How to be More Productive, Authentic, Creative and Compassionate
“If you want to help someone, get yourself together”
~ Wendy Palmer
Our nervous systems are incredible. They’ve evolved over hundreds of thousands of years - sophisticated, elegant responses to promote our survival. Pity then that they just don’t handle uncertainty or chaos very well. And let’s face it, the only constant in life has only ever been change.
When I train aid workers before they travel to conflict zones, I see the full range of human responses to threat: fight, flight, freeze, fold, friend…
All completely natural and understandable. None of them that helpful to deal with the complexity and uncertainty of modern life.
When our stress response is triggered, the body prioritises all the survival systems. It’s not that interested in digesting food, for example, if it thinks it’s about to become food for a lion…which is essentially how the body processes all threat. It can’t distinguish between a lion or an angry boss or a global pandemic for that matter.
All very helpful to avoid being eaten by lions. Not so much if you’re trying to get on with running a business, getting your work done, or being a good parent/partner/friend/colleague.
Because this ‘fight-flight’ reaction causes neocortical inhibition and blocks our social engagement system - basically, in the words of my teacher Mark Walsh, we get stupid and mean. When we’re activated like this, we end up with all-or-nothing thinking and primitive - read ineffective - response patterns.
In order to be productive, to be creative, to be authentic and to be in connection with other people, we need to calm our nervous systems down and get out of this reactive cycle.
When I was in officer training in the RAF, we called this ‘the cigarette break’.
I want to be clear that I am absolutely NOT suggesting or even condoning smoking as an effective response to stress. The cigarette break is a pause. A breath. A deep in-breath and a long exhale. When, as a junior officer, everything seemed overwhelming and I didn’t know what to do next, one of the instructors - normally the wise old Sargeant - would lean in and remind me to breathe.
Deep breath in, deep breath out, now what the f*** is going on?
It’s so simple and yet so friggin’ hard to do. Especially when the proverbial is hitting the fan.
Even with all this training behind me, I still occassionally find myself oscillating between the need to do EVERYTHING and the inability to do so much as get out of bed. I get caught in a loop of judging myself for not doing enough, for not being enough, then the shame of being so hard on myself kicks in and off we go again in an exhausting merry-go-round of different renditions of my inner critic.
And yet, in all the turbulence, there is a little voice asking “Could we just take a pause? Maybe a breath?” And I remember that everything is okay, even the stuff that isn’t.
In the midst of the chaos and uncertainty, it can be so easy to think we have to DO more to get out of it.
Except I’m starting to realise that being overwhelmed is very much like being in quicksand. The more you struggle, the deeper you get sucked in.
The key to stopping overwhelm from overwhelming you is managing your nervous system so that you’re not fighting your physiology as well as the task in front of you. With a regulated nervous system, you can take mindful, meaningful action whether that’s
starting projects with clarity and focus to make overwhelm less likely in the first place,
resetting and getting your day back on track when you’ve been fighting fires instead of focusing on what you really wanted
or ending the day with appreciation, no matter how tough it’s been.
Being stressed and overwhelmed is one of the most human things there is. The skill is not about getting stressed in the first place; it’s how quickly can we notice and respond. The more tools we have to bring ourselves back to a place of centre, calm and compassion, the less power overwhelm has to keep us stuck.
I have a self-study course that guides you through practical approaches to regulating your nervous system and dealing with overwhelm. It’s called Finding Calm - Essential Tools to Reduce Stress and Create Breathing Space.