t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Why You Need a Lifelong Plan for Handling Problems and Stress
• Part One: Your Current Approach: What’s Missing?
• Part Two: Your Very Own Command and Control Center
• Part Three: Choices That Will Definitely Help You Create the Life You Want in a Cool, Calm, and Collected Manner
• Part Four: Taking Action
• Index