How to Keep Your Team Resilient

Silicon Valley, California

Carl is sitting on the outdoor lawn of this company’s luxurious campus enjoying the first breath of spring when the grapevine delivers the news: We’ve been acquired! A new engineer fresh out of college, Carl is stunned. He’s been with the company less than three months; he is almost sure to gen canned. Carl’s imagination immediately starts constructing the worst-case scenario: If i get laid off I’m dead in the water… I’ll never find a position this prestigious. I haven’t even been here long enough to collect unemployment… Caught in the cyclone of spin trap, Carl slumps and watches his career and his future sink like the Titanic. He stands up and walks around the park like a man who is completely lost.

Carl was at a choice point. Like many people today, Carl was sensitive to what is happening in our economy and started to spin many unproven scenarios based in fear.

I find when I work with people in organizations, there are many “Viral” beliefs like Carl’s that run through the minds of staff members, and like a virus spread quickly and diminish the results of a whole department, divisions and more!

A Whole Body Solution

Einstein said, “You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it” As an author and “Whole” body trainer and coach I teach coping strategies that engage our full and complete innate intelligence, from head to toe and boost us to stay resilient, no matter what challenges occur.

Seven Tips

These seven tips will help you do more than just cope by unraveling stress and unleashing creativity. Employ these tips to reduce job related or personal stress or help you with any other challenge you may be facing.

1) Stop Over Thinking! Letting your mind take you through a house of horrors can make you more anxious and push you into blind action that turns scary fiction into fact. The best way to sort out too many thoughts is to separate what is fact from fiction. For example: You heard someone at the office say your company is being acquired (fact). You “think” you will be fired and never be able to find anther job (fiction).

2) Scan Your Body. Detect and release tension in your body from head to toe. Take a few moments throughout the day to check in and notice what your body is telling you. Are you breathing rapidly, tensing your body, or gripping the phone, steering wheel, or computer mouse like there is no tomorrow? What’s your body trying to tell you?

3) Breathe Consciously. Instantly calm your anxiety and gain focus through conscious breathing. Taking five full deep breath-in through your nose and out through your mouth-will slow your breathing instantly and instantly reduce anxiety. Deep breathing also helps you disengage from fearful catastrophic thinking.

4) Move Your Body. Exercise of any form will circulate energy throughout your whole body and give you a break from obsessive mental activity while releasing built up tension and returning calm and creativity.

5) Communicate. Tell someone what you are feeling. Get your concerns off your chest and ask for support from friends, family or a professional coach or counselor. Holding your fears inside builds anxiety to proportions that can make your sick, depressed or immobilized. In this case, silence in NOT golden.

6) Get Innovative. Think out of the box. Make a list of proactive steps you can take to broaden your skills and services to make you even more valuable.

7) Remember Your Purpose. Don’t forget you have  a purpose and value for being part of your team, ranging from family to career goals. Reflect on your purpose and how your organization’s mission aligns and supports your purpose.