Chapter 14.
Don’t Confuse Stressing Out With Caring

Stress, in addition to being itself and the result of itself, is also the cause of itself.

—Hans Selye, Psychologist

Most managers try double negatives as a way to motivate others. First, they intentionally upset themselves over the prospect of not reaching their goals, and then they use the upset as negative energy to fire up the team.

It doesn’t work.

Stressing out over our team’s goals is not the same as caring about them. Stressing out is not a useful form of motivation.

No performer, when tense, or stressed, performs well. No leader does. No salesperson. No athlete. No fund-raiser. No field-goal kicker. No free-throw shooter. No parent.

A stressed-out, tense performer only has access to a small percent of his brain. If your favorite team is playing, do you want a tense, stressed-out person shooting a free throw, or kicking a long field goal in the last moments of the game? Or would you rather see a confident, calm player step up to the challenge?

Most people stress themselves out as a form (or a show) of “really caring” about hitting some goal. But it’s not caring, it’s stressing out. Stressing out makes one perform worse. True caring makes one perform better. That’s why it’s vital for a leader to know the difference. The two couldn’t be more different.

Caring is relaxing, focusing, and calling on all of your resources, all of that relaxed magic, all of that lazy dynamite you bring to bear when you pay full attention with peace of mind. No one performs better than when he or she is relaxed and focused.

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the Earth,” says the great creativity teacher Natalie Goldberg. “It’s a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”

It is not necessary to stress that way. Leadership success comes from knowing to focus and remain focused. Anything you pay attention to will expand.

So don’t spend your attention any old place. Spend it where you want the greatest results: in clients, customers, money, whatever. In a relaxed and happy way, you can be undivided and peaceful and powerful. You can succeed.