#COVID19 #Resilience: 10 tips to Boost the Essential Emotional Intelligence (EI) Skill You Need.
As we are in our third week of confinement in Switzerland, we went through a rollercoaster of emotions, logistical reshuffling, stress, time management challenges and many more situations in order to deal with one of the most radical challenges we are facing in our lifetime.
Indeed, in times of COVID19, you are dealing with changes in your day to day life. Such crucial times of uncertainty create stress and anxiety, and eventually puts you off balance.
THE TRIGGER: #CHANGE
Depending on the resilience skills you have, any change within your direct and indirect environment triggers and impacts your balance and wellbeing. Based on the Kübler-Ross Change Curve Model, your moral and competences shift downwards into shock, denial, frustration to enter into depression. Depending on how you handle stress and adapt to change, your moral and competence are gradually lifted into phases of experiment, decision, integration. Change is a new constant and our stress level is the signal. Before some of us enter into depression phase, perhaps it’s time gain full self-awareness on how specifically stress is affecting our emotional and cognitive skills.
HOW #STRESS IMPACTS YOU: LOOSING YOUR BALANCE
Stress is ranked the number one health epidemic of the 21st century. Your body doesn’t differentiate between home stress and work stress: it just accumulates no matter its origin. When facing adversity, different stresses pile up and multiply. The biochemical reaction is the release of cortisol which if maintained at a high level affects your blood sugar level, blood flow from and to the heart to say the least. It also consumes energy resources from your emotional and cognitive skills. The latter are translated into emotional distress, loss of priorities, frequent errors, loss of focus, short term memory, and cognition. Therefore, when high stress level is sustained, you lose your balance, and eventually slide into a state of depression or burnout out.
YOUR #EI SOLUTION: #ADAPTABILITY
It is an essential emotional intelligence skill which will save you. If you don’t have it, the good news is that you can learn it. Adaptability is essential to self-regulating which is managing your impulses as well as distressing feelings. One of the keys to reduce your stress and gain back your balance is your adaptability. We’ve seen that COVID19 affected people with different IQ across different social classes and cultures. Survival of the fittest is not the smarted, the fastest, the wealthiest or the strongest. It’s how well you adapt to your changing environment.
If you look at plants, animals, humans, companies, and bacteria (remind you COVID19 has mutated in order to adapt and thrive), adaptability determines whether they will thrive or die. Change is the new constant, and therefore, more than ever we need to adapt to our new social, professional, family, health and safety environment.
Here are a few tips to #adapt:
Be flexible and have opened mindset: accept new information, new ways of operating.
Be comfortable with anxiety or uncertainty: repeat a daily mantra such as “everything will be ok”, “I have all the capacities needed”, “I will make it”, “I am enough”…
Seek for the hidden rewards: every challenge is a hidden opportunity. Reflect on what change is offering you, your family and your professional life.
Stay calm in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty: breath! exercise, meditate.
It’s time to beef up your self-confidence: trust and believe in yourself. A ted talk speaker said “you have to fake it until you make it…until you become it”….its time.
Play: do something fun, and funny to get your mind away from auto pilot mode.
Socialize with people who are meaningful to you (same core values). Remember quality vs quantity.
Have downtime: rest and sleep improve your focus, memory, concentration, the quality of your relationships, and your wellbeing.
Define your purpose and use it as a light at the end of the tunnel.
Focus on you what you can control: your thoughts become your intentions, your intentions become your attitude, your attitude becomes your words and behaviour.
Let me know how it helped you…in the meantime, stay mentally safe!
Shermeen Zeidan,
Your Resilience Master Coach
www.internationalcoachingsolutions.com
info@internationalcoachingsolutions.com
