In our second segment of Episode 02, The Level, it’s time to hear about five of the eight key areas of pressure management. The five include rumination, emotional inhibition, toxic achieving, avoidance coping, and perfect control. As you listen, try to give yourself a score in each area to find out what you might need to focus on most!
In the construction industry, you face tight schedules, flaring tempers, and an endless list of other pressures. So stress must be an unavoidable part of the job, right?
Wrong. It is possible to work without stress! On today’s episode of No Bullshit, Alex will teach you exactly how to balance the everyday life pressures both on the job site and off the clock. It’s important to remember that life is a marathon, and your emotional well-being is critical to staying healthy and living it to the fullest.
Building on our last episode, you’ll hear how each color personality naturally responds to stress, so if you haven’t found out which category you fall into, click the link below to take the 4 Lenses Assessment before we get started.
What to look for in today’s episode:
In our second segment, The Level, it’s time to hear about five of the eight key areas of pressure management. The five include rumination, emotional inhibition, toxic achieving, avoidance coping, and perfect control. The same rules in golf apply to these first five, we want you to have low scores in these areas.
Keep listening in order to reach The Foundation, where you’ll hear about the remaining three areas of pressure management.
Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts as well as the YouTube channel to watch full video episodes and be notified as soon as the next episode is live.
Helpful Links
Work without Stress by Derek Roger
Life Change Index Scale (Stress List Score)
[00:00:00] Alex: So welcome to the level my friends. We're jumping into those eight key areas that really dictate how we manage this thing called pressure, right? So, so in the last segment we talked about rumination. Where does rumination come from? Well, Rumination comes from cows, right? Cows ruminate. And, and I'm about to tell you a sick visual, and I hope it sticks in your mind.
[00:00:28] Alex: Uh, but here's the deal. When the [00:00:30] cows eat their food, they, they chew their, the hay, the cut, whatever you call it, right? They're chewing it. They're chewing it. They're chewing it, and they swallow it, and then they regurgitate it back up in their mouth, and they chew it some more. Now, here's the crazy part.
[00:00:43] Alex: My friends, they go through that sixth cycle over and over again. Chewing it, regurgitating it, swallowing it, regurgitating me up. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Disgusting. I get it. I get it now. But here's the deal. If we're being honest, we do the exact same things with [00:01:00] our thoughts. We think about it, we think about it, we think about it.
[00:01:03] Alex: We do all that we can do in those moments, and then we put it away, and then we pick it back up. We put it away, we pick it back up, we put it away, we pick it back up, and we're stressing ourselves out, right? So, so in order to be successful, we have to, number one, get ahead of this thing called rumination.
[00:01:17] Alex: Right. So, so understand this. Most people when I talk to 'em, they say, well, Alex, you don't understand. Uh, there's reasons I ruminate, right? So, so here are the top reasons we hear that most people ruminate. Some, some [00:01:30] people they assume, they say, Hey, listen, uh, if I don't ruminate, I won't be prepared. So they associate rumination with preparation, right?
[00:01:36] Alex: Some people think if they ruminate, maybe the situation won't happen. If I think about it long enough in a negative mindset, it won't happen. Good luck with that shit. I've never seen that one. When you find that magic pill, please call the show and give it to me. Right? Some, some people think that, Hey, listen, if I don't ruminate, I won't have control of the situation, right?
[00:01:56] Alex: So they associate controlling of the situation with rumination, [00:02:00] right? So, so hear me out on this. Truth be told, none of those are true. My friends. Now I want you to understand this. I gotta make a real clear separation. There's a difference between ruminating and reflection right now when you're thinking about past mistakes, when you're thinking about the future.
[00:02:15] Alex: But you're doing it in a positive light, in a positive mindset. We call that reflection. That's good. But now where we're talking about keeping you out of trouble today in our show today is when you begin to have this what if mindset. If, [00:02:30] if only they had given me the plans in time, if only a Jim would've shown up to work on time, right?
[00:02:36] Alex: Hey, or, or, Hey, you know what? What if this happens? Or what if this happens When you begin to to think with that kind of stuff. In that negative mindset, that's where rumination lives, right? So understand reflection in a positive mindset. Hey, how do we move forward? What do we do? That's great? The bottom half of that, when I'm living in regret and what ifs in a negative mindset, that's [00:03:00] where we tend to take pressure and tilted over the stress, right?
[00:03:02] Alex: That's where we're keeping you from today as we kind of talk about that. So, What are those eight key areas that Dr. Derek Rogers talked about that help us manage this thing called pressure? Well, number one is rumination. As we talked about. That's the most important of all of those factors. Rumination is the most important.
[00:03:19] Alex: Uh, next is what we call emotional inhibition, and we'll jump into that in a second. Emotional inhibition, uh, we'll talk about what that is. The next one is toxic achieving, as well as avoidance, coping, and [00:03:30] perfect control. So think about that rumination. Emotional inhibition, toxic achieving perfect control, and avoidance, coping in all of those five areas.
[00:03:41] Alex: You want to try to score, score low on those, right? So, uh, if you think of a scale of one to 10, right? Low being zero to two, right? Uh, high being anywhere between eight to 10. If you had to rank yourself in those five areas, which I'm gonna explain what they are, you really wanna score lower scores in those areas.
[00:03:59] Alex: The lower the [00:04:00] score that you have in those five key areas, the better you can be at handling and managing pressure right now. On the flip side, the other three that you need to think about are detached coping, sensitivity, as well as flexibility. Now in those three, you want higher scores. The higher you score on that, the better you are at managing this thing called pressure.
[00:04:27] Alex: Right? So lemme give you a real story. [00:04:30] So, so I am a serial entrepreneur. Several businesses have gone well. The majority of them have gone miserably wrong, right? So I called my wife Sabrina, a lot of stress, trust me on that, my friends. As a result of that. Now, uh, several years ago we went on an amazing vacation to the Arctic Circle.
[00:04:48] Alex: My wife loves adventurous things like that. Alex, not so much. I like stuff like this and being in front of audiences, but she loves it. So I say, Hey, let's do it. So we went to the Arctic Circle, these two Floridians at the time. [00:05:00] And, uh, we went on this ship and what happened? We were going from, uh, place to place ultimately in search for one thing, polar bears.
[00:05:07] Alex: We were chasing polar bears, trying to find polar bears, right? So I know what you're thinking, dude. Why the hell would you do that? Haven't you seen horror movies? The black guy doesn't make it out alive in that movie. So, but here we are on this ship chasing polar bears. The captain comes on the ship and the captain says, Hey, we've had a polar bear sighting.
[00:05:22] Alex: The polar bear is 30 miles away. It's safe to get off the ship. So I look at my wife, Sabrina. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why the hell would he say that? Why, [00:05:30] why, why would he come on and say, Hey, listen, it's safe to get off the ship. And my wife's smiling looks over me and says, Hey, I, I, well, I knew if you knew this, you, you wouldn't come on the trip.
[00:05:38] Alex: At least this part of the discouraging, but polar bears hunt humans. And I'm like, well, why the hell are we getting off the damn ship? Right? So, lo and behold, she talks to me getting off the ship. We get off the ship. When we got off the ship, you get off with arm, arm guards who have rifles just in case the polar bear comes that way.
[00:05:56] Alex: And so we went over to check out a glacier. So as we're looking at this [00:06:00] amazing glacier, I shit you not my friends. All of a sudden, my wife, Sabrina, fell through the ice, fell through the ice. Sabrina is waist deep in the ice and I am freaking out. Right? So we go in the rescue mode, the team kind of throws ropes around her, making sure the ice isn't cracking, seeing what's kind of going on.
[00:06:20] Alex: I'm freaking out because she's stuck in the ice and at the same time I'm looking around like, where the hell is that damn polar bear? Because if the polar bear come, I may have to leave her because somebody has to take care of the kids. I'm just saying, [00:06:30] I'm trying to be the responsible adult here.
[00:06:32] Alex: Somebody has to get back and take care of the kids, right? So, but here's the funny and crazy part, as Sabrina was stuck in the ice, she's laughing and joking and having a phenomenal time. Everyone else is stressed out around her. She's cool, calm, and collective, right? So in that moment, she wasn't allowing rumination to take over, right?
[00:06:51] Alex: She was controlling her emotions in that moment, right? Whereas Alex was freaking out, the team was freaking out. We were allowing our emotions to jump and go [00:07:00] crazy because we were thinking the worst. What if she falls all the way through? What if the ice continues to crack? And we had all of these what ifs in the process of all of those what ifs?
[00:07:09] Alex: We were stressing out, missing everything around us. In that moment, Sabrina took a phenomenal picture from her iPhone of the sun rising that morning. I didn't see that picture until we got back home, and I'm like, holy shit, where was this picture? And she's like, Hey dude, remember that day that I fell through the ice?
[00:07:24] Alex: You and everyone was freaking out. It was a gorgeous day. Everything was going on, phenomenal around you, [00:07:30] and you missed it all. I say that because oftentimes my friends, when we allow the pressure of our industry, To stress us out. We're missing connection with our coworkers around us. We carry it home with us.
[00:07:44] Alex: We're missing great times with our families, with our children, moments that we can have with our friends, all because we're bottling up this pressure, not controlling and understanding the power of how to control and how to master it. Right? So these eight key areas [00:08:00] of all eight, we're gonna go through them.
[00:08:02] Alex: The one I want you to pay attention to more than anything. It's the first one. Rumination. If you can control that one, you can control pressure not going over to stress. The other seven really dictate how much you ruminate, right? The second one is this emotional inhibition. Well, this, what does this mean, Alex?
[00:08:22] Alex: Well, this is, this measures the extent that you're willing to talk about or share your emotions, right? Are you one [00:08:30] who bottles up your emotions or do you talk about it with your team? Now, understand this. If you don't talk about it, and if you bottle it up, my friends, please understand you are going to think about it more, which increases your level of rumination simply because you don't talk about it.
[00:08:46] Alex: Now, we tend to have this tough guy mentality in construction that, Hey, leave your damn feelings at the gate. Don't talk about it, but I wanna share, share this with you. It's important for you as leaders to open up to your team and begin to ask [00:09:00] them questions about how they're feeling, how they're doing, what's going on.
[00:09:03] Alex: Because by talking about it, Science and research shows that you begin to separate those feelings from you and you begin to understand that you're not the only one feeling that way, and it helps you better interact with everyone around you and the team, right? So, so emotional inhibition is a huge one that I want you to think about that's going to ultimately help you, right?
[00:09:21] Alex: Talking about things with your team, being open and honest. The next one, the third one is toxic achieving. So, what's toxic achievement? Well, this is a tough one. This is one [00:09:30] that Alex struggles with. Uh, I'm in rehab currently for toxic achieving, right? Uh, so what's toxic achievement? Toxic achievement is it's constant time pressure to get things done immediately all the time.
[00:09:43] Alex: This means that you're always in a hurry, always on a rush. You need everything yesterday. Now hear me out. I understand that construction is very time consuming, that we have deadlines, that we have a lot going on. But if we're being honest, everything isn't [00:10:00] urgent and immediate right now. Understand those who have high scores in toxic Achieve, what does that mean?
[00:10:09] Alex: Well, that those who have high scores, you're not stressed out. So please understand this. If you are, are a toxic achiever like Alex, you're not stressed out. But here's the problem, my friends, you just stress everyone else out around you. When you walk on the scene, everyone begins to walk on damn eggshells because you are there, right?
[00:10:29] Alex: So [00:10:30] you begin to bring pressure and tension to everyone simply because you are there, right? I tell you this from a former athlete, some of the worst coaches to play for, were toxic achieving coaches because if we're being honest, when players feel the pressure. They allow that pressure to tilt over the stress.
[00:10:47] Alex: They're not their best self. They can't perform at high levels. It's the same with your team. So you want to cut that down as much as you can with that, right? So, so understand this. The next one that we talked about is avoidance coping. [00:11:00] Avoidance, coping. What is avoidance? Coping well, avoidance coping involves burying your head in the sand and just hoping that everything is just gonna disappear.
[00:11:08] Alex: You know what? I don't want to deal with this pressure right now. I don't wanna deal with the situation. I'm gonna close my eyes and hopefully this shit just goes away. Let's be honest, my friends problems don't go away. They get worse, right? So for those who have avoidance, coping issues, who won't handle the issue straight up, you're going to increase your pressure, increase your stress, because the problem tends to get [00:11:30] bigger, right?
[00:11:30] Alex: As a result of not handling it. Now, on the flip side of that, I don't want you to be a bull in a China Shaw. And go in and just destroy shit either, right? Because in construction we can be very blunt in, in your face at times, which causes us another level of stress. So we have to tone it down and have that nice balance of where am I now?
[00:11:50] Alex: Hear me out on this. Regardless of how you score on this, I need you to understand all of us, if we're being honest in some way, shape, or form, [00:12:00] avoid pressure. We avoid it. Now, let me give you an example. There are what we like to call eight key ways that we avoid pressure. Number one, we call this the busy bee.
[00:12:10] Alex: This is the person, when they're stressed out, they get so busy and they just try to make themselves busy so that they, they don't have to think about the stress. The next one is the ostrich who sticks their head in the sand. They just say, Hey, listen, I'm gonna stick my head down in the sand and just hope that it goes away.
[00:12:24] Alex: You have what we call the rationalizer, right? This is the person who tries to explain the stress away, well, [00:12:30] here's why I'm stressed. And so instead of dealing with it, they try to explain it. What most of us in construction do. We're this next one, which we call the stoic, right? We try to act strong, macho, Hey, I'm fine.
[00:12:42] Alex: Didn't bother me at all when truth be told, it really did. Right? From there, you have what we call the butterfly. The butterfly shifts their attention from thing to thing. Ultimately trying to focus and think on different things, right? You have the, the warrior worries about everything except the damn problem in front of them right [00:13:00] now.
[00:13:00] Alex: Right? Uh, similar to, uh, my grandmother, you have, uh, what we call the Rattler, right? Who just shakes, right? So they get nervous and they have this nervous energy. Energy. And then the other big one that we find in construction is the ster. The ster. Well, what's the ster? Well, the ster looks for any way possible to get rid of their stress.
[00:13:19] Alex: Drug, sex, rock and roll porn, you name it. I'm trying to find it to, to just escape for a second because I don't wanna deal with the pressure. So it's important for you as a leader to [00:13:30] understand when you feel high levels of pressure, what's your go to? Because if you can really begin to analyze your go-to, you can do a phenomenal job of making a game plan to get ahead of it so that ultimately you're successful.
[00:13:43] Alex: Right? Now, the last one in this segment I wanna talk about is Perfect Control Your PC score, right? How do you manage that? How? How are you with perfect control? Well, what's perfect control? Well, perfect control, my friends, is an A, a desire for perfectionism and control. Right. This is a tough one in [00:14:00] construction because oftentimes at construction, the, the leaders that I get a chance to work with, we marry ourself to the work that we do, and so therefore, we want it to represent us well in such a way that it has to be perfect.
[00:14:13] Alex: Well, when we do that, oftentimes we have little trust for others and we tend to not delegate. Now, unlike, unlike some of the other key areas, In perfect control. If you are a high perfect control person, you are [00:14:30] stressed out. Why? Because you're not giving things away to other people. You're taking it on yourself.
[00:14:35] Alex: You're adding to your plate, and as a result of that, you find yourself extremely stressed under pressure as a result of that, right? So I wanna challenge you those first five. Remember, the lower you will score yourself, the better you are at handling this thing called pressure, not letting it til over the stress.
[00:14:53] Alex: In our next segment, we're gonna really jump into these next three and these next three. You want higher scores, right? The higher you [00:15:00] are with your score, the better you can be. And they really begin to focus in on team and how team can come together. Those first five are more so personal. How me as a leader looks at pressure and how I deal with it, and then how I show up for my team.
[00:15:14] Alex: These next three that we go into the next segment are really gonna dive into how do I manage myself and my team in such a way that I create a phenomenal belonging environment that is stress free, maybe high end pressure, but with a high performing team that can make [00:15:30] things happen. So I look forward to seeing the next segment.