Overcoming Workplace Stress

PERSONAL RESILIENCE is our ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune, change, or perceived threats.  Personal resilience depends upon our ability to self-manage our emotions, allowing us to better perceive, understand and regulate our moods, and use emotional information to improve our cognitive resources.  As resilience is enhanced, it allows us to better maintain poise, improve our physical and psychological wellness, and reduce our stress.  The good news is that resilience is a learned skill.

Just as exercise changes and improves the body, so too can the brain be changed and improved.  “Plasticity” is the term neurologists use to describe the brain’s ability to change. As you exercise new skills, which differ from an old set of skills, your brain grows new connections. This gradual change allows the billions of microscopic neurons lining the road between the rational and emotional centers of your brain to branch off small “arms” (much like a tree), reaching out to other cells.  A single cell can grow 15,000 connections with neighboring cells.  This chain reaction of growth allows new behaviors to become second nature to us, changing our old “default settings”.