Mine your mental muscles - how to create resilience

Mine your mental muscle

March 12, 2014 Gillian Leithman, BA, MSC, Ph.D. Candidate

www.lifeskillstoolbox.ca

Mine your mental muscles


Today’s agenda

!  Eustress Vs. Distress

!  A matter of mindset: Lessons from the trenches

!  Why mindset matters

!  Strategies for building Resilience

Local, changeable, temporary

Alter your narrative

A focus on the future


Group exercise

What comes to mind when you think of the term stress?


Stress & Work

!  1 in 4 workers report being “highly stressed”

(Statistics Canada, 2011)

!  Increased Absenteeism

!  Increased medical expenses

!  Loss of productivity

!  Burnout

!  Mental health issues cost the Canadian economy 50 billion dollars a year


Stressed about feeling stress?


An Imbalanced View?


Do you ever view stress as beneficial?



Increased productivity at work

Enhanced physiology & immunity


Increased mental toughness


Greater appreciation for life


How do we reconcile this paradox?


Mindset: Debilitating or enhancing?


Mindset has a downstream effect on judgment !  Intelligence: Fixed vs. Growth (Dweck)

! Aging: Proactive vs. inactive (Counterclockwise study; Levy & colleagues)

! Work: Exercise vs. a job (Hotel study: Crum)

!  Stress: Enhancing or debilitating ??? (Salovey,Crum, & Achor, 2013)


Psychological Resilience An individual's ability to cope with stress & adversity and bounce back even better


Remember Shawn Achor

“It is not our reality that shapes us, but the lens through which we view that reality. If we change the lens, we can change our outcomes”.


Stress

Event

Interpretation

Chemical response

Emotional + Behavioral reaction


Building mental toughness

!  Local

!  Temporary

!  Changeable


Create a new narrative Post traumatic Growth

! Human beings are sense making creatures

! What is the meaning behind the stress/traumatic event that you are living

! Create a new narrative that tells a different story about the event


Victor Frankl

“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for”


!  Graduates of Concordia’s Department of Communication Studies, Frederic Bohbot, BA 01, Kieran Crilly Carl Freed, BA 94 Luc St. Pierre, BFA 09,


What’s next? www.lifeskillstoolbox.ca

“More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails... that’s true in the Olympics and its true in the boardroom”.

Dean Becker, CEO adaptive solutions


Session summary ! Eustress Vs. Distress

! A matter of mindset: Lessons from the trenches

! Why mindset matters

! Building Resilience

Local, changeable, temporary

Alter your narrative

Focus on the future


References ! Mindet by Carol Dweck

! Crum, A., Salovey, P. & Achor, S. (2013). Rethinking Stress: The Role of Mindsets in Determining the Stress Response. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. [impact factor: 4.9]

!  Rethinking Stress - http://goodthinkinc.com/rethinkstress

!  http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/03/post-traumatic-growth-and-buil/

!  Building resilienceby Martin Seligman- Harvard Business Review, April 2011


Mine your mental muscles - how to create resilience

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Transcript of Mine your mental muscles - how to create resilience