0:03

Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, Cultivating Adaptability: Normalize Change – hosted by HRDQ-U and presented by Ken Scott.

0:14

My name is Sarah, and I will moderate today’s webinar.

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The webinar will last around one hour. If you have any questions or comments, please type them into the question area on your GoToWebinar control panel, and we’ll answer as many questions as we can during today’s session. And, if you just want to type in a “Hi!”, or where you’re coming from and that questions box – then seek and find where that is, as we will be using that frequently during today’s event.

0:40

And today’s webinar is sponsored by HRDQstore. HRDQU is based upon research of our published training tools. For more than 40 years HRDQ has been a provider of research-based training resources for classroom virtual online, soft skills training HRDQ offers learning resources to help retain employees and clients make better decisions, improve performance, and much more learn more at HRDQstore.com.

1:10

And today’s webinar is presented by Ken Scott. Ken serves as a coach, consultant, and trainer. He has worked with all levels of an organization from senior executive VP’s to individuals’ adding value for the customer. He has a deep desire to help individuals evolve to higher levels of performance and enjoyment.

1:29

This empowers them to change themselves and to contribute to their changing organization from the inside out.

1:35

Ken has been practicing the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza since 2012, and became a HeartMath Certified Neuro Change Solutions Consultant in 2020, teaching the work of Dr. Joe and HeartMath to individuals teams and organizations, both locally and internationally.

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Ken’s background is in manufacturing and engineering. His background keeps them grounded in the desire for science, and research-based solutions to personal, and organizational changes. Ken has committed himself to continuing his exploration of the ever evolving scientific understandings of personal change and transformation, both for himself and for his clients, thank you for joining us today.

2:16

Absolutely, happy to be here and thanks for moderating for us today, Sarah. Greatly appreciate it.

2:25

So today, and thanks to everyone who is on my call, greatly, appreciate you being here and, and hopefully having a conversation with me.

2:35

Webinar format can make that difficult at times. But we are lucky.

2:39

We have a skilled moderator and Sarah that’s going to help us have a conversation in this format.

2:46

Now, Sarah mentioned that I really want to talk about adaptability, the idea of cultivating adaptability to normalize change.

2:55

So to give you a high level overview of the journey that I hope we go on together today, the first thing I want to do is make a case that going forward, and even in this moment, organizations will need to become adaptable, become skilled, at change, in order to thrive going forward.

3:18

And I suspect that it’ll be a short discussion, and, and maybe easy concept to grasp and agree upon.

3:27

Secondly, then I’m going to make the case that in order for an organization to be adaptable, individuals have to be adaptable.

3:37

They have to be comfortable with and even skill that change.

3:41

And I’m going to present a model, an image of what adaptability looks like as a reference point, not necessarily as a destination, but just an ideal that we can use to talk to through the rest of this webinar.

4:01

After that, months, we’ve kind of come to consensus, hopefully, that individuals will need to be good at change in order for organizations to be good at change.

4:11

I want to talk to why we struggle with change.

4:16

And I want to do it from a somewhat biological perspective.

4:23

So that we go into these challenges with more information of what is going on, and why it’s happening, so that when I present at the very end of this webinar, a tool that you could use, of how you could begin to fool yourself, cultivate an internal state that would allow you to be more adaptable, and what allow you to normalize change for yourself, as an individual, within your organization.

4:54

You’ll understand why you would want to do it, what and what you’re doing.

5:00

I will try to cover all that in an hour. And I’m also wanted to engage you as we do it.

5:05

So let’s jump right in.

5:09

First thing I want to present as a case for adaptability.

5:15

Up until about 170 years ago, the fastest way that a human being could transport one cell from A to B over a distance was the horse.

5:27

And so often, that meant the fastest way that we could communicate as well.

5:31

And roughly that’s about 40 miles an hour, is the top speed of a horse.

5:38

And around that time, it’s kinda when the locomotive took over at about 50 miles an hour as the fastest mode of transportation.

5:46

Also, the telegram is in there around that same time, too.

5:51

So what’s interesting is, if you look over that span of 170 years, the rate of transportation is over 100 times faster now.

5:59

The fastest jet is published, and it’s a military jet. So we don’t even know if this is fully accurate, right?

6:06

It could be even faster, but publish it over 4500 miles an hour, over 100 times faster than the horse.

6:14

But when you look at information and the impact of fiber optics, and the fact that we can almost instantaneously communicate right now, I’m presenting from Traverse City, Michigan, and wherever you at your at your, at some distance, but almost instantaneously, you’re receiving this information.

6:35

So we can say that information can travel near the speed of light, 33 million, 480,000 times faster.

6:43

And what it was just 170 years ago.

6:48

If we plot technology advancements over a similar period of time, it’s an exponential curve. And I’m sure many of you have seen or had some exposure to this information in the past.

7:04

Advancement is happening so fast that it is changing the way we interact with reality.

7:12

When you look at that, from an individual perspective, an organizational impact, generations are growing up in a completely different environment than a generation prior, and that’s causing them to have a completely different experience, completely different needs.

7:31

So that’s one challenge that we face that is a reason why businesses would need to adapt and change just because of that alone.

7:40

Also, because of the technological changes that are happening around them and from a technology perspective.

7:49

If you think back to antiquity from generation to generation, let’s say a blacksmith.

7:56

What almost tried to maintain and sustain the exact same process to get the same level of quality?

8:03

I spent a lot of my time an industry tried to do very similar thing, maintain the parameters and process within a combined working inputs and variables.

8:16

And you could do that for generations and generations.

8:19

But now, an organization because of these changing parameters, needs to evolve itself within a decade. Maybe even less time if you’re in the tech sector.

8:31

So, my question to you is going to be, and this will be our first poll, our first chance to engage is, from your thoughts, From your perspective, how important to you is adaptability for your organization?

8:47

Get that full life, so you can take some time here and submit your answer, and then we will share the results on screen up, and I see their responses streaming in there.

9:00

Beautiful, thank you for responding. Appreciate that.

9:04

I already feel like you’re in the room.

9:07

I’ll give you 10 more seconds.

9:14

OK, great, Let’s get those results there. Can you see those on your side?

9:21

I cannot at this point.

9:24

So we have 66% saying, extremely important, 31 first thing important, and 2% saying a little bit important.

9:36

Well, I think we have consensus. And then we can move on. And thank you for sharing those results for me.

9:43

So we can say, then, adaptability is a must have, that, in some level, we need to figure this out.

9:48

As organizations, how to be more adaptable let me give you a model, and, again, this is just a model.

9:53

Just an ideal, not necessarily something we would try to ultimately, hold ourselves to, but an ideal.

10:02

This image is a school of fish.

10:08

The reason why I chose this image is because this is a community of individuals acting almost as one in the sense that there is an emerging image of a sphere, a giant ball or sphere.

10:27

they do this to confuse larger predators, to a predator.

10:33

This is a confusing thing to see in the middle of the ocean.

10:38

What’s fascinating about this?

10:40

They’ve studied this, and you could, you have probably seen this phenomenon in starlings are other bird populations, fish populations, And not just necessarily making a sphere like these fish are, but almost dancing with each other. And what emerges is an appearance of a larger, whole, an entity that is the sum of all the parts.

11:05

And what’s super fascinating to me, about this phenomenon, is, there is no leader in this formation.

11:15

No one fish is sitting in the middle, here, telling all the fish. I use, without their useful here at mound, guys, let’s get it together.

11:22

There’s no change management program, no meetings before.

11:26

They are simply interacting with one another on common purpose, common values, for a common goal, to protect a community, to survive as a whole, and they’re organizing themselves based on what is going on around them.

11:45

So, my question for you, and you can pop these into the question, What type of traits you think we, as human beings, would have to have to model such a behavior?

11:57

How would we have to behave or, or what would we have to do in order for us to organize in such a way that individual to individual, we’re communicating and sharing, acting, interacting, without one common leader? What are the traits that we would have to have with each other?

12:20

You can type your response on that last box. We’ll share some of their answers. We received, We have trust. Oh, perfect. Because the first one, I was looking for Some other purpose. Millimeter, hmm, hmm. Hmm.

12:37

co-operation, yes.

12:40

Empathy: Blockchain: Transparency, communication.

12:48

Listening to understand, flex the ball, honesty, sense of community, and respect, elaboration, clear expectations.

13:02

Nice.

13:04

Those are a great list. Thank you, Sarah, for sharing that. And thank you guys.

13:08

This is, uh, this is a break community, and you get it so well, that’s our model, OK? And we’ll come back and talk to that towards the end, but that’s, that’s the model we’re striving for.

13:20

Now, let’s talk about why organizations struggle with change.

13:25

And as I mentioned before, organizations struggle with change, because individuals struggle with change.

13:37

And what I would like to do is share with you my best understanding of why we, as individuals struggle with change.

13:45

And we’ll do it on two levels.

13:47

one is just fundamental to change in itself.

13:52

It doesn’t really matter what the changes, and I have a nice, fun little example to share with you.

13:59

And then there’s going to be another later layer that actually reinforces or exacerbates that struggle with change and becomes somewhat like a positive feedback loop in, in our difficulty with dealing with change.

14:19

So the first thing I’d like to share with you, and I It’s interesting to me, But I came across this information, and started to understand this at exactly 35 years old, 95% of who we are by the time we are 35 years old, or in our mid thirties, is a set of memorized behaviors, unconscious, emotional reactions, automatic habits, hard wired, attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions.

14:54

Let function just like a computer program.

14:58

Let’s think about that.

14:59

95% are who we are, is an unconscious program.

15:07

We’re getting cues from our environment, there are triggering these habits so that we can automatically do it.

15:16

We, they become a way for us to be more efficient in our environment.

15:22

And so, in a way, it’s very adaptive that we could do a routine enough times to make it automatic and unconscious.

15:30

So, let me give you example.

15:32

Very simple example.

15:35

Up until about a month ago, the recycling in my house was placed under the sink.

15:44

Stick with me, I know that this is an example, but stick with me Under the sink, OK.

15:50

And through some re-organization of things and and getting rid of some things and and my wife made a decision and I agreed with this decision to move the recycling to the cupboard right next to it.

16:05

So that’s no longer under the sink Literally the cupboard right next to it.

16:12

Now I know that it’s in the other cupboard consciously.

16:17

I’m aware that that is in a different cupboard.

16:21

But when I go to recycle something, and it’s in my hand, my conscious awareness isn’t actually on where is the recycling, My conscious awareness is usually somewhere else.

16:34

I’m just walking somewhat mindlessly, we could say toward the cupboard. wouldn’t you know?

16:41

I opened the cupboard under the sink and guess what, there’s no recycling there.

16:48

The first time, it’s kind of funny because I know what’s going on here.

16:52

The second time, it’s still interesting.

16:55

But after a week, when I know what’s going on here, it starts to become annoying. And I can feel it. I can sense that.

17:05

Why can’t I get this, right?

17:08

Why can’t I choose the right cupboard when I know that it’s right?

17:13

And the reason is because it’s an automatic program.

17:17

I had gone to that covered so many times that I no longer have to cut should we think of it.

17:21

So a habit, we could say that there’s a redundant set of automatic, often unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and emotions that are acquired through repetition.

17:35

A habit is when we’ve done something so many times, we no longer have to consciously think about it.

17:42

A habit is wind in a way the body hasn’t become the mind.

17:47

It is sensing cues from the environment below our conscious awareness and automatically selecting the program appropriate for that environmental condition.

17:58

Now, let’s put that into perspective of some sort of organizational change.

18:03

If we, because of the time, it’s decided to go through, for example, a digital transformation, and we looked at the information, we did all our homework, We know that if we implement this, that the long term goals associated with this digital transformation, our financial benefit to the organization ideally will make people’s lives easier. Many of us have been in this situation.

18:31

We often get very excited about the change and perhaps we do all the right change management things, we have the right meetings, we communicate, communicate, communicate. All of this does a great job of making us aware of what the change is, why we’re doing it. When it’s gonna happen, who it’s going to affect first?

18:52

None of that helps us reprogram the habit though.

18:57

And I’m still, as an individual at an individual level, I’m going to come up against my habits.

19:03

And if I haven’t been doing a particular process for a certain period of time, and I have repeated it over and over again, it’s an unconscious act.

19:13

And even though I intend a desire to make the change, I understand.

19:21

Often what happens for us, as that we are still being unconscious in our routine we are still unaware of our unconscious habits.

19:32

And as soon as we have to do something different, this is the hardest part about change is to make a different choice in the same environment.

19:42

We’re coming up against that program.

19:44

We’re coming up against the body, so to speak.

19:48

And even in something as simple as putting the recycling in a cupboard next to it, if I hit up against it enough times, there’s a good chance that I will get frustrated, I will become annoyed.

20:06

And in that state, I lose sight of the reason why I was doing this change in the first place, and it becomes easy to blame the initiative, too.

20:18

Blame the person who asked us to do it differently, but the way that we feel inside of us.

20:26

So what I want to present to you is that any change that we desire to make within the organization, has a chance and likely will come up against somebody’s habits and routines, because 95% of who we are as a set of habits and routines, that’s the first layer.

20:45

That’s the first thing that we have to become aware of.

20:48

And when an individual understands that to do something different, will feel uncomfortable, because now I’m breaking the routine of the body.

20:56

At least they have a better understanding that not only is it a change for the organization, but this is a change for me.

21:05

This is a personal change, and I propose that every organizational change is a personal change, and the more that we invest in individuals, an ability to respond appropriately to that stressor, the better chance they have of overcoming themselves.

21:27

And coming back to the reason why they’re doing it, repeating the new routine enough times to start creating a new habit.

21:34

Because lucky for us, we are extremely neuro plastic.

21:39

That is to say we are innately adaptable when we understand how to use the hardware that we’ve been given.

21:50

Next thing I want to propose, and this is the next layer, is that we live in 1 or 2 states of mind, and body.

21:57

We either live in a state of survival or we live in a state of creation, they’re living in survival, is living in stress.

22:10

Stress when the brain and body are knocked out of balance, stress is when the brain and body are knocked out of order, we’re out of homeostasis.

22:22

The stress response is what the body and make me does to restore itself, back to order, back to balance.

22:30

And that all living organisms can tolerate short-term stress.

22:35

And in some ways, it is is good for us. We we stress muscles are downstairs to to encourage growth.

22:44

And so there’s aspects of stress that are very good. This isn’t to say that stress is bad.

22:49

The problem is, is when we turn stress on, but we can’t turn it off.

22:53

And now, it has become adaptive, becomes very maladaptive, and there are three types of stressors that we could run into and in our environment.

23:07

They’re physical stresses such as maybe ergonomic injuries or accidents, balls, broken bones, fatigue.

23:20

There are chemical stressors such as toxins, pollutants, viruses, bacterias, hangovers.

23:29

There are emotional stresses such as overdue projects, dales, inflation, the news.

23:40

What I’d like you to do is share in the question box what are some of your sources of stressors. Because the first thing we need to do in order to meet the challenge of the stressors of our days, of our environment, is to identify them. We can’t change something. We can’t counteract something. We can’t counter-measure something we’re not aware of.

24:00

So just list out, share in the questions.

24:03

What are some of your sources of stress?

24:06

So, Darin, Sandy?

24:09

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, great, one.

24:12

Tim says, lack of time with too much to do, mmm hmm, Teresa said Financial.

24:22

Grace said, Aging parents.

24:27

Nancy says, clients.

24:29

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, chance at time restraints.

24:35

Katie says, Lack of confidence, Kelly says, Lots of projects in the air.

24:41

Yeah, Selecting priorities.

24:44

I have a few more financial stressors coming in.

24:48

Lindsay says, Balancing my kidney kids’ needs of my own.

24:52

Yes!

24:54

constant re-organization, Katherine, Nicole says change. It says Berkeley!

25:02

Yes, I love this list. I want to pull out a few that it’s a great list, There’s a couple. I’d love to talk to you.

25:09

The first one right off the bat pulled on my heartstrings there, The unknown.

25:16

I mean, that’s a great talking point.

25:19

When we look at the net change in why we consciously could think a change is good and want to change, but biologically might not, if we think about our body, for a second, as an animal, just for an analogy.

25:39

It fears, the unknown.

25:42

The unpredictable, be unfamiliar.

25:45

It actually craze what it’s experienced in the past and known the familiar, the predictable it wants to be able to know the outcome.

25:53

So when we do implement change, which I love that change itself came up as a stressor, is that’s absolutely true.

26:01

When we come up against a change, we might consciously want to make that change.

26:08

And, the same time, the closer we get to it, and I’ve experienced this many times in my life, the closer you get to actually doing something different, making a different choice in the same environment, We begin to feel uncomfortable.

26:22

And that is messages from body, that this is unknown.

26:26

This is unpredictable.

26:29

And it’s a survival instinct, it is to tell us that, hey, we don’t know how this is going to turn out, more individuals understand that.

26:40

The better their chances are of going through that.

26:44

Through that discomfort, through that to the other side, where true growth is.

26:51

All of these change initiatives in the beginning begin with an ideal growth into something else.

27:01

Then it’s at an individual level, though, that we are challenged with the unknown, and it’s at an individual level that we come up against that discomfort.

27:13

Thank you guys, so much. Great, Great perspectives. Great, sharing on your stressors, Great awareness in the community.

27:21

And awareness is absolutely key, we can’t change anything that we’re not aware of.

27:28

I want to dive into this, a little bit deeper, talk about stress a little bit more.

27:35

Oh, it doesn’t really matter if it is a physical stress, if it is a chemical stress or if it is an emotional stress, it engages our autonomic nervous system in the same way.

27:51

When I say autonomic, you can think automatic and there are two branches of the autonomic nervous system.

27:59

There’s the parasympathetic nervous system, often called the rest and repair, then there is the sympathetic nervous system often called fight or flight.

28:12

And when we react with stress, we are engaging that sympathetic nervous system.

28:20

And that causes our pupils to dilate. Our heart rate to increase causes, respiratory rate to increase.

28:29

It shunts blood flow away from the internal organs to the extremities to begin or prepare to either fight, run or to hide to prepare for some external threat.

28:50

What’s interesting is, the more that we do this, the more that we experience this.

28:56

This also gives us a rush of energy, a jolted energy, and we begin to become accustomed to that, and we begin to crave it and it’s like triple cappuccino.

29:06

We we desire to have it.

29:08

We need it to get, to move forward throughout our day.

29:14

So now we’re using things in our environment as ques, to turn on the stress response automatically and unconsciously putting ourselves back into the operating of sympathetic nervous system.

29:29

Now this is going to be important in our conversation of a change.

29:34

What I hope that you can see is that often we become habituated to or I would even say addicted to the hormones of stress. I know this to have been true in my life.

29:49

When I came across this information, I was a manufacturing engineer and an end product lead for a new product being being launched at my organization.

30:01

And I had a mantra to work hard, play hard.

30:06

What that really meant for me was work and stress plant stress.

30:11

Certainly, I didn’t think about it that way, in those terms, But as I look back, it’s the way I interacted with individuals the way I met my day. I was in the sympathetic nervous system.

30:23

I would say, 80 to 90% of the day.

30:27

Now, why is that a problem?

30:32

In order to explain that, I need to talk to you a little bit about brainwaves.

30:38

Don’t worry. This is not going to get too scientific and tend to keep this very simple.

30:43

Well, we’ve got a nice little chart here and we’re, as we move from the left to the right or from blue to green, we are moving. We are increasing the frequency of activity in the brain.

30:57

Now maybe you have seen before the kind of hair nets that people wear a lot of the wires coming out of it.

31:06

That is a quantitative electroencephalogram.

31:11

What we’re doing with a Q EEG is we are measuring the magnetic activity caused by the activity of the brain outside of the brain.

31:22

Yes. That means your thoughts are literally outside of your head.

31:28

And we then put them the activity of the brain into categories.

31:34

So, the first category is Delta.

31:37

This is zero point five two four cycles per second or Hertz.

31:43

Very low activity and this is actually associated with eat sleep.

31:48

The next level up is theta 4 to eight hertz and this is a dream state.

31:55

This is when we are asleep but we’re still have activity in the brain and we are dreaming it’s also a very hypnotic stay, very suggestible state.

32:06

The next one up is alpha, alpha is eight hertz to 13 Hertz And this is we are aware awake with our environment, but our inner world is a little more real than our outer world we’re internally reflective.

32:23

And we go in into this state all the time throughout the day.

32:28

Right now, some of you, as I share information, might look out into space for a second.

32:33

As you think about what I’m sharing. And in that moment your inner world is more real than your outer world You’re not paying attention to what’s going on around you and your consolidating Information.

32:45

Alpha is a very inner reflective and a great creative space to be.

32:52

Next layer is beta and Beta has three ranges.

32:56

The first layer of beta is low range beta, many of you are probably in low range beta right now.

33:03

That’s our normal, conscious awareness in our environment, and we’re externally focused. We can say that our senses have plugged this in your environment, and we’re paying attention to it. We’re paying attention to what’s going on around us.

33:18

Next is mid beta.

33:21

And this is 16 to 22 Hertz, and this is, but I call it that you stress, or that it’s a good stress. So right before this presentation, I was probably in a little bit of mid-range beta.

33:35

I got I knew I content and that was prepared, but, you know, you’re getting ready to do the presented presentation and maybe your height and a little bit, and that’s a good place to be.

33:45

And we pop into mid range beta in low range beta and alpha, naturally throughout our day.

33:52

But the last one is high beta.

33:56

This is when we’re in around the state.

33:58

This is, when we become over analytical, overly focused on the environment, and we become object focused, focused.

34:06

We narrow our focus on different people, different objects, different sayings, our environment.

34:15

And our mind is overworking over processing, and we feel like, sometimes, we can’t stop. We have to have something to focus on, something to do, Something, to process, Something to analyze. Why is this important?

34:31

High range beta is stress.

34:34

We’re hiring, beta.

34:36

We will never change, because it’s a survival response, virna survival state.

34:41

Linear survival, not a time to try something new.

34:45

It’s not a time to create.

34:48

It’s not a time to collaborate.

34:50

It’s not a time to communicate, it’s a time to do what you know.

34:55

I’m being chased by a bear in the words. You think I’m going to compare my my, my stride to if there’s an efficient, my use malware in the right shoes. Now. Run as fast as I can.

35:07

If I am in a state of stress at work and I try to get things done, and I know you know this is true.

35:16

I just want to do it the way that I’ve always done it, I just want to get it done.

35:21

And that different way, albeit, that the long term effects of changing to this new way would be in my benefit. In the short term, it’s causing me more time.

35:33

A lot of people brought up time as a model, as a thing that’s called the stressor, now we’ve exacerbated that.

35:41

And if the change becomes the stressor.

35:46

Now, associated with it and I’m already accustomed to normalized or addicted to stress.

35:54

Now, I have created an environment, a culture of resistance.

36:01

What’s worse, or what is even more interesting is that I can carry on the stress response just by thought alone.

36:11

Now, just thinking about the change causes. Stress. Now, just wondering what’s gonna happen causes me to go in distress.

36:18

Now, just thinking about how I have to do things differently can cause me to go into distress, and as I said, we’re high beta.

36:28

It’s not a time of change.

36:31

And so, the idea then would be, if we could educate individuals, if we could train them and teach them how to self regulate, how do I identify when they are in these different brainwave frequencies when they’re in high beta when they become stressed And they’re overanalyzing and we could teach them how to restore themselves back to order, back to balance, back to homeostasis, back, into low beta or alpha.

37:03

They would be in fertile soil for change, They would be in a better place, more adaptable, more resilient to the obstacles that come with that change, because we all know the change is not perfect.

37:18

And then, no matter how many planning sessions we do, and no matter how good the change management program is, sooner or later, this comes to an individual journey.

37:30

And individuals, when they meet a stressor, and they go into stress, they take themselves out of the space for adaptability.

37:41

They take themselves out of a place where change could take root.

37:48

And, unbeknownst to them, maybe unaware to them, these hormones of stress cause us to feel the emotions such as anger, shame, powerlessness, frustration, insecurity, depression, judgement, pain, hatred, sadness, suffering, guilt, hopelessness, overwhelm, impatience, annoyance.

38:16

All of these, what we might call, lower emotions, are correlated with or associated with stress.

38:26

And it says it’s a survival response, it’s a self preserving response.

38:33

We become very selfish will become self aggrandizing, self loathing, self pity, it’s all about the self.

38:41

Now, think about that.

38:43

when we go back to what you had told me that we needed to have in order to have an organization that was highly adaptable. Trust.

38:52

We had to be able to communicate.

38:55

We had to be able to, ah work together.

39:01

That is the opposite of stress that is more in the realm of the parasympathetic nervous system of the rest and repair system, the long term building projects that are associated with the internal organism.

39:18

And what happens is, we have some stressor in our experience.

39:22

And, Let’s say, for an example, we have an argument with a colleague about change.

39:32

And we start reviewing that argument in our minds.

39:36

We felt angry because of it.

39:39

And while we think about it, because we can create stress just by thought alone, more angry, we feel.

39:45

And if we hold onto this for hours, or days, and somebody says, I can so angry.

39:53

And I would be able to tell you as a Well, let me tell you what happened to me three hours ago.

40:00

If we held onto that now one long emotional reaction to an experience for weeks or months, we will be building a temperament.

40:12

Moving from a mood to a temperament.

40:15

People say, I just can have such a bad temper. Me say, I don’t know, ask him.

40:20

And then I would say, Well, let me tell you what happened to me five months ago, one long emotional reaction.

40:27

Then finally, if we hold onto these emotions for years, we’d be building a personality trait.

40:34

It starts to become who we are and all of us can probably think of someone in our lives.

40:41

Who has become an emotion that you that would we would say that isn’t relatively angry person or that is A A person who is unhappy.

40:52

They have embodied it a comment.

40:55

So the ability to this whole thing is called the refractory period.

41:01

In Chemistry the idea that this chemistry is coursing through our body for a certain period of time and we’re extending that refractory, period.

41:11

one long emotional reaction.

41:14

So the idea of shortening our emotional reactions of reducing the refractory period, moving ourselves out of the sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system, there’s what we call emotional intelligence.

41:34

The ability to be aware of one’s own emotional state recognize that is stress and take action to reduce the refractory period of that emotional reaction is what we call emotional intelligence.

41:54

Moving from the sympathetic nervous to the parasympathetic nervous system moving from fear to trust, moving from frustration to care moving from isolation to collaboration.

42:12

Now, what I’d like you to tell me is how beneficial would it be to your organization if every single person don’t analyze whether it’s possible?

42:23

If every single person in your organization could shorten their refractory period, could move from a state of stress to a State of hello to a State E S R.

42:37

To a State of rest and repair.

42:39

If they can move from frustration to trust, skillfully, how beneficial would that be to your organization?

42:48

How important would it be?

42:52

We have a poll for this one, Sarah, I believe.

42:58

Now, you can take a few moments here, submit your answer, we’ll share the results.

43:07

Oh, and I see the responses streaming 15 more seconds here.

43:23

OK, let’s get those results up on the screen.

43:28

There you are. We have 59% saying, extremely important, 36% saying important, and 5% saying a little bit important.

43:39

Fantastic.

43:40

We have consensus again, I love it, and thank you for responding.

43:47

So that’s the what and the why.

43:51

Ha.

43:52

I want you to?

43:57

Take an opportunity with me if you can, and you can do this anywhere to practice this tool with me.

44:02

I’m going to explain it to you First Amendment Guide gets through it, and You can do this anywhere. You can do this in your office. You can do this with your eyes open. You can do it with your eyes closed. You can do it in a meeting. I’ve done it several times, You can do it in a traffic jam.

44:18

You can do it.

44:21

In your house anywhere, it’s very accessible tool, and this is called heart focused breathing.

44:31

It doesn’t require a lot of time.

44:34

So what I’m going to have you do with either eyes opened, our eyes closed, they’re driving, please eyes open.

44:41

You’re gonna place your awareness in the area of your heart, whatever that is for you, the air in the somewhere, in the center of your chest, and the area of your heart.

44:52

You’re going to imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, And you’re going to breathe a little slower and a little deeper than normal.

45:06

Very simple, simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy.

45:11

If we’re really worked out, this might not be an easy thing for us to access. So I’m going to ask you to practice it and set up a plan on how to do that. And the last slide.

45:25

But let’s just take a few moments and practice it, So go ahead.

45:30

Sit up straight if you’re sitting down.

45:33

Eyes closed, if you prefer.

45:37

Pleasure, Awareness.

45:39

In the area of your heart.

45:43

Imagine your breath, it’s flowing, in and out, true area of your heart.

45:54

Allowing your breath.

45:57

Do you become a little slower, and a little deeper, Norma?

46:05

Breathing in and breathing now.

46:11

Duty area of your heart.

46:16

And if your mind should wander, because that’s the nature of mind, simply become aware.

46:25

Bring your attention back to the area of your heart.

46:29

And back to that conscious breath.

46:33

Breathing deeper.

46:35

Slower, Normal.

46:40

You can use a count if you prefer and have an equal inhale.

46:48

Man equal exhale.

46:51

Breathing in and breathing out the area of your heart.

47:04

Maintaining this breath.

47:08

Until you feel some shift, some change.

47:15

Perhaps a sense of calm.

47:18

Her ease?

47:30

And then.

47:33

When you’re ready, open your eyes if you had them closed back to the webinar.

47:43

I wonder if I could get some April to put into the questions.

47:48

What was your experience with that breath?

47:51

How do you feel after having practice that technique?

47:58

We have a couple sleepy is coming through and relax.

48:03

Hmm?

48:04

Yes?

48:07

More clarity and control of myself.

48:12

Millimeter. It seems like the overall consensus asleep, be relaxed and calm.

48:19

Nice, beautiful.

48:22

I want to talk to the sleepy real quick.

48:24

Do you remember those brainwaves, we were talking about?

48:29

Let me tell you what’s going on there.

48:31

Every night when you go to sleep, you go from beta alpha to ceda to Delta.

48:39

Melatonin, Mel puts you to sleep and so you naturally go to these brainwave frequencies.

48:45

So what that tells me is, in that short period of time, not much more than a minute, you changed your brainwave frequencies.

48:59

He moved in, perhaps alpha.

49:03

You alter your brainwave frequency change to a point where your body started to believe that it was time to rest.

49:10

That’s a great sign.

49:12

Move it from the sympathetic nervous system to whatever degree.

49:15

And again, this isn’t a binary thing closer into the parasympathetic nervous system that’s exactly what I want for you.

49:24

Not only the ability to do it once because if you do it once, you should be able to do again and remember a habit, a redundant set of automatic, unconscious thoughts, behaviors and emotions. It’s acquired through repetition.

49:39

If you repeated this, you’d become very good at it.

49:42

And I know this from experience.

49:45

You can be in that meeting.

49:47

You can have that individual who always pushes your buttons, know who they are.

49:52

And you could self regulate yourself back into a state of calm.

49:58

And that wouldn’t be important to you, because we never act at our best when we’re in a state of frustration, wouldn’t you agree?

50:07

Those are the times we say, I wish I’d never said that. Had never done, I wish I’d never sent that e-mail.

50:14

So you’d be doing yourself, a favor.

50:16

It’s not about the other person, it’s about you.

50:19

So let me explain what just happened for you, too.

50:22

First thing you did is you activated your frontal lobe.

50:25

This is the self regulatory part of the brain.

50:27

So you took the wheel, we took over and said, All right, we’re going to calm down, maybe you consciously. didn’t think that.

50:35

But by engaging your breath, in a conscious way and focusing your attention in the area of your heart, you engage your frontal lobe to takeover, too be the ringmaster in that moment.

50:49

As we talked about just a second ago you engage the parasympathetic nervous system you moved from survival to what I call creation.

50:57

And then finally, I don’t have a lot of time to explain this and maybe perhaps another webinar at some point.

51:05

You move your heart toward coherence and all I want you to say, not understand about that, is you look at the two images, the one that’s red, and you got it very irregular rhythm in between the heart and the brain, and on the right-hand side, it’s green. You’ve got a very smooth rhythm, that’s the rhythm of the heart, so to speak.

51:24

And when your heart rhythm is irregular, you’re in stress or incoherent.

51:29

When your heart’s incoherent, it brain’s incoherent.

51:32

When your brain is incoherent, you are incoherent and your brain’s not working, right?

51:37

Your outworking, right?

51:39

So, you’re also engaging yourself and putting yourself into a more optimal state of being to meet the next challenge of your day.

51:47

That could be the next challenge, is coming from that change initiative that you consciously wanted, and now you’re better prepared to meet the challenge.

51:56

So this is what I’d like you to do. Here’s your call to action, and we’ll open up for questions.

52:00

Haven’t stack it.

52:01

So, choose something in your day that you know you do as a habit.

52:05

And this could be, the moment you get back to your desk after a meeting, you’re going to breed.

52:11

Sit in your chair, turn around, face away from your computer, perhaps a breeze, or as soon as you, maybe you do a lot of Zoom meetings that are remote, as soon as you hit, leave meeting, you turn it around in your chair, and you breeze, attach this breathing to something you already do. So, that you can start getting good at it.

52:30

Now, I’ll take questions.

52:34

Great. So, if you have any questions, type them into the questions box. We have some time here to answer those for you today.

52:45

Let’s see here, I have a question from Jonathan.

52:48

Jonathan asked, Have you seen any organizations build in mental health professionals into their services for employees to help individuals manage stress?

53:00

I am not specifically.

53:03

I have heard of it, but I have not personally experienced it yet.

53:09

And to tag on to that, and Jonathan said, What are some systemic and systematic ways that we, that organizations can teach this to employees?

53:24

one of the thing, it’s a very simple, accessible technique, and if you want more information on a specific technique, I’d encourage you to go to heart math dot org, all the research behind this. They’ve been studying this for over 30 years, and you can educate yourself.

53:41

And then, I have another technique, which is just to build on this.

53:45

I’d like to start easy.

53:48

It’s called Quick Coherence technique, and that’s available.

53:51

It’s free to open-source to you, and it’s first, you become skilled at it, somewhat of a master, and then you just share it.

54:02

It’s a very simple, accessible technique, and I think organically we share it from colleague to colleague, we are allowing it to spread naturally and certainly, you could engage me personally in my organization and and we could come in as trainers.

54:19

We would do workshops to teach individuals, teams, and organizations, science, and these techniques.

54:28

Great, and we have another question here from Amy and Amy asked, is it always a bad thing to experience emotions like frustration, anger, and stress emotion?

54:40

Great question, Amy! Absolutely not.

54:43

We all react and we all have stress emotions and there’s certainly a time and place for it.

54:49

The question we have to ask ourselves is what have we become habituated to?

54:54

What is normal for us?

54:56

What is automatic? And we didn’t choose it.

54:58

So what I found for myself, um, is the moment I moved into a conference room because the body is the unconscious mind is paying attention to the environment for a meeting, I automatically start feeling impatient.

55:13

And if certain individuals were in that meeting, as soon as they would talk, I would be annoyed.

55:20

And that wasn’t a conscious effort. And there’s nothing often that they said was independently annoying.

55:25

It’s just that my body had become habituated to that emotion and that’s when it becomes a problem when we are in stress and these emotions, like you talked about, are an indication of stress and we can’t turn it off. Now it’s a problem.

55:45

And we actually had a comment come here. From Jackie, she said, No question. Just wanted to say thank you. I’ve been holding on to things and old manager has done it for years. And I realize now that is, it has really changed me by holding onto it. I’ll be going home to shred all of the paperwork from about 10 years ago and I am going to start it let it go. You did an amazing job.

56:09

Oh, thank you. And thank you for sharing that and happy Shredding.

56:14

And we have a question here from Derek. And Derek asks, If you have someone who continually stresses you out but you cannot remove them from your professional slash personal life, how do you stop yourself from being apprehensive when you know you are going to have to interact with them?

56:30

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, that’s a great question. And we could do an entire different Webinar on that.

56:35

Um, this might be hard to believe, But I know it to be true for myself, What’s happening there is what I talked about earlier.

56:44

We can’t create stress by thought alone, so we’re predicting some worst-case scenario.

56:49

We’re predicting what’s going to happen, and based on past experiences.

56:55

What you could do, is you could actually, mentally rehearse, and this is something that I teach people how to do, and it’s a specific technique, but you could see yourself in that same space.

57:10

And being at, let’s say, you chose com.

57:17

But you, and since we can make thought more real than anything else, if I could bring up that, which you can, because, but it causes an error.

57:26

response and anxiety, we could bring up that same image. But then do this breathing, technique, and calm ourselves down.

57:33

So now, I have the image and I have the response. Oh, it makes me feel anxious, OK? Calm myself down. Bring back up the image.

57:41

And we do this internally.

57:43

And we can then, at some point, actually feel calm while we’re thinking about the meeting.

57:48

We created a different association. Like we said, habit takes repetition, you repeat it sooner or later, the body is quantum memorize. That is the new normal.

57:59

The pattern recognition would be changed. What we have is a wrecking pattern based on past experiences. And we’re predicting some future event.

58:08

But we can change our prediction of the future because it’s ours, it’s our experience.

58:14

And we could have a much deeper conversation of fine.

58:19

And let’s see here. We it looks like we have time for one more question. And that question is coming from Kate. And Kate would like to know, what if people just don’t want to change?

58:33

That is the question, all right?

58:36

Often, when I present this information, that is brought up. What if people just don’t want to change?

58:43

And my response to that is we’re talking about an individual level.

58:51

And I am passionate about teaching individuals how to maintain in the state of ease of Qom in the same environment.

59:02

When our attention is on someone else, and we’re using them as the reason not to change, because they don’t change, or they want change.

59:12

We limit our own possibilities, our own potential.

59:15

There will be individuals who don’t want to change, and they will self identify at a time if an organization takes on something like this and begins to normalize self regulation so that they can be more adaptable.

59:29

The individual who truly doesn’t want to change will feel very uncomfortable in that new environment.

59:35

And then maybe that’s not the thing that we want to hear, but it’s not, in the best interests of the organization, to maintain individuals in that space.

59:45

And I’ll finish it with, though.

59:46

We should always give everybody, in our environment, the opportunity to demonstrate this mastery, because all of us, because we are human.

59:55

We have all the neurological and biological hardware to do this.

1:00:00

The question is, will we give it enough times to be good at it?

1:00:07

Great. Well, that does bring us exactly to the top of the hour. Thank you so much for your time today, for such an informative webinar.

1:00:16

Yeah, happy to be here. There’s a lot of fun, The great community.

1:00:21

Yes, and thank you all, for participating in today’s webinar. I look forward to seeing you all next week. Happy training.