Stress and resilience

The first assignment is to teach the practice partner about the concepts of stress and resilience.

Everyone knows what stress is. Everyone felt stressed at least once: in traffic, with a partner, with children, with colleagues. Stress is inevitable. It is in our genes. It has been passed by the caveman that ran away when he saw a predator and felt he was in danger.

There are many stressors. Stressors are what triggers stress.

We need stress to do something in life. Studies indicate that humans perform better when they are subject to some stress. But too much or too little stress decrease human performance.

The curve below illustrates this. It is called the Yerkes-Dotson curve.

Resilience is defined as the ability to cope with changes, the ability to both survive difficult and challenging situations and thrive in life by optimizing well being. Resilience can be trained and acquired throughout our lives. Like in cooking recipes, there are ingredients that help people become more resilient. These include:

• managing negative emotions
• inducing positive emotions
• physical activity
• good sleep
• being grateful
• mindful-based practices

Resilience impacts our well being through:

• minimizing stress
• promoting physical and emotional well being
• engaging in behaviours that gives us a sense of purpose, meaning and overall life satisfaction.

And that is it for Week 1 of the course.