By Grant McMillan, NAICC President
When someone asks what is the number one killer in America, often the answer will gravitate to heart disease, cancer or some other major ailment. But the true answer is denial! Denial that something is wrong in the first place. Denial that a nagging pain or uncomfortable feeling is nothing and passing it off, rather than acting and seeking treatment early. I once read a story from a lady who said that her father died of lung cancer. When gathering up his belongings, she came across several journals that he kept. In them she found out that he wrote about a nagging reoccurring pain in his chest years before his death and kept disregarding it as a non-issue. In the end, she was left wondering if her father would still be around, if he didn’t succumb to the vial of denial and acted on his instincts.
As we progress further into the year, is seems that every month brings a new set of challenges to face. We need not to be in denial about the toll stress and worry can take on our health and its impacts on our short- and long-term performance and health. Stress and worry are chronic ailments within our industry as we are asked to continuously find solutions to our clients’ problems. As this is the last issue until August, I would like to share three principles I have learned and implemented from the Dale Carnegie Course which have helped me deal with stress and worry.
Live in “day-tight compartments”
Large ships have a series of compartments along their haul in which in the event of a hole, the crew are able to seal these compartments from top to bottom, preventing the water from spreading throughout the ship and sinking it. Start thinking of your day as a day-tight compartment like ships have. This is something I teach my staff early within the on-boarding process. We have no control of what happened yesterday, nor do we have any control of what will happen tomorrow, so why should we create stress and worry about what did happen or might happen. We can only deal with today.
Get all the facts
Sometimes the root of stress and worry begins with making assumptions because you don’t have all the information needed to make an informed decision. Often these assumptions are naturally biased towards a negative outcome. I have often found that taking the time to sit down and writing out the facts associated with my problem will often pay dividends by giving me the data to overcome my stress and worry.
Rest before you get tired
Growing up on a cow-calf farm, I often found myself conducting impromptu repairs to fences without tools. A trick I learned to cut wire without wire cutters was to repeatably bend the wire back and forth until it became fatigued and broke. As crop consultants, we are trying to make 12 months of income in 6-8 months. As a result, our springs, summers, and falls are filled with long days and countless consecutive days of work. Physical and mental fatigue is a problem that can sneak up on us and it can lead to burnout. I do this by making sure I take my lunch break each day. This gives my mind a rest from work and in the long run, it allows me the needed rest before I get tired and break like the fence wire.
Stress and worry can be a paralyzing feeling, only once we realize that it exists, can we begin planning to overcome it and start living!
