T+

This morning you will

Yes - set: I hope you can hear me clearly?
Hand clap icebreaker?
LOOK For red, close your eyes

Conscious Why
- This is for you if you’ve ever found yourself at the mercy of your emotions
- Would you like to have more freedom and flexibility when handling
challenging situations?
- Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you know better but don’t do
what you know, all because of the emotional state you’re in? (Lose your mind,
forget something simple)
- What if you could understand what’s going on in your brain when you’re
stressed and get that process working for you?

Personal Story
- Think of an area in your life where
- Positive/Negative States in any given week
- Why this is important to me – Used to hate public speaking, now I love it! I’d
stand up to speak, and my mind would sit right down
- 1st did this with My mom 
Bad day at work 
Did you really have a bad day - or were there some good things too?
What really happened? One bad moment that coloured the day
Called me later and had walked herself through it - and I was like YES!
Are you allowing a bad moment, bad day or bad experience to colour your day,
or worse your life? 

Preframe
-Put prior learning aside for the time being
-May have heard some of this before – repetition is the mother of learning
(hear it in new way). Knowing more vs doing what you know
-Some ideas may be very simple but they’re not simplistic

Unconscious Why
Icebreaker
- Force card first
- Card
- Circle
Meaning – all different (values, backgrounds, beliefs) but we’re also the same
(minds and bodies work). Stress affects us in similar ways and we can learn to
manage it and use it to our advantage.

Stress
Stress – One or more of our essential needs are not being met. Accumulation
of pressures – physical/psychological – too much to comfortably cope with.
Will vary from person to person.

Can be good/bad - getting married, having a baby, going on holiday. Stretched

vs stressed.
When undertaking a new challenge, planning a new event or taking on a new
skill, we are initially stretched beyond our comfort zone, but if we can rise to
the challenge it feels good.
When we are stressed we feel like it’s too much – we feel defeated, bad,
negative and anxious.
Focus on the doughnut, not the hole

What happens when we’re under stress? Physical (tension, poor sleep),
Emotional (worrying), Mental (Poor concentration)

Challenge today is stressors are harder to identify. Usually on-going etc.

How the brain treats stress

-3 brains
- Under normal circumstances they should work together – Spock and Kirk
- More connections between Limbic System/Feeling brain (older) to
Neocortex/Thinking brain than the other way
- Emotional brain hijacks the thinking brain (Fear, Anger, Worry, Anxiety) -
Captain Kirk outranks Spock
- Emotional stimulation/excitement makes us stupid, literally, as long as we
remain in that state - Kicked Spock off the bridge
- Amygdala – alerts us of any possible danger – flight/fight
- Crossing the street – car barreling towards you – no time to stop and think
- Emotional brain has to be fast in order to survive. Fast but not accurate
- Used to be a lion chasing you – real threat
- Now it’s deadlines, financial pressures, work pressure & unfair comparisons
because of social media – won’t immediately kill you but the brain doesn’t
know the difference – there is no where to run and nothing to fight; but the
brain acts as if the threat is real
- What this means: High emotional alertness in the brain = high level of
stupidity because we’re not thinking clearly. Which mean if we remain partially
and constantly emotionally alert – constantly functioning at sub optimal levels.
- Blueprint is set in the feeling brain about how to handle this type of situation
next time

Anxiety and Stress is what you make it

-How does it feel to ask someone out on a date? Heart rate, sweaty, butterflies
in your stomach? Yet these are good feeling we associate with
pleasure/excitement
-Skydiving, a speech or performance of some kind – if we don’t enjoy the
activity, the feelings are the same but they’re accompanied by fear/dread
- Bruce Springsteen vs Carly Simon
- What you call it is what it becomes
-Challenge any negative thoughts
- Yet (I haven’t mastered this area yet, I haven’t learned how to do it correctly
yet)
-Disaster, challenge or opportunity – Focus on the doughnut – there will
always be things we can control and things we can’t – that’s life
- Pain is inevitable, it’s a normal & necessary part of life. It’s part of how we
learn and grow. Suffering is optional – making the hole bigger than it is

Relaxation and the Leader

-Useless trying to help someone dying of thirst to think about their long-term
finances, you can’t help a stressed person until what?
-Until they calm down
-Emotional stress – signal that needs not being met adequately just as physical
thirst is a sign that the body is dehydrated. Knowing how to calm down is a skill
that you as the leader need to know for both yourself and the people you lead.

Thirst things First

Talking/planning/leading/coaching when someone is crippled by stress is like
giving salted food to a dehydrated person. Quench their thirst first, then work
out how you can help them, or help yourself.

Emotional challenges like depression, anxiety & panic attacks are caused and
made worse by stress – which in turn causes more stress.

When someone is drowning in depression, fear, anxiety and panic is not the
time to teach them how to swim - remember that their emotional brain is
running the show so they can't think clearly, they're not focusing on the
doughnut, they're focusing on the hole and making it bigger than it is - when
someone is drowning what do they need? A life vest. 

Relaxation doesn’t just get rid of the symptoms of stress, it has therapeutic
benefits because it reduces the emotional alertness in the brain, allowing you
to think clearly.

When we are calm:

- We are better able to see clearly, so we have a better chance of solving
problems Mind is a pool of water
- We more often see problems simply as challenges to overcome rather
than a disaster that we can do nothing about Sailboat
- You’re a leader – at minimum people will follow you. And it will grow.
Something more deadly and contagious than covid. Panic is contagious.
Worry is contagious. Chaos is contagious. Calmness is very contagious.
Church snake
- Things that seemed like issues may no longer seem that way Princess’
Crown
- Very Important: Thinking about challenges when you’re a in a relaxed
state gives your emotional brain a new blueprint to try out – more
options to try out
 - Most importantly – When you are different in a situation, that situation
becomes different, even if it outwardly seems the same.
Shallow roots perfect
Your life can be exactly the same and yet everything can be better, because
you are different. And that will have a domino effect on every area of your life

No problem is permanent, your soul is 

Night becomes day
Winters can be long, cold , but what follows it?
Spring 
Things will always change and they can change to our advantage - Good times
follow bad, and when bad things happen again (as they will), we can relax
about than knowing that good times will follow them again