Resilience & OZONE

Appropriately tackling resilience starts with identifying the stressors within your line of work. Next, it is imperative that you evaluate and realize how you currently respond to those stressors. Our response determines how effective we are at sustaining our resilience. Lastly, the ultimate end-state is to learn a method of response that optimizes our performance long-term.

How do we define resilience?

Resilience is the skill of preparing, handling, and bouncing back from stressful situations consistently. It’s studied and applied in mental training for different performance domains, for example, military and other high-risk occupations, sport, and performing arts.

We will talk about how to develop and maintain resilience, first we start with how we conceptualize it.

How do we conceptualize resilience?

Key Concepts from this module

RESILIENCE: a skill of preparing, handling, and bouncing back from stressful situations.

RESILIENCE = OZONE + RECOVERY

OZONE: an inner state that allows us to perform best when it matters the most

RECOVERY: recharging after a high-stress event to be able to get back into OZONE

ROUTINES: Pre, During, and Post Performance; habits that help get into OZONE or recover

TOOLS: techniques we implement into our routines to get into OZONE or recover better

AWARENESS: awareness allows us to check-in with our current state (the 4 pillars) so we can get into/maintain OZONE or fully disengage to recover.

Optimal Zone of Natural Excellence (OZONE)

Everyone has their own optimal zone of natural excellence. OZONE tells us in which physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual state we perform the best. Our aim is to be in the OZONE or as close as possible to it to perform best when it matters. Some people work better under higher pressure, others under lower pressure. Knowing where is your optimal zone of natural excellence helps you to aim for it when you check-in with your self. OZONE also depends on the task characteristic. A golfer will most likely perform best when their activation is low; while a professional weight-lifter or a firefighter needs to get activated much more to perform best. When you reflect on your best performance during a call/high-stress event, how would you describe your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state? This will most likely be your OZONE for a call/high-stress event.

Where does our path to resilience begin?

Resilience always begins begins with awareness.

Importance – A – B, core skill for checking 4 pillars

If you know you’re at work, but you’re aware that you are not fully engaged, you then can apply mental tools to get fully engaged into your work.
We would like you to develop awareness of what your worst and best performance feel and look like.

Awareness allows you to better identify what is needed to fully engage or fully disengage when it matters (work/home). With appropriate awareness, you are able to focus on what’s important in the moment and facilitate full engagement.

How do you develop and sustain resilience?

The way to develop and sustain resilient is through routines.

Pre-performance routines: increases ability to fully disengage from non-work related problems; increases ability to fully engage in work
During performance routines: allows you to stay in or as close as possible to OZONE while performing
Post-performance routines: allows for efficient recovery:
- 1) processing the high-stress incident,
- 2) disengaging from the high-stress incident,
- 3) recharging, and
- 4) preparing for re-engagement in work.

What does resilience look like in your job or this line of work?

What have you done that has been working for you?

Key elements of routines

Routines are very individual. Keep what works for you.
It takes time to establish a routine
Consistency and commitment make the routine effective.
Avoid adding in behavior or action to an established routine – this will result in a decrease of effectivity.
Keep the routine short.

Generally suggested process of a routine:

Check-in with your pillars (this part can be skipped; i.e. for cue words before the call)
See which pillar needs to be adjusted for getting into OZONE (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual)
Choose a routine related to the pillar

How to create a sustainable routine

In addition to these tips, we recommend creating some sort of a habit tracker that helps with recording progress, maintaining accountability, and map the mutual impact of multiple habits and their outcomes.