Luminary Mindset - Fight, Flight and Freeze Leadership

 This covers basically:

• The Brain and Nervous system
• Meaning Making
• Wellness and Wellbeing

Our Thinking Brain:

• Our Brain is designed to protect us from harm
• The Brain has a negativity Bias
• We have approximately 80,000 thoughts a day, 80% are repeating thoughts and 90% of those are negative.

When we experience a thought our brain sends hormone signals to the body to inform it of how to feel and respond/react.

Our Nervous System:

• If our brain perceives risk - then stress hormone is sent into the body to prepare it to react (fight, flight or freeze)
• Cortisol is designed to increase blood sugars in the blood so that our muscles have energy to react, and our brain can be more alert.
• Adrenaline is designed to increase heart rate, elevate blood pressure and boost energy supplies to get the body ready to react.

Our Body Brain:

• Our gut has over 100 million neurons reading the level of Hormone in our bloodstream.
• Too much stress hormone and our gut will tell the brain, this usually shows up as discomfort in the lower or upper abdomen, and more severe symptoms.
• It is very important we listen to and respond to these signals to avoid developing chronic illness.

Why this matter:

Communication

Emotions and the 'state' we are in influences our communication both verbal and non verbal. The

more activated our nervous system is, the less consciously we are behaving.

Relationships - if we feel threatened, or in a state of 'activation' we are not as open to receiving

other people's communication as it is really happening. We make up meaning and can act in a

way that is not in-line with maintaining good relations.

Decision Making

As with relationships, we are not as open to new information, we are scanning for negativity and

risk so decision making will be biased towards that.

Luminary Levels of Emotional Regulation:

Meaning Making

What Happened           ------)            What I Made It Mean

It's an emotional cycle trap.

We need to separate the two and share the meaning we make from certain events in order to break the emotional cycle. 

Meaning Making Training:

Our Brain will not retrain itself - Just like training the body.

Repetition, commitment and practice is needed.

Set yourself some time everyday to practice these techniques:

1. Identify moments where you realize in hindsight you did not respond or react in the best way for you and others
2. Create 2 circles on a piece of paper and separate the what happened from the meaning your brain has given it.
3. Identify the belief you have that created that meaning
4. Write down the Triad you were in
5. Create a new belief, meaning and Triad for this event

How to calm the nervous system:

• Breath - The fastest way to calm the brain, nervous system and body - circular breath. 
• Diet - Reduce the stimulants - caffeine, sugar, alcohol. Just two weeks of reduced stimulants will reset your nervous system.
• Sensory Inputs - Switch off the negativity, switch on the positivity. Most of what we consume is also made up meaning - Try not to add to the noise.

Was reminded of Reniee from “The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery”; where she is stuck in a situation (bathroom) unable to decide if she should Fight, freeze or take a flight.

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Shelley Taylor, a researcher at UCLA, looked at this idea that the only reactions to stress are fight or flight. That has been our understanding forever, that under stress and duress, humans do one of two things: fight or retreat. Dr. Taylor began to look at how female mammals respond to stress. And she came up with the term “tend and befriend.” Female animals, including women, do not react to stress with fight or flight, but are more likely to tend and befriend. This has been shown often in corporate America, where often women’s response to stress is to create a sense of belonging in a team, as opposed to “I’m the only one who knows how; I don’t need to ask for other people’s opinions; your opinion is less important than mine.” It’s more a gathering of ideas and a gathering of people into a sense of belonging.

https://aninjusticemag.com/women-power-stories-an-interview-with-author-elizabeth-lesser-53de62f8f4f8