AEE Mental Performance

STRESS your Resilience and Improve Your Effectiveness as a Leader During Crisis

Brian Bishop — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 18:13:23 +0000

What is stress?

Stress is the body’s reaction to any change that requires an adjustment or response. The body reacts to these changes with physical, mental, and emotional responses such as tension/chronic pain, irritation and frustration, or losing focus when it’s needed most. Stress is a normal part of life and some (eustress) is needed to achieve our Optimal Zone of Natural Excellence (OZONE). The other (distress) can be detrimental to our well-being, especially if poorly managed. In positions of leadership, stress can be exceptionally high. There are multiple demands placed on leaders, especially in high stress environments such as business, healthcare, emergency response, and athletics. These demands can include anything from providing consistent results within the performance domain to ensuring that subordinates underneath their leadership responsibilities have what they need to perform at their best when it matters.

According to an article from the American Psychological Association, leaders face pressure on a regular basis, and COVID-19 has intensified the stress surrounding them. Whether in business, non-profits, or government, leaders are juggling additional demands on their time, attention, and focus. Effective leaders learn to manage stress when making decisions and motivating others, but even the most effective leaders may feel emotionally and physically worn down during the pandemic. When leaders practice healthy stress management and self-care, they signal that it’s all right for others to do the same. And by doing so, an organization or community becomes healthier and better equipped to respond to challenging situations and manage future crises. Poor management of stress and low resilience can impact leader effectiveness in many ways including: decision making, control over the situation, isolation, sleep deprivation, and negative mood.

“To the victim, adversity is bad. To the Leader – And Warrior – hard times are life’s richest times of growth, opportunity and possibility.”

Robin Sharma – leadership expert, humanitarian, best selling author

We all experience stress, and to some extent we need to experience stress to reach our optimal level of performance. However, as if performing in a high stress environment isn’t stressful enough, being effective as a leader in a high stress environment can be even more volatile. Leadership IS stressful and leaders make impact. However, within the continuum of stress, too much stress or distress can compromise what we are attempting to accomplish, which a lot of times is successful and effective performance towards a desired outcome. When we don’t achieve that outcome we assume there is some poor performance related aspect or something outside of our control that caused this to be. We then react to this negatively and experience distress or an over activation of stress to regain control of the situation to achieve what we want next time. This can have significant impacts on those around us such as emotional instability, bad decisions, miscommunication, lack of cohesiveness, etc., especially if we are in positions of leadership or consider ourselves to be leaders in our respective sphere of influence.

However, anyone can be a leader at any moment and managing stress appropriately allows us to maintain resilience in the face of adversity, prevent burnout, and, most importantly, respond appropriately to the situation within our performance when it matters most. So how do we STRESS our resilience as leaders so that we are ready for the next stressful situation we will encounter? Let’s take a look at that below:

Stress your resilience as a leader

1) Self-awareness

STRESS-ing your resilience begins with self-awareness. As with much of what we do, awareness is key to implementing meaningful change that improves how we currently approach our performance. Check-in where you are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Additionally, awareness is critical to knowing where you are, in relation to the four pillars, at any given moment as well as the impact what state you are in, is having on your subordinates and those around you. A resilient foundation helps to promote this awareness. Self-awareness is best built and developed through mindfulness practice and precedes the implementation of self-regulation techniques. We discuss that more in depth in our blog on training self-regulation. Check-in with yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually daily; Self-Awareness is the key.

2) Time to Process and Reflect

Processing and reflecting is a key component of the recovery process after performing or after stressful situations, especially as a leader in high stress environments where past decisions that negatively effect or may effect our personnel invade our thoughts. As a leader, processing and reflecting is key to adjusting to those past decisions and outcomes for better decisions next time that ideally yield more desirable results. However, processing requires non-judgmentally addressing the uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and reactions associated with that event and working through those with the appropriate tools such as mindfulness with self-compassion, relaxation techniques, and reconnecting with your values. Within reflection, seek self-discovery, meaning explore controllables and uncontrollables as well as explore your internal dialogue (self-talk). Throughout the process, check-in physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually maintaining awareness of what’s needed to bring those pillars back to their optimal levels.

3) Regroup & Refocus

Regroup and Refocus on growing and learning. With the complexity that is humans, leaders never stop learning and growing in order to maintain effectiveness in their leadership abilities. When you are growing and learning, you are not burning out. This is the essence of taking a growth mindset approach to your life as a leader in whatever it is that you do. What and who else can you connect and engage with to take that next step to being better and not giving up (fixed mindset) for those around you? Growing and learning is associated with the parasympathetic system (responsible for recovery) of our autonomic nervous system. This is where the regrouping happens which then allows us to refocus on what matters (i.e. solving a difficult problem, engaging with loved ones or professional connections, learning how to remain proficient in saving lives, etc.). The list can be extensive, however, what matters to you is what is in line with your values. With a new focus, we have the flexibility to cope adaptively with the stressors we face, view these stressors more objectively, and master them going forward.

4) Engage with Others

Leadership is all about engaging with others. Engaging with others allows us to better manage our response to various stressors in our lives by compelling us to see things from a different perspective. Why? Connecting and engaging also taps into the parasympathetic system of our autonomic nervous system. More specifically the ventral vagus nerve. This is the same area that is engaged when we are infants as we connect with caregivers and experience feelings of comfort and support. As we go through life and experience stressors we engage this area less and less and tend to carry more of the load on ourselves. This is especially natural to do as leaders. Leadership can be a lonely journey, however, it is imperative that we connect and engage appropriately with trusted sources of support. As the stress piles up, ensure you are engaging with others in a way that allows you to experience these similar feelings from your childhood.

5) Sense of Belonging

Creating a sense of belonging is an outcome of engaging appropriately to better manage stress collectively. Additionally, as leaders we want to foster a sense of belonging, and cohesiveness amongst our team. Contributing to a sense of belonging begins with “a leader” (specifically not “the leader”). That’s either leadership by position or by the subordinate who leads the change that is needed. Founded on the three concepts of safety, vulnerability, and purpose; a strong sense of belonging helps to increase our perceptions of social support, security, and solidarity in high stress situations where, based on a study by Cornell University, there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity for a member of a certain group. Safety, vulnerability, and purpose are built through communication where individuals build trust amongst each other, share risk and reciprocate the vulnerability that comes with that, and share stories that develop a common purpose. This happens through intentionally and meaningfully connecting and engaging with others. Therefore, in STRESSing your resilience, it is not only important to evaluate how we are contributing to creating a sense of belonging within our organization and families, but also how we are responding to the sense of belonging that we perceive exists. To learn how to strengthen the sense of belonging in yourself and/or within your environment, contact us or check out Daniel’s Coyle book The Culture Code, where he breaks down the concept in a very practical applicable way through lenses of current successful organizations. You can also look at what gives people a sense of belonging at work the most in this linkedIn article.

6) Strengthen Your WHY

The final component of STRESSing your resilience; your WHY is a critical aspect to keeping you on track when stress throws you off. WHY is exceptionally important as leaders experience stressors from above and below. As we experience distress on a consistent basis and it goes unaddressed, we begin to lose sight of why we do what we do. This significantly impacts how we respond to stressful situations (coping), how we recover from day to day, our mindset (fixed vs growth), our motivation, and how we interact with others collectively. As a result, we become more susceptible to burnout, ineffective leadership, other significant mental health issues, and can go as far as suicide.

Strengthening your WHY begins with identifying your values. Values help you know your WHY. Knowing your WHY promotes sustainable, long-term optimal motivation. Values lead you towards facing and overcoming challenges and obstacles. Values push you to leave the comfort zone and strive for progress that oftentimes requires vulnerability and accepting mistakes. Values, when followed by action, lead to personal meaning, fulfillment, and developing a personal philosophy. They contribute to your long-term self-worth as you develop yourself in relation to the world based on your authentic, meaningful visions – visions you share with your team as you inspire them to perform at their best.
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How it Improves Performance and Effectiveness as a Leader?

What does every leader want? To lead effectively and to compel the team through inspiration to accomplish the tasks or mission properly and on time. How is this achieved? Simply put, the more resilient you are, the better you perform. But let’s break that down just a bit further. We like to approach resilience through the lens of four pillars – mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. These four pillars are critical to anyone’s performance and the more aligned they are, the better we perform. This is extremely important when it comes to leading effectively. It is imperative to know where you are within those four pillars so that you also know what recovery methods are needed to bring those pillars where they need to be and optimize performance and effectiveness as a leader. I mentioned earlier that stress is needed to achieve our optimal zone of natural excellence (OZONE). Achieving your OZONE state means you are consistently performing at your best when it matters; however, if we don’t have enough stress or are experiencing too much stress and we don’t manage to maintain that zone appropriately. Our performance, then, in what we are doing and in how we are leading will inevitably suffer and this can have a negative impact on those around us as well.

Gaining and maintaining self-awareness is key to knowing where we are when we need to be at our best and it allows us to implement the proper self-regulation techniques to achieve our ready and resilient state both as a leader and performer. Taking time to process and reflect provides us the space as leaders and followers to respond accordingly to our team or whatever the task is in front of us. Self-awareness and taking time to process and reflect provide us with an objective perspective which allows us to regroup and refocus. Regrouping and refocusing are where some of our recovery efforts take place. We will cover recovery more in later blogs and you can also learn how to build effective recovery routines in our online burnout prevention training guide. Regrouping and refocusing allows us to re-engage (respond) appropriately which ultimately promotes performance flexibility. Engaging with others allows us to tap into our parasympathetic nervous system, slowing things down a bit. This allows us to get our stress level where it needs to be and put us closer to our OZONE state. Engaging with others effectively also contributes to fostering a Sense of Belonging within our team. A strong sense of belonging fosters a cohesive environment that is productive, proactive, and consistently efficient. Lastly, strengthening your why helps to develop your personal philosophy. This personal philosophy is what you lean on in times of greatest stress as you move towards the threat and lead others in the face of adversity.

All of these elements work together to ultimately optimize your performance, especially as a leader, when the stress is high. Additionally these elements work to create and shape the right environment to make the best leadership decisions that positively impact the performance of your team to serve the community or customers. Positive impact instead of negative effect. Stressing resilience also has the benefit of helping to prevent burnout both individually and collectively. Being less close to burnout means we are closer to engagement and this engagement is both on the individual and collective level. Engaging is what leadership is about.

How are you stressing your resilience to be the best leader you can be? If you see there is room for improvement, where is it?

The post STRESS your Resilience and Improve Your Effectiveness as a Leader During Crisis appeared first on AEE Mental Performance.

Increase Resilience and Optimize Performance Through TrainingSelf-Regulation

Brian Bishop — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 02:18:07 +0000

What is self-regulation?

There are two forms of self-regulation; behavioral and emotional. Behavioral self regulation entails acting in accordance with your goals and values. For instance, you may find it difficult to get up early in the mornings to jog but do so because you want to improve your fitness and health as those are values of yours. Emotional self-regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of an experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is sufficiently flexible to delay spontaneous reactions as needed and appropriately manage disruptive emotions and impulses. Simply put, self-regulation is the control of oneself, by oneself. This also entails controlling the impact that thoughts may have on you as they come flooding in during intense situations.

In much of our work, we seek to promote self-control and self-regulation. The research shows us that self-control/regulation allows for the performance flexibility to adjust and respond accordingly in the most stressful of situations, not necessarily in the sense of taking time to meditate while performing critical tasks but in quick, immediate, sometimes subtle responses such as one breath only for proper composure. When focused on the outcomes that we CAN’T control, we often miss focusing on self-regulating our physiological state (which we CAN control by tapping into our para/sympathetic nervous system). Effective self-regulation can significantly contribute to the desired outcome we seek. Much in the same way that self-regulation has positive impacts on other aspects such as medically to help reduce blood pressure or to help improve some developmental handicaps, mastering self-regulation can also vastly improve our performance by allowing for appropriate response when it matters. In our previous post on How mental readiness and psychological resilience optimize performance, we mentioned what we call the elements that promote self-regulation. These are the elements both individually and collectively that help create and maintain a ready and resilient state for optimal functioning when it matters. These elements include awareness, control, and flexibility from the individual perspective.

The Benefits

Trained self control of your mental, physical, and emotional state has various benefits. Below we list some of the benefits and explain the positive impact they can have on your life and overall performance.

Improved self-monitoring

Self-monitoring is one of the main keys to effective self-regulation. Self-monitoring helps to increase one’s awareness of their own behaviors that may negatively impact their response to stressors. As the bidirectional relationship forms and the individual experiences the positive results in self-regulation from implementing self-monitoring they are more willing to maintain effective strategies, by breaking old unproductive habits, and therefore produce consistent results.

Implementation of “skills” instead of “pills”

Self-regulation requires the implementation of skills instead of pills. For example, current nonpharmacological interventions for insomnia include cognitive therapy, relaxation training, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and sleep hygiene education which are all considered self-regulation strategies. Of these interventions, cognitive behavioral therapy, sleep hygiene education, and some biofeedback implementations have proven to be most promising as far as yielding effectiveness thus far in Veteran populations. This speaks to the effectiveness of mastering self-regulation skills and the impact it can have on improving sleep disorders. Sleep is extremely important as we covered in our previous blog post.

Modifying environment accordingly

This is more of a cognitive modification to the environment which then allows you to physically appropriately modify your environment and optimize performance. As you experience, stressful situations that cause some fusing (identification – see Mindfulness Practice for Self-Regulation and Resilience Resource Room) with negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions, bringing awareness to those reactions provides us an opportunity to create some distance between the stimuli and our response. Self-regulation is the path to that appropriate response.

Chaos outside, order inside - you become an impact instead of effect

Self-regulation allows you to maintain a calm and composed state within the most stressful of situations. This promotes the performance flexibility we spoke to in our performance flexibility blog post. This allows you to respond accordingly rather than react due to arousal taking over when the situation becomes stressful. Thus, you can make a more productive impact instead of exacerbating the situation further. Additionally, self regulation allows for proper recovery as well, creating more order inside as one prepares for subsequent performance.

All leading to Improved performance

With attaining an appropriate level of self-control/self-regulation, you are ready for “whatever comes”. The skill of self-control/regulation allows you to achieve a ready state for optimal performance and sustain resilience overtime so you maintain your performance level regardless of potential setbacks. In other words, you stay up when it matters..

How to improve your self-regulation skills

Intentional practice

Imagine self-regulation as equivalent to winning an important game. Much like in basketball, in order to increase the chances of hitting the game winning shot players consistently practice hundreds of shots from multiple positions on the court. Much like in hockey, in order to increase the chances of getting the puck in the net for the game winning goal, players consistently practice hundreds of slap shots. Much like in tennis in order to increase the chances of winning the game, set, and match, players practice hundreds of forehands. Don’t stop after one week of practice. Explore, adjust, develop overtime.

Biofeedback training

Secondly, we seek to improve self-regulation through the implementation of biofeedback training. Biofeedback training is considered to be a bridge to self-regulation. It shows the individual what the body is doing when applying adaptive techniques to regulate thoughts, feelings, and reactions as well as what the body is doing when those same aspects are not regulated. This facilitates developing the self-awareness we mentioned earlier in this blog. Awareness allows for better self-control within highly stressful situations, which look differently for everyone, and ultimately promotes performance flexibility allowing the performer to flow within the highs and lows that naturally occur during performance in any domain.

Mindfulness practice

Lastly, the implementation of biofeedback training more effectively promotes mindfulness. Mindfulness can be achieved without biofeedback as well. More on mindfulness in our website here. We often connect the application of mindfulness to resilience. We promote its use within the recovery process to non-judgmentally check-in internally post high-stress performance. It involves “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). This approach allows the individual to focus in on internal feedback more immediately to distinguish between what they can control and cannot control and apply change accordingly (ideally to what can be controlled). This guides the trial-and-error process underlying self-regulation. Through shifting focus to the controllable aspects of optimizing one’s performance, this helps to prevent some of the detrimental perceptions that may follow undesirable outcomes and allow the individual to better tune in and process desirable outcomes in order to replicate those performances in the future.

Self-regulation is critical for so many various aspects of our lives. We encourage you to check out our other posts as well as some of the self-regulation strategies we provide on our website. Think how you improve or maintain your self-regulation and what works for you. And always remember – PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE!

The post Increase Resilience and Optimize Performance Through Training
Self-Regulation appeared first on AEE Mental Performance.

Insufficient Sleep Impact on Readiness, Resilience, and Overall Performance

Barbora Kijasova — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 06:57:09 +0000

“Sleep is a performance activity – you can run in flip flops, but if you put Asics on, you will run much faster. Same with sleep – approach sleep as a performance – prepare for it, adjust it to your needs, think about how you can get better at it.”
Michael Breus, PhD

Why is sleep important for our performance?

Let us ask you a question: how much do you care about sleep, the activity that takes up ⅓ of our lives? Do you analyze sleep effectiveness and strategize for increasing it? As the quote above suggests, when people talk performance quality and performance enhancement, sleep often does not come up. For most of us, sleep is “just” a form of rest. We “just” do it. We “just” rest. We “just” go to sleep. Such an approach to sleep can be very limiting to our performance. In fact, we can perform only as much as we are recovered, and sleep is the main element for proper recovery. As you could learn in the previous blog How Readiness & Resilience Optimize Performance, recovery (therefore sleep) is one of the main building blocks to proper readiness and resilience.

Sleep has a significant impact on our daily mental and physical performance as well as overall, potentially long-term mental and physical health. Before we break down how insufficient sleep disrupts readiness and resilience, let us give you a few numbers: in a study with data from 1.6 billion people from 70 countries that use daylight savings time, there has been noted a 24% increase of heart attacks after one hour lost of sleep (in spring), and 21% decrease of heart attacks after one hour of sleep was gained (in fall). Roughly same rates were measured with suicide and with road traffic accidents. Quite significant statistics of behavioral and mental changes after only 1h more/less of sleep, aren’t they?

Negative impacts of insufficient sleep on our readiness that make you underperform

As you can see, the impact of insufficient sleep goes far beyond the “I just need to grab a coffee” state. In fact, insufficient sleep, while significantly disrupting our mental and physical readiness to perform, can lead to as negative an outcome as death, and that is certainly not an overstatement from our end. In 2009, a forest firefighter, Thomas Marovich, was killed immediately after he fell from the helicopter while rappelling. The reason for the fall was a failure to check his safety hook-up. Such a mistake was probably made due to lack of concentration while executing a routine that a firefighter does on a daily basis.

Proper concentration at the task at hand, that was certainly missing in Thomas Marovich’s case, is one of the mental skills contributing to readiness to perform and is significantly and negatively influenced by insufficient sleep. Let’s explore other impacts that insufficient sleep can have to our readiness, potentially leading to making mistakes such as mentioned above.

Poor decision making

Without enough sleep, you are more likely to make poorer decisions, such as taking unnecessary risk, which might make a significant impact on your performance and its outcome. As we know, in intense stressful situations, there is only minimal space (meaning almost no space) for making the right choices. In the heat of the situation, we need to make the right moves in a matter of tens of seconds. Improper recovery (insufficient sleep) makes this process significantly less effective, which leads to making more mistakes than we would otherwise.

Lower alertness and concentration

With sleep deprivation, it gets harder to focus and pay attention which ultimately leads to missing important external cues necessary for proper responses within your performance. Lower ability to concentrate can lead to confusion in which wrong decisions come into play.

Slower reaction time

Insufficient sleep decreases the information-integration process that is a necessary, otherwise very quick, process for creating a response on a stimulus. This is a particularly crucial skill for those of you who face quick situational shifts during your performance (a civilian raising a weapon) that requires you to respond immediately (covering). Such situations particularly occur among police or firefighters where quick shifts can and should be expected and usually have a significant impact on the outcome of the situation.

Prevalence to injury

Physical and mental fatigue decreases body balance which puts excessive pressure on your joints as well as increases probability for you to make wrong movements. Fatigue then, in other words, leads to a higher risk for injuries. This is the last thing to happen when you are otherwise properly trained to execute quality, reliable performance.

Emotional imbalance

Individuals that do not get enough sleep tend to be easily frustrated and irritated. Tiredness keeps your body in a sympathetic nervous system – the fight or flee state of your body that is prepared and to react as if there was a significant chance for danger occuring. Such reactions are usually automatic and very often unproductive, because they do not seek a context of the situation, nor consider potential negative outcomes. A ready individual is a composed individual, and the ability to compose gets more difficult when your tired body automatically does otherwise.

Slower, inefficient learning

Lack of REM sleep disrupts learning new information. Lack of NREM sleep disrupts coding of motor skills into your memory. In both cases, your learning efficiency decreases. Sleeping 6hrs per night for 10 days causes the same decrease (40%) of memorizing motor skills as 1 night with no sleep. In other words, learning through practicing 400 penalty kicks with enough sleep will have roughly the same impact on your improvement of the skill as practicing 1000 penalty kicks while sleeping only 6h. This is a great example that speaks to an importance of readiness within a practice stage. Readiness in this case helps you learn new information and movements faster which ultimately promotes how trained you are for a competition, a call, or any other situation within your performance domain that matters.

It’s not only about hours in bed. What attributes of sleep impact readiness and resilience?

When it comes to analyzing sleep, most people focus on the number of hours they spend in bed. This is a great start, but even when you get the hours (7-9) right, it most likely won’t optimize your sleep fully. A high number of hours in bed does not necessarily promise optimal recovery. The length of sleep is only one side of the coin called optimal sleep. Quality of sleep is the other one. Recent research has shown that the quality and quantity of sleep are roughly equally important. Some research even suggests that inconsistent sleep can be worse than short average sleep.

Sleep quality depends on various internal and external factors, such as alcohol, caffeine, stress, rumination, hunger, overeating, room temperature, light before and during sleep, and others that support or disrupt certain sleep phases. Some of these negatively impact our circadian rhythm and nervous system. The circadian rhythm is a timer that prepares our body for certain actions throughout the day. With that, our internal timer for sleep is off and our body does not get most of it. Our nervous system, on the other hand, coordinates how relaxed/alert we are before sleeping which then impacts how easy we fall asleep.

The bad news and the good news about your sleep

Researchers from OnePoll, on behalf of retailer Mattress Firm, surveyed 2,000 U.S. adults about their sleep times and habits. Results of the annual survey show that the respondents’ average night’s sleep decreased to five hours, 30 minutes in 2019 from six hours, 17 minutes in 2018. According to the National Sleep Foundation, this is far below suggested seven to nine hours a night for an adult. Our sleep, simply put, is just not optimized at all and all other factors discarded, most of us underperform on a constant basis.

The bad news is that some of you might not be able to reach 7-9 of sleep on a daily basis due to work shifts or having a family, to name a few. The good news is that by applying certain habits during the day and routines before sleep time that minimize the sleep disruptors and prepare your body and mind for maximizing your recovery from sleep you can certainly improve your sleep quality without increasing the length of time you have to sleep.

As we often emphasize at AEE, it all starts with awareness and we encourage you to put some thought into how your sleep looks now and how you can optimize your sleep (which we will cover in future posts). If you already know that you are struggling with falling asleep we welcome you to check the downloadable PDF 3 Tips on How To Fall Asleep Easier down below. You might find helpful our Stress-management for Increasing Resilience and Mindfulness Practice for Self-regulation & Resilience Resource Room where we break down some relaxation techniques that might help you release the stress that keeps you awake.

Sleep as the basic element of recovery has a significant impact on the components crucial for your readiness. It’s time to think of sleep as a performance so we analyze, strategize, and optimize it for full readiness during the day and increase our resilience over time.

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How Mental Readiness and Psychological Resilience Optimize Performance

Brian Bishop — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 01:38:46 +0000

Targeting individual and organizational readiness and resilience is adopted from my time as a Soldier in the US Army and their focus on the same two concepts for the Soldier population and their families. However, in this blog, we will discuss how we have modified the concept and have created a model that fits our perspective on how we see readiness is achieved within the populations that we engage; athletes, business professionals, and most importantly first responders.

why is mental readiness important?

Imagine being in a high stress situation (intense call for service, high stakes championship game, or needing to produce quality results on a project for your boss or investors) and your mind is ruminating on past performances/future failures/situations at home, you are low on energy, or your arousal is through the roof. In other words, you were not ready. In scenarios such as these, the end result is often performance breakdowns that look like, increased errors, poor decision making, physical injury, poor recovery, etc. Achieving and maintaining an appropriate ready state sets the stage for how resilient individuals and organizations are or can be in the face of crisis and adversity. Mental readiness is the cornerstone of performance flexibility. How prepared are you to handle the worst possible or even best possible situations? Our performance can be significantly positively or negatively impacted by our state of readiness.

what does a ready individual look like?

We see a ready individual as someone who is optimally motivated (the individual has an understanding of the proper balance between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and how to increase self determination to achieve that optimal state of motivation), someone with a proactive attitude, composed, focused, confident, recovered, collectively competent, and, lastly, appropriately mentally and physically trained (the individual knows when, why, and how to use the skills that optimize performance).

Let's look at how we approach readiness & resilience

Let’s explain what each layer of this concept means and why it has an impact on effectively achieving a ready and resilient state. The innermost ring is what we call the core of development. From the individual perspective, deliberate purpose is the individual’s “why” to what it is that they choose to do. It is the identified values that guide the individual daily – more on this in our previous post. From the organizational perspective, a sense of belonging is the foundation upon which organizations create a work culture that promotes solidarity, social support, autonomy, leadership development, and competence all geared towards constantly effective performance. These two overarching elements towards readiness from both the individual and organizational perspectives are important to providing a base from which both the individual and organization improve readiness and maintain resilience.

Moving outward, the second ring is what we call the elements that promote self-regulation. These are the elements both individually and collectively that help create and maintain a ready and resilient state for optimal functioning when it matters. From the individual perspective, developing a sense of awareness of current productive or unproductive behaviors as well as awareness of effective tools/concepts is one of the first steps to truly making changes that allow for remaining ready and resilient. This awareness allows for better self-control within highly stressful situations, which look differently for everyone, and ultimately promotes performance flexibility allowing the performer to flow within the highs and lows that naturally occur during performance in any domain. One of the most common areas where we implement self-control is stress-management. For specific tips on how to apply stress-management tools, visit our Stress-management for Increasing Resilience Resource Room. From the organizational perspective, reflectiveness allows the organization to objectively evaluate areas of improvement or success from past performances and then intentionally implement concepts that help to either improve or maintain those areas. With that, the organization becomes flexible.

The outermost ring is what we call the individual and organizational state of readiness. This is the achieved state of readiness at the individual and organization levels. This state of readiness is what allows for the individual and the organization to perform in their Optimal Zone of Natural Excellence (OZONE) more consistently and increase resilience. When we think about burnout and other significant mental injuries that take performers away from what they enjoy or leave organizations and teams with holes to fill, making mistakes and not being able to shake the impact of those as well as not being able to bounce back from the stress related to traumatic experiences is at the root. This measurable ready state provides something tangible to strive for and allows individuals and organizations to perform at their best when it matters most.

how this impacts and improves performance?

In today’s world, the ability to achieve a performance enhancing mental ready state couldn’t be more important. In the present environment where performing at your best when it matters most, especially as a first responder, is critical to the life, safety, and security of those around you and the public you engage with, your mental state of readiness helps to determine the outcome in those high stress situations. High stress and high-risk performance are rife with task relevant and task irrelevant stimuli. The key is to respond effectively and appropriately to the relevant stimuli that help to control the chances of the best possible outcome. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychologist and Holocaust survivor said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” In the same way, information processing theory scientifically walks us through the path from stimulus to response as well. We want the individual to be empowered through the knowledge and implementation of performance enhancing mental tools to develop that ability to choose a suitable response. Our mental readiness state affords us the space to evaluate when, where, and how to utilize those tools to optimize our performance.

For more information on how to create the space between the stimulus and response, visit Mindfulness Practice for Self-regulation & Resilience.

Moreover, as the cornerstone of performance flexibility, readiness allows the individual and organization to respond appropriately rather than react. Reacting is less deliberate and can have significant uncontrollable impacts due to engaging in impulsive reactions to experiences. Readiness doesn’t mean we are stress free, it means we are where we need to be to effectively manage the impacts of the stress we have and will encounter throughout performance. The idea here is to increase resilience to better promote nonreactivity. One study that looked at the role of resilience in mindfulness training for first responders reported on the conclusions from evaluations of mindfulness-based interventions which found that improvements in nonreactivity predicted reductions in depression symptoms in veterans (Colgan et al. 2016) and increases in predicted stress and anger outcomes in LEOs (Bergman et al. 2016). This is important because it speaks to the emotional demands, linked to high rates of job dissatisfaction and burnout, that come with being in high risk occupations, especially in law enforcement work. The effects of improving nonreactivity hold true whether you are an athlete, business professional, or first responder. In any of these high demand performance domains, readiness is critical to performing in your OZONE when the stress is high and you have to make the right decisions. In later blogs, we will discuss tips to achieve an optimal mental readiness state and improve psychological resilience.

The post How Mental Readiness and Psychological Resilience Optimize Performance appeared first on AEE Mental Performance.

Does Burnout Exist?

Brian Bishop — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 22:12:01 +0000

There is some debate on this. Some will say that it does not exist due to the fact that there is no clinical or biological substantiality to human beings burning out. But is that actually true? Well, the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon within the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), the handbook that guides medical providers in diagnosing diseases.

what is burnout?

Mechanically speaking, “burnout” exists as a physical result of entropy. Entropy is the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Clinically and biologically speaking, “burnout” in regards to human beings, is more of a description to explain the manifestation of various symptoms we see in others or ourselves when stressors have compiled over time and have gone unaddressed.

why do we use burnout?

Typically, we will describe someone who is highly productive, energetic, and connected to what they do as having some fire inside that drives them to perform in this manner. Well, as we know, due to entropy, fires can burnout. So, as we see or feel the fire extinguished, what comes to mind is the idea that it has burned out due to the compilation of stress suffocating and extinguishing the flame that exists within.

is burnout the big green monster that exists around every corner we should run from?

Burnout is something that exists around us. Given the advances in technology that keep us more connected to executing and less connected to what matters, we are always on the gas pedal without taking time to connect and engage appropriately. This ultimately leads to exhaustion, disengagement, poor mental and physical health, etc. which is essentially burnout.

so what?

Given what was described above, burnout is a real thing and frequently happens amongst those working on challenging issues, in difficult contexts, and in high stress environments. It is not something that only affects the person who suffers it, but also the organization or the collective as a whole. As mentioned earlier, burnout is the manifestation of symptoms such as exhaustion, cynicism, inability to sleep, disengagement, hopelessness/helplessness, inability to manage stress, etc. These are signs we may see in others and also experience ourselves that tell us that our stress response to the job or in our lives is spilling over into an unmanageable area. Oftentimes, we will deny and ignore the signs and symptoms thinking we are not susceptible, typically known as hero culture. However, left unaddressed, this burnout can lead to more significant mental and physical health issues.

The resilience tools we provide as well as the concepts we cover during mental training modules, individual sessions, workshops as well as other preventive performance enhancing services are the “armor” against burnout. For more information about how to manage stress effectively, visit our Stress-management for Increasing Resilience Resource Room. Think about it this way . . . burnout is not something you are trying to run away from daily, but more so, effective concepts and tools allow you to co-exist and operate more freely in a line of work or life where burnout CAN run rampant. So, what do you think, does burnout exist?

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Action-Based Living to Become Resilient and Achieve Excellence Starts with WHY

Barbora Kijasova — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 22:27:08 +0000

Values, a phenomenon that determines what actions are best to do or what way is best to live, are usually applied when people talk about ethics. Yet, there are other areas in our lives that are significantly influenced by awareness and depth of our values and have an impact on our performance and quality of life. Specifically, when talking values in the field of performance psychology, we mean their impact on level and quality of motivation, defining a direction for our actions, reaching fulfillment in life as well as our long-term self-worth leading to increased confidence, perseverance, resilience, and composure when it matters most. In other words, values have the power to lead us in a direction towards mastery over a skill, performance, and life.

Before we get into the WHY of values, let’s clarify some facts:

Everyone values something in life – everyone has a certain set of values
Unless we dig deep in ourselves, the values stay hidden and not applied to their full potential
Values can change over time with personal experience and development
It’s only YOU who change or develop your values – whether you realize it or not
The more you explore your values, the stronger impact they will have on you and your performance

So now, you learned the main principles of values, which is important for being able to work on them. We gotta know how the smartphone works first so we can use it, right? Otherwise, we can make a big mess playing with something we don’t actually understand. Okay. Let’s look at WHY you want to get and use the most powerful smartphone available . . . sorry, values.

The WHY of values - your internal compass towards flexibility, perseverance, mastery, and fulfillment

Values help you know your WHY
Knowing your WHY promotes sustainable, long-term optimal motivation
Values lead you towards facing and overcoming challenges and obstacles
Values push you to leave the comfort zone and strive for progress that oftentimes requires vulnerability and accepting mistakes
Values, when followed by action, lead to personal meaning and fulfillment (more in this research)
Values contribute to your long-term self-worth as you start creating yourself and the world based on your authentic, meaningful visions

In other words, when having your values firmly established and when following them by appropriate decisions and actions, you will not only see the results over time, but also in the moment-to-moment interactions with the world. And that’s how the biggest progress and impact are created.

It’s an intentional work on who you are

Although everyone has a set of values (and this set varies across individuals and groups), not everyone knows what their values truly are. Personal values go far beyond knowing “what or who you like”. It also goes beyond what is important for you. All of these are necessary for making meaning of your values, but the values themselves lie deeper, further beyond these questions. Once you answer what you like and what is important for you, ask another question – WHY. Why do you like something, why is it important for you? Keep asking why multiple times, and you will find what you truly, deeply value. Such value can then be transferred to almost any situation and action you take – leading to performance flexibility as a result of mastering personal flexibility (which is a concept we will dive into later). This process requires time and effort. It is an intentional work on who you are, and we will focus on how to do the work properly next time.

Next post will be on exploring your values to strengthen your WHY!

Challenge your resilience and visit our Resource Rooms

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Performance Flexibility And Its Impact On Resilience

Brian Bishop — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 03:43:08 +0000

Have you ever been so distracted by your thoughts, feelings, and reactions surrounding performance that you made poor decisions and barely made it through? Performance flexibility is a concept we promote and a term I use to describe the ability of a performer/athlete to effectively navigate the highs and lows of performance that naturally occur and remain proficient and resilient throughout. At the heart of performance excellence is the ability for the performer/athlete to be flexible within competition or in the face of adversity. I believe that mastery of applicable performance enhancing components that we teach promote performance flexibility. In competition or performance, the situation can change rapidly. Performance flexibility allows the athlete to adjust, regroup, refocus, and respond to the present situation. This is an idea adopted from the late Ken Ravizza, world leading peak performance consultant and former sport psychology professor at Cal State Fullerton.

why is performance flexibility important?

Performance encompasses a series of setbacks and set forwards that can easily derail the path to success and excellence. The more mentally flexible an individual is within performance, the more adaptable they can be to variations and the greater their ability to maintain an optimal zone of natural excellence.

Resilience is the foundation of performance excellence as it most readily speaks to a performer’s mental flexibility. I believe flexibility that is rooted in resilience comes from having an appropriate balance of components such as, values-based goals, present moment awareness and acceptance, optimal motivation, and effective indivdualized mental routines that promote performance flexibility. For example, mental routines compel the athlete or performer to utilize multiple mental skills, that we teach, to help achieve an optimal zone of natural excellence prior to, during, and post competition. As the individual or group masters the ability to shift from a training mindset to a competition/performance mindset, they are able to execute appropriate tasks exhibiting the resilience necessary to flow within the highs and lows of an unstable environment. Quality practice of the concepts and skills we offer will help bring permanence to these aspects as a part of the individual’s life in and out of performance. This in turn creates a more mentally tough individual who is adequately trained, proficient, and ready to respond in the moment.

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Welcome to ARMOR EQUIP EMPOWER

Barbora Kijasova — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:42:00 +0000

Armor, Equip, Empower Mental Performance is not only a provider of services for mental performance leading to performance enhancement. AEE is here to fulfill a mission of building a strong community of leaders and high performers in all areas and of all levels across the nation and beyond. We serve everyone who strives for the mastery over the mind that leads to higher productivity, fulfillment, and success in their performance domain as well as in lives.

With strong dedication, AEE provides various types of services from individual sessions to weeks-long training modules to the first responders’ community, athletes with disabilities, and the general population – all along with one goal, to get your performance to the edge of possibilities and potential when it matters most. Along with delivering customized training to its clients, AEE actively contributes with its expertise to the public here, on AEE Blog, as well as on Instagram to elevate performance and fulfillment on a daily basis.

This is AEE in a shell – we provided more info on About Us page – but who stands behind it all? Two extreme enthusiasts coming from different life experiences, yet deeply aligning in their values and sharing a singular vision. Barbora and Brian have created, perhaps, the most possible diverse team in this field that offers multiple perspectives providing a deeper understanding of various phenomena, therefore flexibility to choose the right strategy for each type of work and client.

We, Barbora and Brian, created AEE to train your mind and push your limits to the edge in the domain that is most important for you. We believe AEE will serve you as a valuable guide on your path towards personal and performance excellence. And with others joining along, you will build a strong community of leaders and high performers that move the world.

Challenge your resilience and visit our Resource Rooms

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