The Difference Between Being Inside And The Business OF BE’ing Within
At this point, we’ve all be home now for the last two weeks or more. We just learned on Sunday, it’s going to be another 30 days. As Covid19 (coronavirus) continues to disrupt life as we now it, the outbreak is triggering emotional and psychological stress for individuals across all walks of life and industries.
What’s driving our stress and anxiety around Covid19? It ranges from fears of catching the virus to loss of income, loss of a job, juggling kids & work, being confined to our homes, running out of food, isolation from human interaction, loss of retirement income . . . just to name a few. The uncertainty of when it will end and what life will look like on the other side is challenging our coping skills.
Covid19, along with the external fear factors associated with the outbreak, are wreaking havoc on our mental, emotional AND physical health. And here’s why . . . the amygdala is part of the limbic system in the brain where we process strong emotions. In processing these emotions, we develop learned responses to fear and anxiety because emotions are remembered and attach themselves to memories as a learned response or behavior. When we feel threatened, the amygdala kicks the stress response of the Autonomic Nervous System in high gear. An already stressed culture where stress is associated with 90% of our Chronic Illness conditions, at present, limiting productivity and performance is now REALLY STRESSED OUT.
The Business Of BE’ing Within
As we all adapt to “being inside”, I urge you to turn your stressors into an opportunity for growth and transformation. As these external factors hijack our amygdala to BE in a constant state of threat, there are tools and strategies we can incorporate at home that allow us to process emotions in a rational and transformational way. To do that, we need to incorporate intentional strategies to activate the hippocampus and prefrontal lobes in the brain responsible for thinking, decision-making and reasoning. This is “The Business OF BE’ing Within.”
The only way to deploy different strategies to a current problem is to work from the hippocampus. As employers and employees shift gears and adapt into life as it is today, the strength of our ability to do so is rooted in the strength of our Parasympathetic Nervous System. Now, more than ever, the “soft skills” that get employees into trouble with productivity and performance under normal conditions are the same values being hijacked, at an accelerated level, due to the Covid19 outbreak. Understanding how the hippocampus contributes to the adaptive behaviors necessary for navigating these waters will help you not only survive but thrive at home and at work.
The ‘business of BE’ing within’ creates a construct for us to examine how we’re perceiving what’s happening outside of us. As we become “aware” of how we’re behaving in response to a fear, we can make the “choice” to “transform” these emotional memories towards ACT’ing in alignment with healthier habits and mental models.
Stop Getting Hijacked
In the BodyMindBusiness philosophy, we understand we go to the body FIRST to transform the mind. A great tool to calm ourselves that we ALL have access to is our breathing. The length, depth and pace of our breathing plays a large role in whether our brain signals the stress response or the relaxation response. Every time you start to feel a bit of anxiety or stress, begin to incorporate Diaphragmatic Breathing with an Ocean Sound to bring your breathing rate back into balance. To initiate the relaxation response, we must get our breathing rate to 10 breaths or less per minute. Incorporating the ocean sound with the Diaphragmatic Breath is a great way to control the breathing into a coherence pattern.
Once you get yourself to this place, then we can begin to examine the thoughts and emotions tied to the current stressor. Right now, let’s take a look at the soft skill of adaptability. We are all being asked to adapt in ways we weren’t prepared for physically, financially, geographically and more. In the business world, our ability to adapt is a sign of our resilience. The physical nature of resilience is rooted in our relaxation response. Hence, we calm our body FIRST using our breath. Then, we take on the mind to understand “why” we are struggling to “adapt” to the current situation. Once we understand what’s driving us in that moment, we can make a choice to change the mental model driving our fear of change.
BodyMindBusiness Exercise
Once your breathing rate is at or below ten breaths or less per minute, transform your breathing to diaphragmatically inhale for a count of 4, hold the breath in for a 2 count at the top of the inhale. Then, exhale for a count of 4 and hold the breath out for a count of 2 at the base of the exhale. The purpose of the holding at the top of the inhale and the base of the exhale is to stop the mind; silence the monkey mind.
As you inhale, bring your attention to the fear associated with adapting to change. During the pause at the top of the inhale, just BE. On the exhale, imagine releasing the mental trigger fully and completely from your mind and body. During the pause at the base of the exhale, just BE. Silence the mind with the pause. Do this for several rounds. In fact, do this until you feel there is no emotional charge associated with the thought. The gaps between the inhale and exhale train the mind not to react to the thought. The process of “BE’ing within” allows us to interact with the gap in our mind with a different perspective. As we transform out inner world, we transform our outer world.
Learn how to become more productive and effective under pressure AND to achieve it without compromising personal health and happiness. In BodyMindBusiness, we align the body’s optimal physiology and biochemistry with the psychology of peak performance and organizational results.
Go BE Great!