 How to Flow With Hyper Change
Without bothering to ask for our consent,
globalization and technological innovation has rapidly created a new
world. In today's demanding work environment, there are few personal
skills more valuable than being able to flow with the accelerating and
unremitting changes which are driving our workplaces and defining our
time. As we move through the twenty-first century, it's important
to develop better coping skills and to build much needed resilience to
the unusual scale of today's changes. For example, over the next ten
years we will likely undergo more change than has occurred in all of
previous human history. Through a process called homeostasis,
every body-mind has an in-built tendency to resist change, no matter
whether the change is good or bad. It's an amazingly complex system
that wants to stay within narrow limits and return to that state
whenever it is forced out of it. Our body-minds evolved over many
thousands of millennia knowing that in order to survive, stability was
needed. This need for equilibrium is a natural mechanism that
wants to keep things as they are. We experience this automatic
resistance to change in ourselves and we see it in our organizations.
The resistance is generally proportionate to the size and speed of the
change, making the unusual scale of today's changes especially
demanding on every body. There is a pressing need for people to
overcome their natural resistance to change and become more flexible
and open towards it. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the former editor of The
Harvard Business Review, described "flexible" as the most important
essential skill for organizational survival in the new work world,
along with becoming more "focused, fast and friendly". But just telling
people to become more flexible (and focused, friendly, etc.) is like
telling them to go fly. To devise a strategy to enhance
flexibility and focus you must first understand that resistance to
change expresses itself in the body-mind as an arousal state commonly
called stress. Over time, the wear and tear of too much stress plays a
significant role in making us sick and impairing our performance. It
keeps mentally and physically rigid and inflexible and especially
resistant to change. That's why one of the most important skills
for our time is what Harvard Medical School has labeled the "relaxation
response". The relaxation response is a measurable state of profound
rest which, when regularly called upon, permits the body-mind to
effectively unwind from the chronic strain that adaptation stress
imposes. Within minutes, it achieves a state of rest that would
normally be achieved after four or five hours of sleep. All of the
complex and interrelated systems of the body respond by letting go of
the excess stress and afford a tired and straining body-mind a
much-needed chance to properly rest, recuperate, and repair. It's
a total response of the body-mind. The heart beat becomes slower, as
does one's breathing rate. Blood pressure and blood sugar levels drop.
Brain waves slow down. Even skin resistance changes. The entire
body-mind system becomes quiet and has an opportunity to rebalance and
replenish itself. Measurable self-healing occurs. Every system in the
body-mind has an opportunity to regenerate and renew itself. It goes
beyond the advertising hype and produces an actual experience worthy of
the expression, "the pause that refreshes". Decades of medical
research has proven that everyone can be more in control of themselves
by learning simple ways to properly unwind. By releasing stress on a
regular basis, we have a natural safety valve that keeps it from
building to harmful levels. Almost everybody who uses the relaxation
response discovers that they are much better able to withstand the
on-going and inevitable strains of modern life. They can absorb so much
more without negative side effects. They are able to flow more easily
into the new structures as they emerge, adapt to new ideas, and
creatively respond to new challenges. Those hoping to steer their
organizations (or themselves) through the white water that is clearly
ahead would be wise to provide their workers (and families) with the
"how to" of body-mind self-regulation, the relaxation response. My bet
is that the greatest success in the new wireless world will come to
those organizations and individuals who have learned best how to
effectively let go and flow better with change. Eli
Bay is one of Canada's most respected stress management authorities. He
is a master at delivering the stress-free relaxation state to virtually
anyone and has been successfully unwinding individuals and audiences
for decades. Visit: http://www.elibay.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eli_Bay
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