The One Thing That Is Killing Most Of Us, And How We Can Stop It

According to the numbers we’ve found a new way to shorten our lifespan. Our jobs are the new cigarette.

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I know what will kill most of us. I’m not a psychic and don’t have a crystal ball.

What I do have are numbers. I have numbers that alarm me. They paint a dreadful picture of a society that is literally killing itself, unnecessarily. It’s like looking back into the smoking epidemic of the 20^th century, as people are slowly killing themselves, one breath at a time. Only the tar and nicotine of old are being replaced with something much harder to quit, much more demanding of our attention, and extremely more addictive. Our jobs are the new cigarette.

Stress at work is killing people faster than car accidents, which is tough to believe, until you read the data. So let’s look at the data. The major source of stress in our lives comes, overwhelmingly from work. In this breakdown, the number one cause of stress in our lives is workload. A whopping 46% of all stress can be attributed to directly to how much is required from us at work. Juggling work and personal lives, and a lack of job security, also show up on the chart at a cumulative 26%, leaving only one major cause of stress that doesn’t have work or job in the heading. That segment is people issues coming in at 28%. I doubt these people issues are coming from dinner parties and barbecues. It is apparent that work is loading us with stress. But that’s not death, it’s just stress right?  Not really. Here’s why.

The six major causes of death in the U.S. are heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide—all of which have been linked directly or indirectly with stress. In fact seven people die every two seconds from a stress related event.

We know that Monday mornings are the most likely mornings to die from a heart attack. Dr. Stephen Sinatra, America’s #1 integrated cardiologist, as is clearly stated in the upper left-hand corner of his website, says this, “According to researchers, an ‘outpouring’ of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, occurs within working people on Mondays. These findings were substantiated in a study of 683 patients, predominantly middle-aged men with implanted defibrillators and a history of life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias. The data led researchers to conclude that Monday is the most stressful day of the week when it comes to risk factors for heart attack.”

Our major cause of death is stress and our major cause of stress is work. Stress.org reports that in New York, Los Angeles and a few other areas, police officers who sustain a “coronary event” on or off the job are qualified as having a workplace injury. The officers are eligible to draw benefits accordingly even in cases where the event occurred while fishing on vacation or gambling in Las Vegas. And if that isn’t bad enough, OSHA reports that around 13 people are killed every day while at work.

Work is killing us at an alarming rate. So what can we do? What do we do as workers trapped in the whirlpool death and leaders trying to paddle against the current?

Fortunately I just had an enlightening conversation with a great business owner. Not sitting across a desk, asking him questions he expected. Not over a formal lunch, as a consultant digging for problems. But sitting in the cab of a pickup, with our kids laughing in the back seat, on a fishing trip. And I was amazed. I was amazed because I know or have spoken to quite a few of his employees and all of those with whom I spoke loved their job. They smiled when they talked about it and, in a few instances, I watched the stress melt off their faces as they mentioned working for him. And when the opportunity to go fishing with the owner came up, I was excited for two reasons.

1. I really like the guy and his family.
2. I wanted to know how he was running a successful business (much more successful than I previously thought) with such happy, stress free employees.

I was amazed. I thought I would hear an overview of the book Drive, by Dan Pink, in which the author lays out the three top motivators for 21^st century workers.

• Autonomy; The urge to direct our own lives
• Mastery; The desire to get better and better at something that matters
• Purpose; The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

And in part, there were hints of that in what he does. He did explain allowing employees to make their own choices (autonomy) to the point he knew the choices were not the best, and he just prepared to clean up the mess afterward. He did tell me that his employees are so well-trained they could walk out the doors of his company and get great, if not better paying jobs with the competition (mastery). He did explain that he wants people who already have the drive and ambition to move ahead so he can nurture what is already there, which would lead to them becoming the best version of themselves while serving their customers (purpose).

But none of these were tactics. In fact there was no mention of books or strategies or TED talks. These were the collective results of what I think is the answer to the horrible, “death from work” scene I painted in the beginning of this article. These were the cumulative effects of one sentence that summed everything up, from the incredibly successful owner of the business maintaining the majority of the market share available in a lucrative industry, with happy employees. The one sentence that melted the stress from his workers face, made his business so successful and made me so curious was this.

“I have great employees.”

His face beamed with respect and admiration for the people working for him. I could see, in his eyes that he knew and respected the daily grunt work of those in his employ, and he found the cure to turn over, poor culture, and stress at work.

He leads with and from respect. And this is the answer to “death from work”. If you are a leader, respect and care for those you lead. If you are an employee, work only for leaders who care about and respect you. Anything less is dangerous.

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Photo: Getty Images