Hi, I'm Jazzy Jordz.
And you're watching Crack Your Career.
In this new episode of Crack Your Career,
we'll stress out a friend, do some math,
create an amazing table and put on our Lycra suits and play Clark Kent.
Let's do it. You've come to the right place.
Welcome to JobTeaser.
Choosing your career,
prepping for an interview,
starting a new job,
asking out your crush on a date.
All these things can be really stressful.
So, what to do about it?
Stick your head in the sand and avoid stressful situations
to protect your mental and physical health?
Not always the best idea.
Or should we step out of our comfort zone and go bonkers?
What we call stress is actually a series of physiological responses
our body makes to threatening situations
or situations that are perceived as a threat.
Your heart races and your breathing speeds up.
You might start to sweat.
Remember that all these reactions are useful.
They get us ready for two potential actions.
Fight or flight.
So, stress is actually pretty beneficial.
It lets us mobilise our resources when we need to.
For instance, when our heart rate goes up and you start breathing faster,
that helps to send more oxygenated blood to your brain and muscles.
And as a result, you're more focused and ready to act.
But when stress is too intense and lasts for a long time,
it can start to harm your physical and mental health.
For example, it increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Not great news, right?
But what is good news is that,
as psychologist Kelly McGonigal has explained,
when we decide to see stress as something positive,
it doesn't do our body any harm anymore.
It can be good for us.
According to McGonigal, it's not about getting rid of stress
but improving our ability to manage it.
Another positive aspect to stress is that it makes us sociable.
This is because of oxytocin.
Oxytocin is also called the love or cuddle hormone
because it's released when we hug someone or we're touched.
It also helps to activate pro-social behaviour.
It encourages us to ask for help when something feels threatening.
When you call your mate about a problem you're having,
that's also thanks to oxytocin.
Or should I say broxytocin.
Our social relationships are one of our body's defence mechanisms.
So, don't hesitate to talk to your loved ones
as sharing stuff with others
is a super important part of stress management.
We know talking helps
but being a listener is also beneficial.
This is one reason why support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous
have listening to other people as a key principal.
The truth is that by helping other people
we help ourselves too.
So, you're probably wondering exactly how we can see stress
as something useful.
Well, what you need to do is associate positive
with stress's physiological effects.
Don't worry, we're going to move on to the practical side of things as always.
I've got a little exercise for you.
Put yourself in a stressful situation.
We never said it would be easy but it will be worth it in the end.
Find a mate.
Could be a friend, brother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend.
Just someone you can do this exercise with.
Then go sit in a busy place.
Somewhere you won't be able to chill out.
Maybe a corridor or a bus or train.
Recite your times tables one through nine to your partner.
And to get you really stressed, they can interrupt you,
make noises and tell you how bad at this you really are.
I bet you can think of a few friends that will be perfect.
Try to focus on the signals your body is giving you.
Listen to your heartbeat and your breathing.
If you're not getting any stress signals,
it might be that you're too good at multiplication.
Try again with something more personal. You know, like telling a story.
The time your crush turned you down or your most embarrassing moment.
Or the last thing that did your head in at work.
And again, your sadistic friend is going to interrupt you.
Just thinking about it is making me stressed out.
Once the exercise is over, tell your friend how you felt.
But try put a positive spin on it
by figuring out what was useful about each reaction.
For instance, you might say that your heart beating faster
helped you to stay focused.
The way you concentrated on the rhythm of your breath
helped you ignore any distractions around you.
Being more conscious of your body helped you stay rooted in the present
and dampen any anxiety about what would happen next.
Feeling more tension in your muscles helped you feel more supported
and confident to overcome the challenges.
If you didn't get to the end of your exercise,
you can still debrief afterwards
and talk about the positive learning.
Once you've debriefed, switch roles
and take your turn to stress your mate out.
What goes around comes around.
Sharing a stressful challenge like this can actually help you bond.
Now we'll look at how to manage emotions during a job interview.
We've seen how generally speaking, stress and emotions prepare us for action.
Emotions activate the resources our body and brain need
so that we can behave in a way that suits a particular event.
As time goes by
we develop a kind of inner emotional index in our memory,
which we can use as a reference when we want to quickly prepare
our body for action.
These cognitive shortcuts also minimise the brain resources we use.
Effectively, our brain has learnt to take cognitive shortcuts,
also known as heuristics.
And yes, you can use that word to impress people at parties.
However, our automatic emotional responses aren't inevitable.
"Automatic" doesn't mean the same thing as "systematic".
It's more to do with something happening unconsciously.
By learning to change our mental models,
we can overcome our biases.
To do that, first we need to learn how to get to know ourselves
and identify what makes us react in the wrong way.
Let's take a quick example.
Spoiler alert, this is a story from my own life.
So, put yourself at ease and have some popcorn.
A couple of years ago, I was doing an interview
but there were gaps in my CV.
It was really stressing me out.
This made me automatically interpret the recruiter's questions about these gaps
as criticisms when in fact he was actually neutral about them.
I reacted that way because I'd already been criticised
for those career gaps at a previous job interview.
It had become an emotional trigger for me.
We don't have the same emotional triggers.
They won't necessarily stay the same throughout our lives.
Thank God. That's why it's important we regularly reflect
on our past experiences.
Ready for a little exercise?
I'm going to share a technique for retraining your brain
so that you can sidestep your basic emotional reactions.
The key idea is to take back control.
And we're going to make a table. You know how I love making tables.
#TableFan.
Take a second to think back to interviews in the past.
What happened that provoked
the strongest, most disruptive emotional reactions in you?
List your top three in the first column of your table.
An example might be the time a recruiter cut me off
several times during an interview.
Now think about how you reacted to these emotions.
Describe your reactions in the second column.
For instance, I got angry and stopped answering his questions.
Think of the reason why you have reacted this way.
What in your life might explain it?
For instance, I might feel like I'm not being listened to
because I'm not very tall and I have a soft voice.
Finally in the fourth column,
write down how you'd have preferred to have reacted.
For instance, not getting annoyed
or taking a step back
and reminding myself it's nothing personal.
Now comes the most important step.
Replay the various situations you identified.
Replay the various situations you identified but with a different ending.
Try to react the way you'd have liked to.
It's no big deal if you don't manage it the first time.
Keep training yourself. It comes with practice.
And feel free to do it again and again
when you've got another interview
as it will help you train your brain to move away
from the automatic emotional responses you're trying to avoid
and give you more control over how you react.
We know our state of mind influences our bodily reactions.
We saw it when we were stressed out and started sweating.
Our heart started racing and so on.
We might reflect this through our body language
in the way we curl up quite small, stutter or fold our arms.
Our body language changes depending on our emotions as we all know.
For example, if you smile at your neighbour,
even when you don't feel like it,
that might make your neighbour smile back, which in turn can make you smile for real.
Just be aware that beyond one second,
smiling and staring at someone could make them feel very uncomfortable.
We can influence our state of mind
but changing our body's posture.
For example, when you mime self-confidence,
you'll really start to feel more confident.
As the saying goes, fake it till you make it.
That can be really useful in interviews
or if you have a presentation for your boss.
Before a job interview,
an important meeting or other stressful situations,
take two minutes to yourself and stand in a power pose.
The idea is to take up space
and stand like a winner or a superhero.
This theory around postural feedback was made very popular
by a Ted Talk by the psychologist Amy Cuddy.
Taking a more confident posture even when you don't feel it
helps your brain to release hormones
just like it would if you really were confident.
This boosts our chances
in that it gets us in a good frame of mind
to tackle whatever we have in store.
Okay, that one's not been approved yet.
Now you're ready to walk into your interview confidently
and face any stressful situation,
which requires you to be at your best.
But we do recommend you do your power pose in the toilets,
rather than in the main reception
or you might get a few funny looks.
Otherwise, go for it.