001 | 7 Ways to Regulate our Nervous System at Work

EDITION 001 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor Labs​
​READ TIME: 3 minutes

🗓️ New this week

Sharing new ideas is hard. I'm writing a whole newsletter about it...

Any number of moments could cause us to feel triggered, embarrassed, or judged over the course of developing an idea in public.

Regulating our emotions helps us become grounded before the meetings, collaborations and presentations where our presence itself helps sell the idea. Can't sell without confidence.

This idea is so important to collaborating on ideas that I am actually going to share a reminder — in every single issue — to take a moment for slow, deep breaths.

Here's our first one, now.

Make a little room to think Now is a perfect moment to take a breath. 8 seconds in, pause, 8 seconds out.

🔬 This week's topic

THE PREMISE

Our emotions are regulated by our nervous system. That's useful in the right situations, but rarely at work.

Our nervous system keeps us safe. When triggered, it floods our bodies with chemicals; adrenaline and cortisol, activating a stress response like fight or flight or freeze.

Work has changed and our biology hasn’t kept up. As a result, old perceived threats (eg. a scary predator in the grass) and new perceived threats (eg. a colleague criticizing our work in public) trigger, biologically, the same stress response.

Freeze, fight or flight reactions rarely serve us very well in the modern workplace. We naturally get defensive, we deny, we say something we regret, or we say nothing at all.

This part took me years to learn for myself: doing something different takes practice.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO GROWING IDEAS

We can’t reasonably share, collaborate or pitch new ideas when we’re dysregulated. Sharing our ideas sets them free to be judged by our peers: inviting unwelcome feelings that can dysregulate our nervous system. We want to own our reactions, first.

To do that, we need grounding to create the space to be in-control, to be more creative, and be less defensive.

HOW WE CAN USE IT THIS WEEK

• Breathwork — believe it or not, something as simple as slow breathing has been widely studied to activate our parasympathetic nervous system and slow our heart rate.
  (Source)
• Name our feelings — we learned this in Kindergarten and we forget to use it: naming our feelings is shown to reduce their intensity by activating the prefrontal cortex responsible for executive functions and complex decisions, while reducing the activity in the amygdala, which triggers the stress response.
  (Source)
• Co-regulation — be in a calm room with someone else, and our autonomic nervous system can begin to mirror theirs.
  (Source)
• Disappear into a fond memory — close our eyes and imagine ourselves somewhere we feel safe and empowered. It can be a real memory or a daydream. Our nervous system adapts to our current situation even if it's all in our minds.
• 10 minutes of activity — exercise has a similar effect on our parasympathetic system and can help reset our steady state more effectively than by sitting still.
• Write a control list — facing a stressful situation, separate the things we can control and things we can’t. The delineation of what we can do about something gives us calm perspective.
• Take small action — feeling helpless corners us into stress. By taking one action, even a tiny one, that brings us closer to our goal; we can remind our nervous system that we have agency. For ideas on small actions, I like Anne-Laure Le Cunff's book.

Pssssst, hey

These are the early editions of Room to Think.
I could use any support to nurture my growing audience:

• Forward this to the author of your favourite marketing newsletter. Collabs are how newsletters grow.
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• I'm an active speaker and looking for more speaking stage and guest podcast appearances. A quick intro is more than helpful.

Did you learn something from this newsletter? Did you put it into practice? I'm dying to hear how it went. Please email letstalk@formentor.ca and share your thoughts.