Talking about harnessing your energy and building your resiliency. And I know that you've done some other presentations and other workshops on stress, but we're going to be looking at Okay, how do we take that information that we've already talked about and move it further into the road of resiliency, you'll see my stress thermometer, and my stress thermometer goes all the way from going to explode down into ho hum. Kind of zoning out kind of area, way, way past the the mind numbing stage. So think about where you've been over the last two weeks. So think of everything that's going on over the last two weeks. Where would you put your stress level?

Would it be at the high end? Would it be at the low end? Would it be somewhere in the middle? So let's start. How many of you would say it's kind of near the bottom, it's in that kind of too low. Life's a little dull.

Anybody down and not end, huh? Anybody going for the crisis going to explode? kind of end up this way? How many of you were in my just right? More than I'd like, maybe a little too high? Somewhere in there.

But so think about where you've been a year ago. But would your stress level have been higher? Lower, or about the same? How many of you say it would be higher last year, which was maybe more stressful? Okay, good. How many of you say man, it's about the same as it is right now?

Anybody going, Hey, last year, way better. Last year, my stress level was lower. Good. Okay. So we have kind of a all over the place. Now, let's kind of project ahead.

Where do you think your stress level is going to be in September of this year? Higher how many of you're going to say it's going to be higher than it is right now? Good. Okay. How many of you say no, it's gonna be a breeze. It's gonna be lower than it is right now.

Not that optimistic. Okay, how many of you both the same? Alright, so we kind of hit miss all over the place. Now from during that discussion. What do we know about stress? What do you think?

It's exhausting? Absolutely. that it takes energy away from us, doesn't it? What else do we know? There's outside factors. There's kinds of things.

So we talked a little bit about, you know, work, maybe, but there could be lots of things that are impacting you. What about that kind of level thermometer? What else do we know about stress? it fluctuates. It's always changing. And for some of us, it changes maybe age over age.

For some of us maybe it changes more week over week or month over month, depending on what's going on around us. How many of you it changes kind of day by day or hour by hour depending on who walks in the door to greet you or who phoned you or what you have to Yeah, okay, so it's always changing. Now, we hear lots of things in the media about stress and some of them are Correct and some of them are not as correct. What happens if you stay at the going to explode and for too long, I'll give you a hint starts with the D ends in an E, it's a three letter word, you will die. And we hear about that right? Heart Attack strokes, diabetes, cancer, all kinds of things related to stress.

But what happens if you stay at the bottom end for too long? Give you another hand, starts with a D, and an E. It's a three letter word. Yeah, there's no such thing as No, no stress. And so often people will come to me and say, Well, how do I get rid of it all? That's not what we're aiming for. What we're aiming for is to live in that middle range where we have just enough stress to keep life exciting and challenging and motivating, but not so much that it's causing us to get sick and taking us away from the kinds of things that we want to be doing.

Does that make sense? So we're going to be looking at how do we manage that? How do we build our energy resources? So here's my stress management kind of outline up here are six steps and stress management. So we start with, you know, where does it come? Just like you talked about, you know, what are those outside resources?

What is it doing to us? How well Am I dealing with that stress? And then what am I going to do about it? What are the things that I need to put in place in order to be able to take care of myself? And really what we're going to be looking at is that SOS plan. I'll tell you a little bit more about what SOS stands for in a minute.

But what do we do about the things that are causing stress? How do we take care of ourselves? And then how do we put a plan in place to help build our resiliency? All right. So we talked a lot about health. What would your definition of health look like?

What What is health for you? Being able to stay active, I like that. So being able to move being able to do the things that you want to do. Good. What else? What else do you think of when you think of the word health?

Being positive, so an outlook as well good. Now, is it possible to be healthy and have a broken leg? Yeah, I've kind of most of you are kind of nodding yes. Okay. Is it possible to be dealing with depression and be healthy? If I've got more of you saying no and kind of confused looks without Well, that's a bit of a tougher question, isn't it?

So, a person who has a broken leg can be absolutely healthy, they may have just had an accident, but maybe responding maybe dealing, okay, somebody who's having depression, their depression may be under control, they may be able to function normally as well. Somebody who has depression may not be functioning and so may not be healthy in the same way that somebody who has a broken leg, it may be devastating they may not be able to you know, get to their class or they may not be able to get to work or take care of their family. They may be really upset and maybe taking them away from the big game that you know that playoff game that they were We're supposed to be the star of. So again, it's it's depending on kind of how you see things, how you function. So for me a definition of health is being able to live your life without feeling overwhelmed.

It's being able to do the things that you want to do without that sense of overwhelm. Does that make sense? Kind of in those definitions? All right. So when we talk about resiliency, what comes to mind when we talk about the word resiliency? bounce back and like that, for me, that's the image that I always keep in my head about like Indian rubber ball that we used to play with when we were kids, and you throw it up against the wall as hard as you could, but it always came back for you.

Right? What else do you think of when you think of resiliency, being able to cope with what comes right, being able to handle whatever comes along the way. And so for me, it's it's that kind of being able to bounce it's not just bouncing and taking it but bouncing it and moving forward bouncing it around. And being able to be changed by that experience, but for the better, not where it's causing you to feel overwhelmed, not where it's causing, you're taking you away from the things that you want to do. So even though we face all of those life challenges, we get through them. We don't just muck through them, we get through them.

And we're different. We're better. We're growing. We're moving forward. For me, when I look at resiliency, it's this cute little kid. How many of you have children or had children have grandchildren right now?

Yeah. Do you remember when they were learning how to walk? They didn't just get up one day and just be successful at it. Right? They had to learn how to crawl they had to learn how to rock themselves, they had to learn how to pull themselves up. And how many times did they fall down?

And how many times did they bump their head and there was tears, and you told them to get up and get going, and they did and they you know, they could be crying one moment and then they're laughing the next moment, but eventually they learned how to walk. For me that that picture of resiliency, it's it's even though it's tough, it's not easy to learn how to walk Even though it's tough, they still get through it. But they get through it with strength. They get through it with humor, and they get through it with that, that spirit, and that's what carries them through. And so being able to do that in such a way to build a resiliency. I like that when we talk about resiliency is not about being able to cope with a moment in time.

We cultivate that resiliency so that we can live a life that's full and a life that's flourishing. So when we talk about it, it's not just that we can deal with this one little thing. That's not what resiliency looks like, because some of us are really resilient overall. But we do have things that throw us off. It's about overall, how are we doing? Are we living a life that is full that is flourishing that is meant for us?

So we talked about the SOS principle, which stands for situation ourself in support, and you need all three of those areas in order to have a full toolbox of strategies. So we're going to kind of focus on the Oh, more so than the other things. For this time around, we're going to talk about some some simple things that we can do. So I have any things that I call cooler back to school. So thinking of the answer cooler back to school, what's the easiest way to break your stress response? Give me some examples of something that may break your stress response.

Laughing This one's even easier than laughing. breathing. It's our number one simplest strategy that we can use. It should be our go to type of strategy. And so breathing we can take in 10 times more air by doing deep breathing, breathing from the stomach all the way up through your lungs. It's our body's override that manual override when you're stressed out when you're tense when you're kind of upset about things.

Breathing is that strategy but people mock it people think it's got it's far too easy. I do it every day. How can that be? Possibly helped me. But it helps to bring clarity it helps to bring creativity it helps to relax your muscles. So it's all kinds of wonderful things that we need to be doing.

So we need to be putting that into our tools of tool belts. So we're going to actually do this one, I want you to take everything out of your hand. So put it on the chair beside you. Feel feet flat on the floor. One hand underneath your belly button, one hand above your belly button. All right, we're going to breathe in three parts.

So we're going to fill the bottom, show the middle, fill the top, release the top, release the middle, release the bottom, and we're going to do three of them. We're going to go in through our nose and out thrown out, okay, so breathing with me, we're going to go in, in, in and out all the way and in And our last one going in and out. I'm going to be can feel your shoulders relaxing a little bit. Anybody get a little bit dizzy. Sometimes we take in this oxygen, most of us only breathe from the top third of our lungs, all of a sudden we get this whole washed of oxygen in our body goes, whoo. So we need to make sure that we're taking in and expanding our lung capacity.

We should be doing five to 10 of those deep breaths several times throughout the day, just for general maintenance. But then you can use it whenever you're dealing with a difficult person. Whenever you're having trouble falling asleep at night, whenever that stress has kind of built itself up. That makes sense. Good. All right.

Next 65% have us do not get a good night's sleep. How many of you would love to have a great big pillow somewhere around your desk at some point in the middle of the afternoon? Yeah. How many of you have those kind of micro sleeps? Were you kind of doing the head? Bob's at some point?

Yeah. So it's tough. How many hours of sleep do we need? Eight, Seven. Depends how many of you are surviving on five or six. Okay, so generally for health the last study I read said eight and three quarter of hours, which sounds like a really odd number.

But think of the sleep cycle as being 90 minutes long. And you need several of those sleep cycles throughout the night. So that's eight and three quarter hours. So if you're not getting sleep, what's the problem with that? And the idea? Yep, you're tired.

You're worn out. You don't cope very well. You get grumpy. What else is the problem? Your body's not rejuvenating. It's only when you're sleeping that your body puts itself back together.

So if you're not sleeping long enough, or getting the right kind of sleep, you're going into a deficit. And so you're not going to be able to respond to all of those things. You're not going to be as resilient, resilient as you need to be. If you're sleeping properly, you will have most of your energy first thing in the morning, it will dip into the middle of the afternoon, which is that one to two o'clock? How many of you can really notice that one to two o'clock where your energy just kind of fall down? It rises into the early evening?

How many of you found that where, you know if you just persevere all of a sudden you get that second round of energy, you can get more things done, which often kind of is why many of us can become workaholics, right? If we just keep going, Oh, then you get your second wind, and then you keep kind of doing that overtime. So watching your energy cycles, do the most difficult things. When you have the most amount of energy do the least difficult things when you have the least amount of energy. Now some of you can do that in your workplace. Some of you can So look at the ways of managing.

The problem is when we have that dip in the middle of the afternoon, what do we often go towards? coffee, coffee and sugar, right? And so we get on this roller coaster of ups and downs and then we don't feel very well, we can't sleep at night or we can't relax completely when we need to. So just watch the ways of being able to handle that. There are some natural things that you can do going outside for a light break, drinking glass, the cool water, talking to a funny friend. All of those things will boost your energy without putting you onto that roller coaster.

Practice the art of recovery. Long time ago when we were cavemen and cave women, we had a rhythm to life. You dealt with a stressful situation. And you came back down, you dealt with a stressful situation. And you came back down. got up in the morning we went for a hunt.

We killed the beast. We ate it for lunch. We had a nap. Does that sound good? But now we get up in the morning we're late for work. We didn't get caught in traffic by the time time we get that there's too much to do.

There's not enough time to get it all done. Everybody wants something from us the computer crashes in the middle of the afternoon, I haven't had time to even go potty break right now. And then I have to then have to get home. I've got all the things that I've got to do at home, we got to get my kids to whatever. And then we go to try to go to bed at night. And we can't relax.

How many of you felt like you've been on that roller coaster? Yeah. How many of you've heard your colleagues wear that badge of honor, I was so busy today that I didn't even have time to go pee. I was so busy today that I didn't even have time for lunch. we're so busy today that I didn't even have time to stand up or sit down depending on the kind of work that you do. That's a sign that we've lost that rhythm.

And so when I talk about the art of recovery, look for ways of getting a rhythm back. A lot of the sources of stress, you can't do anything about they are what they are right. Those big emergencies or those challenges or those kind of political things. They are what they are. But what you can do is get a rhythm back. What do you do after a stressful situation to bring yourself back down so that you're ready to deal with the next stressful situation.

Is it going for a walk? Is it going to, you know, talk to somebody? is it changing up task? Is it looking on your computer and and checking out a funny email. It's those things that can take you from up here to down here. They don't do anything about the stress.

But what they do is they help build a rhythm. Alright, cooler back to school. What percentage of our Canadian diet is made up of processed foods? So think about that. All right. I have some multiple choice up here.

What do you think? So I heard 71. Let's see. 62 What do you think? There we go. So 62% of our diet is made up of processed foods.

That's a lot. And so we think of the kind of how we're eating are we eating more raw foods? Do we need to look at ways of, of not adding all that stuff to our bodies. Any idea what GI Joe stands for? Garbage in, garbage out. So if we're putting junk in, we're not going to have the energy to be resilient.

And so how do we build up that resiliency? All right, cooler back to school. Our average sugar consumption per person per year. What are you thinking? Huh? Give me a shout.

We'll start in the back. Give me a shout out. Either one of you. 126 Nope. 4873 Oh 151 pounds per person per year. Over the last two centuries, we've gone up from four pounds per person to 151 pounds per person.

So looking at how much sugar in it, those hidden sugars often isn't in the processed foods. And so again, being on that sugar rollercoaster, even when you may not be eating something sugary, you still may be getting more than what your daily intake is. Alright, so some stretching exercises. Let's see, how are we doing here? All right. So everybody stand up, find your spot, and you may want to move to the hallway or the iOS, either one, but I just want you to give yourself a little bit of room.

So try not to stand side by side so you don't bunk or hit each other. are right now, can you still see okay, that way? You're perfect. Wonderful. All right. So getting rid of the stress in our body is really important.

Often we hold on to it. How many of you feel it in your neck and shoulders? Yeah, so we want to get rid of it in this area. All right, so feet, shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent, arms hanging comfortably down at your side, which you're going to do, we're going to work on our neck and shoulders first. So I will Want you to look over your right shoulder. Turn it as far as you can without turning your shoulders.

Then back to the middle and to the left. Perfect. Now I want you to drop your right shoulder down to your right ear, it's your shoulder that comes or your ear that comes down, not your shoulder that comes up. So relax your shoulders. Keep them nice and square. And then take your ear over to your right shoulder.

Keep those nice and relaxed. Take it over as far as you can. Good and back up, left ear to left shoulder and back up. How many of you can feel that tugging? Yeah, as we get tense, those muscles get shorter and shorter. So I'm watching some of you Very little movement in that left to right.

So we want to make sure that we do that several times a day to kind of lengthen these. Now, we know about our muscles and our tendons and things in our body that not only can you stretch them to get them to relax, but you can squeeze them to get them to relax. So you're going to make two fists. You're going to pull your shoulders up to your ears and you're going to squeeze until I say stop. So ready. 123 pull them up, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze Harder, harder.

Squeeze me and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. And there's a pull up, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, harder, harder, harder, harder. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Right here to right shoulder and back up, left ear to left shoulder and back up. Alright, the next one we're going to do is called the chicken flap. So you're gonna take your fingers, place them on your shoulder tips, and you're just going to lift your elbows all the way up to the ceiling, and down and up and down that, no, I'm not gonna do the chicken beard stuff.

All right now because we've been sitting and often when we're sitting or we're working in appropriately, we get rolled shoulders. So we want to bring those elbows in together. Then we want to push them all the way back, try to get your shoulder blades to touch if you can push, push, push, and in and out, in and out, and up and down. Gonna do our ribs from sitting this all scrunches in, and so we want to open that up so that we can breathe deeply. So, feet shoulder width apart, knees are slightly bent, hands are on your hip. If you have any back problems, be very careful with this one, okay?

Only do what's comfortable. What you're going to do is we're going to rotate, our hips are going to stay still, our shoulders are going to do the rotating. So if I was standing this way, you're going Bend over at the waist straight ahead. All right, pretend that that is 12 o'clock on your clock. Okay, so you're going from 12 o'clock over to three o'clock. You'll notice at three o'clock I'm not leaning, so I'm not this way.

I'm straight over. If I was to take my arm over, it's like I'm a little teapot. Okay, so I'm over at three. Okay, back to six. Over to nine. Again, if I'm at nine, I'm not leaning, I'm leaning through my ribs, okay.

And back to 12 go the opposite way. 12 963 12. And how many of you could feel that through your ribs? Yeah. Okay, now we're going to do our hips. our hips are a little bit different from sitting Can these all get squished so feet, shoulder width apart, knees are slightly bent, hands are on your hips, shoulders stay still hips do the swinging.

So I want everybody to stand like this. Your hips are out at the 12 o'clock position, I want you to imagine that you're at work right now. People are wondering what you're doing. Alright, so you're going to go from 12, you're going to push over to three, it's a push through your hips. So don't move your shoulders. Keep your shoulders there, but push out through your hips.

Bums out for six. Over to nine. Good push out to their back to the Hangout position. go the opposite way. 963 and the Hangout position and backup. All right, perfect.

One more. We're going to do our hands. Start your hands open as well. As you can close them tight, open, close again, for carpal tunnel, we want to make sure that we're stretching all those out, thumbs across, fingers down, open, fingers, thumbs, open, thumbs, fingers, fingers, thumbs up one of these right? Open nice and wide, shake them nice and hard. And have a seat, perfect.

It doesn't take a lot to break that stress response. So very quickly, just by doing kind of necks and shoulders and backs and hips, you've got that blood flowing, you've maybe recoup some energy that you were kind of thinking around and kind of giving yourself that more oxygen intake, all kinds of wonderful things. So think of the ways that you can add that into your daily schedule, kind of maybe as you're answering emails or taking a break before you go off to lunch, all of those kinds of things. Any idea what 100 equals 10 Next, one of the tips is carrying a sense of humor. So Globe and Mail had ink on the could of the article around stress that laughing 100 times a day was the equivalent of a 10 mile run. That's pretty cool.

I'm more likely to laugh 100 times a day than I ever am to run 10 miles today, on any given day, they got the study a little bit wrong, it's actually laughing 100 times is about the equivalent of 10 minutes on a rowing machine, or 15 minutes on an exercise bike. That's still pretty good. That's still there's still lots of really good benefits. So what are you doing for fun? What are you doing in your workplace? What are you doing at home?

What are you doing in your hobbies? Are you making sure that there's something that's making you smile that's making you giggle? How many of you get those emails that are you see them on Facebook, the posts, the ones that kind of make you laugh out loud, put them somewhere, put them in your human first aid kit. You keep them on in a file that when you're having a really crappy day, you can go and kind of give yourself that that sense of of enjoyment and fun. My favorite quote is what the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly. And for me, I think that's a huge reflection on perspective.

Because often we awfulest things, often, you know, all of those things that were really stressful How many of you found that you may have had a stressful day last week, but now you can't remember what all those things were you just remember that it was a really bad day. But you can't remember all the little pieces with it. And so sometimes we get into awful icing, but I really like this, it keeps that that sense of perspective that things are always going to change. We often try to get rid of our stress, and we talked about that earlier. But a meaningful life is a stressful life. And a stressful life is a meaningful life because we stress about those things that are important to us.

We don't stress about the things that are not important to us. And so when we're stressed it's because something matters, and that creates meaning in our life. So how do we put those things things into perspective. This is a very short presentation. But in your booklets, I'm just going to highlight a couple of things. I took a whole bunch of the stretching exercises and just I showed you a couple of them, but there's a lot more of them in there.

So use them figure out which ones do you need. If your lower back that seems to be always aching and tight and not responding. Well look for those types of things. If it's your legs, look for the strategies that are going to help out doing them on a regular basis. So there's some deep breathing, there's some visualization and there's some stretching exercises already in your booklets. I'm going to wrap up with one quick little story.

So when it talks about perspective, and for me perspective is one of the big things. It was hot. It was August, and I was picking my two sons up from daycare. And my oldest son from the backseat said Mummy, guess what? I cringed. Ah, I don't want to do this right now.

Now you have to understand Taylor I was in was in daycare and he was learning words from the older kids, you know those words that you don't want them to say when they're out in public. And he was testing those words out, and he would test them out on me on the way home. And if I if he had a big response, like mommy's not really impressed, that was a keeper. And so I knew this was my test. And I didn't want to do it. And I didn't want to hear his word.

And I didn't want to be upset. I just wanted to get home. And I just wanted to get things done. And so my first thing I think, was to crank up the radio and pretend that I didn't hear him. And then that mommy guilt took over how many of you experienced that mommy guilt? So I said to him What?

Yeah, and it had that kind of a snap to it. And he looked at me and he said, Mommy, your sunflowers are awesome. Awesome with his new word of the day. Now, the two of us had planted the sunflowers, the beginning of the spring. They had grown weed weeded them weird watered them. But until that particular day, I hadn't really looked at them they were pretty awesome.

They were 12 to 15 feet tall. That's pretty cool. You know sometimes we get so caught up in the things that are happening around us that we forget to see the awesome we forget to see how wonderful the people are that that help us out we get to you. And you don't need to be out in in you know the middle of the country. I live in a wonderful area of the corpus, but you can be anywhere. What used to make me laugh was how many of you remember the Elvis moose on Elvis?

Elvis moose moose on Bloor Street. Anybody see the Elvis moose? White? It had the rhinestones all over big black kind of flip in the hair made me laugh every single time. So are you looking for the off of the awesome? Are you noticing the things that are around?

Because those are the kinds of things that put life back into perspective. I want to thank you for joining me today for coming out and have an absolutely wonderful day, everyone.