You can pull out the weeds, but if you don't tackle the roots, they will come back. Just like excessive negative work pressure.
Last week, as a business psychologist, I gave an in-company workshop on this topic at the organization CINX, as an IT support provider for various markets and the healthcare sector. The importance of healthy employees/professionals who are sustainably employable is a top priority for them. And with that, effectively managing work pressure and stress themselves is also a priority.
Often, people look at the surface of how to eliminate negative stress without addressing the roots. As a result, negative stress persists and not infrequently leads to burnout and expensive reintegrations.
In my years of research, however, I have discovered that there are four levels that determine whether someone collapses or stays standing under high work pressure. As you can see in the model below on ‘Spirited Personal Leadership’ from the book of the same name:
1: Environment: controlled workload and efficient work systems
2: Behavior & skills including stress management & time management
3: Ego & the ego-bus
4. Soulfulness
© 2022: Model ‘Spirited Personal Leadership’
This particular workshop on ‘Personal Development & Work Pressure’ focused on the influence of your ego and soul on work pressure. Regarding the ego, this included the underestimated role of the three P’s: the inner Pleaser, Pusher, and Perfectionist, who, as ego passengers within your ego, are responsible for top performance but, in an excessive sense, also for burnout. Ego management is key. And what about soulless or over-passionate soulfulness? Or profound soul experiences that got under your skin and still cause a structural energy drain? Or, that your soul no longer fits the place where you currently work?
After short theoretical sections, participants were invited, using short questionnaires, to examine their own ego and soul. And subsequently, to exchange this with a colleague. What emerged was mutual inspiration and deepening, with an invitation to a practical follow-up. And this is what they reported afterwards:
“Drs. Martin Thoolen took us through a session on soul and ego. About what drives you, where you sometimes get stuck, and how you can deal with that more consciously. Not a New Age story, but surprisingly practical and confrontingly relatable. Exactly how we like to see it.”
Do you also want to keep your team or organization fundamentally healthy and save countless healthcare costs?
Then perhaps this is something for you: https://martinthoolen.com/en/service/in-company-services/
Your very welcome for a free exploration. Yours kindly, Martin
© 2026
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