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Session 3 of 5
Becoming Resilient: Time To Regulate
Harnessing Our Energy Cycles
This is the most pivotal lesson in building resilience. While skillful self-awareness is a prerequisite, self-regulation is the linchpin to unlocking the fullness of your resilience. This is more than staying calm when the seas get rough. It's learning to utilize our natural reactions more effectively.
In healthcare, this what helps you stay present and calm under pressure. This is also what supports you springing into action when that is what the situation requires. Self-regulation allows us to sustain focus for long periods of time yet also allows us to down-shift in a stressful moment to have an emotional connection with a patient.
Primary takeaway: We are in constant cycles of activating and settling throughout every day. We need to learn how to utilize this natural balancing act to keep us within our range of resiliency. This primes the rebound of resiliency.
This can be vital to helping get through a highly emotional day at work or helping deal with the tough situations, moments, and environments encountered throughout the day.
Self-regulation
Self-regulation is being able to change your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physiology. Self-regulation helps you understand in what ways and how to transition yourself. Developing a strong autonomic nervous system is the most crucial element to this.
Understanding Your Stress Response
Our body naturally alerts us to stress daily; it's a good thing. However, sometimes these become problematic when chronic in nature.
Identify three of the following stress responses that you most connect to and wish to shift. Some options are:
- Increased heart rate
- Shaky hands
- Feeling districted
- Shallow breathing
- Rapid breathing
- Muscle tension
- Decrease hunger
- Increase urination
- Restlessness
During these moments, it's often helpful to return to the self awareness techniques from the previous lesson, paying attention to what opposites might be.
TIP: Using the Better 30-second Break method is a great way to begin to transition these stress responses.
Self-regulation is our ability to transition stress responses we notice through self awareness. This is important to:
- Better manage change
- Reduce chronic stress
- Engage in healthy relationships
This transition is the body and brain working together to shift between the sympathetic and parasympathetic sides of our autonomic nervous system. We clearly need both of these and, most importantly, is the ability on which to engage when. Also, too often we artificially keep our sympathetic engaged, through such things like caffeine and technology, when our bodies are craving rest through engaging the parasympathetic. We need to train ourselves to rest and recover (parasympathetic) which allows us to better trust our activation (sympathetic) response when we need it.
Taking a Better 30-second Break
We all need breaks. We also need to evaluate the breaks that we do take. After watching this video on how to take a better 30-second break, list 3 times throughout a normal day in which you can replace a break or transition to include the model set forth in this video.
The goal is to take less time away while increasing our awareness of:
- Our surroundings
- How we feel in our body
- What emotions we may be experiencing
To take a deeper dive
Flow is often also called "Being in the Zone". This is the author that coined Flow and this was his follow up book which highlights this concept into work, leisure, and relationships.