There are 550 million working days lost each year because of absenteeism. Experts claim that stress is responsible for half of those days. Stress attacks the immune system, elevates your blood pressure, and directly affects health costs.

Of all the maladies and symptoms going on in the work place, employers and managers give stress the shortest shrift. Stressed employees avoid coming to work, they avoid confrontation, they cannot resolve conflict and as a result progress is halted. They become contentious.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asserts that a full 80 percent of our medical expenditures are now stress-related.

There are three ingredients responsible for work-related stress. 1) The type of stress. 2) A proper balance between occupational stimulation and boredom.  3) The condition of the employee’s home life.

Noticeably absent is a source for solutions that addresses the root cause and doesn’t shuffle around symptoms. We live in a society that has taught us learned helplessness coupled with a veneer of pride that prevents us from admitting we could use some help.

The first two stress inducers are better addressed by employers, however, the one thing an employer is not likely to address is the home.

Dr. John Gottman from the University of Washington conducted a study that consisted of exposing expectant couples to marital interventions whether their marriages were in trouble or not.

They found that babies raised in intervention households didn’t look anything like the babies raised in a comparable control group. Their nervous systems didn’t develop the same way, they didn’t cry as much, and they were more stable to external stressors.

Dr. Gottman could predict the success or failure of a marriage within 3 minutes of interacting with the couple with 90 percent accuracy. His ability to determine the outcome of a marriage stemmed from how each spouse communicated with the other.

Our education system from K – 12, our university system, and our technical schools across the nation spend all of their effort teaching their students how to earn an income. Quietly absent from life’s lessons are effective communication especially between loved ones.

Very few of us were raised on a farm working alongside mom and dad 7 days a week. Very few people can look back to their youth and name significant mentors who shaped their character, taught them correct principals, and held them accountable for becoming a better person.

When a child is raised in an environment (intervention group) of effective communicators, the child learns at an early age to resolve conflict before a contentious spirit is introduced. Contention takes on the appearance of drugs, alcohol, tattoos, sexual promiscuity, bad grades, low self-esteem and the list goes on.

It isn’t what we know about effective parental communication that is the problem; it’s what we know that isn’t so. Sadly, most parents possess the illusion of knowledge because they can go to bed at night without a fight. This is the greatest obstacle to a child’s success.

She’s right. I am a pleaser. I don’t like it when my wife is angry with me. I want to make her happy and I don’t like the doghouse. I prefer my wife’s bed, just like my dog.

When we (husband and wife) take the time to talk about important items, we discover we both want the same things. What doesn’t make sense is how often a husband or a wife will act in such a way that elicits the exact opposite reaction needed to accomplish the goal.

This is called collusion. The art of doing the exact opposite of what I want.

We have found the best way to avoid collusion is by having a BOD meeting. The next time you find yourself in collusion with your spouse or child or anyone,

STOP, DROP, and ROLL.

Stop what you are doing. (Discontinue the fight, the discussion, the dialogue.)

Drop your argument completely. (No excuses, no explanations, no blaming.)

Roll the discussion into a BOD meeting to protect yourself from making matters worse. (Put the topic on your agenda and handle it in such a way that gives you the highest probability of working out a win/win scenario.)