Until recent years, there has been very little research into the relationship between stress and performance. For many years, people thought that stress was just a “side affect” of work and people should just “deal with it”. As an aside, there was also very little research into the correlation between stress and health. Now, doctors readily admit that stress is the overwhelming and primary cause of disease and illness.
Our body is really an energy system. We eat food to give us energy. We sleep to restore our energy. We even tell children to run around and burn off some energy. So, we are an energy system. There are only two types of energy or energy systems – integrative and disintegrative, coherent and incoherent, extropy and entropy – in other words, one type of energy builds you up while the other tears you down. Stress tears down your energy system.
If you are wearing a heart rate monitor and you experience “stress”, you go into an incoherent heart rhythm. The shape of your heart rhythm literally becomes chaotic and disorganized. This causes your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) to go out of balance. Then, the impulses that travel from your heart to your brain access the reptilian part of the brain. This part of the brain governs “flight or flight” or repeating patterns. When this happens, you are cut off from accessing the brain’s frontal lobe, where your executive skills like creativity, intuition and problem solving skills reside.
In other words, when you are under stress, you are not able to think clearly and process information effectively. Stress cuts off your ability to perform. This dynamic can be easily overcome with emotional intelligence training and learning skills to become emotionally balanced.