Motivated to work happily and productively: This is how flow, stress and endorphins work in the brain

Self-determined and meaningful work brings better results. However, the word should not be spoken for a pure feel-good culture. Also Stress Promotes productive work by hormone release in the brain.

The power of flow

In the discussion of a post about Motivation Best of through self-determined and meaningful work HR - Berufebilder.de® the question arose how important Discipline, willingness to perform and social recognition are for motivated work. You should only do what you can Lust to work motivated and productively? Or is a little stress not so bad after all?

The Hungarian-American Psychology-Professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi has it Term Flow shaped. Flow is the lust of the curiosity drive: Curiosity motivates us to move forward, Problems to solve and face new challenges. We experience eustress (from the Greek eu = good), which also puts a strain on the body, but is important for dealing with new and difficult things Tasks to manage something. Because if we solve a problem or master a job satisfactorily under time pressure, it is absolutely fine usefulthat we put a little pressure on ourselves to achieve top performance.

Stress helps to achieve goals

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When we stress ourselves, it's usually to solve a problem or to achieve something—for example, recognition, social connections, or security. And when we solve the problem or fulfill our wish, we experience joy - just flow. Conversely, recognition is also important to motivate us feel. About through the Executive, the colleagues or the Society. Anyone who permanently experiences too little recognition to solve a problem also experiences a healthy challenge fast as pressure.

But Swiss researchers have found: Stress clouds our memory. This is because cortisol is released from the adrenal cortex, which is supposed to protect the body from overexertion. Among other things, it blocks memory and leads to high blood sugarspiegelacidification of the blood and a weakening of the thyroid function.

Like a hormone cocktail: the brain networks faster

When the boss entrusts us with an important task, we immediately begin to think about how we will proceed and our organism prepares to perform at its best to deal with the situation. Recent results of brain research even show that stress promotes faster networking of brain cells: every time we solve a problem under stress, we quickly learn a thinking pattern that we can call up again in similar situations in the future. Stress increases our flexibility.

We owe the euphoria that we feel when we have satisfactorily completed a stressful job to the hormones norepinephrine and serotonin, among other things. they call positive Feelings emerge as a reward for previous effort act. If the eustress occurs regularly and in doses, it stimulates the immune system and has a motivating effect. It is important that we experience the situation as a challenge that we are happy to face; the task that our boss gives us should neither under nor overtax us. It all depends on the right mix of flow and routine!

The bore-out trap

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Most feel underwhelmed People when work is monotonous and involves too much routine. Then there is the threat of bore-out syndrome. Because even if a certain amount of routine is important in our lives: without changes, we simply get bored. Though we do our job well and clear faster if we have already done the task a hundred times because our Brain just got used to this Behavior run almost automatically.

But new challenges, even if they initially involve stress, are important. Because only by coping with them can we achieve the flow that motivates us to achieve top performance. On the other hand, those who hold firm to established behaviors and rigid thinking patterns refuse this euphoric feeling.

Problems that we cannot deal with

However, the overwhelming poses great problems. While we are bored with stupid work, we also always face challenges that we find stressful, overwhelming and uncomfortable. Often these are situations that we believe cannot be dealt with. For example, economic crises, the general labor market situation or the job cuts in Companys - all things that the individual cannot influence and that therefore give us the feeling that we are at the mercy.

In such moments, negative distress arises. It always occurs when there is no way out, because the human brain does not have a solution mechanism for this problem due to a lack of experience. In contrast to eustress, we do not experience flow in such situations, but often feel helpless and fearful.

Endorphin punk without a brain?

The overload is sometimes homemade. Neurobiological studies show that some people become downright addicted to the body's own happiness hormone, flow: They even cause stressful situations on purpose because they keep coming back to them with the positive feeling of having overcome a problem self-confidence strengthen. But in this way, eustress can quickly turn into distress: Because the body can only relax if the enormous energy potential, which is geared towards a physical reaction and which arises from the release of stress hormones, is also completely eliminated.

However, if you are always under pressure, you will soon believe that a task is insurmountable out of sheer overload and will lose all motivation as a result. Therefore: It is essential to take regular breaks – otherwise there will be acute Burnout-Danger!

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