The Insidious Nature of Stress: Building Resilience in the Workplace for High Performance

Stress is insidious. It often operates quietly and below the radar. Our brain’s stress-response systems (for example the amygdala and its connectivity with the prefrontal cortex) can become activated repeatedly without our conscious awareness. There are simple ways to be resilient with stress through a regular mindfulness practice. Research shows that a breath-based attention process intervenes in those neurobiological stress-pathways and can enhance awareness of early warning signs of stress and improve well-being in organizational settings.

This article focusses on stress, its causes and actions required to protect mental health, increase wellness and well-being required for high performing organizations.

Stress comes from a myriad of places: The day-to-day challenges of meeting deadlines; the requirement to do more with less – whether it is time or resources; meeting personal family and financial commitments; digital encroachment; from the environment – the chemically infused food we eat, water we drink, the polluted air we breathe. All of this eats away at our wellness, well-being and mental health – gnawing at the joys of life.

That is because our natural stress response designed for survival in life threatening situations – fight, flight, freeze – is overkill for our non-physically threatening situations that are present in the modern techno industrial age. Our bodies and mind have not adapted to the new realities – where threats are perceived more in the mind – rather than dangers present and imminent to our physical selves.

Physiologically, the stress response floods in hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, and increases the heart rate and blood pressure to send the energy to the extremities of the body to physically defend yourself. This is overkill when a manager is giving some critical feedback – taking your mind to a place of fear and anxiety, thinking your job maybe at risk – or worse still, your body thinks you are going to die.

If that fear and anxiety remain, especially, if the sense of psychological safety is not present in terms of job security for instance – whether it is imagined or real – can give rise to chronic stress, undermining mental clarity, vitality, health and wellbeing.

Prolonged stress narrows your attention, causing you to lose perspective, context and insight for wise judgement, as the amygdala dominates on auto pilot, taking over from the center of reason – the prefrontal cortex responsible for emotional control, empathy, awareness, understanding and mental clarity – needed for good decision making. In essence, chronic stress fragments the harmony between body, mind, and spirit.

Cultivating Resilience in the Workplace

We then need to adopt a practice to become resilient – cultivating the capacity to withstand and recover quickly from difficulties. It is akin to toughness: to be able to adapt to life’s stressor and bounce back from adversity.

Resilience requires mental, emotional and behavioral flexibility to overcome, learn from and find balance in dealing with hardships of life, and to recover from the occasional big adverse events that can throw us off balance.

How to Build Resilience in 2 Minutes a Day

This is where daily mindfulness and exercise practice are important to restore balance and become resilient. By learning the practice to pause, breathe, and cultivate mindful awareness, the nervous system can reset, the body can heal, and the mind can once again see clearly.

Start with small changes in your daily routine to help build resilience to stressful circumstances.

If you do not have a regular daily practice, carve out some time for yourself either in the morning or at the end of the day. Morning is preferable as it sets the stage and a positive intention for the day.

Here is a suggested 2-minute practice for beginners to do for 21 days, to help form a habit:

1. Wake up five minutes earlier than your normal time.
2. Find a quiet place to sit away from the bed.
3. Put a timer on for 2 minutes, close your eyes and remain there until the alarm sounds. If your mind was racing all over the place, even egging you on to get up and walk away – it is even more important to sit for the 2 minutes, as this is the beginning of taming the mind.

As you sit there, be attentive to your mind and body, your thoughts, and any bodily sensations. That alone is helping you gain present moment awareness, which is what the practice is about – as the mind normally flits between the past and the future in a life of its own – often raising a feeling, emotion, and even causing stress.

Over a few days you may find it easier to sit and let go of the mind and its ‘trips’ and you may feel comfortable extending the time to 3 minutes or more.

Now is the time to bring attention to your breath. Try to pay attention to as many breaths as possible – watching the body expand and contract. If and when you lose your focus, simply reorient your attention to the breath and start evolving your mental muscle for regulation.

This regulation helps you to focus on an emotion, whether it is joy, fear or anxiety – pay attention to the timbre of that emotion and where you feel it in the mind and body. This is how you slowly build your mental resilience to put things in perspective – to move away from stressful anxiety the next time your manager gives you critical feedback and to take that in spirit of learning to grow – with the confidence that your manager does not mean any malice, but wants you to improve and thrive.

With resilience you can be more adaptable to constantly changing situations and uncertainties.

With clarity, you can continue to cultivate good relationships with confidence and trust, be proactive to see ahead to avoid the icebergs, see the big picture, and be strategic to contribute with confidence. Whether your work is repetitive and boring even, you will find ways to keep your interest going as you realize you are contributing to a larger good for the organization and for your own personal benefits – as all this is a manifestation of the mind.

Apart from mindfulness practice – yoga, exercise, a walk in the woods, playing a musical instrument – anything that can divert your attention with a focus – away from your daily worries, helps you with resilience.

Resilient People Foster Resilient Organizations

Resilient people run resilient organizations. Your capacity to adapt, innovate, and maintain well-being is foundational. You can better contribute to the organization’s ability to stay grounded through the constant challenges arising out of uncontrollable factors of the market, politics, economics, social, environmental adversities, and new technology.

Being resilient enables a culture that fosters mental health – well-being, wellness and mental clarity – to better navigate change, solve problems creatively, and maintain engagement and productivity even during challenging times.

Resilience is a two-way relationship: while individuals bring resilience to the organization, the organization must also cultivate an appreciative culture that supports and enhances individual resilience. This creates a positive feedback loop where a resilient team contributes to an organization’s ability to adapt and grow, which in turn provides the resources and support to further build the team’s resilience.

In today’s volatile world, organizations that recognize the insidious impact of stress and intentionally cultivate resilience and well-being gain a measurable advantage. Research shows that workplace stress contributes to roughly 60–80% of workplace accidents and over 80% of doctor visits, costing global businesses an estimated US $300 billion annually in lost productivity.

Conversely, organizations that embed wellness and an appreciative culture into their operations see transformative outcomes. According to Gallup, employees who strongly agree that their organization cares about their well-being are 69% less likely to actively search for a new job, 71% less likely to experience burnout, and 3.5 times more likely to be engaged. This engagement directly correlates with 21% higher profitability and 17% greater productivity.

In short, building resilience and fostering a culture of appreciation are not just moral imperatives – they are strategic investments to mitigate stress among the entire team. When leaders prioritize wellness and mental clarity they unleash the full potential of their people, creating high-performing, innovative, and profitable organizations grounded in wellbeing and trust.

Developing Resilience in the Workplace

To explore the topic of workplace reliance further, consider a course from PMC Training on Developing Workplace Resilience for Top Performers or Creating a Workplace Wellness Program for your team.