Am I Safe?

Am I safe?

My friend Tim Anderson will tell you that this is the only thing your nervous system ever asks... but only every day and all the time. 

We are hard-wired to look for patterns, and anything that doesn't fit a pre-planned model gets flagged as a threat.

Is this "threat" threatening? 

It all depends on how you frame it... how you perceive it. 

For the sake of this piece, there are two ways of viewing a threat- either as a Challenge or as Overwhelm.

Challenge- is the preferred stance; you may have some excitement/anxiety but remain driven to overcome. This state comes with a great deal of curiosity embedded, and you find yourself thinking about the task when away from it. 

Overwhelm- in this perspective, procrastination and distraction arise, and you want to put it off. This is a burnout, grindy, living-for-the-weekend place. 

There are many vectors of nuance between these two extremes, of course. Factor in that you don't always have a say in how you see things (see PoC suggestion below), and this concept becomes more striated. But back to the brain's only question: 

Am I safe?

When the answer is "yes," you are in a place of growth and can welcome a Challenge. *Beware of your work ethic writing checks here that your body can't cash. Many of us have suffered under a delusion that establishing limits is a sign of weakness; we are wrong to carry this belief. 

If the answer is "<expletive deleted> no," then you are typically in a fixed mindset, a caustic-hormonal cascade of nothing good- Overwhelm. Burnout dwells at the end of this path, but we frequently have to take a few steps down this road to know that we are on it. 

Can you think your way through from Overwhelm to Challenge?

Pivots or a reframe of thinking can help, especially if you tie the current task to your identity or purpose. However, with that said, since psychology is driven by physiology, other factors must be considered. 

The usual well-being suspects appear here: Sleep, Movement, Eating, and Community.

Simple Proof of Concept: Stay up all night tonight and tackle your most significant work or family problem first thing in the morning. I apologize to your peers & partners in advance if you decide to do this. Please, don't do this.

I like the term "adaptive reserve" to reference the capacity to perform at high levels while leaving enough energy and focus "in the bank" so you can handle what comes up. This keeps one in the Challenge zone. I speak elsewhere about this idealized ~75% (65-85%) of maximum capacity that my best-performing teams followed. 

So with mindset reframe (aligning your task with your identity), it is possible to pivot from a state of Overwhelm to one of Challenge, but only if you set yourself up by taking care of the fundamental factors of personal well-being. 

So how do you consistently provide an affirmative answer to your nervous system's query?

First, position and align what you are doing to your greater goals.

Second, take care of your fundamentals:

• Sleep like a baby
• Move like a kid
• Eat like a grown-up
• Support (and be supported) like an elder

Questions on this or if I can support you in any way-

Ask; I always answer.