The 7 Habits of Highly Stressed People

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“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” —Samuel Johnson

Stephen R. Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has sold more than 40 million copies since its release in 1989, offering a new paradigm for being successful at work. Given that it is reported to be one of the best-selling nonfiction books in history, one would imagine that the work world is replete with people being more productive.

As an employee-assistance professional who works directly with employees from myriad organizations, I’ve not experienced that the average worker fits this category. On the contrary, the people I come across report feeling just the opposite: tired, overworked, unappreciated, and burned out.

Having stood in front of large numbers of workers during trainings, seminars, and workshops, and having worked with countless others in one-on-one counseling sessions, I’ve developed a theory as to why Covey’s seven habits have not led to a Golden Age of work. Quite simply, it’s due to more workers practicing the seven habits of highly stressed people—an age-old paradigm that has withstood the test of time. These habits are as follows:

1. Referring to going to work as “another day in hell”: One is unlikely to have a stress-free day when crossing over into the land of all things evil.
2. Expecting the worst to avoid the pain of disappointment: The power of intention suggests that these expectations will be met, and the only comfort is being able to say, “I told you so.”
3. Commiserating with coworkers: Sometimes known as the meeting after the meeting, spending time around others who are miserable reinforces the feeling “If you aren’t miserable, you aren’t one of us.”
4. Confusing what one does for a living with who one is: Overidentifying with one’s job title means that the slings and arrows in the workplace are carried over to one’s home life.
5. Assuming that stressing out at work comes under the heading of “other duties as assigned”: When the assumption is that work and stress are two sides of the same coin, opportunities to reinforce this belief can be found from the breakroom to the boardroom.
6. Spending large amounts of nonwork time talking about work issues: Repetition is a key element to developing any habit, and once we invite work stress home, it becomes an unruly guest.
7. Valuing one’s paycheck more than one’s sanity: The saying, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps,” demonstrates the psychological risks many people take daily to remain gainfully employed.

As Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit, “Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness or can be deliberately designed.” This suggests that most workers do not show up at work with the intention of creating stressful habits rather than effective ones. Most of the workers I have counseled over the years are genuinely at a loss to explain why they have fallen into the negative loop of the seven stress habits.

In the absence of awareness that one’s stress reactions at work are habits, activated upon exposure to cues (e.g., showing up for work), workers are faced with a small menu of choices:

1. Find a less stressful work environment.
2. Hold on until retirement.

The good news is that once the habitual nature of stress-filled responses is identified, workers can learn to replace the self-defeating habits with healthy alternatives. The process is quite simple (which is why many people will avoid it, thinking it must be more complicated). Here are the steps that I’ve used to help workers find relief:

1. Decide on the habit you would like to address.
2. Make a list of the pros and cons of maintaining this habit. (Many are surprised that even bad habits have both primary and secondary gains and, therefore, the resistance to changing them).
3. Choose a habit to replace the identified one with (e.g., replace commiserating with coworkers with spending time around positive employees). (In truly toxic environments, this may not be possible. The alternative is to keep a running list of the positive aspects of one’s job).
4. Practice the new habit at regular intervals.
5. Add a reward for practicing the new habit, avoiding unhealthy rewards as this only creates more bad habits.
6. Prepare for slipping back into the old habit (in the world of addiction this is called a relapse prevention plan) and practice self-compassion rather than self-blame.

This process utilizes the current understanding that attempts to remove an old habit (to include thinking habits) suffer from ironic rebound—suppressing thoughts and behaviors making them more likely to return—and that habits, by their nature, are locked in, thereby making their removal futile. This also aligns with the positive psychology movement, which steers away from focusing on negation— stopping an undesirable action—and, instead, implements a positive and, therefore, healthier activity.

While there is no guarantee, most workers will find it easier to adapt Covey’s habits once they have addressed their work stress habits. Once accomplished, they will discover that, while not paradise, Dante’s warning at the gates of the Inferno, “Abandon hope all ye that enter here” no longer applies to them.