2 - 2 - Module 2.2_Stress and Renewal

8/11/2019 2 - 2 - Module 2.2_Stress and Renewal

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[MUSIC].Now we get into what is it that setspeople off.What I'd like to do is, is I'd like to doa brief exercise, to help illustratethis, this very basic human process.This is going to feel a little odd, butI'm going to ask you to go through tworeflections, with your eyes closed in amoment, when I give you the instruction.And then I will guide you through somethoughts about them, with your eyesclosed.And then I'll tell you when you can openyour eyes and we'll begin to discuss someof the sensations that you were having.So, I'd like you to get very comfortablein your seat right now.Sit back, don't, don't be slouching.Move so your rear end's up against theback of your chair.Don't cross your arms or your legs.Get relaxed.And I'd like you to close your eyes.

And as you close your eyes, I will guideyou to the first reflection.For this first reflection, I would likeyou to think of one of your subordinatesor a client or customer who's a real painin the ass.Somebody who really aggravates you andfrustrates you.Think about the last couple of times thatyou interacted with them.Remembering those interactions, what arethey doing that you wish they wouldn't.What are they not doing that you wish

they would.Keeping your eyes closed reflect on a fewof those moments.Keeping your eyes closed, I'd like you toreflect on how you were feeling duringthose memories, those reflections.What feelings were you having?What sensations might you have beenhaving in different parts of your body?Keeping your eyes closed, I'd like tobring you into the second reflection.For this one, I'd like you to rememberone of your children when, when they were

three to five years old, or niece ornephew, or if you don't have any, a puppywhen you're dog was five months old orthe kitten when your cat.Was five months old.What was it like to play with them, to bewith them, remember a few of thosemoments.[BLANK_AUDIO]Keeping your eyes closed, I'd like you to


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be aware of any feelings you were havingduring the second reflections.Any sensations in different parts of yourbody.Thank you, you can open your eyes.What I'd like you to do right now, is tosee if you can do an internal comparingcontrast.This is an opportunity to practice alittle bit of mindfulness.We were talking about why it was soimportant, in the earlier module.What were you feeling in the first centerreflections that was different than inthe second.How you might of felt different indifferent parts of your body.Having done this with large numbers ofother people before, I can say that mostpeople most of us report on the firstone, feeling a bit tense.You know, we're angry at the person and,and we describe it with hand motions likethis.

We, we feel a, we either clench our teethor maybe we pull our shoulder blades intogether and feel some tension in ourneck, sometimes we're frowning.Other times we feel a knot in ourstomach.we don't like being there.And sometimes people say well, I startedto think about why the person does it.I, I needed to analyze it to get beyondhow angry I was with the individual.In contrast, on the second one.As I'm sure most of you had the

experience, most people say, well It feltmuch lighter.I, I went from being tense in the firstone to, being free in the second.It was almost a feeling of darknessversus light.Heaviness versus lightness.In the second one, I was smiling, andmany of you were, I could see through thecameras in your computers.but many of you are smiling, you feltmore relaxed, you felt warm, you feltlike you wanted to continue.

And even though I gave you exactly 30seconds in each time, from the time Istopped speaking to the time I returned.A lot of you felt like the first one wasmuch longer, and you wanted the secondone to last longer.These two sets of reactions, are twoparts of the autonomic nervous system inthe human organism.The culprit, the thing that leads most


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people who are smart, intelligent andthoughtful, to be less effective in theirrelationships is, the build up of theeffect of chronic stress.Now, we need stress.We need stress to wake up in the morning.We need stress to defend ourselves.We need stress to build up ourresiliance.But, the build-up of chronic annoyingstress is disastrous.Now, I don't mean acute stress,pull-you-hair-out stress.I'm talking about annoying stuff.Somebody cuts you off in traffic, yourcell phone drops a call, your computerdoesn't boot up.That kind of annoying stress.The people who study this say we have 8to 12 of those, as adults in professionalexecutive roles on a good day.Meanwhile, our bodies were not designedfor it.Most men in professional roles have five

or six days of this, professional womenhave seven days of this.Because no sooner do you get home for aweekend or part of a weekend, or a dayoff when you've got family or the largermale child to worry about or parents.But the fact is that our bodies are notdesigned for this load.It's called actually by the scientistswho study it, Allostatic load strain.What happens when a moment of stressactivates?Well, you probably had one this morning

when you were first waking up.You know, the clouds are starting todrift out of your head and you'restarting to get a little conscious.And you pulled back the sheets and yourolled over in bed.What was the first thought that came toyou?Oh my God, a beautiful day here!Probably not.You probably though oh, I, I have to dothat thing at work.I have to take the car to the mechanic.

What am I going to do about that emailthat really annoyed me last night?We often activate the human organism whenwe wake up to prepare for the, for ourto-do list.But it's not a positive to-do list,usually it's a negative.Joseph Ledoux has shown that when westart to get some basic data from ourfive senses into our brain, it hits our


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thalamus and in eight milliseconds ithits the amygdala.The amygdala goes into alarm, watch out.It takes about forty milliseconds to getto the other parts of the neocortex, toframe actual what might become later,conscious thought.On observation, perception but duringthat process your body activates what'scalled the hypothalamus pituitary adrenalaxis, the sympathetic nervous system.This is the body's fight or flightresponse.Among other things, as a part of this,your body starts to secrete threeendocrines, in particular Epinephrine,Norepinephrine, and Cortisol.Now Epinephrine and Norepinephrine areboth hormones and neurotransmitters.And one of their jobs is, in these kindsof dosage levels, to be vasoconstrictors.So, it's said that our blood travelsabout seven and a half miles in ourbodies, though when this clicks in, it

knocks off, what some people estimate,bay to be about a mile.So, if you remember simple physics, youhave this amount of fluid in this fixedtube and you cut a bunch of it off, thepressure goes out.So, as your blood pressure goes up, yourpulse rate goes up your breathing startsto get more shallow.Epinephrine is pulling blood from yourcapillaries, your fingertips, nose, ears,and extremities, to go to the largemuscle groups in the arms so you could

fight.Norepinephrine to go to the large musclegroups in your legs so you can run, ifyou have to.But in the process what most people don'tappreciate is also pulling blood fromcapillaries in your brain.The net effect is, that when you're underthis build up of chronic annoying stress,you don't have access to all of yourneural networks.On top of that cortisol, a whole set ofcortisol steroids are going into your

blood stream, crh, crf, acth, eventuallycortisol.We need cortisol, it's the body's naturalanti inflammatory, if we are about to gethit or bitten body says, hey keep going.And it also helps convert fat cells toglucose, so you can use them for energy.But cortisol has two nasty effects on thehuman body.First, it relatively turns off your


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immune system, within 8-12 minutes of theonset of these annoying episodes ofstress, your mini goblin.And your natural killer T-cells aresignificantly lower than they werebefore, which means you are veryvulnerable to all the diseased organismsaround.The second nasty effect, is basically thefact that it inhibits to the point ofalmost stopping neurogenesis.Neurogenesis is the growth of new neuraltissue.We know that fetuses do it, infants doit, children do it.Even teenagers, despite reason orobservations, are still having theirbrains growing dramatically.Adults can continue to build new neuraltissue throughout our adult life.When Peter Eriksson and his colleagues atthe University of Sweden published thisfirst study on Adult Human Neurogenesisin 1981.

I've gotta say, for those of us who wereat college in the 60s, this was veryreassuring news.But for all of us, what it means is thatwe're under, when we're under thischronic deluge of stress, which most ofus are.In professional managerial positions, weare not, not only aren't we on top of ourgame, but we're actually under a degreeof cognitive, perceptual and emotionalimpairment.For example, most of us have 180 to 270

degree peripheral vision.Under this onslaught of chronic stress,with occasional doses of acute stress.It goes down to 30 degrees.Other studies have shown the same thinghappening when you're exposed to people.You, you are closed to people who you maynot know or people who are different thanyou are.The same thing happens when you considernew ideas.Under this chronic stress, you're muchlikely to have your first reaction to be

reject any new idea.Now with all this going on, and the factthat all of these problems with ourimmune system being relativelydysfunctional at this point.What's happening is, that's why peopleunder a lot this kind of, chronic powerstress, have higher incidence of:bacterial infection,influenza, influenza,type two diabetes, ulcers.


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At least three of the 87 categories of,diagnostic categories of cancer, thatI've read about end up because of the[UNKNOWN].You have a lot of problems with heartattacks, strokes sleep disorders,gastrointestinal difficulties and sexualdysfunctions.Welcome to leadership.The dilemma is if all this were going on,how come you're not dead?Well, sometimes I joke around you and saywell, maybe you are.Then you have to decide if is this yourversion of heaven or hell.But again, if we take it seriously, thereason you're not dead is the human bodyis designed to counter act thisonslaught.And even though were not designed and arenot designed to deal with the level ofthis onslaught we get in modern life, westill bounce back.That is through the function of the

parasympathetic nervous system and thisis a neural hormonal endocrine activationthat allows us to rebuild the body.So, in the first reflection, I'm assumingas you felt tense, as you started to feelmore kind of agitation, as you maybe yourmind flitted around, you were annoyed.And in that sensation, you weren't reallyon top of things.In the second one, people very often slowdown.Their breathing got deeper.They felt warmer.

They felt more relaxed.The tensions flowed away, that was theaction of the parasympathetic nervoussystem.Notice when I said think of one of yourchildren when they were three to five.I didn't say when they were fifteen.And the only time this exercise doesn'twork well is if you currently have threeto five year-olds.Because then the experience is not asnice as the nostalgia of those momentswhen they were that adorable.

But, the parasympathetic nervous systemliterally, quite literally is theopposite to the sympathetic system.You start to see a baby smile, you startto see a puppy rolling around in thegrass, or a kitten batting a ball, andyou smile.What happens is you start to activate adifferent network, at the same speeds asthe other one.


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This one goes through, as all do, youramygdala, but it often hits the orbitalfrontal cortex, part of the nucleusaccumbens, very often you're getting astimulation of the vagus nerve.And then as this circuit starts to hitother parts of your brain, a differentset of hormones are being secreted intoyour bloodstream.Primarily oxytocin in women and primarilyvasopressin in men.These are vasodilators at these levels ofdosage.That means that they do the opposite towhat epinephrin/norepinephrine does.So, what they're doing is opening up theblood vessels, so you start to feelwarmer in your extremities.[SOUND] Your blood pressure's going down.Your pulse rate' going down.You start to breath more deeply.And in the process, you feel more lifted.More elated.It is in this arena, of the

parasympathetic nervous system, that yourbody can renew itself.It is in this arena of arousal andactivation, that you are at yourcognitive best according to the researchstudies.In many of them, you can do the mostcomplex activities.You are the most creative, you are themost open to understanding individuals,even though they look very different thatyou are.And on every measure done, you are at a

better state.Perceptually, cognitively, emotionally,and, your immune system is kicking in.So what, whatever, I mean, some of ushave immunosuppressive disorders.But at whatever level your immune systemcan function, it's functioning at it'sbest.In this parasympathetic renewal state.It is in this renewal state theneurogenesis is occurring.It is in this state that you start tofeel amused, joyful.

Not necessarily happy, happy is a littlebit of a odd emotion.Doesn't always associate withparasympathetic nervous system [MUSIC].

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2 - 2 - Module 2.2_Stress and Renewal