A story about a bear and the loss of IQ

A story about a bearand the loss of IQInspired by opening remarks of John Perry (MSc, 3x MA)at Barefoot Coaching PGCert Course Module 1 in Jan. 2016.

Georg Fasching - Coaching People & Products.@geofas geofas.com Modern Way Consulting Ltd.

Georg Fasching - Coaching People & [email protected] Modern Way Consulting Ltd.

[Title Slide]


[Slide 2] Imagine spending some time in nature. Fresh air. Gentle sounds of a stream soothing your spirits. Youre calm. You feel light.


[Slide 3] All of a sudden, a Grizzly bear charges at you. What happen in your body? It goes into survival mode to prepare yourself for the life-threatening situation at hand. Blood rushes to your upper torso. Your shoulders tighten. Your heart-rate spikes. Your mind gets singularly focussed on the threat. Everything else disappears. For millions of years evolution has shaped this natural response. Thanks to this our species survived.


[Slide 4] Lets shake off this experience and go back to where most of us spend most of our time. Lets look at an example of what some of us are dealing with.


[Slide 5] Public speaking or public performance. Dozens, hundreds, or thousands of pairs of eyes are aimed at you. What happens to your body? For those who havent been doing this day after day for quite some time, our body has a rather similar reaction. Is this a survival situation? Sarcastically wed say yes. Really though, wed have to say no.

-20 IQ Pts!!!


[Slide 6] Our body cant intuitively tell the difference between these two very different triggers of sympathetic nervous system activation, or stress response. Blood flow in our brain changes in favour of evolutionarily older parts of the brain, depriving your parts of the brain of blood flow. This costs us up to 20 IQ points!!! I dont know about you, but Id rather have access to those.Whats more, develop tunnel vision, and tunnel hearing. We also dont get to think about those around us as empathy is out the window too.At its strongest the survival mode will go all the way. It is a spectrum though and the reaction is not binary.

What to do?


[Slide 7] While in a bear-facing scenario this might be useful, in our day-to-day activities it certainly is not quite so useful. So what can we do about this? I developed a couple of tools for this.

Bear Test.


[Slide 8] Behold, the bear test. This is a very simple test that you can administer whenever you feel your body going into survival mode.

Is it a bear?


[Slide 9] Ask yourself: Is it a bear?

No?


[Slide 10] More often then not the answer will be no. Great. Then what?

1. Smile


[Slide 11] 1. Smile! You just survived what you body thought was a bear attack. You live to live another day. Smile. Smiling helps your body reset from survival mode.

2. Breathe


[Slide 12] 2. Breathe. Especially long deep breaths out help your body reset from survival mode.

3. Assess with Bear-ometerTM

TeddyGrizzly


[Slide 13] 3. Assess the situation using the Bear-ometerTM. On a scale of Teddy to Grizzly, what kind of situation is it?

Options

Deep breaths outGo for a walkDrink water10-second pauseWASP (Wait, Absorb, Slowly, Proceed)Show him whos boss?Buy yourself time


[Slide 14] Depending on the situation you have some options. All of them help reset your body out of survival mode.To keep check of your survival mode, you can start and end your tasks at work with a 10-second pause to take a deep breath and a deeper breath out.Drink some water to ensure your body is sufficiently hydrates so blood can easily reach the newer parts of your brain.When someone requests something and you dont have an automated response, buy yourself time to think by saying Let me think about that..Go for a walk. Fresh air, and gentle walking help relax the body out of survival mode.In strong cases you can apply the WASP (Wait. Absorb. Slowly. Proceed.). The Bear Test is a light-hearted and based on WASP.In the case of facing a real Grizzly, Im out of my depth and you might better research that.

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[Final Slide]

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A story about a bear and the loss of IQ