Resilience is the new skill to have. Resilience helps reduce the emotional and physical effects of time crunch, overload, edginess, financial pressures and unexpected changes. Resilience helps us stay flexible and bounce forward when we are challenged with stressful circumstances.
Research shows that daily stress can have a cumulative effect, which can deplete our reserves of resilience.
When we’re low on resilience, we can tend to add extra drama to a problem which magnifies the situation and creates even more drain. And that’s when we spin out of control, make mistakes, say things we later regret, ignore our health and so on.
A good example of this might be when listening to the news, surfing the web or in a meeting and we hear something that makes us angry or worried. Instead of letting the anger run or projecting fear into the future, imagine if you had a super tool to help take the intensity or steam out of depleting emotions. Now imagine that this simple tool could help you to regain control and perspective so you could sort out your options and choose how you want to respond.The following steps are for HeartMath’s Notice and Ease™ tool and it can help you do just that. Try it tonight when you watch the news, or in that next meeting this afternoon or when you check in on the latest happenings when you’re online later today. Experiment with it and get to know it. It’s a great tool to have as part of your resilience building tool kit.
Notice and admit what you are feeling.
To gain more insight about your emotions, you will need to become more aware of what you are feeling. Noticing and admitting what you are feeling requires slowing down and taking stock. Periodically, throughout the day simply pause and notice how you feel. It takes only a few seconds to ask, “What am I feeling right now?” Don’t judge whatever you are feeling. Instead, observe what’s flowing through your emotions. You’ll discover new things about your emotional patterns and what triggers less desirable emotions in you.
Try to name the feeling.
Simply by naming the feeling to yourself, whatever it is – worry, anxiety, frustration, anger, sadness, hurt, resistance or even a vague disturbance – will help you admit what you are feeling. Being honest about naming what we are feeling helps regulate our emotional energy, slowing down the emotional energy running through our system and giving us more power. We can then redirect emotional energy to work for us instead of having it leave us feeling drained throughout the day.
Tell yourself to e-a-s-e…
As you gently focus in your heart, relax as you breathe and e-a-s-e the stress out. As you tell yourself to ease in your heart, relax and ease the stressful emotion out, feel as if the unwanted emotion is leaving your system. Don’t force it out; ease it out. Befriend the reaction by holding it in your heart, and then let the feeling ease out of your system. If you try to fight your feelings or push them away, they will gain energy. Befriending your feelings will help you clear. Keep using the Notice and Ease tool for one minute or longer, until you feel something lighten up, even if you don’t get an immediate, complete release. Quite often any of us can experience so many feelings within just five minutes. Don’t let this confuse you. Don’t even try to figure out why. Just keep practicing the Notice and Ease tool until your energies come back in balance. Then listen to the intuitive guidance of your heart on what to do next.
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