Resilience Through Rapid Change

Resilience through rapid change: Your resilience capacity can be thought of as the amount of energy you can store in your “inner battery”. Learning and applying energy management strategies can increase energy reserves and, in doing so, increases our resilience capacity.

Transcript

Hi everyone and welcome to this brief talk on resilience through rapid change.

Take a few moments first to collect yourself,

Get comfortable in the space you're in.

Perhaps you'd like a glass of water nearby to you or a notepad and a pen to note down any insights,

Points of interest or points to reflect upon later as you hear what we discuss.

In this brief session we'll be going through a bit of an introduction to resilience,

An understanding of the four domains of energy,

We'll talk about the rust out and the burnout zones,

We'll have a brief discussion of the physiology stress and we'll introduce Dan,

Dr Daniel Siegel's hand model of the brain for you to refer to as a point of origin source to refer back to later.

We'll talk about the role of our emotions and the depletion to renewal energy grid.

And then we'll talk about building a stress resilient system and I'll discuss and introduce discuss and introduce or perhaps remind you of some aspects to consider in terms of your immediate well-being and energy profile.

So let's get started.

Now resilience of course is the capacity to prepare for recover from and adapt in the face of stress,

In the face of challenge or other adversity and that's a definition from the HeartMath association for you to refer to who have some wonderful resources available as well.

And your resilience capacity can be thought of as the amount of energy that you store in your inner battery.

So learning and applying energy management strategies is really important and of course it can increase your energy reserves and in doing so increases your overall resilience capacity.

And the four domains of energy or resilience that we speak about.

For obvious domains of course we can drill down further and discover different aspects of well-being and resilience when we try,

When we really consider.

But let's start with these four today.

We'll start with the physical.

Now of course physical energy comes from our physical being and our physical bodies and of course the physical world around us.

So activity,

Rest,

Renewal and so forth.

So we really talk about our physical well-being,

Our physical flexibility,

Our endurance and our physical strength.

So all things here relating to our physical existence,

Our rest,

Our sleep,

Our of course nutrition,

Very important as well.

And so the physical domain of our energy profile is really important as is the emotional domain.

So moving on now to the emotional domain of energy and resilience.

And here we're speaking about emotional flexibility.

We're talking about optimism or a general positive outlook and an ability to self-regulate our emotional experience.

So again you can see really important here to consider in terms of our overall resilience through rapid change to consider and cater for our emotional domain of energy.

And moving now to our mental domain of energy and here obviously we're talking about mental flexibility.

We're talking about things such as focus and concentration and our attention span.

Our ability to focus as you know is constantly under siege.

And it's obvious that we benefit from incorporating multiple points of view.

So here in our mental domain we might have particular aspects upon which to immediately focus to give ourself a boost or to create space and capacity in that mental domain.

And lastly in these four domains is the spiritual domain of energy and clearly relating to our resilience profile.

We're talking about here spiritual flexibility and this could be as obvious or as deep in our spiritual realms as comes to mind immediately in terms of our own context.

At the basic it's about commitment to living and embodying our values in the majority of our experience.

So really living in the integrity of our value system while also being tolerant to,

Acceptive of and supportive of others values and belief systems even when of course they differ from our own.

And so here just when we touch on these four domains of energy you can see that there are aspects within each of those that perhaps are our nurture points and we know to prioritize them because they don't come as naturally to us.

Or perhaps we know those areas that come to us as natural strengths and they're our go-to resourcing opportunities and we have to be careful also not to overuse them in times of challenge or adversity or stress.

So the four domains of energy and resilience are really quick and easy for us to reflect upon and in the moment can be really helpful to mid-course correct and maintain or boost our energy profiles.

It's also important for us to consider the performance curve and you can any quick and easy google search can yield greater information for you around this to touch on later.

And obviously this goes back to that point I've discussed earlier in terms of burnout and exhaustion but also that rust out or dropout side on the lower end of the performance curve.

So imagine now a bell curve before you and you'll see on the left side before that beautiful peak of performance we have here what may be called the dropout zone or the drone zone or the rust out zone and this is perhaps we don't have enough energy or motivation or arousal to be performing our best at that level.

On the other side of that bell curve you're imagining picture this is obviously being the burnout zone the exhaustion zone a sustained period of exertion of energy that inevitably if continues leads to breakdown and burnout and as we know it's very difficult to come back from.

And of course we have the middle and the beautiful peak in that performance curve obviously being that peak performance that optimal use of energy that matches that beautiful level of arousal or motivation.

Now again even just referring back to those four domains of energy we can see that keeping continual monitoring and checking and tweaking and adjusting of those four domains of energy can help us sustain our ability to remain in or near that peak performance zone remembering of course that we're beautifully human.

Now as we move on to talk about what's going on in the body of the brain I'm sure we can all familiarize ourselves back or refresh our minds as to the parasympathetic versus the sympathetic nervous system and of course this world is oriented for us to spend a great deal of time in that sympathetic nervous system where we're ready to pounce we're bracing ourselves for what might come next with that next wave of whatever that is metaphorically literally or anywhere in between the two.

So of course we even just waking in the morning is that boost in our cortisol that you know the level of stress to get us up and about with our day and and of course we're familiar with what that stress response looks and feels like in our own minds in our own bodies and in our own circumstances whether it be work related,

Family related,

Financially related or even just looking at the news in the evening.

So I won't spend any time so much going around that sympathetic stress side of our bodies because I think we already are quite familiar with this side.

What I will spend a few moments about is talking about the real power in that parasympathetic rest and digest tend and befriend side of our nervous systems and our ability to train ourself to become more proficient,

More competent,

More capable and more familiar with bringing ourselves back to that parasympathetic state and way of being is so beautiful for our resilience building but so too our overall health and vitality and clearly our enjoyment and satisfaction of life quality that's associated with those things.

So if you're not familiar with the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system I really encourage you to go and do some of your own further research because even just growing awareness of how each bodily organ relates and interacts according to the signals from our brain and our bodies in terms of whether or not we're preparing to survive or preparing ourselves to have a really wonderful and restful state of rejuvenation.

Now I mentioned of course that we talk a little bit about what's happening in our brains and how the level of brain activity and the different parts of our brain can interact with to support our resilience particularly in times of rapid change.

Now imagine or even if you're refreshing here your awareness already these three areas in our brains and we've got obviously starting with the brain stem,

This is probably what you know as the reptilian part of our brain so really in terms of deeply embedded in our survival and our evolution as a species,

These are parts of our brain that are often and generally operating outside of our awareness to keep us going,

To keep us safe and to keep us obviously reproducing to continue as a species into the future.

So there's a lot there that responds and reacts in times of stress and that we can train other parts of our beautiful minds to help us become more resilient and fluid in our ability to recover when we do become alert for example to danger in particular instances.

We have the limbic part of our brain or our limbic system which is connected to our emotional experience and our memories.

So here we're talking about again this tend and befriend side of our brain that's oriented to attachment and connection and very relational in its origins.

And then we talk about our beautiful clever human mind that has this wonderful ability that's different from other animals to critique and self critique and to reflect and to have wonderful strategic functioning and decision making and really the beautiful intelligence that comes from being human.

Now why would we talk about these parts of our minds so that neocortex that very human conscious side of our brain that that prefrontal cortex versus this you know survival evolutionary reptilian brain that largely operates outside our conscious awareness.

And I mentioned at the start of this talk that we talked introduced briefly Dr Daniel Siegel and I recommend you writing that name down and again doing your own research in your own time simply that we don't have the time and we could talk about his wonderful research wonderful research and learnings and teachings all day.

But you may have also seen a YouTube video or another demonstration of Dr Siegel's work where he talks about the hand model of the brain and through simple use of the hand model imagine before you the thumb tucking in to the palm and that representing the reptilian brain and then the fingers wrapping over that thumb and that then the enclosement of those fingers over the thumb representing the neocortex or that conscious part of our minds.

Now what I wanted to just refer on Dr Siegel's work is that in times of stress and in times of emotional intensity we can do what's called flipping our lid where that beautiful neocortex conscious aware very humanistic part of our brain just pops off and goes offline and we respond purely automatically and autopilot in that survival mode.

And our understanding of what happens when in our physiology and our brain activity is also extremely beneficial for helping us self-manage and increase that resilience capacity that we spoke of earlier.

And so moving on now to the role of emotions and really looking at well is this emotion and this experience of this emotion is is this one that's giving me energy and renewing or is this actually depleting my energy and it's adding to this emotional drain.

And so again everybody is slightly different we of course have similarities in how we experience emotions energetically but it's really important for us to become aware that in times of stress often that emotional experience simply adds to the drain.

And so how can we create greater awareness of those renewing emotions whether it's joy whether it's human humor sorry I should say whether it's love and connection and those beautiful regenerative emotions that we know of and can really consciously add in as our go-to to really reorient ourselves into that renewal side of our emotional profile versus the emotions that might happen by the way such as frustration,

Irritation,

Annoyance at those low grade levels or so to anxiety you know even anger increasing in the intensity side of things which we know we can create and adjust our experience and our interactions to consciously bring more of those regenerative emotional states back into our day.

And what is so wonderful about this is that our minds don't know the difference between imagination and reality and we have such vivid creative wonderfully wonderfully creative imaginations as humans.

Many times though we use those bright clever wonderful imaginations actually creating states of energy that continue to drain us such as rumination such as fantasizing about how I could have responded in that situation or what I could have said or done differently that might continue to add to that emotional drain rather than bring up in our mental screens before us you know anything that could bring us joy appreciation love gratitude even imagining for me a puppy dog puppy dog for example my beautiful puppy dog I want to consciously change my emotional experience I might bring up this beautiful screen before me in my mind of my puppy dog doing something silly maybe he's asking for a biscuit maybe he's asking to go for a walk and immediately I can feel my biochemistry adjusting to that wonderful sense of love and humor and those feel-good feelings that come from beautiful puppy dogs.

So again the role of our emotions in times of rapid change is really important and we can use our conscious awareness to actively construct and create situations and emotional experiences that bring us back to that renewal side of our emotional energy grid so that we are recharging as we go so that we are increasing our ability and our resilience capacity over time and so that we can also create circuit breakers that can help us in the moment when we realize that we are in an emotional experience or in a mental experience that is not resourceful and we have capacities and tools to help us adjust in those specific moments too.

So really important particularly in times of rapid change but actually in any time any way.

So I encourage you to play with those and really a couple of things that I want to touch on as real tips and tricks and go-tos before we wrap up this conversation today are really around that stress resilience system.

So like I mentioned before we've talked about those four domains of energy now maybe I'll talk about the next layer of detail down to see if anything's resonating as being relevant to you at this moment.

Are there any easy adjustments or tweaks that you can make right now without much or any effort at all that will help you either adjust your energy profile right now or give you a clue of where to go in your next step in the path.

So let's talk about a bit of a self-audit.

Okay so as we move around here have a think about where you are right now perhaps give yourself a scale between zero and ten of course ten being perfect and zero being totally imperfect.

So anywhere plotting yourself according to that those dimensions that we're about to go through and at the end of course maybe we'll have a couple of little points to focus on immediately.

Okay so let's talk about our awareness.

Now clearly an unaware brain is a surprise brain and when our brains are surprised a lot of our capabilities go offline.

So this is a foundation for all areas of wellness and it's also responsible for that conscious side of our being that observation and monitoring.

So being in that low end difficult to focus or concentrate or being surprised by our emotional experience and in that high end being obviously the opposite so focused emotionally self-aware being really comfortably embodied.

So things that can help us boost awareness mindfulness practices clearly meditation journaling self-compassion being able to accept what is happening in the moment without criticizing or judging or being inclined to change anything which is perhaps one we could all add to our list today.

So think about where you are out of 10 and maybe just make a note or just even a mental note as we move on.

Now to the second one which is rest and here we have a tired brain which is a grumpy brain and I wonder if we can all identify with this from some point in our timeline.

Now obviously rest allows our brain and our body to rebuild and repair and rejuvenate and regenerate in terms of energy.

It helps us to consolidate information and learning that we've gained throughout our waking time.

Obviously at the low end of this dimension we're talking about being tired difficult to sleep we might be feeling tired and wired and on the high end obviously waking up being wonderfully refreshed feeling totally energized and really being confident in our ability to prioritize renewal as well.

So think about strategies here if this is one for you to add to your list.

Obviously prioritizing rest which is not just sleep and what does that look like for you.

Also prioritizing sleep and sleep qualities so think about what's your sleep hygiene like there are lots that we can tweak here to improve.

Using an evening routine perhaps preparing for sleep reducing stimulants for example.

I'm not going to go through an exhaustive list here because I'm sure you know which ones may be more relevant to you as I certainly do for me.

So thinking about where you are out of 10 on this one just making a note even mentally.

As we move on to the third one here where we're talking about support.

So an unsupported brain is a sad brain we're social creatures so we really need to think about our psychological supports our emotional supports physical supports of course as well the help we receive and allow us ourselves to receive from others.

So when this might be on the low end it could look like feeling a bit isolated or withdrawn or alone or unsupported and clearly on that higher side having a really strong social support network irrespective of the size we know the quality and the depth is there.

So strategies here that could be really helpful asking for help reaching out to connect having perhaps a regular social occasion so it's part of our routine maybe a club or a community of shared goals or common interests.

Also here learning to say no to some of those social things as well if they come to with those energetic drains and being mindful of being over reliant on others and or perhaps others over reliant on you.

So tying that back to the learning to say no.

So now just check in with yourself where are you with this one where are you with support is this a note that you're making or are you here perhaps on the strength side.

Okay so number four exercise again I won't go into huge detail an unfit brain is a slow brain we know physical activity builds both cardio and muscular strength and flexibility it's also good for our mental well-being at our mental energy as well so associated with clear numerous health outcomes we will not go into here we'll be here forever.

So obviously we're on the lower side not getting enough exercise or we're sitting too much during the day not getting up for our regular hourly breaks not being physically active versus on the higher side obviously having that regular daily exercise routine with a variety of strength and cardio and flexibility.

So again some possible strategies here if it's on our list is increasing our curiosity with movement not necessarily feeling an obligation but what is it that feels good today what could I do today that will bring me some movement that I can enjoy introducing variety including and incorporating relaxation exercises as well can be really helpful and really making sure that we're also adding to our muscular strength as well.

So here on exercise I'll let you select where you think you are on the dial here as we move into number five nutrition a hungry brain is a distracted brain now how we nourish our brain and bodies with nutrient dense food you know are you what you eat perhaps we shall ask our brains so do we have poor eating habits are we eating too much fatty and processed food too many stimulants such as caffeine and so what or are we really balanced eating things that are right for us right for our body right for our health profiles are we really monitoring our water intake as well as our minerals so are we seeking professional advice here some strategies increasing our water considering supplements you know I'm not going to go into this one because everyone's different and everyone knows what some of those nurture points may be so take a moment here on nutrition where are you is this a note that you're making second last our attitude a negative brain is an angry brain now your mindset and outlook has an impact on your well-being of course your well-being but also those around you so being self-aware around how your behavior your attitude and outlook influences those people near and dear to you so obviously our attitude underpins our motivation our mood you know the level of compassion our mood you know the level of commitment and interest we have in things our ability to self care perhaps whereas on the lower side here are we judging ourselves or others too harshly that's bringing an emotional drain how accountable are we to ourselves and others on the higher side are we flexible here are we adaptable do we generally see things optimistically are we generally self-accepting and are we accountable to ourselves and others so if this is a nurture point for you some possible strategies could include maybe some stretch projects or challenges that can help build your confidence in yourself and your capabilities maybe it's focusing and learning and practicing to interrupt negative thought spirals when they come up perhaps that rumination you know those interrupts those circuit breakers things such as practicing self-acceptance accepting of others and being really clear on your positive intentions and what those positive intentions are that are driving your behaviors so again on attitude where are you right now is this a nurture point is this a focus point maybe this is a strength already supporting you that will continue and the last one on this beautiful arsenal that we're building today is learning so an unused brain is a forgetful brain so this is about increasing our knowledge our skill our ability our capability our competence it's about increasing and enhancing our ability to learn or learning agility continues to build flexibility has a huge influence on our level of adaptability and overall resilience capacity so on the lower side of learning are we avoiding learning new things are we avoiding new situations are we staying really comfortably in that comfort zone are we overlooking and missing opportunities to grow versus on the higher side do we have that beautiful attitude of a lifelong learner do we enjoy learning are we experimental and do we approach life with this eagerness to try and learn new things so you know where you might be on this one right now and some possible strategies to consider joining an interest group finding a mentor even unofficially even sometimes that mentor might be a celebrity or someone online who you might not even have a physical relationship a personal relationship with seeking to master new skills big and or small and knowing your ideal learning environment and learning conditions you know we learn best when we feel safe to learn to safely make mistakes and experiment so what does that environment need to be for you so on that last one learning where are you now and is this a priority for you right now or maybe not so we've done a couple of things a quick audit there of some things that really promote well-being and resilience how can you now capitalize on your strengths and which areas will most benefit from your attention right now so again just wrapping up today we've done a whirlwind of well-being and resilience discussion we have had uh initially what we spoke about a definition of resilience then we looked at the four domains of energy we spoke quickly about the performance curve before we moved on to how our brain and our bodies actually respond in stressful situations versus that relaxing renewing regenerative parasympathetic side of our experience we talked about dr daniel seagal's hand model of the brain that you may go and do some further research around after this today and then we talked about a whirlwind a very very quick whirlwind where we did a bit of a wellness audit to see what do you want and where will you most benefit from attending to right now along with some possible strategies for each of those seven areas that we looked at so thank you for your listening today it has been a whirlwind we have covered a lot in a very little amount of detail so make sure that you tune in to my further talks and of course some relaxation techniques and some mindfulness activities as well over time so perhaps you want to add me to your favorites and remember that there are always other areas to learn new information but sometimes the best place to learn new things is through experimenting with ourselves and reflecting and adjusting over time so thank you for your company today and i look forward to the next time enjoy