How to cut your stress by staying humble and practicing detachment

 
Why shouldn’t you believe your own hype and act as if you’re someone truly important? You’re doing a key job. You have people working for you—perhaps quite a lot of them. You’re responsible for a great deal of money and extensive corporate resources. People look up to you. They listen when you speak. You can even give your staff instructions and expect to see them carried out.

The higher you rise in an organization, the greater the temptation to see yourself as important outside that organization as well. Power is intoxicating. Being “a person of influence,” a “player” and “contender,” can quickly go to your head.

All this produces expectations about how people ought to treat you: how they ought to recognize your status and worth. But watch out! There are some nasty stressors associated with this kind of attitude.

• As boss, your every mood and expression is scrutinized for what it may mean. Your praise and criticism is magnified by the size of the job you hold. Have a bad day and people start discussing how large the impending round of lay-offs will be. It’s very stressful to have to keep yourself constantly under close control to make sure that you don’t unwittingly cause some dangerous rumor to start.
• People stop responding to you honestly. If you puff yourself up and insist on your status, don’t be surprised to find the number of yea-sayers around you increases quickly. In a short time, you’ll have no idea how people really think about what you are doing or saying. All you will hear is what they think is in their interests to say.
• People stop telling you the truth. The more senior you become, the more responsibility you carry for what happens; yet the less willing people become to bring you bad news—unless you take good care to stay humble and open to the truth. Pompous, status-conscious managers are horribly at risk: carrying the can while being kept almost totally in the dark about anything nastly lurking to trip them up. How stressful is it to be responsible for events and almost blind to what’s coming?
• Demanding special respect and consideration destroys people’s empathy. Your people will no longer care whether you’re succeeding or not. In fact, they’ll probably rather like to see you brought down a peg or two. Leaders who constantly demand special treatment quickly find that those around them start to become cold and hostile—except, of course, to their face. Isolation of this kind is very stressful.
• Your family will become less and less supportive. If you believe your own work-based hype, you’ll quickly start expecting your family to treat you in a special way too. But your partner isn’t one of your staff; your teenage daughter won’t care whether you’re responsible for millions in resources; your son won’t be impressed by your quarterly results. Instead of seeing a loving, caring human being, they’ll see only a stuffed-shirt who breezes into their lives occasionally and starts demanding that they act impressed. Losing the support of your family is going to hurt deeply, as well as send your stress levels sky-high.
• You’ll no longer know who to trust. In fact, it the ultra-political environment of most executive suites, you’ll probably feel there is no one whom you can trust. That’s going to make you extremely anxious. Soon, you won’t be willing to trust anyone at all, which will ensure that no one trusts you either. This vicious cycle causes more stress than almost anything else.

What’s the answer?

If you keep yourself in perspective, you’ll realize that almost nothing you do is that important. We’re all totally replaceable in our workplaces. Fall under a bus and your job will be filled in short order. In less than a year, no one will remember your name. What you do may be important to the business, but it doesn’t give you any basis for claiming special treatment from the world at large.

Practicing detachment doesn’t mean being cold and distant; it means understanding that taking yourself seriously is neither necessary nor useful. It’s also a great way to increase your stress and anxiety. At root, we’re all simply human animals, doing our best to get by in the world. Lightening up is a great way to feel better and make yourself much more acceptable to others.

Try it.

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