I'm really happy to be here this afternoon and really talk about something that I think is really important, as we kind of reflect on this last year. Resilience is a word that people throw around and, and we hear. But I think this past year has pretty much tested our individual, our team and our organizational resilience. And so what I'd like to share with you today is some insights, some research as well as help you in a very hopefully interactive way. Understand where you are in your own level of resilience. How you may be able to do some minor things on a, on a day-to-day basis to help build that. And how you can use purpose and the Purposeful app that we're partnering with the University of Delaware on to, to really build that inner strength that can help you grow and adapt to the pressures and the challenges and changes that we see. So that's where we are. And as you go through this, I'll be asking you to reflect. And what that means is kind of maybe jot down or type into a notepad just some of the things that are coming to you as I talk about those things. I think it's important as we begin to understand concepts that we take a moment and pause and reflect and understand how does that relate to me? How does that relate to the people around me? And then how does that actually helped me maybe change a mindset or change a belief, or help motivate a new behavior. So this is what I hope to gain at the end of our time together today. So let me just move slides. There we go. So we all know that this, this past year has been significant to ourselves and our families, our companies, our organizations, and to society, not only in the US but across the world. And I'm sure you as a university have, have been seeing it from not just an employer or an organization, from the impact it's making on your students and your faculty and the entire community at the University of Delaware. And how the University kind of sits within a broader community of Delaware and how that outside community affects it. Just some data that, you know, the the impact is not minimal. I mean, our anxiety levels and our depression levels are at the highest levels that we've seen in a long, long time. And also, what we're seeing is there's a disproportionate effect on people. Some people who are in different areas of society are being impacted differently, different ages. Interestingly that the young, which you deal with a lot at the University are actually having and experiencing more anxiety than somebody older because they perhaps, and this is where we will focus on have less skills, life skills in this resilience capacity, even though we think the young are very resilient. Sometimes life experiences help us moderate and manage our own response to change. And that's an area that I want to get into as well, is how do we respond to the changes that we face and how does that response actually help build our resilience overall. So I think we can all share in this understanding that it's been a very impactful year. Interestingly too, some of the challenges are not just in the space of mental well-being. Many people have faced job insecurity, economic uncertainty. And for the first time, employed individuals at a large level, up to 30 percent are, experiencing things that we think are more often in the vulnerable communities, such as food and security. Of course, child and elder care needs, housing insecurity, utilities insecurity. While they may be employed with an individual company, their entire family unit may have had a disruption in their in their finances. And therefore, the implications of this last year have tested our resilience and not just a mental way, but in a physical and emotional as well as spiritual way. It's really tested our ability to really manage. So what I would hope to do is to have you begin to reflect on how did you show up in this last year? What things did you find that you, you learned about yourself as we speak about resilience. So the first thing is let's define it, so we all kind of are on an even playing field. Maybe you can tap into your chat box. What, maybe one word or two words, how do you best describe resilience to yourself or to others? Just go ahead and share that with the rest of the individuals on the, on the call. Let me just stop the share so I bring everyone back up. See what the chats showing. Oh, sorry, social determinants of health. I apologize. That ability to bounce back and ability to get back up after falling down; strength; excellent ability to grow through difficulty; perseverance; the ability to bounce back after a difficult time. The ability to cope with whatever comes. Keyword is to cope; deal with the unexpected, in a sense, because we can plan for the known unknowns, but we can't always plan for the unknown unknowns. And therefore that unexpected change or challenges is always very impactful to us. Great. These are really... building inner strength. Again, very, very powerful. So let me go back to sharing. One of the definitions that I find very, very helpful in understanding resilience is this one, And it's, if I were to read it, It's the acquired ability to regularly recover, adapt, and grow from stress or the challenges we face. And I think many of you have, have identified elements of this. But I'd like you to just look at those words and tell me which words really popped out for you in that, in that definition. Just what, what pops out, what one word? And we'll focus on whoever puts the word in the chat box first. Acquired. Okay, great, that's a great insight because a lot of times people feel that resilience is this, you're born with it. And yes, there is a nature element of people there, how they are hard wired to manage pressure, but it is an acquired life skill. So there's hope for all of us to not only strengthen it, but to use it in an effective way. So that's a really essential insight into the definition of resilience. What is another one? Regularly. Absolutely. So, you know, we weren't born brushing our teeth, but we started to brush our teeth because we regularly practice it based on our parents', perhaps, concept of oral hygiene. And we then became it became rather than a routine that we had to be asked to do, it became a habit that it pulls us to do right. If we don't do it, we feel something's missing after a meal or when we wake up. So that regularly type of action is what we call habit formation. And the more we build these practices into habits, the more readily they come up when we need them automatically, almost like what we would call muscle memory. They will come up and be useful to us in a time that we need it. So that's great and then recover. That's an awesome word because oftentimes we push, push, push. We're always on. But it's actually when we recover, is when we grow. Like studies have shown that learning doesn't occur in the classroom. That the stress and the stimulus to learn occurs in the classroom, but actually learning occurs when we sleep, when we can process and file in the appropriate way in our memory areas of the brain that stimulus of knowledge that we, the data points that we acquire during the day. Our muscles grow and build when we give them time to rest. We stress them, but then the recovery period is when they actually adapt to that stress and grow. So recovery is important. So begin to ask yourself, like in this moment, what are some of the ways that you recover? What are some of the ways that you recharge? And if you aren't recharging enough, if at the end of the day you're totally spent, you're feeling tired and fatigued. Maybe one thing you can do for yourself is to try to build in more micro-bursts of recovery throughout the day. Because it's in that recovery that we re-boost or renew or recharge our energy. It's like our iPhone. If I asked you, what is the level of battery on your iPhone, I'd say, or on your cell phone. I shouldn't just say iPhone, on your cell phone. I'd say almost 90, some-odd percent of you would know. But if I asked you that same question, what's your own battery level? A lot of us would not be as self-aware. So again, being self-aware of your level of energy and your need to recover is so important as we try to help build resilience. So The other area someone mentioned is grow. And that's indeed so, so important that we take the stress and challenge. We don't avoid it. But with the right support, resources and resilience, we can actually grow from the challenges we face. In fact, if I were to ask you, over the past year, what are some of the things that really impressed you about how you grew during the challenges you face. I bet you could identify quite a few. And so maybe what I'll do now is just to ask you to self-reflect on that, on that one question. What are some of the things that you have grown from in the past year? You don't have to share unless you want to. Yeah, it's a voluntary self-reflection. But I just want to take a moment because I think we often don't realize how much we've grown. You know, when we first start a course of study, like a language, or when we go to the first-class in a university, it's a stress, it's a challenge. We don't know the content yet and we work hard and we process. But by the end of that, we hopefully have learned and we have grown that muscle of knowledge or that muscle of life skill. And it's in that process of stress. And then using that stress to challenge is how we, on a regular basis, build that resilience. I think the other word that is right before grow is also important. Darwin, a great scientist, once said that the survival of the species is based on those who, in a competitive, changing environment adapt quicker, right, or more successfully. And so this whole process of the last year has shown that, that we not only can grow from stress, but we can adapt. We've totally taken like online learning and moved it in a virtual classroom learning and we've moved it online may not be as ideal as, we previously wanted, but we adapted. We've adapted our own day-to-day activities because we needed to. We've adapted our ability to to wear masks. to protect us. Those are things that we've had to adapt to faced with these challenges. So again, these are the words that I think are really important for us to reflect on as we now think about building our own capacity for resilience. So I've got a question. I'm wondering if resilience can be become depleted when stress occurs over a long period of time? Yes. Yes. So actually that's a great question. Think of resilience as, again as a muscle. And if you constantly overwork that muscle without rest, you will have a an overuse syndrome, right? You will deplete the ability of that muscle to work. So resilience is quite like that. And that's why that recovery process of being self-aware of when you need to recharge. And the problem with what's happened over the last year is that one of the biggest tools that we used to use to help us recharge, besides things that we do on our own, like sleep or go out and take a walk or take a nap or read a book, do something different from being fully on, is the social support. Our social connections are so important to help us mitigate the way we experience pressure and stress. And when that is cut off, like it's been, and we've been isolated. Sometimes we've been isolated totally alone. Others we've been isolated in nuclear families, but our other connections and our day-to-day ability to process with others and get support and share and cope, that has been lost. So clearly. at a physiologic level, chronic stress, chronic change, leads to constant engagement of the amygdala in the brain. Constant engagement then of the neuro-hormonal- adrenalin-cortisol process. And that actually creates overall harm physically in addition to the mental pressures of stress. So yes, it's a great question and again, It's how we use that self-awareness of recovery and when we need to recover. And how we recover and different ways to recover. Because sometimes we think, you know, I don't have time to go to the gym or I don't have time to do that. But you can take a one-minute moment of meditation to calm yourself. And maybe I can just show you right here. You can put your hand on your heart. You feel your heartbeat. Let's everyone do that. And as you feel your heartbeat, you take a deep breath, and you inhale and you exhale. And you inhale and exhale. And then you think of a box. And you think of counting four seconds in each corner of the box. And as you inhale, you inhale for four seconds. You hold for four seconds. You exhale for four seconds. You hold for four seconds. And then you inhale again for four seconds and you repeat that two to three times, you will be surprised at how that can calm, as well as reduce blood pressure. It's been shown even that one moment. So if you're in the checkout line and someone is in front of you with 33 things and the express checkout and you're getting agitated because you only have two, take a moment and calm yourself because you don't need that extra pressure and stress during that time. So that's just a simple meditation. And in the Purposeful app, there are several types of those meditations that you can find on the Explore. And I'll get to some of those as we get more into, more into some, some ways to improve that. Great question. So anyway, I want to get back to white. Why we're focused on purpose at Kumanu and why Purposeful is focused on purpose. It's because the studies are all pointing to purpose being one of the most interesting risk factors. We don't think of it as a risk factor like cholesterol or blood pressure for like heart disease and for other, other kinds of cardiovascular conditions. But actually the connection to your purpose, your values, your, you know, that you know where you're going and why that, that you know your why, that has been shown to have significant impact on your ability to build resilience and maintain it under pressure. And there's this, I'm going to share some studies. These are all published studies. This is a very interesting study that looked at mortality and those who had connections to purpose and what was interesting is that regardless of race, of age, of socioeconomic status, individuals with a strong connection to their life purpose seemingly lived longer lives. And again, it's an association, it's not causal. We don't have the reason. We do know that individuals who have strong connections of purpose have greater levels of telomerase, which is the enzyme that helps us repair our telomeres which are in our chromosomes. And the theory behind that is that as you, as your chromosomes get smaller, we age. It's a reflection of age or it's actually dependent on aging. And therefore, the ability to repair, increases with your ability to have a connection to your purpose. So again, there's a lot more research that's looking into this. But clearly purpose and connecting daily to your purpose does increase your ability to not only manage the change, but also to maybe thwart some physical areas. Nietzsche, a great philosopher in the 1900s, mentioned that he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. And that's what the studies today are showing, that if you have this why to live and you know it, and you're connected to it, no matter what comes your way, you can persevere. It's like it gives you grit, almost it seems. It gives you that ability to be Teflonic, and let things bounce off of you because, you know that whatever it is, you're still focused on that, on that purpose. So it's a really interesting concept. So one thing I'd like to just share with you is, is kind of a good, solid definition of purpose. Because when I say purpose, people perhaps have all different ideas of what that means. So the way we look at purpose at Kumanu, and the way we've built it, is based on some studies that look at purpose in life systems. And purpose is really the central self-organizing life aim that organizes and stimulates your ability to plan, to set goals, to kind of check your behavior. Is doing this in line with what I, my intention, with what I want in life, with my purpose? And it provides a sense of meaning. It's in a sense kind of like your Google Maps, your GPS. So that if you get off course, if you know that that purpose is your destination, you can reroute and reroute to get back on course. More importantly, our neuroscience and studies have shown that it actually awakens us to be more open to possibilities, to be more open to change, and to mitigate that threat of the challenges. So part of the reason why individuals with resilience can manage pressure differently is they don't see it as so much of a threat and keep seeing it as a threat. They see it as an obstacle, and they quickly move it from being an obstacle to an opportunity to leverage rather than remaining a threat. And keeping your amygdala and that whole neurohormonal cortisol mechanism going. So that's an important area to fix. So anyway, I would love to have you reflect on what matters most to you and to help you, there are Quests in the Purposeful app that you can do, Purpose quest, for instance. That in a sense, asks these kinds of questions to help you find your why. So I would just want you to take a moment and on your own, pick one or two of these questions that, that resonate with you. Just jot down some answers. Who do you admire most? How are you when you're at your best? What impact do you want to have on others? What causes are the most important to you? What energizes you? What makes your life really worth living? Who do you want to become? Who relies on you? And how do you want to be remembered? These are just some of the questions that you can self-reflect on and can help you begin to form your own why. So I'm going to pause for a few minutes while you just answer some of those questions on your own. I think the more you begin to probe these areas of who you are and really what drives you. What you really are passionate about, what excites you, what gets you out of bed in the morning? What keeps you there? Because it's not exciting. Those insights are really important to help you, not just find your purpose and your why, but to help you navigate life, and actually navigate your response to life because that's also important. So I'll pause for right now and just take a moment and look at this. So I know many of you may have already used the Purposeful app and may have created your purpose. For any of those who have, I would welcome you sharing it in the chat box. Your life purpose, or work purpose. Some people have two purpose statements. Some have just one. But if you want to share, feel free. I think by sharing it one, it's a very positive emotional experience that we all experience. And it's always good to have more positive emotions during, during times of significant challenge. But also it just gets to know us, know each other better. And so if you, if you would like to share, that's fine. If not, that's your right. That's beautiful. Jaquee. spread kindness, create and share art with others. So while some of you are sharing, just want to re-emphasize that, that neuro biologically, we've done functional MRI studies, and this part of the brain, the ventral, medial prefrontal cortex, is actually what gets activated when we think about purpose. It creates that future thinking, that hope. And it also manages that threat response in the amygdala. Another is that I'm reading. My purpose is to build up others around me through kindness and laughter. Thank you, Meena. Serve others like the Gospel hymn. if I can help somebody in their journey. That's wonderful, James. And the studies that we've seen is that purpose actually activates that center to the point where in a recent poll, we have seen where individuals who stated that they have a strong connection to their, their purpose in life, actually are up to seven times more resilient than those who have a low purpose in life. They're more able to emotionally regulate. And I'm going to get back to that. That's a huge part of building resilience is your ability to manage your emotions and to use your emotions wisely and to be self-aware of your emotional state and how it's affecting yourself, your physical, mental self, as well as others. It actually shows a decrease. People who have a high connections to their purpose have lower levels of depression. I mean, these are all based on validated scales, depressant scales, anxiety scales, life satisfaction scales. Interestingly, people are more engaged with work and well-being. It seems that purpose, and if you know your purpose, you look at your roles in your life. Whether they're your family, friends, community, and your roles at work with a different level of insight that you're not working for the University of Delaware. University of Delaware is a channel for you to achieve your purpose. That's huge in terms of a shift of thinking that then the work I have to do and sometimes that tedious stuff when I had to put together those Bloom's Taxonomy of objectives for my classes at Georgetown. That drove me crazy, that tediousness of it. But I knew that there was a purpose. Because if I actually focused on that, I would be doing something good for my students. And that is what I wanted my purpose to be, to help the students activate new thinking and come away with a new insight and a new, perception of life. So as we've run through, purpose actually does drive well-being. It amplifies future thinking. It helps us to motivate action and sustain whatever change we want to make. That's in line with where we want to go, our goals. It helps us strengthen emotional self-regulation. It reduces that stress response and it's foundational to resilience. So one of the things I'd like to share, to ask you, and this is where I'm going to have you go into a breakout is so what gets in the way? You may want to think about your own, like what gets your way in your personal self. What are your own personal blockers for you being more connected to your purpose? What about in your team or in your organization? And I think that will be very interesting to look at. So let me, let me, though. The last is about this emotional regulation. And this is actually data, live, in a sense, data, dynamic data from understanding an individual's emotional sentiment over time. And in the axis, you see time elements. And this was taken during the first six months of last year. And what's interesting is that our emotions are dynamic. Our emotions in an organization are dynamic. And some of the points that you see are either external things that happen like COVID occurred in March. Offices shut down. No information. That creates greater uncertainty, maybe greater levels of anxiety, anger. And then, you know, the President of the University issues a statement or your team leader issues a statement and all of a sudden anger kind of comes down. There's a little bit more certainty about. So this kind of just shows you that just taking a onetime survey isn't enough. These dynamic emotions are happening. And this is just a collection of emotions in an organization over a period of time. We looked at to see, okay, how do we help intervene at the moment when they're the most angry or the most burnt out or the most frustrated or the least connected or the least grateful, how do we intervene and help them in the moment? Because I think you have to meet people where they are in the moment. Oftentimes, we try to meet people where we want them to be at our moment. This is probably facetious, but when I went through training in our emergency room, there was a little sign. It was very small and it was not facing the patients, but the administrator had your emergency is not necessarily how we define emergency. So again, I think we can, we can look at being people-centric and being individual centric in how we help assess and help support individuals. And it is about this awareness of our emotions and how we grow the muscle of being aware of what our emotions are, but also how they're affecting our behaviors and how those behaviors are affecting others. It's a circuitous process that I think is important. Frankl, in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, which is a great small book. He's a psychiatrist, if you don't know him, who survived the Holocaust as a, as an incarcerated, concentration camp prisoner. And as a psychiatrist, he did a lot of observational analysis while he was in the concentration camps and then post-release spent his whole rest of his life looking at this and his, one of the biggest insights that he uses that's so important is this concept that between a stimulus, an act, a change, something hitting you, a challenge, and your response to that, there's a space. And how well we understand that space and we're aware of that space is important. That's a muscle of awareness. But it's in that space that gives us the power to choose our response. The response can be very knee-jerk. We just are going to respond because we haven't thought about it. But if we take the moment and we are self-aware, rather than being triggered by a habitual response, we can actually take a response that's more measured and it's in that response, therefore, that lies our potential for growth and our freedom. And I think it's just a beautiful way to think about the two dynamics of growing the space of awareness between things that hit you and how you respond to them. And then choosing the right response that benefits you, or benefits your intention or is in line with your purpose, right? I think that's the importance there. So these are just some questions you could ask yourself when you are feeling and emotive, either sad or angry or frustrated or whatever. Just ask, What are you feeling? Why are you feeling that way? How are these feelings affecting your actions? How are those actions affecting others? And are these actions really your intention? And if not, how can you change them, right? So that last part is the hardest. But the first part is, you can't do the last part without understanding the first part. So growing that muscle of awareness is the first element of being able to then successfully manage it. And that's half of what we call emotional intelligence, that self-awareness and self-management of your emotions. And then the next is understanding other behaviors. And how then to manage those relationships. That's the other half of being emotionally intelligent. And so again, this is a powerful area. So what I would like you to think about in the last few moments are these 2 areas and what can, how can you grow that muscle of self-awareness? What things can you do to help? Maybe using the Purposeful app to understand greater ways of self-awareness raising in yourself and then what are some of the actions you can take to better manage your emotions and help you build resilience. Because as you regulate your emotions and you are now actively choosing the response that you make. You are resilient. You are choosing a response that actually helps you. That benefits you physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, as opposed to just choosing an emotion which further agitate you are further, takes you down in a negative spiral. So those are our two questions. And just as a note, this presentation I will send or share with Laura, it's being recorded. So you'll see these. If you want to come back to some of these at your leisure, you can at anytime. So this is an example of a purposeful day. It's really about starting with your why, setting that daily intention of how you want to show up, what are some of the goals you want to achieve in that day, in that week, in that month, in that year. Then reflecting on what it what is it that you learned about the past day or past week that you can use into the future. Seeking out meaning and purpose in your day-to-day routines as well as your work. That brings and reinforces that this level of purpose, again, setting up your daily actions. And again, you can peg those in the Purposeful App. Sharing. We talked about the social, the positive element of social connections and sharing ideas and support. And then the self-coaching. This is all about coaching yourself, getting that insight, then making a change, seeing how it worked. If it worked, great, continue, if not tweak it. It's what athletes do all the time with their training log. So it's kind of like your own journal of self-coaching and then you track your progress. And all of this is available in that Purposeful app that you have access to. And these are the theories, the sound psychological and psychosocial theories that go behind this development of your, of your ability to be purposeful and to build resilience. So the last I'd like to leave you with is, this last year has been hugely impactful for so many. And there's a way to look at it like, I'm so glad I'm getting out of it. Or we could look at it as how do we reframe that as a chapter in our life and then we build a new chapter. What did we appreciate about that year? What do we want to bring forward into our future? What do we want to put to bed, and what do we have we learned about? And also the things that we don't really want to do again? That's important. We close that chapter, we begin a new chapter. So what have you learned about yourself? What are you proud of? Begin thinking about that and sharing. I think the more we share about things that we've learned about ourselves and learned about our organization and the strength of the University in this significant challenge. That's powerful. And then again, how can you find ways to strengthen your connection to your purpose? So this is the app. I think many of you have probably used it, but if you haven't, Laura will be putting in the chat room links to it. This is a sample of how you access an area like Energizing Your life, you want more energy. Well, here are some things you can do. The quests are like sequential phases to build a skill in either authentic relationships here or energized life or life purpose. And this is, again, just to kind of give you an idea, you go through these different sections or modules, and you end up having the tools, the insight about yourself for, in this case, an energizing life. So there are many different kinds of quests. There's a Resilience Quest, there's a Purpose Quest. There's Building Authentic Relationships. All of those are in that, in the app. And I'll leave this slide on as we come back. So I would I just would like to thank you for the time that you've shared with me today and hopefully this has been helpful. Maybe activate some new thinking, reinforce some, solid thinking that you already have. Because sometimes we need that reinforcement as well as new ideas.

Mental Wellbeing Boosters: What’s your ‘Why’? Fostering Resilience With Purpose

From Chelsea Finch May 12, 2021

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Purpose is that goal or set of goals that matter most to you in your life – that really drive you. In the midst of a challenge, you can come back to your purpose and let it fuel you to keep going. It can be a major source of resilience, help you recover from adversity and keep you focused on the things you care deeply about. In this session, learn ways you can strengthen your resilience using purpose.

Department Name: Employee Health and Wellbeing
Department Division: HR
Date Established: May 12, 2021
Appears In: Employee Health And Wellbeing

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