In this disrupted and fast-paced World, hustling endlessly has not been an option but an absolute thing that is needed to make the dream keep on alive. However, a research from Oxford Academic reported people that is working for over 55 hours or more a week was associated with a high risk of chronic and mental diseases. Additionally in 2021, for around 40% of employees globally reported have experienced daily stress, quite a significant increase from 30%-ish in 2019.

We bet that you are maybe experiencing the same and this article is kinda relatable to your condition right now. It’s when stress goes up and implicates on the decline of passion to do the job that you have desired since a long time ago. Isn’t it?

Simon Sinek said that it’s called “The Split”. It’s (again) when stress goes up and passion goes down.

These figure above has shown that there are two variables that consist of stress (the inclining one) and passion (the diminishing one). Each of these variables has its own driver. Stress is driven by authority and passion is driven by leadership. The keywords of authority is “what we do” on a daily basis, the things that we did and the things what we will do in the near future. While leadership is the “why”. And oftentimes, we get lost in what we do, and gradually forget the reasons why we want to do it. This is important because the “why” is, in fact, the key driver of our motivation to do something.

Nevertheless, people generally struggling to find the antidote of the split. Especially when we’re surrounded by unsupportive environment. The stress even will go up and the passion will go down, significantly. For thus, one thing that is essential but most of us forget to handle this kind of problem is “More Handshake”.

“More Handshake” means that being honest about what we feel and what we think. It also means being brave to express. It also means that we have to get a genuine and honest conversation all the time. Whether it’s formally or informally.

The infamous Dr. Robert Cialdini who authored “Influence” book conducted an experiment with two groups competing by answering a series of questions on the computer, divided into two tests sequentially. But at the second test, the team leader of each team told the group that they were going to lie, deliberately. After that, the score that they got declined around 20% lower than the first test. This experiment showed that moral stress of lying could lead to a poor performance of employee. And this also suggest that honesty, open communication, and genuineness are essentials aspect of company’s culture to get people more productive.

So, we know that we’ve already been aware of these solutions. But, the key driver to implement it is still low, isn’t it? We hope that when you find this article, you can get “the why” stronger than before, and then you can be more genuine and honest, not only for your professional career but also for your self development.