Zoning In and Out of Stress
on a daily basis
we travel on the highways of stress
we travel from lanes of calm
to lanes of stress and back again
i’m dr jackie brasi and i’m a
practitioner academic
i study the area of effective
neuroscience in organizations
and leadership for example
i explore how stress manifests itself
in your brain and body and how that
impacts
performance learning and well-being
today i will explain you about five
zones of stress
and how you can zone in and out of
stress so you can take better care of
yourself
want to know more alright let’s get
going
i want to invite you to take a
comfortable position
and take a deep breath in and out
now i will ask you to do it once more
and when you do it again
breathe in through your belly in through
your nose
and out through your mouth let’s go
how does that feel feels good right
must admit i included this exercise
selfishly for myself as well
because doing a thing like this may be a
bit anxiety provoking
and what we just did by breathing deeply
was activating our parasympathetic
nervous system
and we got ourselves into a calm
zone a calm zone of comfort
in this comfort zone we feel safe
in this comfort zone we may have
peaceful thoughts and our body may feel
calm as well
we feel good we feel great
what happens in this zone is that we
have
we can have an open mind we can have
full access to our brain resources
this is also the zone where we can
connect with others
where it feels good to make a connection
and this is also a place where we can
get in a flow
if we are busy with a hobby or if we are
at work
and let’s explore that a bit more
imagine
you are at work and you’re in this flow
you’re in your comfort zone
and you’ve been working for the last
half hour
on a piece that you had to prepare
for a meeting later and you’ve been
writing
some text and it really went well at
some points
you decide to check your email
and so you go to your email and you read
the first message
and the subject line of that message
reads in capitals
urgent respond asap
your breath takes a jump and your heart
starts beating faster
it’s from your manager and this subject
line doesn’t predict anything good
you must have done something wrong your
brain goes crazy
and you just got yourself into a zone of
stress
in other words i use is protection zone
you activated your sympathetic nervous
system
and in this state you try your body
and your brain comes into play tries to
protect you
makes you alert there may be some danger
so you
feel unsafe
your body responds as well as a result
of hormone release
and you may start trembling you may
start feeling
a bit sweaty and your voice may start
shaking
the result of this situation is also
that the open mind that you just had
goes to a tunnel vision
so there is a closed mind you go back to
what you know you withdraw
in this situation connection with others
may not be that easy
you may even pick a fight or you start
distrusting people
productivity goes down the drain
and it’s not really the best place to be
although it’s a normal place to be your
body works very healthy when it responds
in situations like this
the way it did it’s a good place to have
and it’s also a good situation to have
when your body responds like this
however if you are in this zone too
often
or too long not only does it
damage your productivity it may also
damage your health
let’s have a look at that how that may
happen and how this story may continue
let’s go back to that email so you’re in
this state of stress
indeed you read the message and this
it’s not good news
you really messed up and you have to
come in front of a board
to explain yourself this is serious
you go into your cocoon and you just
you freak out and you start working
harder and harder and harder you prepare
more than needed you over prepare the
board meeting is in a couple of days and
you don’t sleep well
you don’t rest and you eat badly
the meeting is here and you enter the
room
and everybody is looking very serious
and you just
pick up the stress in the room
you have a bit of stomach pain but hey
here we go you get bombarded by
questions
and you don’t know the answer and you
panic a bit
because this is really not good it turns
black in front of your eyes and the next
thing you know you wake up on the ground
you just entered your terror zone
the terror zone is a build up of a lot
of stress over time or
immediate danger you get into the
terrorism
when your body it’s not even consciously
happening your body picks up you maybe
even in life danger
it’s the zone of extreme freeze
it’s the zone of trauma and it’s the
zone of
burnout this doesn’t happen a lot
in general but it’s important to know
that this is a zone that exists
because if you don’t take care of
yourself you may end up in that zone
now so far the story is a bit of a story
of doom and gloom
isn’t it indeed it is
and you may wonder could the story have
evolved differently
yes actually it could have
let’s explore let’s go back let’s rewind
to the email
so you read the email and you feel in
the stress situation
you pick up what happens you know
you’re going into his protection zone
you take a step back
and you read the message again you take
a deep
breath whoa
this is not really good news you decide
to take a
to take a break to take a walk take some
distance
and come back and read the message again
you know what to do you know your old
pattern
and this time this is not going to
happen you’re gonna call your manager
you’re gonna connect with your team and
you explain the situation
you also explain what you did wrong but
you also explained that as a team we’re
gonna fix this
you want to have every elephant in the
room and you want to understand
where things went wrong and you do that
by creating an
atmosphere of safety everybody can share
their feeling and their input but you
also bring
a mindset to the table of learning and
development
whatever happens yes we’re not in a good
place but we can learn and develop we
can learn and grow
from this so let’s do this together and
let’s
get on with it together so you create
safety
stretch and also a mindset of growth
that’s one thing the other thing that
you do is taking care of yourself
you know the tendency is not to stop
working until you’re done
but you know that’s not right and so you
plan where you make sure you have enough
breaks
you eat well and you try to sleep so you
set yourself and your team up
for success today of the board meeting
you’re all ready you all feel stressed
you still feel it’s quite anxiety
producing this situation
but you know you’ve done everything you
could and you also know you’re there
together you’ve taken the the right
preparations and you’re ready for it and
magic happens in this meeting
because when you go into this meeting
there is a difficult there are many
difficult conversations
but creativity starts to happen and
actually you come out of the meeting
with a better results than you ever
could have imagined
you got yourself and the team in a
learning zone
in the learning zone you go out of your
comfort zone
but you learn how to be comfortable with
the stress
in the learning zone you accept that
mistakes can be made
but that you can learn from it and that
you can come to better
results you have
stress but you can keep an open mind
you can be curious and engaged with
what’s going on
after this meeting you all go home and
you are exhausted
because you really worked very hard
and you know you have thousands of
emails to plow through
but you also know that they can maybe
wait for a few more minutes
or maybe for an hour or two because you
first will go do some yoga and take a
bath
you will get yourself into the recovery
zone
in the recovery zone you take care
of yourself but also of the stress that
you have injured
you need to refuel but you also need to
build a buffer for the next ride
the recovery zone is an important
important
part of your day-to-day life should be
an important part of your day-to-day
life
this is also the zone that we’re in when
we sleep
so it’s a deep resting state
now you may think so what you’ve told us
these stories and we know
there are five zones what do i need to
do with this
well let me tell you about what to do
with it and let me go once more
through those five zones and then
explain
how to look at this and how to manage it
so we started with the comfort zone
the calm zone you can get into the
comfort zone in many ways
and and there are lots of exercises and
lots of things that you can do to get
you in a calm place
when you are in a stressful situation
you get into the protection zone
that may also happen at home it’s not
only at work
right little things even this morning i
was coming here i had to be here at a
certain time and there was a huge
convoy in front of me and i couldn’t go
faster and i was
really getting nervous and uh and then
of course heartbeat goes up i start
sweating will i ever
be on time if you stay too long here
you can end up here and here’s the thing
you can learn actually either to prevent
from getting into this red zone
by directly going into the learning zone
or go from the protections onto the
learning zone
without getting into the terror zone
and making sure that recovery zone is
part of your program
and if you noticed on the slide
the different colors that i used the key
message
is there are two key messages actually
try to stay in the green zone
as much as possible i’m not saying try
to stay in the comfort zone as much as
possible because that’s the zone of
status quo you won’t learn you won’t
develop you won’t grow
but try to find the right balance and
find out what it is important for to get
out of this comfort zone into the
learning zone and make sure you have
enough recovery
here’s the other thing you have to do
that yourself
nobody’s going to do it for you the
world has changed
structures are very different you have
to earn your life
and you have to manage this now you may
wonder how
well it starts with the very simple
habits
first of all create awareness where you
are on a daily basis or in a moment
and we can do that right now check in
with yourself
and reflect on where you are currently
on what highway
and how do you check in you can take a
deep breath
but fill your body and see what happens
in your brain
what are the thoughts that you have
currently i am in the learning zone but
on this stage
i moved from comfort to protection and
stress
and then i managed myself back to the
learning zone
and i know what to do and how to do it
i set myself up for success and these
are skills that you can actually learn
on a day-to-day basis notice
notice where you are so in the morning
when you wake up
check in how am i feeling today
and then when you look ahead at the day
you may have
an agenda full of appointments and lots
of things going on
have a look what is going to happen
today and where
may i get stretched too far out of my
learning zone
in a stress zone or what else do we have
and how can i actually proactively
manage this process
what do i need to do to look at my day
or at my week
to build enough recovery to create
learning
when you enter a meeting room check in
where am i at the moment what do i need
what is my intention
and how do i want to show up in this
meeting
when you check in you can plan ahead
and you can also seek help if you need
it
the other thing you need to know is of
course if this goes for you
this also goes for others so if you have
a difficult meeting
or a difficult conversation with someone
else and you get a reaction that you did
not expect
reflect on that what’s going on for that
other person is it maybe better to
re-schedule this meeting
or can i actually do something to get
this person back to a learning zone
when you check in when you notice you
can take action
and you can zone in and out of stress
and that’s how you can take care of
yourself
thank you
you