Stress Education Center - Dstress.com Newsletter

"Dedicated to serving by providing information, products, and services to create awareness and then offer control of stress and the process of change."

In this issue:

1. Introduction and Welcome

2. Stress Management Tip of the Month: Temperature Training Biofeedback

3. Stress Management and Athletic Performance

4. Article: Executive Summary... Hiring Winners

5. Products of the Month: Autogenic Training, etal

6. Thank you

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1. Introduction of the Stress Education Center's - Dstress.com Newsletter

A special thank you to all the new readers who have signed up to receive our newsletter. This is a small milestone. It is our 20th newsletter and I hope that it will be of service to you.

It is August, 2003. The Summer season is winding down for us in the Northern Hemisphere. It is time to begin to prepare for the onset of Fall. Fall can not be far off, because the "boys of Summer" (baseball players) are furiously trying to get into the playoffs that lead to the "Fall Classic" (the World Series.) Football teams are practicing for the start of their seasons. And no one is by their telephones for business, because there are so many late Summer vacations going on. (France just about shuts down in the month of August for vacations.)

Falls brings the season of Re-Focus. We return to school or work, and to our more regular routines. The stress management business gets much better! People are stressed! The pace of work life seems to ramp-up as we try to be productive before the Winter holidays destroy our routines once again.

This year, be more vigilant. Do not let the shortening of the days sneak up on you. Celebrate the light and warmth of the late Summer and early Fall. Take the necessary steps to protect yourself from the coming frenetic Fall.

As I requested in the most recent past newsletter:

Stop for a minute in whatever busy place you are, take one deep breath, relax your shoulders, your forehead, and your jaw. Put the news into perspective. React but do not over-react. Be present...enjoy the moment! And please, take good care of yourself.

As I requested in the most recent past newsletter:

Stop for a minute in whatever busy place you are, take one deep breath, relax your shoulders, your forehead, and your jaw. Put the news into perspective. React but do not over-react. Be present...enjoy the moment! And please, take good care of yourself.

Thanks for reading

L. John Mason, Ph.D.

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2. Stress Management Tip of the Month: Temperature Training - Home Biofeedback
The Art of Learning to "Let Go"

The primitive survival mechanism known as the "Fight/Flight" response is built into every human. It responds to fear/danger from everything from life threatening situations to the alarm going off in the morning. Every human has a habitual response to stress that is either learned or genetically implanted. In a real life or death situation almost all of this response will be triggered by survival to help you to fight off or flee this danger.

Since awareness is half the battle in controlling stress, you must learn to be aware of how you respond to stress. Remember, you have a unique response. It may include:

1. Increased heart rate.
   This pumps blood around the body to get oxygen and sugars to the cells that you will need to use to survive. Rapid or irregular heartbeats can be associated with this stress response.
   
   
2. Breathing usually becomes more rapid in order to get more oxygen into the body. Symptoms that can be associated with this stress response might include: hyperventilation and some forms of asthma.
   
   
3. Stress hormones are released.
   Adrenaline, also called epinephrine, is released by the adrenal glands. This hormone helps to maintain increased heart rates and will tell the liver to release stored sugar for energy to the body. Other stress hormones do other thing. For example, noradrenaline is associated with anger and will raise blood pressure for most people. Symptoms that can be associated with this stress response might include: high blood pressure, panic or anxiety.
   
   
4. Elavated blood pressure can be triggered by released stress hormones. Symptoms that can be associated with this stress response might include: high blood pressure.
   
   
5. Changes in blood flow/circulation.
   Blood is directed toward the brain and major muscles for survival. Blood is directed away from surface of skin in hands and feet (for survival a primitive response so you do not bleed to death if you get cut running away or fighting for your life.) Blood is directed away from digestive organ and reproductive organ because for survival it becomes a low priority to digest food or keep the species alive if you are threatened. Symptoms that can be associated with this stress response might include: high blood pressure, cold hands and feet, upset stomach, migraine headaches, pre-ulcerous/ulcerous conditions, increased colitis, sometimes constipation, and 70% of sexual dysfunction in both men and women can be linked to this stress response.

It is this stress response that Temperature Training Biofeedback is designed to control.

By learning to warm the extremities, the hands and then the feet, you can learn the skills necessary to prevent or at least, minimize symptoms of stress that manifest, such as:

• Stress caused or Situational High Blood Pressure
• Rapid or irregular heart rates
• Migraine Headache
• Panic and Anxiety
• Many Digestive symptoms
• Raynaud's Syndrome
• Many symptoms of Sexual Dysfunction including infertility, impotence, and lower libido

How to use Home Temperature Training Biofeedback

You can use a simple thermometer (that registers from 60-100 degree Fahrenheit) (costs $.50 - $1.00), or stress card, or a biofeedback temperature trainer (more expensive.) You usually begin by loosely taping the thermister or simple thermometer to the middle of one of your index fingers. Wait 1-2 minutes and determine the temperature of the skin over the middle of this finger. It will range from 65 degrees to up to 97 degrees. (A cool room will generally give lower readings.) By practicing: breathing techniques, Autogenic Training, guided relaxations, visualizations, meditations, self-hypnosis, etc. you can learn to let go of stress and then raise your hand temperature. Ideally, you would like to be able to warm your hands to 93-95+ degrees. This can take some time and practice, often 8-12 weeks. Usually, if you are practicing 1-3 times per day, you will find increases in hand temperatures within 4-6 weeks, occasionally sooner. In fact, many people find there hand temperature dropping in the first few weeks. If this is happening, you may be trying too hard to relax! This is not bad. It means you have good control, but just not in the right direction. This can take time and practice. You want to try temperature training in a warmer room, in the beginning. Or you may want to warm your hands by placing them in warm water (remove thermometer first,) holding them up to source of heat, or even in the sun light. This mechanical warming can assist you in learning to let go of constricted blood flow and so to be able to warm your hands mentally.

After mastering raising the hand temperature, consistently, to 93-95 degrees, you will want to learn to warm your feet to 90 degrees. This is usually more challenging, but will usually be the key to lowering blood pressure, controlling panic/anxiety, preventing migraines, etc.

The key will be to tape the thermometer to the ball of your foot, at the base of one of your big toes. By practicing the relaxations and learning to let go of stress, you can get your temperature to move up to about 90 degrees. When you have mastered this and can get your feet to consistently warm to this level, you will see a reduction in stress related symptoms. Warming the lower extremities, though difficult, is very important to developing this process of control. Using these skills regularly will aid in prevention of the stress related symptoms.

Like learning to ride a bicycle, you will never forget how do this new skill. You may get rusty and need practice, but your body will have a new, healthy skill, forever!

Remember everyone holds their tension in one or more system. You need to identify which systems respond when you get stressed and then learn to release this physical tension. It takes time and motivated practice to learn to let go but the results in enhanced quality of life and increased productivity are worth the effort!

Learn more about how temperature training fits into programs to control symptoms such as:

• High Blood Pressure
• Panic/Anxiety
• Digestive Disorders
  

Good luck and good health!

For information, audio stress management tapes, books, on-line stress management courses (a thermometer and audio tapes/CD's are included in the materials for this program), or coaching contact L. John Mason, Ph.D. through the Stress Education Center.

I have said this before and I will say this again... make time for your self-care. It will save you time in the long run. You will have a better quality of life, more energy, and you will be able to produce more! Try this relaxation approach for 8-12 weeks and let me know how it works for you.

For more tips on what you can do to get back in control of your responses when you are stressed, use the tips from the article "ten timely tips" at www.dstress.com/10-tips.htm. These are very useful. Let me know what you think.

Along the way, do not forget to take good care of yourself!

Good Health!
L. John Mason, Ph.D.

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3. Stress Management Improves Athletes Performance

To compliment the article from the last newsletter on stress and performance, we found this article for you...

July 23, 2003
From article from Melissa Stoppler, MD's Newsletter

Stress Therapy Helps Athletes
Watching the Tour de France in July 2003, one can't help but marvel at the physical and emotional stamina required to participate in such a challenge. It's bound to be stressful. Doctors have shown through research, that stress management therapy can be of value for college athletes. Athletes who received stress management training lost fewer days to injury and illness than their counterparts.

The Research...
Stress Management Therapy Aids Athletes:

Cognitive Behavior Stress Therapy reduced injury and illness among college athletes.

A form of stress management therapy was able to significantly reduce the frequency of illness and injury among collegiate athletes, according to researchers.

The researchers studied the effects of Cognitive Behavioral Stress Management (CBSM), a form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) in a group of collegiate rowers. CBT is a form of short-term psychotherapy that helps us to recognize negative, or inaccurate, thoughts and to alter our behavioral responses to these negative thoughts. CBSM has already been shown to reduce fatigue, depression, and cortisol stress response in college athletes during heavy exercise training.

Doctors in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University divided the collegiate rowers into two groups comparable in terms of gender and competitive level as determined by evaluations of past medical history, moods, stress levels, cortisol levels, sleep patterns, exercise, and alcohol consumption. One group received CBSM therapy and was compared to a control group who did not receive the stress management training.

Health care providers recorded the number of days of illness or injury throughout the athletic season for each group. Those athletes randomly assigned to the CBSM group had significantly fewer days of illness and injury than their control group counterparts, and those athletes receiving stress therapy had 50% fewer health service visits. This study, published in the January, 2003 edition of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, demonstrates that this type of stress management therapy designed for an athlete population may be important tool for reducing injury and illness among college athletes.

Thank you.

Along the way, please take good care of yourself.

Send me your comments regarding what strategies you believe work for your self-care and how you most benefit from regular self-care practices.

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4. Article: The Stressful Process of Hiring Winners

Executive Summary
Strategies for Hiring Winners:

We conducted a series of interviews to learn how successful leaders hire the "right" people for their companies. Since hiring the "wrong" person (one who does not work out well for your company) can be expensive and time draining from your productivity, you want to be able to do a good job of finding the correct fit for your company and the position to be filled. Stress manifests when you try organize a program to determine who to hire and then make the decision about which candidate fits your requirements best.

If you are looking for the perfect job, you may learn something from this article that can assist you in your search.

Bottom-line:
Know the job and your company's culture, then find the correct person to fill the job.

Hiring mistakes are very costly. Estimates range from 1-10 times the annual salaries, with the general consensus being 3 times the annual salary. This is based on recruiting and training the wrong candidate (the mistake), waiting for the productivity that does not come, removing the person, dealing with morale and sabotage, replacing and training the next candidate. If you have an engineer or mid-level manager that earns $80,000 - $100,000 this can be a cost to your company of $240,000 to $300,000 for just one mistake!

90% of all hiring decisions are made by an interview. Interviewing is 14% accurate according to Michigan State University. This percentage can increase if you have hiring managers that are really well trained or if their intuition is very well developed. The training for interviewers must be extensive because as Victoria Perrault, VP of Advanced Fibre Communication (AFC) says, there are "obvious problems" when the hiring interviews are a "fly by the seat of your pants" experience. She is leading AFC into a "Success Profile" approach to benchmark the critical success factors. Yvonne Myers, Director of HR at Legacy Marketing group (a 540 person insurance sales & marketing business), has found results to be "dead on" for their E.Q.I. Profile which creates a "footprint" (benchmark) which helps develop specific interview questions that determine the soft-skill competencies of their candidates for job success. These insure that the candidates will be the "right fit" for their organization.

More companies are assessing the competencies necessary for specific jobs within their specific cultures. Some companies are benchmarking their personnel and selecting the top performers and comparing assessment results with their poorest performers to discover the patterns of success that are required for top production and satisfaction on the job. More fortune 500 companies report that they are using assessments, which is up from 15% in 1985 to 30% in 1996 and expected to hit over 50% by 2002.

The assessments are also used for staff development, planning training, and to aid managers finding the ideal motivation for specific staff members.

Kent Sherwood, recently retired CEO of Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa, emphasized the need for "integrity" as the highest quality for leadership candidates. He also looks for honesty, reliability, follow through, and straight talking. Good candidates must have the skill set necessary or have the "inclination to learn in a reasonable time" with the appropriate personality to blend with the existing culture.

Fred Philpott, VP of Human Resources for Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, uses a model to check for winning characteristics which include:

A.) Technical/experience
B.) Behavior: drive, urgency, ethics, Integrity, open communication, business acumen, global-strategic thinking, teaming-partnering, consensus, quick decisions,
C.) Bottomline ability to influence and persuade

Two of three companies either use recruiters or have used recruiters to get qualified candidates to interview. The other companies rely on internal referral and developing leaders from within the organization (which is a great retention strategy.)

Hiring Winners Checklist:

1. Know the job - skills, experience, soft-skills, competencies. Develop clear expectations.
2. 2. Know your company's culture (Mission, Vision, Values)
3. Benchmark your top and bottom performers (assess the styles, behaviors and attitudes of your winners!)
4. Develop your interview process to adequately assess candidates' necessary soft-skills
5. Hire the Right People for the Right Job!
6. Support and develop your key talent. Get them to love your company!
7. Continuously re-assess your hiring process.

W. Edwards Deming said, "If a person is not performing as expected, it is probably because they have been miscast for the job."

Please contact the Stress Education Center if you wish to have your current benchmarking program evaluated or if you wish to install a cost saving and performance enhancing assessment program.

If you require additional information regarding stress management or executive coaching, you can investigate the information available through the Stress Education Center's website at http://www.dstress.com.

Since 1978, the Stress Education Center has provided consulting and training services for individuals and organizations. The books, tapes, training seminars, on-line courses, and executive coaching have assisted thousands of motivated business people to improve their performance and enhance the quality of their lives.

I hope that this article offers you useful information.
Along the way, do not forget to take good care of yourself!

Good Health!
L. John Mason, Ph.D.