As I’ve been talking with my clients, friends, colleagues, and family members, it is becoming more and more apparent that increased stress is something we are all experiencing in one form or another in the season of the COVID-19 outbreak and resulting social distancing. The economic impact of this pandemic alone is enough to send many families into a state of crisis. Combine that with transitioning to working from home (if you are able), limited social interaction, and widespread fear of contracting or spreading the virus, and you’ve got a recipe for some serious stress to take over.

Physiologically, stress weakens our immune systems. The stress hormone, cortisol, is your body’s natural alarm system when a triggering event occurs. This is often called the “fight, flight, or freeze” hormone, because when released, it prompts us to respond to traumatic or stressful events in one of those three ways. Cortisol is extremely useful when you’re in a forest and you need to run away from a wild animal. When we become over-stressed, however, in events (like the present) with no major stimulus to go running from, and lots of downtime to sit and ruminate in, cortisol can have detrimental health effects. The excess of cortisol has been associated with anxiety, depression, heart disease, GI issues, weight gain, and sleep deprivation, just to name a few.

As I sit and observe the general response to the events unfolding, I’m hearing more and more phrases I, unfortunately, do not view as entirely helpful. “Stay calm,” “Calm down,” “Don’t stress,” “Stop stressing…” You get it. Someone tell me – have any of those statements ever actually helped someone to do what they command? I may be alone here, but I personally have never magically stopped stressing because someone told me to. Honestly, the opposite effect usually ensues when these trite expressions are thrown at us. This is why I’m giving you a new set of instructions – STOP TRYING TO GET RID OF YOUR STRESS.

If we aren’t supposed to get rid of it, what do you do with all this stress? While nutrition and exercise are excellent, holistic ways to regulate cortisol, I’m going to share a technique with you that I use with clients weekly. Within this model, rather than get rid of your stress (which might not be totally possible), you get to repurpose it into a useful tool for your own success. Let’s talk about the WOOP method.

WOOP stands for:

WISH. OUTCOME. OBSTACLE. PLAN.

This method has been scientifically proven to help people achieve their goals and reduce their stress while doing so. Essentially, you use your worry to anticipate obstacles that might get in the way of achieving the thing you wish for. You use your worry to mobilize yourself and fend off those obstacles, which results in achieving your goal. It goes like this:

Wish – what is your goal? Within this time of social distancing, you could choose a wish like: maintaining solid connections with friends, maintaining productivity while working from home, staying healthy and avoiding the virus, or maintaining a healthy nutrition/exercise routine. For the sake of practice, let’s select the example of maintaining productivity while working from home. Depending on your situation, whether you have a lot of work to do at home or a little – you can always choose to use this time to focus on those creative projects you don’t usually have time for in the typical work week. So whether it’s working from home or just being productive with your time at home in general, our wish is increased productivity. Now that we’ve got our wish, let’s envision the outcome.

Outcome – what is the outcome you hope for? Visualize it, as specifically as possible. If we go with maintaining productivity while working from home, follow this sequence of thinking. When COVID-19 is contained and social distancing is over, imagine the growth you experience in your workplace because of all the time and energy you put in while quarantined. What will you accomplish over these next few weeks or months? Maybe you’ll launch an online platform for your company, or for yourself; maybe you’ll finish a book you started writing within your industry; maybe your boss noticed all your effort and when all is said and done, you get the promotion you’ve been wanting for the past year. Imagine the ways this outcome will impact your family relationships, your friendships, and other areas of your life. The idea here is, the more specifically you envision the outcome you want, the better.

Obstacles – This is where your stress comes into play to help us. Here you need to imagine all the possible obstacles that might get in the way of you achieving your goals. Give your cortisol permission to run wild and really try to use your worry to imagine anything that could get in your way. Continuing with the previous goal, maybe working from home is difficult for you because you find it hard to follow through. Maybe, like me, it’s hard for you to focus on one thing at a time so you get distracted. Perhaps you lack organizational skills when no one is watching you in an office setting. Now that we’ve used our stress to anticipate all that might get in our way of being more productive, it’s time to move on to the final step of the WOOP process…

Plan – This step involves specifically addressing each obstacle so that if or when it comes up, you’re ready to take action. If you tend to struggle with follow through, you might try breaking your tasks down into smaller pieces and using a task list as you progress. If focusing on one thing at a time is hard for you, plan to have Zoom or Skype meetings with colleagues while you work toward the same goal. Build accountability into your routine so that someone is checking in on your progress – maybe create a daily routine calendar on Google and share it with that person. Being as creative as possible with the obstacles will enable you to really plan for anything that could get in your way. By doing so, you are creating an effective map for navigating those challenges.

This was a simple example, and as I said, you can use this method with any goal. While we are in a position where we have so much time to be still and reflect, giving your own goals some extra attention by using the WOOP method could really help you reduce your stress as well as use it as a catalyst for change.

Getting “rid” of stress might sound nice, but it’s not exactly effective. Give yourself permission to feel whatever it is you’re feeling – even stressed out – and from this place of acceptance, explore your stress and transform it into an agent of change in your life. Watch as the goals you have for yourself make their way into your reality as a result. Oh, and also – let’s all agree never to tell someone to “calm down” again?