One of my favorite authors is Clay Christensen, who has written books like The Innovator’s Dilemma, Competing Against Luck, and How Will You Measure Your Life?.

One thing several of his books have in common is a coauthor by the name of Karen Dillon. She’s now cowritten another new book, this time with Rob Cross, called The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems—and What to Do About It.

Karen says there’s a force we encounter every day that we aren’t aware of—and it threatens to derail otherwise promising careers and lives: microstress.

This hidden epidemic of small moments of stress has insidiously infiltrated both our work and our personal lives with invisible but devastating effects. Microstress doesn’t trigger the normal stress response in our brains to help us deal with it.

Instead, it embeds itself in our minds and accumulates daily, one microstress on top of the other. The long-term impact can be debilitating. Unregistered microstress weighs us down, damages our physical and emotional health, and contributes to a decline in our well-being. What’s more, microstress is baked into our lives. The source is seldom a classic antagonist, such as a demanding client or a jerk boss. Instead, it comes from the people with whom we are closest: our friends, family, and colleagues.

The good news is that once you understand microstress, you can fight back. Rob and Karen share the secrets of a small set of people who’ve endured their share of microstress but have still managed to cultivate relationships that enable them to thrive both at work and in life.

I hope you’ll click the play button below to learn more about Karen and her work. For a summary, just keep scrolling.

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In today’s episode, I ask Karen about:

* How your inability to say “no” could be impacting your (micro)stress levels

* How to build resilience against the microstress in your life

* The impact on your brain of working late and early in the morning

* And lots more!

Order Karen’s Book

You can order your copy of The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems—and What to Do About It right now!

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471: The Microstress Effect with Karen Dillon

Read to Lead Podcast