Monday 22nd November 2021
Mark Davies
Mark is the founder of 7Futures and has been consulting in workplace resilience, wellbeing and performance since 2000. He is a resilience coach, an FA coach (working for several years at Leicester City FC) and also a mindfulness teacher. He is the only UK consultant to have completed the USA based MMFT training programme and is supporting the Mindfulness Initiative for the UK Armed Forces. Formerly a CEO of J Rothschild International Assurance with responsibility for their European, Americas and Far Eastern operations, Mark has over 20 years of international financial services experience and a deep understanding of the pressures leaders need to manage. He remains a founding partner in one of the West Midlands most respected nursing care groups which has been providing essential care since 1988.
Nathan Douglas
Nathan Douglas is a Double Olympian for Team GB and sports scientist from Loughborough University, having enjoyed a career spanning over 16 years at world-class level. He is twice ranked in the top three in the world and has won two European silver medals in the Triple Jump. Nathan has been British Champion 7 times. In 2016 he was made the GB Team Captain, a reward and recognition of his resilience over the past few years in times of difficulty.
Nathan is a certified Peak Performance Coach and NLP Practitioner. He is on a mission to stop people from just functioning and to help them flourish and perform at their very best.
Thank you for attending the session on Monday 22nd November. We hope you have found it helpful, insightful and enjoyable. We outlined the resilience definition and framework within which you can explore how to tweak some aspects of your mindset and behaviours to sustain/heal or improve your resilience. Please note we did not have the time to go into techniques such as nervous system regulation, grounding and other body/mind tools (e.g. yoga) which can be enormously helpful. If anyone needs more guidance on this please email jo@7futures.com or discuss with Brendan/Assis. We have added a few extra slides into the ones we used in case they are of help.
The subject of resilience and wellbeing is a complex one which is continually evolving with more research and opinion. Our present position is probably best described as "if it's not broken don't try and fix it". In other words, if you feel you are responding well to life's stressors, sleeping well and have good levels of enjoyment from life and work then perhaps it's best to not change too much. If, however, some of the stressors overwhelm you from time-to-time, you seem to have no time for regular movement, work/life balance feels out of kilter, or sleep quality is not great then maybe it's worth tweaking something.
Our objective, therefore, is to provide you with a framework, robustly researched and tested, within which you can explore your own self-awareness, habits and personal development. The framework is grounded in the neurophysiology of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) which, when functioning well, provides us with the self-regulating mechanisms to adapt through stress to become more resilient. The chronic accumulation of stress, or traumatic incidents/episodes of stress, can cause the ANS to become dysregulated. In simple terms we lose our capacity to not only manage stress but also to adapt and grow/become more resilient. Ultimately this will hinder and undermine performance at work, home, social life and deplete our energy. It can be experienced in many complex and subtle ways. Today's environmental stressors often cause a relentless sense of being on the go...so even if our stressors are not too bad we can find ourselves unconsciously in the sympathetic branch for too long which results in unnecessarily levels of fatigue. So, even at the mild end of the spectrum we need to be aware of the wellbeing risks of prolonged fatigue and not enjoying sufficient rest, sleep and recovery.
A central message is to reflect on the recovery side of the equation:
stress + recovery = resilience
We will always experience stress but it can be successfully managed and harnessed for positive growth if we understand how to recover effectively. This is explained in more detail in the links you will find below.
If anyone wants signposting to more in-depth reading on any aspect of what you have listened to, please don't hesitate to ask. There isn't one book which pulls all our content together but there are great specialists out there on parts of it. We have compiled our own resources to try and help and these are explained further below together with links you can use to access them.
We would suggest you read the 90 second guide to resilience before the ANS and Social Engagement resource. It is a more complex read but very helpful for managing/leading others and also it has relevance to parenting. Please ask for more clarification if you need it because it is a highly nuanced area. The 'expert' who has developed this over the past 30 years has had a significant influence on the world of therapy/personal development in the USA and globally.
resilience slide presentation
a 90 second read on resilience which attempts to fill in some of the commentary that is delivered with the slide deck
a short read about an important feature of the nervous system which we talked about - the social engagement system - this is what Nathan had inadvertently neglected when pushing himself hard to overcome the disappointment of failing to win a medal at the World Championships. So despite ticking all the normal wellbeing boxes (sleep, nutrition etc.) he developed chronic fatigue which plagued him for 3 years
a link to further reading.
Click the buttons below to view:
Please feel free to ask for more information on any of the attachments or any other aspects of resilience and wellbeing. All requests are treated in the strictest confidence.
best wishes
Mark and Nathan
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to email me mark@7futures.com or jo@7futures.com.
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© 2012 7Futures Ltd. Please note that at 7Futures, our role is to help educate and encourage our clients to take positive responsibility for their wellbeing. We are not medical doctors and are not able to offer individual medical advice. We always recommend you should discuss with your GP or other medical professional before making any changes you hope will impact your wellbeing, or that of your current/future family. 7Futures Ltd offers generic information which is for educational purposes only. The information we provided is not a prescription system and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. As such our materials, videos products and communications are for general information purposes only and should not be read as a personal recommendation for specific changes in lifestyle behaviour, nutrition, or exercise. Please click here for a clear description of our services and the relationship with you as a client. You should not participate in any of our services until you have studied this link...it is for your benefit.