031: Sources of Stress with Brendan McManus

Are you concerned about how stress may be affecting your productivity, wellbeing, and relationships? Are you keen to relinquish the grip that stress holds over your everyday life?

In this episode, we’re thrilled to be speaking with Brendan McManus, CEO of PIB Insurance Brokers. Brendan is prolific within the insurance industry, having worked in the market for over 40 years in a range of successful companies. In conversation with Coffee, Calm & Connection’s Sarah Myerscough, he shares wisdom about managing stress in both your career and relationships, offering methods to help you start improving your wellbeing today.

 

Quote of the Episode

“If ever you are feeling down, fed up, whatever, you’ve got to bust out of it. You've got to change the situation. And everybody can do that. Even if it's only changing your behaviour for a short period of time, and taking a risk with your behaviour.”

Our wellbeing is dominated by the behaviours with which we conduct our daily lives. Brendan McManus suggests that these behaviours are not always productive or beneficial, and can have a detrimental effect on us, proliferating the effects of stress, if we fail to challenge them sufficiently. Such behaviours can not only negatively impact ourselves, but those we love. Indeed, for many of us, a greater source of stress is derived from our relationships than from work. To counteract this, you should endeavour to understand yourself more deeply. This can be achieved by engaging in mindful practices, such as the 5-minute daily exercises offered by Coffee Calm & Connection’s packages. This will enable you to reorient your habits and gradually adjust your behaviours in a manner which is beneficial both for your own wellbeing and for the strength of your relationships with others.

 

Key Takeaways

In being determined and driven, you need to be able to acknowledge and accept responsibility for your own success or failure. A good way to deal with this is by planning. However, if you are a temporary planner, and you find yourself running out of a plan, or that your plan is not working, you may feel deeply disappointed. For Brendan, you must simply acknowledge how you can rework, or perhaps even entirely overhaul your plan into something that can and will succeed for you and your business, and begin working towards it.

 

When our plans are forced to change, as was the case throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we should not consider ourselves as being personally affronted or denied something. This pandemic affects everyone; you are not unique in the struggles it has brought upon you, although some people have unfortunately been affected more directly than others. In the circumstances brought about by the pandemic, and the associated uncertainty it brings, it can often be easy to lose sight of this bigger picture.

 

Stress is derived from the feeling of a lack of control. Never has this sentiment been more bluntly realised than in the past two years. As the pandemic winds down, eventually, other stressors will emerge. Making small changes in your life to improve your situation, from exercising more regularly, to engaging with the activities you enjoy more frequently in order to reorient your work-life balance, can improve your ability to manage stress. By actively seeking to change your situation, you can more easily retake control of it.

 

Stress is a spectrum. Some people have been deeply affected by the pandemic, suffering from grief, economic struggles, or the debilitating effects of long COVID. Similarly, in everyday life, certain jobs are undeniably more stressful than others, be they physically burdening or inadequately paid. Those lucky enough not to face these conditions, or who have been fortunate enough not to be profoundly and personally affected by the pandemic, need to recognise their catastrophising of their own circumstances and the false victimhood that can accompany it.

Brendan suggests that the key way to do this is to ‘be grateful for what you've got, and not be striving for something else all the time’. Another key source of stress for many derives from comparing yourself to others. However, many athletes pride themselves not on the accomplishment of world record titles which are almost impossible to achieve, but on the repeated triumph over their own former personal bests. Similarly, doing your personal best every day is the best that you can do. Envisioning yourself in competition with others will inevitably result in unneeded stress, as your ultimate competitor should always be your own former self.

 

Best Moments/Key Quotes

“I occasionally find it stressful if you run out of a plan... You must work hard to re-engage your vision and focus on what you're trying to achieve, whether it's longer term or short term… Once I've got the plan going again, then the stress tends to disappear.”

“Over the last year or so, many people have assumed that they're somehow victims of this, when in fact, the effect is all the same… We've all missed socializing with friends, or traveling on holiday or whatever. It isn't unfair to a particular individual. It's just been a bit miserable for everybody. Whenever I have a down moment, or whenever I'm feeling fed up or depressed, what I've learned over the years is I've got to change my situation. And I can take control of that.”

‘If you’re just distracting yourself from the problem, you're not solving the problem.’

“You can't do better than a personal best every day. I've always been struck by that personal best cliché. You know, if you're constantly striving to do your best, your competition is you, not anybody else. I never feel competitive against other people.”

 

Resources

PIB Insurance Group: https://www.pib-insurance.com/ 

 

About the Guest

Brendan McManus is the CEO of PIB Insurance Group, which he started in 2015, and which has since acquired forty businesses, and amassed 2,500 employees across the globe. He has worked in the insurance industry for 42 years, and has run several successful businesses over the past two decades.

Brendan’s LinkedIn Profile: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/brendan-mcmanus-05432a7 

 

About the Host

Sarah Myerscough is the Sales and Marketing Director of Boston Tullis Group and the M.D and creator of Coffee, Calm and Connection.

 

Connect with Sarah

https://www.instagram.com/coffeecalmconnection/ 

https://www.facebook.com/coffeecalmconnection 

Coffee Calm & Connection | LinkedIn

Sarah Myerscough - Sales & Marketing Director - Boston Tullis | LinkedIn

 

Hosted by Sarah Myerscough

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to the host and guest speakers. Please conduct your own due diligence.

Website: Coffee Calm & Connection (coffeecalmconnection.org)