The Neuroscience of Stress

Everyone needs a “just right” amount of arousal chemicals for optimal functioning of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the area of the brain responsible for our executive functioning, including thoughtful decision-making and planning for the future, among other things.

Picture a bell curve. To the right of the curve is increased stress / stimulation, and to the left of the curve is decreased stress / stimulation. Our cortex is regulated by two main chemicals (dopamine and norepinephrine) and becomes stimulated (or not) based on the task at hand.  When we are alert and interested, we get the right amount of chemical release. But when we are stressed and out of control, we get BIG releases of these chemicals.  All the connections in this part of the brain become dysfunctional, engaging other kinds of receptors that actually impair prefrontal cortex function. The impact of being over-stimulated or under-stimulated results in the SAME cognitive impairment of the brain: foggy thinking, poor memory, lack of empathy, inability to regulate impulses.  As well, chronic stress results in actual architectural changes in the cortex.  You actually start losing dendrites, a branched part of a neuron involved in cell to cell electrochemical stimulation. Stress is VERY real, and actually has the ability to alter the structural make up of your brain. Cray, eh?
 
So what does this have to do with YOU? Behavior from the top trickles down to your team, so if you are a stressed leader and not taking care of yourself, how can you possibly model good behavior to your colleagues and employees? Moreover, as a leader, you need to be able to access your brain when it is at its best (in balance).  When you are overstressed or under-stimulated, you don’t get optimal executive functioning. Below, I share some strategies for managing stress and getting your PFC closer to balance or “online” as we coaches like to say. 
 
Name Your Emotions

According to BeAbove Leadership, an organization specializing in the intersectionality of neuroscience, consciousness and leadership, “research shows that simply naming an emotion reduces amygdala activity.” This is one of the reasons I listen to my clients and try to help them name the emotions that they are feeling. Often, a client will show up at a session experiencing a whole host of different feelings. After listening very carefully to them, I often reflect what it is I hear them saying, and then attempt to name an emotion. I will say, “it sounds like ‘guilt’ or it sounds like ‘grief,’” and in doing that, it helps them make sense of their own emotions. If I’m not right on with the emotion, it’s the opportunity for them to say, for example, “no, actually it’s not guilt; it’s more ambivalence.”

Journaling how you are feeling each day can also markedly help with stress management; simply waking up in the morning and taking 10 minutes to write down how you are feeling that day can help you process stressful feelings when you don’t have an empathetic listener. 
 
Reframe Your Perspective

Shifting and reframing your perspective is one way to effectively reduce stress. I once left a coaching session feeling a bit stunned. My “inner child” wanted to flee. A client who was feeling a lot of anger in his life had taken it out on me by yelling at me and insulting the coaching profession. I left feeling as if I had failed, and the experience had me questioning my coaching abilities. The “stun” was my fight or flight. In that moment, my prefrontal cortex got (PFC) stressed, and I had very little access to it, as it was flooded with dopamine and norepinephrine.

After some introspection and self-coaching, I was able to reframe this session as a gift instead of an utter disaster. Though it felt stressful for me, my client had triggered something that reminded me of how some people would lash out at me for things when I was growing up, thereby stimulating a very emotional response and memory to the stressor. And this made me feel worthless. So in bringing up this feeling again was an opportunity to heal it, to use my PFC to think more about it and to calm my stress response and self-manage through difficult to be with emotions. Moreover, I realized that my client felt safe enough to express his anger with me.  Following that we had a breakthrough session and he showed up ready and willing to be coached.  Taking the time to think and reframe a stressful event can help build a new neural pathway to thinking about a situation, and bring the PFC back online to help you make sense of your own emotions. 
 
Practice Focus and Attention

The data from studies relating to focus and attention just gets more and more fascinating, particularly around meditation. It’s not just “new-agey stuff.” Studies show that meditation changes the composition of the brain.

Long-term meditators have increased amounts of grey matter in parts of the brain associated with sensory functions, and they also have more grey matter in the PFC. Some studies indicate that meditation also reduces the size of the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for the fight or flight “freeze” response of the brain and strengthens the brain region responsible for processing information related to people perceived as being different front you (our seat of empathy).

What’s this got to do with stress? Well, the data suggests that meditation builds more “good” types of connections in the brain, to help it become more resilient to stress. So with more focus and attention, you can build your resilience and have stronger connections between the logical and empathetic areas of your higher executive functioning brain and your limbic system, making you more resilient to stress. 
 
Make a Powerful Choice

When you are out of balance on the curve, sometimes it requires you to make some lifestyle choices, and sometimes it requires you to make powerful choices. The difference between just making a choice and a POWERFUL choice is that there is often more at stake with the powerful choice. A powerful choice might feel more difficult to make because the consequences of the choice are so life-changing that it is too scary to think about removing the source of the stress.  Powerful choices often require courage, as in the event of choosing to quit a job, get out of a toxic relationship, or simply to just stop doing something. 
 
Lastly, our PFC and the relevant chemical release  is proportional to the task at hand.  While some might feel a little stimulation from something and it feels like a good amount of stimulation, for others it can provoke a much stronger chemical response and overload the PFC with chemicals. What tips and strategies have you picked up along the way to manage your stress? When you are feeling like you want to “fight or flee,” how have you gotten your PFC back online to where things feel just right?

Let’s start with morning rituals. In the past year-and-a-half, I developed a morning ritual consisting of meditation, journaling and consciously assessing on a scale of 1-10 how happy I wake up on that day (10 being completely blissed out to the max, and 0 at a basic level of hopelessness). This may seem excessive and even weird, I know. (Those of you who really know me know that I am a little weird anyway!)  But in the discipline of coaching, self care actually becomes a critical ally for being available and offering yourself at your highest level in service to your clients. That is the reason I focus on how I feel each morning so much. 
 
Anyway, the process has trained me to be more aware of how I’m feeling in the moment. It has helped me to reflect on the circumstances, relationships or events that made me choose that number on a daily basis. This self-reflection, along with spending the past 4 years constantly reading up on the latest neuroscience research on happiness, inspired me to share my insights about happiness. Why is it that so many people who seemingly have everything – a thriving business, millions of dollars in the bank, a seemingly stable relationship – still rank low on their happiness index? What REALLY makes us happy? How can we bring more happiness into our lives? 
 
1.  Understand that your brain is plastic
 
Neuroplasticity is, simply put, the brain’s ability to change over time. And studies show we do actually have a happiness set point. In other words, no matter how much tragedy or what happens to us, we go back to a set point of happiness. (It’s the reason why, for example, there is no real change in one’s happiness set point before they win the lottery vs. after they win.)

Psychology says there are a few things you can do to increase your happiness baseline – namely, focusing on gratitude and service. Similarly, research shows that meditation grows areas in our brain associated with positivity (left hemisphere) and compassion (right hemisphere), which can also increase our happiness set point. In my experience, it IS possible to re-wire your happiness set point, if even just to give it a slight increase. So, start with the belief in your own neuroplasticity. Actually, it’s not just a belief - it’s neuroscience! 
 
2.  Feel the lows in order to feel the highs
 
Some days I have woken up and felt like a 7 in terms of happiness and have thought, Hey, I’m doing pretty good today.  And then upon further reflection, that same morning I could also be in touch with a deep sadness about something. How can we be profoundly happy and at the same time profoundly sad about something? As self-awareness increases, our ability to identify and feel two perhaps very distinct feelings at once also becomes heightened.  We become more aware of our integration. The sadness doesn’t trump my happiness per se, but they both exist in me at the same time.
 
Brené Brown, the touted TEDX speaker, was spot-on in her famous Ted Talk on vulnerability when she pointed out that when we suppress our negative emotions (depression, frustration, sadness, etc.), we end up suppressing the positive ones as well – joy, fulfillment, happiness. So to feel those high places, you absolutely need to take trips to the dark, deep, dank, hopeless emotions of your subconscious basement. I know – I hate going there as well … like HATE! But what I’ve discovered from being able to “be” with those hard emotions and to really feel the lows, is that it helped open up the space to experience the more positive emotions. Whether through coaching, group get-togethers, having an amazing friend with a keen ability to listen or even writing about these feelings, the more we can embrace this idea of feeling places that are not comfortable for us emotionally, the more we make space and open ourselves up to feeling the positive emotions of life. 
 
For example, I started journaling a few years back as part of my daily routine.  It helped pass so many feelings through me that today I don’t know what I would do without this journaling practice. I felt a visible improvement in my mood and happiness on a DAILY basis, simply from having daily self-reflection. Think of it like going to the bathroom; in the same way that you have to release stuff from your gut to clean out your system and make it available for more food and energy to process, reflection allows you to do the same cleaning with your brain.  Heh heh. :) 
 
3.  Hum (I know it sounds weird, but trust me on this one!)
 
For this, you need to know about the vagus nerve, our 10th cranial nerve. The vagus nerve is fascinating and stimulating (literally), as it is the only nerve that connects to every major organ in the human body. If you haven’t Googled “vagus nerve,” you absolutely should because it is fascinating! So fascinating, it makes me want to start a t-shirt line in honor of its critical importance to our life force and evolution of consciousness and sell it in hipster card shops in Oakland!

According to this article on vagus nerve stimulation, low vagal tone (an internal biological process referring to the activity of the vagus nerve, according to Wikipedia) has been linked to depression, inflammation, diabetes and other ailments. Humming (along with slow breathing and other things) was cited as a process that actually INCREASES vagal tone by stimulating the vagus nerve. After reading this, it hit me.   I realized that I was ALWAYS humming SOMETHING.  Walking in the grocery store, driving my car, cleaning the house and definitely while I was sitting on my surfboard, I always had a tune in my head that I quietly hummed to myself. Could it be that humming was responsible, in part, for my happiness?

Stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline and even dopamine) are released in us when we are at lower level resonating consciousness (the states of fear, hopelessness, frustration). Another way to think about this is that our pre-frontal cortex (PFC) or higher level thinking brain gets knocked "offline" and norepinephrine and dopamine (the two main chemicals balancing healthy function of the PFC) are then thrown off balance.  By simply humming and constantly stimulating  your vagus nerve, you increase vagal tone, and actually equalize some of the inflammatory hormones in the body. In other words, we are equipped with an internal stress regulator!
 
This is the scientific reason behind why something like chanting OM is associated with bringing in peace and resonance. It’s because it’s actually stimulating the vagus nerve and increasing our vagal tone. It’s why music, dancing, drumming and vibrations have played such a crucial role for us through the evolution of humanity and spirituality. So, the next time you feel a pang of anxiety come on, try humming.  Try it when you are driving or walking. Just hum to yourself always. In fact, quit reading this and go and hum!   
 
4.  Protect yourself from toxic people
 
It took a lot of lessons – A LOT – to figure out how to spot toxic energy and people, and to make the conscious choice NOT to engage. Admittedly, I get swept away by some gnarly tides of energy; I am very sensitive to others and often find myself taking on their energy or emotional states via our mirror neuron process.

To assess and become aware of toxic energies, here’s a tool to use:  Metaphor.  For example, when I meet someone, I sometimes think of a metaphor of what it was like to be with that person in terms of ocean conditions. (Remember: metaphors are lint catchers for the brain; sometimes you can’t evaluate or see the relationship you are in, so tying it to a metaphor helps the brain see and latch on to your experience or process of it more quickly than just trying to use words to describe or make sense of it.)  I ask myself, If this person were ocean conditions, what kind of conditions would they be?  Ocean Beach on a crazy-ass day (strong current pulling me down the beach, rough shore break)?  Or is the experience more like a fun day at Bolinas – a gentle bohemian enclave of a beach just north of San Francisco – predictable, stable and light?  The metaphor process helps me figure out the stability of the energetic zone I’m relating to, or at least what the ride would potentially feel like down the road if I were in a relationship with a particular person.
 
Once you figure out what your metaphor is (it doesn’t have to be the ocean; maybe it could be movie genres – nightmare, fairy tale, dark comedy or cars – whatever tickles your fancy), figure out what your choices are. I love my surfing metaphor because it gives me 2 options: 

1.  Get off the wave if it is not the wave you want to be on, or if you just can’t handle it.   
2.  Change your equipment and try a more stable board and venture at it again (i.e. - equip yourself with a better set of tools and skills to deal with the toxic and unstable conditions by making yourself more stable). 
 
That’s it – change something in yourself to deal with it, or get off it. Keep it clean. Now when I come into contact with a person, I am aware of how I feel, how my body reacts, and what wave I’m on. Use this for friends, business partners, relationships, etc.
 
These are a few hacks I picked up in life regarding the question of personal happiness.  I hope some of them are helpful to you.  What insights or practices have you found that have helped you cultivate happiness within yourself? Share your thoughts below!

Farah came to Surf Life when she was at a crossroads as a dancer wondering how to make the leap from a trained student to making a career and living as an artist. We did a great deal of work on purpose and alignment together. Today, as a result of her hard work and courage, she is a now an accomplished artist with her own school who has also turned a novel about one of India's most powerful women into a full length work of art using dance, drama and storytelling - a great feat in finding her authentic voice in her art form and in life.

She says this about Surf Life: "Farhana helped me to break through the things that are holding me back and find the path to not just discovering, but living a life that is authentically me."  Click here here for artistic highlights of her show.

Click here for her press accolade.

I had a friend over for dinner the other week.  I just finished giving her updates on my life, how my recent trip back East went, what was hard, what was new.  After I finished, I was met with a “that’s good” type of response.  Not much more.  It was like talking into a well, with no feedback, affirmation, insights, commiserating … nothing.  Then, she launched into her updates, and I spent the remainder of the evening listening, supporting, ad-hoc coaching, and offering feedback to her on her relationships and challenges. 
 
Reflecting on the evening, I felt a little sad and, truth be told, a little used.  Why is it so hard for someone to listen thoughtfully and to let me know I’ve been heard?  I listened to her; why can’t she show me that she’s actively listening to me?  All of this got me thinking about what makes someone a good listener.
 
Let’s start with recognizing what it is to not listen well. 
 
You are quick to interrupt.

You are quick to hear someone and you generally interrupt them to offer a thought or response before they can finish what it is they are saying.  This shows you are not holding space to sufficiently take in what you hear.  Rather, you are already trying to craft an answer, rebuttal, opinion, or respond before fully listening.  Note:  if you are a coach, you may be taught to intrude for the purpose of keeping your client on track, but for the rest of you, you probably aren’t listening well if you continually interrupt.
 
You overshare.

You take up 80% of the space in your conversations.  You are concerned with expressing yourself and making sure you get heard but leave little room for others. 
 
You tend to multitask while someone is talking.

Unless you are knitting, walking, or doing something that takes unconscious competence to do, chances are you are not fully listening to the other person when you are doing something else at the same time.  It is impossible to be a good listener if you are typing an e-mail or reading the news on your phone.  The brain does not multitask; it can only do one thing at a time.  Although you may think you are successfully doing many things at once, in actuality your brain is switching back and forth from task to task and your attention is being divided.  
 
You self-reference.

You automatically apply what someone is saying to your own situation.  In other words, you don’t take the time to show you are understanding what they are saying and feeling.  Instead, you bring the conversation back to you and how you would feel if you were in their position.  This is different from empathizing with someone, as you are not genuinely trying to understand the other person’s feelings as much as you are projecting your thoughts and feelings onto their situation.
 
See any of these behaviors in yourself?  If so, you may have a great opportunity to grow your leadership skills by becoming a better listener.
 
In coaching, one of the first things we do is learn the 3 levels of listening.  Level 1 listening is all about self-referencing per the example above.  For example, if your friend says something, you immediately think of yourself and say, “Oh yeah, I remember when that happened to me."  In other words, it’s all about referencing what someone is saying in relation to you and your experience.  It’s not a bad level, per se.   It is the level we probably most often encounter in our relationships.  But it is not the most powerful level of listening. 
 
Level 2 is when you can actually start to listen to someone and stop referring back to yourself.  You really hear what it is they are trying to say.  You are focused on them and not on yourself.
 
And level 3 is about listening to all the things that are NOT being said, but that are present in a conversation - the energy of the person, their intonation, what you are hearing between the words, what your intuition tells you. This is where you as a leader really have the power to achieve deeper understanding and, ultimately, effect better outcomes through listening. 
 
Here are some tips for achieving level 3 listening:
 
1.  So what I’m hearing you say is … 

This is a great phrase that sets you up for an attempt to understand and reiterate what it is you heard the other person say.  If you are listening well, you should be able to sum up what it is you think the person is trying to say.  You can also use other versions of this phrase, such as:  It seems like … I hear you.  It sounds like … Using any of these phrases will not only help you synthesize what you just heard, but will indicate to the other person that you are truly trying to understand what they are saying..

2.  That’s curious.  How did that make you feel? …

Being curious about what the other person says will help you listen better.  Asking them how something made them feel can help them reflect more on what it is they are saying and also give you another angle to understand what it is they are trying to say. 

3.  Simply ask those around you whether they think you are an effective listener. 

If it’s a “no,” or you get a wishy-washy response because they are afraid to tell you the truth, ask, “How could I improve?”  You’ll be surprised at what they say.  Maybe they will tell you not to interrupt so much when you didn’t realize you were doing that.  Maybe they need a nod or more eye contact from you.  Maybe they just need an acknowledgement of some sort.  If you don’t ask, you won’t know!
 
Challenge yourself in your next conversation: go in with the intention of listening and making the other person feel heard.  Challenge yourself to not respond, offer advice, or self-relate until the person is finished speaking.  See how long you can go just listening!
 
As you practice better listening, you’ll likely gain new insights about yourself and about the person you are listening to.  Getting curious while listening can prompt you to ask the right questions for solving problems and demonstrates that you are truly present in the interaction.  Most of all, growing your listening is growing your leadership.
 
Try these listening tips and leave a comment below about the differences you notice in your conversations!

When is it really time to move on?  People come to me wishing to make a transition, but sometimes what holds them back is they have not yet logically convinced themselves it is time to move on.  They can feel it in their bodies.  They know something is not right.  But somehow they use their mind to convince themselves otherwise.  So what are some ways to tell if it’s time to move? 

1.  When your misery of staying outweighs the benefits
 
Some people come to me for coaching and they incessantly complain about their company - the lack of integrity, their boss, their situation, their disdain for the meaninglessness in what they do.  BUT, they stay and often, they are miserable.  They stay because they have a kid in college, or another one headed there.  They don’t want to leave for fear of not finding another job soon enough.  So I ask them:  does the benefit of staying outweigh the misery they are feeling?  If the answer is no, it is time to move on. 
 
You do not do yourself any favors by staying, nor do you do your company any favors by staying either.  The move may take a thorough assessment and some coaching, challenging you to look at your limiting beliefs, doing financial projections for your transition (cash flow, monthly expenses) and the like.  But once you have come to terms with the feelings and start to see a logical path of how you can move forward, it is much easier to move on.  Think about whether your misery in staying outweighs your benefits.  If it does, what is your next step? 

2.   When you are flat lining
 
If you are no longer being challenged in what you do at work or on a project, you are flat lining.  We all need to feel like we are growing or are being developed and exposed to new thoughts, ideas and ways of doing something.  Flat lining is the feeling that you’ve hit your own glass ceiling, that you really don’t feel like there is a place for you to move up and to develop further. 
 
I remember speaking to one woman who was completely flat lining.  She just didn’t have enough work or challenge in her day, so much so that she’d take off in the middle of the day and go to yoga and have a nice leisurely lunch.  She was making a good salary and things weren’t horrible.  So her choice was either to figure out a way to feel more challenged or to figure out what could be next.  She actually felt GUILTY for taking a paycheck from her work because it didn’t really feel like she was earning it, though she was gainfully employed.  In her case, she chose to stay and was eventually put on more challenging projects.  However, if there were no change, she would have left. 
 
If you are flat lining and the place where you are isn’t terrible, think about what you would need to do to feel more challenged in your work first.  Oftentimes, a frank conversation with your boss can equip her with the information she needs to help you on your growth path to build new skills and gain new experiences. 

3.  When you know you are just not happy
 
I had the experience of having a very deeply unhappy employee at the organization I ran.  What did it do?  First, it caused a ripple effect.  It drove one of the other key directors out of her position.  (The #2 reason this director gave for leaving was due to the unhappiness of her co-director, which rubbed off on her in a negative way.)  Just as happiness is contagious, so is unhappiness.  If you are not happy, you risk making others around you unhappy. (Remember the mirror neuron effect?)   You do both yourself and your company a favor when you choose to leave and go to a place where you will inevitably be happier.  You win because you’ll be closer to what will feel fulfilling, and the organization will win because it will be free of your unhappy energy, which can seriously weigh down innovation and engagement needed to really drive results. 
 
It’s true that some people will be perpetually unhappy.  Sometimes it’s less of a function of your environment and more a function of the own internal work you need to do so you can be happy.  So when assessing this, ask yourself – am I unhappy because of something in my life, or some unresolved childhood issue I’m having that this situation keeps bringing up (feeling-wise)?  Or am I happy when I am out of this space but become unhappy only when I step into this space?  Pay attention mostly to what your body feels and you will get the best data to help guide you forward. 

4.  When your body starts to manifest chronic symptoms
 
They body never lies.  Period.  If you tune into what you are feeling in your body at any given time, you can tap into immense data of what a person, situation or organization gives you.  We have a physiological response to stress all the time – from hair loss, heart palpitations, chronic colds, and yes, even cancer.  When you are getting chronically ill and stressed out, take that as a sign that it is time to shift and change things up.  There are numerous studies now connecting our physiology to stress and our mental well-being.
 
One of the biggest developments in coaching has been using embodiment to work with people.  When we are communicating, 96% of what we are saying is communicated through our body.  Some neuroscientist believe that the heart knows first and knows best, sends information to the brain, where it gets interpreted, put into words, and where it often gets denied.  The brain often interprets the information incorrectly and shuts it down.  Research says the brain just justifies what the gut and heart want to do.  So, tuning into how your body is feeling may reveal more about a situation and it’s impact on you than cerebrally processing it.   
 
I remember my last few years of being an executive and I was sick almost monthly.  It was embarrassing sometimes to be at a graduation ceremony for our students and be blowing my nose incessantly due to a sinus infection.  However, the financial anxiety of money, cash flow and managing so many different strands of the organization weighed on me over time.  What I didn’t realize was that my body was speaking to me.  It was begging me to take a break.  I took a 4-month sabbatical during which time I never got sick and upon my return did not get sick for an entire year.  I did come down with a cold the last day we closed down the organization.  Go figure.  It’s important to start to understand and map how your body responds to stress, and to figure out what it is saying about where you really thrive.  Then you have an indicator for making healthy decisions for you.  We all react to stress differently and some people are more sensitive than others.  But make no mistake tuning into your body will give you a wellness of information on what to do in a situation.

5.  When you realize your values are at odds with where you are
 
This is a big one for folks.  Oftentimes when we feel dissonance in our relationship to something or someone, it is because there is a values clash.  What one party values is not what the other values.  It’s not to say one is right or wrong, but differing value systems can often be cause for a break.  The problem is when you do not realize there is a difference in value systems and you just resort to blaming and pointing fingers.  It’s important to say that this is what I value – integrity, honesty, small-scale operations, putting the client first – or whatever the value is.  Then see where the dissonance is and where you feel you are out of integrity with a value.  Perhaps there is a conversation that could be had in terms of how you could assist with bringing this value more into your work place or perhaps it’s just not possible as your value systems are just too at odds with your organization.  If this is the case, it is a good time to consider a move.  Again, if you are in dissonance and are unhappy with the structure, you either can make efforts to change it from within or leave if you feel like you cannot make a difference. 
 
So those are a few ways to tell when it’s time to leave.  How and when to leave is a totally different question, and one that needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis depending on the situation of your team or company.  Those aspects are just as important, if not more, than identifying when you should leave.  This will have to be a topic of another blog post to come. 
 
What were some of the signs that told you it was time to leave? 

Two concerned parents recently asked me why their 40-something-year-old son was so stuck – why he never pursued a career, why he would start down one path only to stop.  They looked at me as if I could somehow provide them a magical assessment as to why this was the case.  What I told them was that it’s never an easy answer, and it’s an issue he needs to explore himself with curiosity and introspection.  That said, I had a lot to say about feeling stuck.  Many people come to coaching because the feel stuck but manage to find a way to move forward.

To start, “stuckness” is not always a choice.  For example, there are some psychological conditions which will physically deplete people’s motivation, making it very difficult for them to lead functional lives.  They don’t have much control over their situation.  But then there’s the other type of stuckness - the one we do have control over –  let’s call it situational stuckness.  So, why do we get stuck?  The reasons are as varied and numerous as the people who get stuck, but here are some of the common ones I’ve come across. 

Some Reasons:

• Fear - Fear can be paralyzing.  You are so afraid of failure that you will actually keep yourself from finishing something and moving forward with it, for fear you won’t be perfect at it, or won’t live up to someone else’s expectations (your parents’ expectations or even their your own).   With a very successful parent, you might feel so much pressure to live up to their success that you just shut yourself down from trying.  Motivation killed - period. 

• Lack of Confidence – You no longer have confidence in your ability to succeed based on prior negative experiences where you felt that you failed.  Those experiences can cap motivation and keep you from moving forward because you simply don’t believe you can do it.  Your belief systems create your reality. 

•   Have a Dis-empowering Narrative – You have a limiting narrative of yourself, one where you don’t see yourself as capable and able to succeed and be independent for numerous reasons.  This narrative is full of limiting beliefs. 

• Lack of Courage – You know deep down inside you are not where you want to be, but you lack the courage to admit to yourself that you need help moving forward from where you are.

Any of these ring a bell to you?  If so, read on for ideas on how to get “unstuck.”  Sometimes, getting unstuck happens slowly over time as you build up the courage to take a much-needed step in your life, and sometimes it’s a sudden incident or internal shift, something that clicks, and then – wham! – you move!

What gets you moving:

1.    Finding Courage

People who know they are stuck and move out of it find the courage to admit that they are stuck – that they are not moving forward in their lives the way they want to.  Admitting that you are stuck is one of the single biggest steps that can get the ball rolling.  Be honest with yourself.  Admit where you are in your life, how it feels, and find the courage to ask for help, whether it is finding a mentor, consulting a professional (therapist, coach or otherwise) or just finding someone you can openly talk with about your feelings.  That is a great first step.

There is no easy answer on how to get unstuck.  It takes self-discovery, the courage to admit you are not where you want to be, the courage to take a step forward and to explore and get curious about what else might be out there for you.  The courage to name it.  This kind of courage cannot be pushed on anyone; it is something that stems from a deep well within us, a willingness to be vulnerable and to take a risk or unfolds from within over time.  If we’re too comfortable then we’re not going to make the move.

2.    Getting Outside Help

Coaching in particular is a methodology completely based on asking powerful questions, using intuition, helping people make sense of their feelings and helping people come to their own transformative moments they otherwise would not be able to access on their own.  Only through this type of process can one start to understand oneself and uncover what might be keeping them stuck.  If they remain stuck in the same place after working with a coach for 3-4 months, then our profession generally makes a referral to therapy or another counseling methodology, as there may be a deeper psychological issue at play that needs attention.  Sometimes, people require a combination of both therapy and coaching (and I have many clients that do or have done both). 

The important thing is to start looking outside of yourself for help.  This can be as simple as creating an accountability structure with a friend to help ensure that you are reaching your personal or professional goals.

3. Welcoming the JOLT (environmental, situational, mental or otherwise)!

Sometimes, getting unstuck requires a jolt, an unexpected one at that!  It can be an illness that comes into your life, forcing you into a different perspective, a relationship gone sour, or getting fired from your job.  Whatever the situation, take it as a sign that since you are not moving, the universe, God, spirit, or whatever you believe in, is intervening on your behalf.

4.  Changing and Believing in Your Narrative

I see clients who make tremendous progress within 3 months of coaching, taking baby steps towards stated goals, and feeling elated because they are finally moving.  They were able to clear a narrative out of the way that wasn’t serving them. Sometimes, they transform a negative narrative into a positive one.  For example, they take a negative narrative born out of what a former boss said to them and replace it with a narrative they discovered about themselves based on a transformative moment or experience. You inevitably want to create your future from an empowering narrative, else you are just creating a future based on a narrative of the past.  The first step is to know what your narrative even is, and then get help changing it if it is not serving you. 

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my coaching, it is that, as human beings, we are very delicate.  I’ve seen some of the smartest, most competent individuals with amazing people skills and huge hearts just get stuck in a rat hole.  As one of my clients put it when she came to coaching: “I feel like a mole living under the ground.”  (Three months into coaching she now cautiously describes herself as a rabbit hopping about above ground.)

Don’t give up if you are stuck.  You are on a path to learn a lesson about yourself.    Something external or environmental may happen to shift you out of your circumstances, or sometimes anger and frustration can just push you to make a move.  Sometimes, you’ll muster up the courage to ask for help.  Just remember that you are not alone, and millions of people before you have felt stuck and have found a way to move forward.  You can get unstuck, too. 

Have you ever felt stuck on your path?  What shifted that allowed you to move forward, either externally or within? 

Dealing with the highs and lows of change is inevitable.  I’ve seen competent executives with PhDs get moved to tears because they feel totally incompetent at what they are doing, entrepreneurs on an emotional roller coaster because they lost a good lead and their cash flow is screwed for the month.  I’ve also seen people in transition feeling really low because they were a leader and powerful professional at work, and now the people they once did business with won’t even call them back. 

And of course there is just the occasional funk, when you just don’t feel so great (like the one I was in last week).  We all go through our ups and downs, but how can we try to stay more “above the line” as we would say in coaching – in more resonant and positive emotions when we’re not feeling so great?  Here’s what I’ve learned along the way that I’d like to share with you.    

1.    Normalize Your Funk

The first thing to remember is that being in a funk is sometimes NORMAL.  I had lunch with a dear friend from high school who is now a Harvard-trained practicing neuropsychologist.  “What we forget is that it’s normal to have mood swings.  We need to start to normalize the fact that we have a range of emotions,” she’d say.  We can’t all be in a good, chipper mood all the time.  Unfortunately, in today’s society, our moodiness can make us quick to start self-diagnosing – maybe I’m bi-polar, maybe I’m depressed, maybe there is something wrong with me.  The truth of the matter is that we need to feel and be with ALL of our emotions.  So if you get in a funk from time to time, normalize it, for you are part of the animal kingdom!  

One of the principle points that celebrated psychology researcher Brené Brown makes in her TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is that when we suppress our vulnerable feelings like fear, shame and disappointment, it makes it impossible for us to feel the positive ones - like joy, gratitude and happiness.  (Side note:  if you are convinced you feel no emotion, you ARE suppressing your emotions.  Get help accessing and feeling them!)  Seen the new Pixar move Inside Out yet?  Remember at the end when Joy, after trying to keep Sadness from “touching” any of the core memories, finally lets Sadness “touch” some of them?  It’s because she realizes that sadness is a necessary emotion to the human experience.  If sadness is suppressed, joy cannot be felt.  So, embrace your funkiness.  What I mean by that is to feel it.  Be with it. 

2.    Celebrate New Wins

Unfortunately, our brains are velcro for negative experiences and teflon for the positive experiences.  So when we have a negative experience, we tend to hold onto it.   

Oftentimes, clients tell me of their wins for the week at the beginning of our conversations and then leap to all of the problems and what’s going wrong.  They don’t dwell on their wins, elate in their wins, spend time with their wins.  By not doing so, they compromise the benefits of sitting with a positive experience and what it can do for their brains.  This is why they say you have to deliver 5 or 6 pieces of positive feedback for every piece of negative feedback.  It’s the teflon/ velcro thing. 

There have been days in my business where I have felt really low in terms of my progress.  As an entrepreneur, I want everything done yesterday.  When I can sit down and actually list all the accomplishments I’ve had at the end of the day, or in a week, I automatically feel lifted up.  When I focus on all the things I didn’t get done, I feel inadequate and like I am wasting time, which can lead to me to feel stressed and worried.  So, when possible, focus on your wins.   If you search for the positive experiences and spend time with them, you train your brain to identify more positive experiences in the future.  This is not to say you will not feel down about things, but training your brain to stay in your wins longer will make you more resilient for dealing with setbacks, processing feelings and then getting back on track!  (Note:  Studies show meditation is one of the ways to also build resilience among people who may be experiencing what we call below the line emotions.) 

3.    Remember Your Past Wins

This is a sports psychology technique that one of my good buddies explained to me last year.  When an athlete is down or disappointed from their performance, one of the ways to coach them is to get them to remember and recount their past wins.  This activates the memories and wiring they associate with competence, success and accomplishment, and can greatly shift their mental state.   

After closing C.E.O. Women, the non-profit I ran for 11 years, I initially felt pretty low.   I had very little confidence in starting a new venture.  At the time, I was working on setting up Brown Girl Surf, now a prominent, global women’s surf community.  I saw it as  sort of my “transition” work.  I remember how much anxiety I had around it.  In fact, much of my calls were around telling my coach all the reasons I wasn’t capable of doing the work for Brown Girl Surf.  I believed that I had to be a good executor.  Unfortunately, one of the last colleagues I worked with convinced me I was terrible at well, almost everything I did (she even criticized how I closed the door in our office), and especially so in the skills of sequencing, planning and execution – traits often associated with the left hemisphere of the brain.  And the sad thing was that I actually LET myself believe her.  I ended up convincing myself that I wasn’t good at execution, that I had done a lousy job starting and growing the organization, that I didn’t hire right.… the list went on and on.  I'm sure this wasn't her intention (and this was before I understood how we project ourselves onto others to avoid responsibility) but the more she complained and placed blame on others for the challenges and shortcomings she faced, the more my morale fell.  I forgot about all the things I did do right, the execution that went really well, and all the awesome hires that we did make throughout the year. 

My coach at the time listening to me struggling and challenged my thinking.  She asked me, on a scale of 1-10, how I rated myself in terms of executing at C.E.O. Women all those years.  I know nothing was perfect and by all means I knew I had many areas in which to grow, but I gave myself an 8 or 9, taking into consideration context - the little resources we had, and the fact that this thing grew out of my bedroom with just $1,000, with no executive board, no clients, and few connections.  At that point, I started to look at the bigger picture - the risks that were taken, the sacrifices that were made, and all the positive wins and successes my team and I had during that time as well as all the learnings along the way.  It wasn't perfect but it made me feel like if I did all that at C.E.O. Women, I surely could build the Brown Girl Surf community.  It also reminded me to always look at the bigger picture and context; one person putting down your skills should not negate all of your past wins or create mental blocks for future ones. 

(By the way, today Brown Girl Surf is co-led by myself and Mira Manickam, another awesome leader. We have almost 3,000 global followers, have been covered in international media, and just got our first $40,000 grant to support programming for adolescent girls in the San Francisco Bay Area that will foster a more diverse and inclusive surf culture locally and around the world!  And, our short documentary on India's first female surfer just got picked up by a MAJOR media platform and will be featured next month to its 8 million viewers around the world!) 

4.    Connect with Others

Ever wonder why solitary confinement is used to punish people?  The absence of connection - someone to talk to, someone to be seen by, is like slow death for the brain.  There are a few things needed to have a healthy brain, and one of those is connection.  Our bodies are directly impacted by our connection to others and to the outside world. 

When women are down or go through a hard time, they may be more prone to look to connection to help lift them up.  Sometimes the same is true of men, but more often than not, they will retreat to their man caves.  This may be a necessary process.  However, at some point connection and processing is important and can help lift you out of a funk if you’re in one.  A simple phone call, going out to dinner with someone, or inviting them to go out for a coffee can dramatically shift your mood.  For someone with anxious tendencies, talking with a secure person can often help move them back to more stability.  As a coach, I do a lot of my work in isolation.  I have had to plan how to get enough connection throughout my weeks so I am not just doing coaching sessions on the phone all day.  I lead a weekly, in-person boot camp for executives in transition, make sure I get in surf time and connect with my friends on the break, do some face-to-face client meetings, and make sure I meet and talk to at least one new person a week.  If I’m in a funk, I notice my mood dramatically improves when I reach out and connect with my network and friends. 

5.    Self-Reflect

I once attended a women’s writing class every Monday.  The goal was to do our shittiest writing possible, and through that process, the nuggets within our psyches would emerge and we could craft them into powerful writing.  We would read each entry out loud to the group.  We could write about anything that was on our minds.  Some people wrote about their latest online date and getting picked up in a Maserati, while others had something to say about painful memories of being molested in their childhood.  What was profound about the experience was that it allowed us to self-reflect as well as be witnessed by a group.  Though it was a writing class, it sort of had a therapy-like effect on the group.  People heard you.  I would leave feeling so good, as if I had processed an experience and could better make sense of how to move forward from it. 

Today, I make journaling an almost daily routine, putting aside time to let the feelings pass through.  As a CTI (The Coaches Training Institute) coach, we are trained in something called process coaching.  The theory behind process coaching is similar to Buddhist philosophy, in that when we have an emotion but do not feel it, the energy of the emotion becomes stuck or blocked inside us.  Layers upon layers of blocking can build up.  One thing we do as coaches is help our clients become present to their lives, to get them to FEEL their lives.  By doing so, we take them down into their emotion to feel it so they can open up space for forward movement.  I LOVE process coaching.  It’s a highly unique approach to coaching, but hands down one of the most powerful approaches I’ve learned. 

Fortunately, everything I preach I practice as well, and these are some of the techniques and learnings I share with my clients, whether they are moving into a new executive position, feeling the setbacks of starting their new business, or just feeling sad.  Know that it’s normal.  And also, sometimes just a good cry can do a brain good.   The sooner you FEEL your emotions, the sooner will pass them through.  Train your mind to see your wins and focus on them.  And give your brain the connection and self-reflection space it deserves to function optimally in service to your best life!

I had such a crush on this guy when I was growing up.  I was 15 at the time and he was two years older than me (which is a big age gap when you’re a wee teen).  We would talk on the phone for hours about anything and everything.  He had asked me on our first conversation who I liked, in that cheesy, teenager sort of way.  Without giving it much thought, I said I liked him.   He said he also liked me.  These calls were a kind of fantasy space for me.   I had girlish dreams that one day I’d marry him and live happily ever after in a house with a white picket fence in suburbia.  Until one day, he casually mentioned needing to go and get a tuxedo for his prom, along with a corsage for his date.  Unfortunately, the date was not me – it was another girl.  I was crushed.  My first real rejection in love. 

I stopped talking to him, spiraling into a confused state, wondering what all those months of long phone conversations had meant and where I now stood with him.  I turned my feelings of rejection into moping around my room for hours on end, finding pathetic solace in Chicago’s Greatest Hits, feeling completely sorry for myself.  I felt like the poor, heartbroken victim and could empathize with all the narratives of shattered love strumming melodiously from my double deck cassette player.  My best friend at the time played the rescuer, commiserating with my victim-hood, trying to help me make sense of it all, empathizing with my feelings, and allowing me a space to talk things out.  Though well-intentioned, this paradigm bled into months of feeling crappy and unresolved about the whole issue, and trying to figure out ways to get him to like me as much as I liked him.  It also didn’t help that I was a teenager and had to contend with the added elements of raging hormones, a still developing brain, and plots to subvert the parental empire that was designed to protect me from getting mired in such drama in the first place.  After all, I should have just been studying, playing soccer and volunteering at summer camp.

When we’re in conflict, it’s easy to get caught up in the age-old victim, perpetrator, rescuer paradigm. In this model, there is always a perpetrator wronging someone.  There is always a victim, or the person being wronged.  And often, there is someone who takes the role of rescuer and comes along and tries to fix everything.  This is a common relationship paradigm and is often referred to as the dreaded drama triangle (Karpman Drama Triangle).  The idea is when we are in conflict, we are taking on any one of these identities.  I mean, it happens even at the most basic level in our interpersonal interactions.  Oh, and roles shift within the drama triangle too.  Someone can start off the rescuer and then fall into being a victim etc… 

But what if we could shift this paradigm?  What would be possible for us then during difficult transitions, in our relationships and in our lives? 

One day a coach I was working with brought to my attention a most interesting diagram.  It flipped this paradigm on its head from drama triangle to what is called The Empowerment Dynamic.   In this paradigm, the victim becomes the creator, the perpetrator the challenger and the rescuer becomes the coach.  When I learned about this paradigm, something clicked in me.  I started to think about all the situations in which I felt victimized, and imagined instead creating my way forward from them.  To put it in neuroscientific terms, it was as if a new neural pathway started to fire in my brain!  Suddenly, those situations where I was feeling sorry for myself because something didn’t go as planned, looked different.  Right away I could see the traps the old framework set up, and I started to recognize some of the narratives I had that kept me stuck instead of moving forward.      

Looking back on my first bout with heartbreak, I have to wonder: What if I had the ability to simply re-frame this situation?  Instead of seeing my crush as the one who did me wrong, what if I could have seen him as a challenger, and see myself as someone who could create my way forward in this – be my own rescuer?  How empowering and different an experience this might have been for me.  For example, I might have started being curious and created some questions to ask him.  Maybe, “Oh I’m curious – why did you take her to the prom and not ask me?” Or maybe I could have spoken to him and created the space for a kind friendship to ensue in the future, one that wouldn’t necessarily warrant talking on the phone for hours on end.

I didn’t realize it, but at the time, I was being challenged to set boundaries, get clear on my feelings (a skill that would become so important to me later in life), and to step out of my shyness into confronting one of the things I dreaded most – the idea that I may not be worthy of one’s love.  I was never taught to communicate like this let alone share my feelings – when ever are we at that age?  Would I still have been as disappointed knowing I wasn’t the one?  Maybe so.  Would it still have been hard?  Yes.  Would this have even been possible at the tender age of 15, with a barely developed brain (remember the adolescent brain doesn’t fully develop until our mid-20s’, and in some cases it takes until age 30)?  Who knows?  But it would have built a new neural pathway for me to practice getting clarity, a skill which would eventually prove to be extremely valuable in all of my future communications, whether personal, romantic or professional.  When things are clear, at least you can heal and set your own direction forward for freedom.  I also probably wouldn’t have fretted so much, feeling like I fell short in some way.  I might have begun to understood my worthiness and might have even gained a good friend.

So what if we could cut the teenager out of us, whose delusions of love didn’t go as planned, and see ourselves as creators in conflict instead?  Rather than stay stuck and hurt in a situation that didn’t go the way you wanted it to go, how do you create forward movement?  Or, I guess the more powerful question is: What narrative do you need to let go of that’s holding you back?  What’s the new narrative you dare to create?

Back to the teenage crush.  After a few years of not speaking, I ran into him when he was back home visiting from college.  Out of nowhere he apologized for his behavior, for not being up front and for the impact it had had on me.  I heartily accepted his apology, and it felt like such a relief to clear the air.  Looking back at this experience through the empowerment dynamic, where I’m the creator (and well, coach – the coach being the one who asks powerful questions and lets you figure it out on your own vs. saving you and solving problems for you) and he was the challenger, I can shift my narrative. 

Teenage heartbreak wasn’t about whether something did or did not materialize fully into something; it was about necessary experiences I needed to have in service to my full spiritual evolution. 

These are the type of experiences that would deliver lessons in understanding, non-attachment, forgiveness, and an even greater capacity for me to hold love for others and to realize my worth.  They were also necessary to help me eventually understand the qualities I needed in others that would bring out the best in me.  Being disappointed early in life is fuel for learning, and gives us the opportunity to reflect and to set ourselves up for greater success the next time around. 

We will always face challenges on our journey, in our transitions and in our relationships.  We may not have power over what happens to us.  But we do have power over our own personal narratives and how they are framed.  We can keep one narrative and be stuck in it, or we can choose to re-frame it.  I guess that’s why victims of very bad incidents re-frame themselves as survivors.  There is something so much more powerful about that label, one that connotes an heir of creating and thriving as opposed to suffering and blaming.  

In my work as a coach, I speak to many people in profound transition – those who have gone through a tough divorce after 20 years of marriage, competent executives who have had painful and unexpected breakups with their employers, and those who veer off an old path to venture onto a new one, terrified that they aren’t going to come out on top.  When they turn to, “But it can’t work because of this …” or, “In the past, this is what happened …” and I sense that they are stuck, I challenge them to see themselves as a creator instead of a victim, and ask what part of their own narrative or limiting belief needs to be rewritten.  I don’t mean to say processing real feelings is not a necessary part of our work. It is in order to fully heal.  But once the feelings are processed, I ask,  “What would you want to create going forward?” and  “How would you do it?”  It’s surprising to see what new narratives emerge, the new insights, the new way of seeing things, and the gratitude for understanding the purpose in their greater spiritual evolution. 

Think about the narrative you might be living in now.  Where are you the victim, the perpetrator, or perhaps the continuous rescuer?  How would you rewrite this narrative as if you were the creator, challenger, or coach? 

I challenge you to do this.  I bet you’d be surprised at what you could create if you tried. 

Transitions can be a time of rebirth, relaxation and renewal, as well as an opportunity for regeneration of new ideas and new ways of being in the world.  But let’s get real.  Transitions can also be a time of extreme financial hardship, emotional lows, ambiguity and just general suckyness.  Let’s face it - they are hard.  And what’s worse is when you feel like you are the only one who understands your world, that it’s impossible to bring others around you into it.  It can be a very lonely place.  So, I wanted to share with you some helpful things I’ve learned being in the trenches of transition.  Remember, I’m an entrepreneur who transitioned into my own business with very little savings (and had to dip into my fair share of retirement money).  I’ve had my ups and downs, and still sometimes experience them. 

I’ve learned to cope under stressful situations in the best way I know how, and have managed to create helpful processes and resources that made a world of difference in my transition.  I hope these help make your transition a little easier on the soul too! 

1.    Institute a self-reflective process

Whether it is through prayer, writing, meditation or art – whatever modality you choose, find a process that will allow you to reflect on past experiences, or even on your day!  It’s not uncommon to wake up in your transition feeling dazed and confused, wondering how to approach your day.  I guarantee you that if you start each morning with a meditation practice or give yourself some mental space to reflect, you will feel better.  And there’s some science as to why reflection is important.

When we have an experience, the memory of it lives in a certain part of our brain.  When we reflect on it, the memory of it moves to a different part of the brain.  This is the part of the mind that allows us to use the experience to make greater contextual decisions about our lives.  It is also just a great exercise in general to spend 20 minutes each morning quieting your mind.  In fact, I recently signed up for a 21-day meditation experience with good ole Oprah and Deepak.  I know it sounds cheesy, but I can honestly say that it made a huge difference to create the self-reflective time that the program prescribed, and I am often recommending this program to my clients as well. 

Start with a self-reflective practice as the first “to do” in your day.  Another hack you can add to this is to identify the dominant feeling you want to feel for the day, as well as 6 things you want to get accomplished that will make you feel the most productive and happy.  It will help set the course for your day, and will also help give you a daily “north star” during your transition. 

2.    Spend time focusing on what it is you are grateful for

It can be hard to feel grateful sometimes during transition, especially when the future seems like a big unknown.  Whether it’s losing a job, going through a divorce, or healing from some event that did not make you feel so good, rather than dwell on the narrative you feel got you into this position, focus some attention each day on what you are grateful for in your life. 

During my transition out of the non-profit organization I founded, very few people around me knew what it was really like to be in my shoes, and whenever I’d go home, the first question my father would ask me was, “What is your plan?”  I know he meant well to ask this question, but after the tenth time, I wanted to scream,  “Leave me alone!”  One of the things I decided to do with my parents was to share with them how completely present I was being with the day-to-day. I sent them daily texts about what I was grateful for on that day.  (This also helped divert their attention from being so focused on my future to being present with me in my day-to-day.)  I would get the sweetest texts back from them about what they were grateful for.  Most of the time it was the simple things - a good meal, company, companionship.  It was a great exercise for all of us in being grateful and present in the now.

There are tons of studies that show that the practice of gratitude is good for our health and for reducing stress.  I encourage the people I work with to write a list each morning of the things for which they are grateful and reflect on these things.  And even if you are not in transition, this is a great exercise that will help you approach each day with a positive outlook!

3.    Get your full financial picture in order

I facilitate Boot Camps for executives in transition in collaboration with a colleague of mine (Christy Haley Stover of the Platinum Resource Group).  In one of the four weeks we meet, we invite a financial planner to come in to talk with our participants.  I can’t tell you what a difference it makes for people!  One of the most nerve-racking aspects of being in transition, especially when you aren’t earning, is the feeling that you don’t have enough.  But with careful planning and using the right financial tools, you will be surprised by just how long you can go on the resources you do have.  What I’ve seen is that people often don’t take the appropriate time to really map out their financial picture, and to understand exactly how much of a cushion they have. 

If you haven’t done so already, get a monthly budget in order.  Separate it by your fixed costs and your variable costs.  Your fixed expenses are the expenses you have every month that remain the same - mortgage, cell phone, insurance, car payments, etc..  (If you don’t have a good template for this, I do – so ping me and I’d be happy to share it with you!) This will give you a sense of how much you need each month to stay afloat.  Also, do small things like call your cell phone service provider, cable company, car insurance provider and just let them know you are in transition and that you need to lower your bills somehow.  You’d be surprised how much I’ve been able to negotiate with vendors on bills.  It’s their business to keep you as a customer, so don’t be shy about asking.  Consult with your financial advisor as well.  They can help you figure out how to plan and manage your money through your transition.  

Then, it’s perhaps most crucial to make a cash flow plan – this is actually one of my favorite tools.  It is useful when looking at how much money you have in the bank against your monthly expenses, and whatever else might be coming in as income for the rest of the year (gifts, unemployment, alimony or whatever).  It allows you to plug in numbers and project out months so you can see what cash you will have left in your account each month, and conceivably, how many months you can last on what you have.  (If you are a business owner or entrepreneur, then you should be familiar with this tool.)  Having this tool along with a monthly budget and sense of your expenses will help ease some of the stress.  What you don’t know does hurt you when it comes to finances.

4.    Give yourself permission

Lastly, give yourself permission to be one thing and do one thing during your transition.  After a major transition, it is not uncommon for people to find themselves in what’s called a neutral phase.  It can often feel like you have no momentum, you’re directionless and unproductive.  Fear not.  It’s just nature’s way of easing you into the next phase of transition.  Imagine a plant that has been uprooted from the soil.  Its roots are no longer planted, so imagine what that must feel like for the plant.  It has nothing to latch onto.  It needs to find new soil to rest in, or the plant needs to be re-planted, or maybe new seeds need to go into the ground – you get the gist!  The same is true in the neutral phase.  So, go easy with yourself. 

What I recommend to my clients is to come up with one way of being that they want to grant permission to themselves to experience during their transition.  If you want to be a little lazy, give yourself permission to do that.  If you want to feel energetic and active, focus on that.  Then, come up with one thing you want to give yourself permission to DO.  If you want to sleep until 11 a.m. on some days, allow yourself do that.  If you want to eat Cheetos and watch Doogie Howser, M.D. re-runs all week, by all means, give yourself permission to do that (just don't do it for the rest of your life, please!).  The less permission we give ourselves to be in these non-productive states, the more guilt we will feel, and the worse we will feel during our transition.  So, be kind to yourself because sometime being unproductive is a necessary step to figuring out what next steps to take and what seeds to plant.  In short, show yourself a little compassion.

These are a few hacks I’ve instituted along the way.  I hope you find them helpful.  I’m curious, what hacks do you or did you institute during your transition?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!  Share away!

Last year, I wrote a post on what to do when someone around you gets triggered.  In the spirit of good leadership, I’d like to spin it around this time and really focus on what to do when YOU are triggered in a situation. 

What is a trigger?

Triggers are a little different than getting justifiably angry or emotional at something.  The main difference is that triggers show up when something seemingly normal has a very strong impact on you, to the point where you might feel yourself lashing out or wanting to run and hide.  (In other words, the reaction is disproportionate to the stimulus, as touted author and internationally known psychologist Daniel Goleman would say).  Some people respond by fighting, and others respond by fleeing.  Adrenaline and cortisol flood the body.  All rational thought goes out the window.  Simply put, your pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for higher executive thinking, is no longer in control.  Your mammalian brain (amygdala), however, is.  You ROAR! driven by your basic animal instinct.   So the question is, how do we manage our triggers?  We all get triggered by something at one time or another.  Here’s a secret about skilled leaders: they know how to process, manage and recover quickly from a trigger.  Here are some tips on how to get started.

1.    Become present to the feelings in your body & BREATHE!!!

Realizing you are triggered is the first step.  Often, you’ll know because it will feel like your blood will start to boil.  You may feel tightness in your jaw, or in your gut.  I remember getting triggered once by an employee.  I don’t remember what the trigger was, but I do remember the feeling – one of anger and frustration.  My speech got terse and my neck tight.  What I wasn’t aware of at the time was that I was triggered.  So what can you do if this happens?    

First, really become present with the feeling, and notice it.  Notice where you might feel tense in your body (like your jaw or your neck might freeze up) and breathe into it.  If you happen to find yourself getting triggered in a space like a meeting, take a break, give yourself some time to regain your composure, and then come back.  Space is your friend.  One technique that is really helpful for leaders is to say, “I don’t like how I’m showing up right now.  I want to be at my best for this conversation.  Let’s continue this discussion at another time.”  Or, "That's an interesting idea.  Let me check in with my other colleagues and I'll get back to you on this."  Giving yourself space to be present to the feeling and breathing into it will help you manage it.  Becoming self-aware of your triggers will slowly help you to manage them.  Unless you have awareness of your triggers, you can’t address them.

2.    Do complex math

Well, not really.  But counting is a very simple technique to use when you are being triggered.  The advice says to count to 10.  When you are triggered, your pre-frontal cortex gets hijacked by your mammalian brain, and you are essentially in fight or flight mode, our most basic, animalistic survival instinct.  Counting activates the executive function of the brain.  I started counting up in 3’s, because it requires more focused thinking and thus requires more of the executive function to do it. (And it did wonders the other day as I waited for 25 minutes while the Office Depot worker continually kept botching up a credit transaction while I was trying to check out.  I drove home counting in 3’s and soon I was merry!) By trying to call in that function, you are essentially attempting to bypass your mammalian brain and bring yourself back into using your executive function.  You can also write down the numbers, spelling out each one.  Note that these are just  techniques to use in the moment.  You’ll likely need to give space to process the emotion from the trigger after the fact.

If you find yourself triggered and about to write an e-mail, STOP.  You will be writing a mammalian-brained e-mail.  Take some time to stop, breathe and process before writing that email.  Or, write it and keep it in your drafts folder.  Go back to it in a day or so when you’ve regained your executive function and then send. 

3.  Stay curious

Another way to deal with triggers is to get really curious about the other person that triggered you.  If the person is making you flip your lid, you want to get to the point where you can start to take steps to separate their action from their intention.  Their action may be making you flip out, but perhaps that was not their intention.  If you lash out at them and say they are being this way or doing this because of x, you may find yourself in a vortex of projection.   And trust me, you’ll be revealing more about yourself in your words than about anyone else.

Here’s some suggested language to use:  “I’m curious: what did you mean when you said <fill in the blank>?”  or “I’m curious: when you did this, what was your intention?”  In my coaching work with clients, what I find is that most of the time, people are not out to trigger others on purpose.  However, the person doing the triggering often can benefit from learning to be more self-aware of their actions and how they may impact the triggered person.  The person triggered can work on starting to separate the action from the intention. 

4.  Get to the bottom of it!

This is a big one.  What you have to understand is that triggers are often associated with experiences from our childhood that caused us to feel threatened or fearful.  The mammalian brain kicks in and does everything it can to keep us safe, because that feeling or emotion is just too painful for us to handle.  Most of the time, those triggered feelings relate back to feelings of being unloved, worthlessness, and abandonment (I know – grim).  BUT!!!  And I say this again: everyone has triggers – nobody is without them.  Understanding the origins of your triggers can really help shed new light on your relationships, and empower you to take control and responsibility for your own reactions and behaviors when you feel triggered.  It’s hard to trace triggers back to their origins, but there are some effective coaching techniques that can help you uncover them.  Often, when I help a client trace back the origins of a trigger, they cite that the next time they are triggered, the trigger does not have nearly as much of an impact on them as when they were not aware of their trigger.

These are some tips to try.  And if you try and don’t always get it right – that’s OK.  We are all human, and making changes in our behavior takes some getting used to.  And sometimes after mastering one trigger, we’re faced with a new one and have to start all over.  Heck, I still discover new triggers in myself from time to time!  The point is to try, and to get better at understanding and managing yourself.  You can re-pattern the reaction you have to the stimulus. 

When do you get triggered?  How are you able to effectively manage your triggers?  We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section below!