There is a significant difference between reacting to stressors and responding to them. Our stress response is triggered every time we perceive a threat. When we automatically react, our cortisol levels rise, which over time can cause chronic stress and maladaptive coping behaviors including shutting down and absenteeism. However, if we mindfully respond, our oxytocin levels rise instead. Oxytocin is also known as the “love hormone” and is also released when we cuddle with our partner and empathize with others.

Studies show that we have over 6,000 thoughts a day. Count how many distinct thoughts you remember having today. Can you count them on one hand? It doesn’t feel anywhere near the thousands because studies show that 47% of our time is spent mind wandering. Mind wandering predicts subsequent unhappiness. During mind wandering, our thoughts are often on the past or future, neither of which we can control at the moment.

To mindfully respond to the external triggers, we must train our brains to pause and reflect. Instead of mind wandering, if we can harness our resources towards mindful awareness of the present, we can more easily respond to the external stressors around us.

Studies show that practices like journaling, naming our emotions and building emotional self-awareness improves overall mental health. Because when we build that self-awareness, we are able to apply tools to work through and embrace those emotions — we can more consciously work through sadness and anger and have more appreciation for happiness and peace.

Having conversations around these self awarenesses, emotions and the stressors, can help our team, manager, and leadership better understand what decisions to make moving forward. It can be uncomfortable to talk about emotions at work, but it’s time to alter this stigma. If our environment and work culture supports emotional intelligence, imagine how productive and intelligent we would work as a collective. Once a team is collectively tracking emotions and the thoughts behind them, those triggers bubble up into retrospective conversations. We have concrete examples to speak to, and managers will better understand how to respond.

For example, if the team is feeling stressed as a whole, how does that show up if no one talks about it? Team members may be unresponsive or less productive, or eventually people may even decide to leave the company. If we speak to feeling overwhelmed or stressed at work, we can share the why with accountability - is it because we have too much on our plate, too many meetings, or do we struggle with the constant interruptions of email? Each of these examples inspires a different initiative for the managers to support!

It’s incredibly important to be specific and the more we understand about our own triggers, and our coworkers understand about theirs, the more impactful the changes from the leadership will be on the day-to-day life.