Three Key Strategies
Building and Sustaining Your Resilience
You’ve covered a lot of ground in this book. Congratulations for sticking with us in learning how to better handle all the day-to-day stuff! We know there are days when a lot comes at you, and we genuinely hope that practicing the techniques we’ve offered in this book is helping make a difference in your life. Keep at it! Remember, challenges will keep showing up. That’s part of life. The important thing is that you can keep showing up with your heart. Put your heart to work for you again and again, and you’ll find you can better handle the day-to-day stuff that comes up. You’ll also feel more confident and calmer, and will have greater inner security.
You’ve been introduced to techniques designed to help reduce your stress by taking charge of the root cause of your stress—how you respond in situations. In this chapter, we’re going to talk about three key strategies for not only building your resilience so you can better handle anything that comes up, but also for sustaining your resilience.
Practicing these three strategies—prep, shift and reset, and sustain—can help you more effectively regulate your energy and emotions throughout the day. That means making adjustments right on the spot by stopping energy leaks and recharging while you’re on the go. These three key strategies serve as a guide for when to practice the techniques. Let’s see how they work.
What do top athletes and musicians do before performing for thousands of people? They prep. They practice and charge up their inner battery to be at their best level to perform. Before any important activity or event, but especially before ones that are typically stressful like taking a big test, it makes sense to charge up your inner battery by practicing one of the techniques you have already learned—like Quick Coherence (chapter 2)—for two minutes.
To prep for something means to be ready for it in advance so you’re better equipped and prepared to deal with it with more ease. When you study for a test, you are prepping for it. As you very well know, the outcome—that is, the grade you get on the test—will very likely be quite different if you don’t study for the test. With a genuine effort to study, you feel more confident when you take the test. You may not necessarily ace the test, but you can be sure that you’ll do better on it than if you hadn’t prepared at all.
It isn’t only tests you can prep for. You can prep for just about anything. If you’re on a sports team, for example, each day that you practice, you are prepping. You do this so that, when the day of the big game comes, you and the team as a whole will be ready to meet that challenge. If you didn’t practice, the outcome probably wouldn’t be very pretty.
Maybe your family is planning a camping trip. To prep for it, you get out the tent and check to be sure it’s waterproof and gather all the miscellaneous supplies. Don’t forget the food! If you didn’t prep for the camping trip, one rainy night you might find that the tent has some major leaks and all of your sleeping bags get soaked. Imagine the outcome of that—a tired, wet, miserable family!
For the purposes of our discussion of how to reduce stress, prep means to be emotionally prepared and balanced before an upcoming situation or event. If you think about it, there are likely events or recurring situations that typically cause you a lot of stress. They are different for everyone, but we all have them. It could be certain classes or teachers at school, or communications with parents or your peers, and so on. Why not prep yourself before you have to step into those situations or events? Prepping puts you on the right side of the Emotional Landscape (chapter 3), the side from which you have greater ability to be in charge of how you respond in a situation. You can maintain your composure better, think more clearly, and access your intuition more easily so you’ll know how to handle things more wisely and effectively.
Again, we’ll use the example of taking a test. Let’s say you’re anxious and nervous before taking your math test because you really want to do well, but the material you’ve been studying is pretty tough. Your nerves are off the charts! When you sit down to take the test, you feel like an emotional wreck. How well do you think you’re going to do? You might even say to yourself, I am so anxious that I can’t think clearly! How can I possibly remember anything? Recall from chapter 2 that emotions such as anxiety create an incoherent heart rhythm. That signals to the brain a “static message,” and indeed, you literally can’t think clearly or your mind “goes blank.” It’s just the way your body works. The outcome for that test, then, is you won’t be able to do your best and you’ll get a lower score.
But let’s say you prep for that test—not just content-wise but emotionally as well. When you first notice that you’re feeling anxious about the test, maybe even while you’re eating breakfast, you practice one of the techniques to get coherent. Maybe you start by doing Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1) and as you continue doing it, you notice that you begin to feel calmer. Your mind might wander off and start thinking about the test again, but you remember to refocus your attention around your heart and you continue practicing it until you feel calm. That’s prepping! You might decide it would be a good idea to keep doing Heart-Focused Breathing on the way to school and especially right before you walk in and sit down to take the test. Feeling calmer feels much better than feeling anxious, so that’s one benefit. When you feel calmer, you can think better and probably will do better on the test, assuming you studied for it! By doing Heart-Focused Breathing, you also stopped the energy drain caused by anxiety that was sure to zap your inner battery. Let’s see how fifteen-year-old Brandon deals with an important math test.
I got a really bad grade on my last math test, and I had to do well on the next one, which was coming up in a couple of days. I had just learned a couple of the techniques and decided to do Heart-Focused Breathing. I used it most of the time until the test, including when I walked down the hall, sat down to study, and all the rest of the day, too. I could feel myself getting and staying calm. That started to give me confidence that I wouldn’t be really anxious and nervous when I was taking the test.
On the day of the test, I walked into the classroom and sat down at my desk and kept doing Heart-Focused Breathing. I didn’t even open my notes. I just sat calmly and looked straight ahead. The other kids in the class were doing that last-minute cram thing, and some of them looked over at me and wondered what I was doing. My teacher did, too. He gave us the test, and I felt really good. A couple of times I got to a question that I wasn’t sure of and I could feel myself getting anxious again, so I did some more Heart-Focused Breathing and it really helped. I got an 87 percent on the test, which was a huge relief. You can be sure that I will continue to practice Heart-Focused Breathing. It absolutely works!
Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1) is often the first technique people use because it’s simple, and, as Brandon just said, it works. You could also do Quick Coherence (chapter 2) or Attitude Breathing (chapter 4).
The value of prepping cannot be overstated! Here are some times that you might prep:
- before you begin your day—getting coherent to set the tone for the day
- before you do homework or take a test
- before making decisions
- before a situation where you feel anxious or afraid
- before making a presentation
- before having an important talk with your parents, a teacher, or a friend
In addition to prepping in general, for which you may use any of the techniques you’ve learned so far, there’s also a specific technique to use for prepping. Let’s take a look at that now.
The prep technique can prevent a lot of stress and energy drain by helping you be more emotionally prepared for an upcoming situation or event that typically causes you stress or for which you want to perform your best. Olympic athletes, for example, know the value of prepping before an event because they know it can improve their performance. Perhaps you have seen them on TV trying to get into the “zone” minutes before an important event. They visualize just the right moves to make and especially imagine themselves staying composed if they make mistakes. They know and value the importance of staying calm, balanced, and focused to help prevent draining their energy. They want to stay clearheaded so they can perform at their very best.
A genuine commitment is key in making the prep technique effective. It’s not merely a mental exercise, and it’s not just thinking about being calm and balanced. It’s about breathing in through the heart area to get coherent and then imagining staying calm, composed, and resilient throughout the event, situation, or interaction.
To help you learn how to use the prep technique, we’ll first describe its three steps. Next, we’ll give you the Quick Steps, which you can use to refresh your memory. Then, to help you get the most out of practicing the prep technique, we’ll explain it step by step so you’ll better understand the entire technique.
Technique: Prep Technique
Step 1: Identify an upcoming event, situation, or interaction that you are concerned about.
Step 2: While doing Heart-Focused Breathing, see or imagine yourself in that event, situation, or interaction. With genuine feeling, visualize being calm, balanced, and resilient throughout.
Step 3: See yourself remembering to recenter in your heart and take charge of your feelings if you start to overreact or lose emotional composure.
Prep Technique Quick Steps
- Do Heart-Focused Breathing.
- Visualize remaining calm and composed.
- See yourself recentering as needed.
Step 1: Identify an upcoming event, situation, or interaction that you are concerned about.
Identify a situation where you can apply the prep technique. For example, going to the dentist may not be on your Favorite-Things-to-Do list, so it’s a perfect situation where you can use the prep technique! (Other everyday situations where you need to prep might include facing a challenging conversation with someone, taking an important test, or participating in a big athletic event.)
Step 2: While doing Heart-Focused Breathing, see or imagine yourself in that event, situation, or interaction. With genuine feeling, visualize being calm, balanced, and resilient throughout.
Begin by doing Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1) and as you do it, imagine yourself walking (using our example from above) into the dentist’s office and sitting in the chair. Now, visualize and feel yourself walking in, sitting in the chair, and feeling calm and balanced. Continue doing this until you genuinely feel calm and hang out in that feeling for two or three minutes—or longer! The longer you spend doing this, the more familiar that calm feeling becomes. Take your time and don’t rush this step.
Step 3: See yourself remembering to recenter in your heart and take charge of your feelings if you start to overreact or lose emotional composure.
This step is very important, too. Visualize the dentist walking into the room. All of a sudden you feel anxious or maybe even afraid. Here’s where you “take charge” and make a choice to shift back to focusing on your heart. Once again, visualize yourself feeling calm. Notice yourself making that shift and hold that calm feeling steady. Again, don’t rush this. You might then visualize your dentist starting to work on your teeth and that you get anxious again. Shift and recenter in your heart again and continue doing Heart-Focused Breathing as you visualize and feel yourself feeling calm. While you still may have some butterflies in your stomach, you probably will notice that they are greatly reduced.
Practice the prep technique often and with sincerity before you go to the dentist or whatever situation you identify in step 1. When you actually are sitting in the dental chair and not just imagining being there, you may find you’re already calmer. And if you should begin to feel a little anxious, you have already practiced recentering in your heart by doing Heart-Focused Breathing and imagining yourself feeling calm. You can do it again right there on the spot.
For the next three or four minutes, practice the prep technique. Choose a real situation where you think it would be helpful to use it. Take your time with it and see what you notice as you do it. Write down in your notebook the situation and your observations. Have fun giving it a try!
We talked earlier about prep as a key strategy to build resilience. The prep technique is certainly one you can use to be better prepared before any situation, so you may want to practice using different situations. You could use it, for example, if you’ve been in a difficult situation such as being bullied or harassed. Using the prep technique, visualize standing near the person who bullied you. Feel yourself standing with greater confidence and calm. Hold steady in that feeling. See yourself remembering to recenter if feelings of fear come in. It’s a very good technique to use to help you handle difficult situations like this.
Now let’s look at the second key strategy, which is called shift and reset. The name accurately describes what to do—you shift back to calm and composure and reset into that balanced state (which can help you maintain your composure) after a stress reaction, large or small. It’s a simple practice, but when you’ve been triggered and you’re angry, for example, you will need to make an effort and an inner commitment to calm down. Shift and reset just as soon as you can remember to do so. The faster you can shift and reset, the more energy you’ll save by stopping your stress response in its tracks.
Remember Brandon’s story above? He prepped by practicing Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1) before he walked into the classroom and also as he sat at his desk before being handed the test, which helped him have more confidence going into the test. He said that when taking the test, some questions he was unsure of popped up, causing him to feel anxious. Right there on the spot, he did Heart-Focused Breathing to shift and reset back to feeling calm and more confident. If he had not shifted and reset, he likely would have continued to feel anxious and his anxiety may have gotten even worse. He recognized that he had a choice either to continue with the test while feeling anxious or to find his way back to feeling calm. He could have tried to answer the questions with a befuddled mind or with a mind that could think and reason clearly. That makes for very different results on the test.
When should you use the shift and reset strategy? Here are several times when you may find it helpful:
- when someone says something that upsets you
- when you’re having a difficult time focusing and concentrating
- if you feel afraid
- if you’re standing in a line and feel impatient or frustrated
- when you do something that is embarrassing
Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1) is a great technique to use to shift and reset. To reinforce and add more staying power, do Quick Coherence (chapter 2) or Attitude Breathing (chapter 4) until you genuinely feel a deeper sense of calm, composure, or confidence.
Some situations can really be upsetting or challenging. When you feel freaked out, frazzled, or frozen, an effective shift and reset on the spot can be difficult to accomplish. But that does not mean giving up. Do try to shift and reset, but instead of expecting to clear away the intense emotion, try to go to neutral. Neutral means you have not resolved the issue; you may feel wronged or too hurt to greatly weaken the powerful emotion, but instead you try to manage your behavior as best you can so you don’t do or say something stupid. You are doing your best to hold it together. You may have gotten an intuitive insight and you decided to just chill out, knowing that the incident will pass. You will survive, but you need some time to regroup and regain your composure. That is having true compassion for yourself, which leads us to the third key.
To sustain means to hold steady. The goal is, once you’re coherent and feeling more balanced, to try to hold steady so you’re not bouncing emotionally all over the place. With practice, it can become a new way of life. It’s like a surfer riding the waves with balance and ease. When a big emotional wave comes, you can better maintain your balance and make adjustments quickly rather than wiping out.
One way to look at sustain is the practice of the first two key strategies—prep, and shift and reset. You prep to get coherent so you’re more balanced and composed before an upcoming event or conversation, and if you get annoyed or feel impatient, you shift and reset right on the spot so you can get back to a coherent, composed, and balanced place inside. Together those strategies will help you create and hold on to an inner steadiness.
There’s another way you can think of sustain as a strategy. Let’s say you’re having a great day and you feel like you’re in sync and are able to “go with the flow” with ease. That great feeling is worth sustaining and hanging on to! Take advantage of those “feel good” days and practice a technique such as Quick Coherence (chapter 2) to help sustain your steadiness.
Practically speaking, using sustain means carving out several two- to four-minute blocks of time during the day when you can practice one of the techniques such as Heart-Focused Breathing (chapter 1) or Quick Coherence (chapter 2). Those times could include when you drive to school, walk across your school campus in between classes, wait for a class to begin, or hang out at the end of lunch or with a few friends. There is always time to practice one of the techniques we’ve discussed because you do them on the go. Using any of the techniques on a regular basis will help you have less stress and build more resilience in your system.
By using the key strategies of prep, shift and reset, and sustain to get coherent, you create and sustain more flow and balance throughout the day. The more you practice staying composed and balanced, the more resilience and energy reserves you will have to maintain your ability to flex and flow.
It takes making a genuine effort to sustain more coherence and to reduce the drain of energy-zapping emotions so you don’t fall prey to feeling irritated, worried, or frustrated, being judgmental, having self-doubt, or blaming others. It’s easy to rehash issues and get stuck in the same depleting feelings over and over, which reinforces those patterns in the brain. Responses then become automatic. You end up acting out before being able to think clearly. Most people don’t realize their automatic responses have become unconscious habits. This is why it’s so important to practice the techniques you’ve learned on a regular basis and to use the three key strategies—prep, shift and reset, and sustain—as your guide of when to use the techniques.
Here is a brief summary of the three key strategies:
- Prep to be more coherent, to set the tone for the day, and to be more composed before upcoming stressful events, such as taking a test or a having a difficult conversation.
- Shift and reset to a more coherent state as soon as possible after a stress reaction to minimize energy drains.
- Sustain your resilience throughout the day by regularly practicing the techniques on the go.
Using the three strategies of prep, shift and reset, and sustain as a guide of when to practice the techniques can produce a real change in your physiology over time. By doing so, you build resilience in your body as reflected by changes in your heart rhythms. Research by the HeartMath Institute confirms this.
The HeartMath Institute researchers led a large study in a high school. They wanted to see if there would be any measureable changes in the students’ heart rhythms if the students practiced the techniques on a regular basis. The study took place over one semester, which was about four months. The students were taught the same techniques you’ve learned in this book, which they were encouraged to practice frequently. The school also had available technology that showed the students if they were in a coherent state or not. The technology was provided to help reinforce their practice of the technique.
The graphs show examples of the heart rhythms of two of the students. One recording was taken for each student before they were taught the techniques. Those heart rhythms are shown in the two graphs on the left. After four months, the students’ heart rhythms were measured again by the researchers. Those measurements are shown in the graphs on the right. What’s important to note is that when the students’ heart rhythms were measured the second time (after they had practiced the techniques for the semester), there is more amplitude or height in the right two graphs. In other words, the distance from the tops to the bottoms of the “wave” is a greater distance than those in the two graphs on the left. That means that physiologically the students had built more resilience into their systems.
If you look closely, you can also see that the patterns of the heart rhythms in the right two graphs are more coherent than those in the graphs on the left. Remember, the students were not practicing a technique when these measures were made. By practicing the techniques on a frequent basis, the students trained their nervous systems to be more coherent. This means that coherence became natural and more automatic.
Parents and teachers also noticed positive changes in behavior, such as students being more in control of their emotions and less reactive. Not only that, but they also had significantly higher test scores.
As you use the three key strategies and practice the techniques, allow yourself some time to iron out issues in which you’ve invested a lot of emotional energy. For example, you can’t expect to transform a lifelong anxiety issue during the first five minutes you practice a technique. Over time, however, many people have seen genuine improvements from worry, fatigue, tension, frustration, and other stress symptoms after just a few days or a few weeks of practice. The more regularly you practice increasing and sustaining coherence, the sooner you will experience change, as the above graphs show.
All people have different things that cause them to feel stressed. What’s important is not to compare yourself with others. After some practice, you may be surprised at how many situations or issues no longer get to you. Your life can become much smoother, even if some of the accumulated stress still hangs around despite your practice of the techniques.
Keep in mind that there won’t be a total fix for everything that comes up. Life doesn’t always serve up what we want, when we want it. When you face an especially sticky problem, go to your heart and apply a deeper care for all concerned, including yourself. Then you will be able to view the problem through a wider lens and more easily see what’s best for everyone involved.
When things aren’t changing as fast as you’d like, use Attitude Breathing (chapter 4) and breathe compassion for yourself and your challenges. That will help you to continue to move forward. Remember that you are building the power to respond thoughtfully and appropriately rather than automatically reacting, which in the long run will save you enormous amounts of energy and time.
Very often, people’s new self-improvement efforts fade once the initial high of enthusiasm and newness wears off. After all, it does take energy and effort to remember to practice the techniques. Progress can seem slow at times. You might even feel like you are going backward when you respond to a situation with an old reaction or emotional meltdown. Life happens. We are all works in progress. To keep yourself moving forward, stay genuine in your practice. Genuine means being sincere in putting the techniques into practice the very best that you can. Sometimes you may need to have an “I mean business” attitude to draw in more power to help you accomplish your goals.
Being genuine will bring you more insight so you can see things more clearly and can help you follow your heart’s intuition and insights to keep you on track. When you have insight and a can-do attitude, you solve, resolve, and dissolve stress. You stop it in its tracks! You find a rhythm that takes you past many of the challenges you face. Life can become more enjoyable, too.
In chapter 1, you did an exercise where you explored who you really are, what makes you come alive, and who you are when you’re at your best. Go back to that exercise now and see if you’ve become a little more of who you really are as you’ve worked to transform the stress in your day-to-day life. For example, do you feel more confident or have more courage? Do you feel your fun side shines through more often and your true care comes through when you respond to someone who is down and out?
Maybe you discovered some other things about “your best you” along the way. Be sure to add any new discoveries to the list in your notebook or to your collage. Come back to the list of discoveries often to remind yourself of who you truly are, which comes from living from your heart.
You can go back through this book at any time, and we encourage you to do so. Hop from chapter to chapter for reminders of things you’ve explored with us. Read the techniques again—step by step—to refresh your mind on how to do them. Read the tips again, too. You may find that your understanding of techniques and the topics we’ve covered changes and deepens now that you’ve been practicing the techniques for a while.
Find different and creative ways to remind yourself to practice the techniques. Make a game out of plugging energy leaks and recharging your inner battery. Commit to meeting challenges with more calm and composure and see for yourself how that can benefit you and the situation. You might even create your own Stress-Bustin’, Resilience-Boostin’ On-the-Go Action Plan each week.
And last but not least, put your heart into it! Put your heart into everything you do. That’s the key to transforming stress, to finding and being the real you.