Using Emotional Intelligence to Manage Stress

Rushdina Khan & Dr. Sandhya Rani C speaking with Grant Herbert, at the Emotional Intelligence Online Summit in 2020 for People Builders and the Emotional Intelligence Academy, on using Emotional Intelligence to manage Stress.

Rushdina Khan & Dr. Sandhya Rani C speaking with Grant Herbert, at the Emotional Intelligence Online Summit in 2020 for People Builders and the Emotional Intelligence Academy, on using Emotional Intelligence to manage Stress.

03:18​ - A passion for Emotional Intelligence

05:36 - The causes undue stress from a human behavioural perspective

11:35​ - The most helpful EI competencies for managing stress

17:56 - Practical tips for managing stress while working from home

26:30​ - The power of the reframe

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If you want more information on how you can develop your own Emotional intelligence, visit our Emotional Intelligence Academy website to see where we can help you get on the right track for your situation.

http://emotionalintelligenceacademy.online/

If you are interested in becoming a social and emotional intelligence trainer and coach, go deeper into the principles of applied neuroscience and positive psychology, visit our People Builders Institute website to find the path that suits your individual needs.

https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au/

 

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name is Grant Herbert, the founder and global managing partner at People Builders. Today, we are going to discuss together how we can reduce stress with Emotional Intelligence.

Stress is a big issue. Standing here as someone who has a longstanding history, both in my military and corporate career, about stress to a point where it pretty well wrecked my life; I've had four physical and one mental breakdown over my 58 years and Emotional Intelligence was certainly a saviour for me.

So, I want to share some wisdom from 2 leading coaches and trainers in emotional intelligence, Dr. Sandyha Rani C and Rushdina Khan. I will ask them a series of questions and they will share their experience. So, here's the first one:

Why are you so passionate about the work that you do in Emotional Intelligence?

Rushdina: Thank you. That's such a wonderful question to start with.

I love it because it's just through Emotional Intelligence we can regulate and manage all aspects of human behavior and at the same time, manage our relationships for the growth of ourselves and others. It helps us with stress and confidence, continuous self-development, creates in us a mechanism and auto-mechanism of self-motivation, develops resilience and most of all, Emotional Intelligence empowers us to make our own choices of response, not to become a victim of the situation.

Grant: Love that. Excellent. Thank you. And Sandhya, what about you?

Sandhya: To add to that, when I look at Emotional Intelligence, I see how people can use very simple techniques and tools from Emotional Intelligence and bringing in healthier and happier aspects to their life which means a lot of wellness from a physical, mental, emotional perspective - which is especially good these days. I like how Emotional Intelligence can improve the quality of life whether it is family or work or parenting or social life as such. So emotional intelligence is the best when it comes to helping us live a better life.

Grant: Wow. I love that. And you loved it that much that you did your PhD dissertation on Emotional Intelligence.

Grant: All right. We want to keep this at a level where we're not talking about hormones and chemicals and parasympathetic nervous systems and all that sort of stuff, right? We want to keep it at a practical level.

So, from a human behavior perspective, what do you think are the main causes of stress? (What I mean there is we know there are different parts of stress and all that sort of stuff is used throughout, which is good but we're not going to go there.) Just from a perspective of what we think, what we do as humans and the behavioral work that we do, what do you think is undue stress? Where does it start?

Rushdina: I see it this way: When you do not get what you're expecting. For example, getting very little in return of what you put in; you expect a good salary for the amount of work that you're doing, and you're not getting it. Or when things do not work as planned; you plan to do one work today, while you’re added to this 10-work schedule today and you were not prepared for it. You're missing out deadlines. You're getting stuck in this unpredictable traffic.

So, when there's something you're expecting and you are not getting it, so when all of this happen repeatedly, this causes stress. So, that's my perspective of looking at it.

Grant: Fantastic. So with what you're saying, it’s the way that we're looking at it that's creating the stress?

Rushdina: Yes. I would say the way we’re looking at it. If I'm to explain a little further. First of all, if I expect a traffic on my way to work today, that would take me around two hours to reach my workplace. So that's much easier for me to accept it when I spend around on the round one and a half hours on the bay. But if I'm expecting to reach the workplace within 20 minutes and it takes around two hours, so that's when I start getting stressed. So, it's not what you're expecting, not what you want to happen. So that's when the stress strikes.

Grant: So, unrealistic expectations.

Rushdina: Yes. That's it.

Grant: By the way, for those who don't know, Rushdina is from Taka in Bangladesh. I've been there two years ago and it's the most densely populated city on the planet. And I understand she doesn't get to go too far to go to work, but it still takes two hours to get there in a car and for someone who reacts badly as a driver in a traffic, it's one of my triggers. I wouldn't do it. So for me, my commute to work right now is about 14 seconds from my kitchen to my studio. So, I've got no excuse for any stress. Therefore, it is not just what happens, it's how we look at it and the expectations. I love that. What would you add to that Sandhya?

Sandhya: What I see from my experience recently, people are very stressed because of the lack of compartmentalization in their lives. Because they brought home the work and the work happens from home and we have the family life also happening at home and children are taking their schooling from home.

Early on, when people have everything perfectly compartmentalized, I would say that about what literally our commute was to us, people were able to disengage from family life during that commute and get prepared for the work in the office. But now there is no such a space for transition and everything has come home. So, you have a spouse working from home, you are working from home, your child is studying from home and added to all of that, at least in the Asian countries we had a lot of help at home, which has stopped right now due to the pandemic. So, this is costing a lot of stress to people because there is no compartmentalization in their lives. Along with that, there is a lot more of a usage for social media these days, because we would like to keep in touch with people and to have a real good social life. And, what I see in my work with teenagers and young adults is that social media is causing a lot of stress, adding to all these other problems due to a lack of compartmentalization or socialization.

Grant: I love that. I worked from home. I have been doing that for many years, except when I was traveling, so obviously I wasn't at home. So, I can totally understand that. I remember one thing that really helped me, that might just help. It just came to me, as you're saying this; that is to make sure that you've got a place set up for work, if you can. One of the things I used to do, is I’d put a different lock on my office door than what was on the rest of the house. So when I was finished at the end of the day, what I would do is lock my office and I would actually jump in the car and drive down to the post office and collect all mail out of our postbox.

Now, I could have gotten someone else to do that for me, but what it did was it allowed me to do that compartmentalization that you're talking about. It allowed me to have a transition from being at work then coming home again. I definitely can see how that would be stressful for people. So, looking at it too from a behavior perspective, as we've said, it's more about how we think about things, how we see things and those expectations. It's going back to what Sandhya is talking about when we're running those mind traps as well - we've got a perfectionist of strategy running or a perfectionist mind trap then that's going to create a lot of stress as well.

I'm not only talking about the performance trap and getting approval from others. All those things create a lot of stress as well. What we might do Sandhya is we might let you go first this time. You get to say and then Rushdina gets to add to it.

Of the 26 competencies that we, the three of us, train and coach in SEI ( Social and Emotional Intelligence), what are the ones that you think have the biggest impact on stress and in being able to manage stress? Can you give me your top two?

Sandhya: I'm happy that you said top two. Because I don’t think just a single competency can help with stress management. My top 2 would definitely be: Emotional Self-Awareness followed by Emotional Self Control. Because in stress management, the first thing we need to know are the triggers. If I know what my trigger is, then I would know if I’m about to get stressed and I can do my defense mechanism to help me better. So, my first take is definitely Emotional Self Awareness because from awareness comes an understanding of what my stressors are. The second is Emotional Self-Control. Because once we know the triggers, we know how to manage or probably at least influence it. So, we don't get stressed easily or we raise our threshold for stress.

Grant: Love that. So, Rushdina, do you want to throw another couple in there that come to mind for you?

Rushdina: Yes. I'd love to. Thank you, Sandhya. That was really nice. I will add to it Personal Power and Resilience. Because Personal power gives us the awareness of our own power, our confidence level and our strengths to cope up with the stressful situation.

Once we are developing Self-Awareness, we know about the emotions that are causing leading us towards stress. So that's when we need the Personal Power to develop our confidence: ‘yes, we can cope with this difficulty.’ ‘We can cope with these challenges and this difficult situation, move on with it and reach our targets and achieve our goals’.

Then it comes to Resilience. In the beginning of life, we develop this resilience. We know what we want in life and how important that is. So I want to stay on track. So, in order to be on track, I need to put up with the stress and move on, and then we have those tools working on them- I'm sure we're going to be to be allowed to discuss these tools after the rest, I’m not bringing in the tools yet, but yes, my points are Personal Power and Resilience.

Grant: Yeah. Love that. As you both know, I always say that of the 26 Competencies, Personal Power underpins all the others. It is that ability to know that you've got everything within you and around you to get ahead in life. It's not about power over others, it's power over yourself and your identity and self-worth.

For me, because you took my top two, the two of them that come to mind straight away is Personal Agility. It is the ability to zig and zag, to be able to change direction without it being a major problem. When we are talking about Personal Agility, we are not talking about flexibility from the point of view of being a gymnast. But if I use that as an example, if we're not open to change and change is something that even saying the word change sometimes is going to invoke a state of anxiety for some people, if we're not open to new ideas then we're not able to shift quickly when we need to.

And let me tell you, the world helps us to have that need right now. It's like having a limb; say my hand here, if it is not being used, it will become rigid because I'm resisting and then it becomes arthritic and it causes pain. That's a big one for me is to become more personally agile and be able to make shifts.

The second one is Realistic Optimism. I always use an image to demonstrate this; the one I've found is a picture of a glass that's half full at the bottom and the other one's half full at the top. And people say: ‘Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person?’ Now that a lot of people say: ‘Oh, it doesn't really matter because you can always fill the glass,’ but it's not about that, it's about having Realistic Optimism. It's not about the optimism that just says, ‘Oh, I'm an eternal optimist; everything's going to be okay.’ Because let me tell you, there's a lot of stuff going down right now around the world, and there is a level of uncertainty in it. But having a realistic optimism that puts things in perspective and allows you as you build that competency, to go: ‘Okay, what's the worst thing that could happen here? What's the best thing that could happen here?’ And then reducing that overwhelm that causes that stress by bringing it down to: ‘What's the one thing that I could do to stop that worst case thing happening? And what's one thing I could do to work towards that best thing happening?’ and then to go: ‘Well, okay, what's likely to happen?’ So now that we've come out of that state of overwhelm, our brain will allow us to actually think more logically and go: ‘Well, okay, this is probably more middle of the road what's going to happen.’ And then we're in a state to be able to go: ‘Okay, what’s my next step to move towards that outcome? So, they’re the two for me. Then obviously, it goes without saying, the competency of Stress Management itself. So, learning strategies to reduce and manage stress. It’s not about getting rid of it; it’s about being able to manage the stresses there in our world. I love that.

So, between us, we came up with a handful of them, By the way, I just sent these questions to Sandhya and Rushdina about an hour or so ago. So, it's great that we're all coming up with this.

The next one:

“How can we use Social and Emotional Intelligence to maintain healthy stress levels in this time of uncertainty?”

I know we've talked about some of those already. So, what I want you to do here, if you can, is just be a little bit more practical. For example, Sandhya, you talked about working from home and Rushdina, you talked about being in traffic and having expectations for example. So, if we pick up on those things, what are some practical things that you do that help you to manage stress? I know Sandhya that story that you used as a metaphor there is your story. You're working at home, your husband's working at home, you've got the child at school at home and you've got the baby, right? So tell us, what do you do that you've learned through your studies and your application of Emotional Intelligence to help you to navigate that?

Sandhya: Yeah, so Grant, just like you've done, we set up an office at home. If we have a program, especially something like this, we come in and we close the door of this office. No one is allowed to disturb us. One other thing that helps me compartmentalize is to make sure that I have some quality ‘me time’. Which if you were in the office, you could disconnect from family but now I’m seeing them too much and I would like to have a little less of them sometimes. So, one thing I can actually do is to get up a little bit early than anyone else so I get a solid two hours two hours for myself where I actually sit down and do the things that I really want to do without being interrupted at all.

And that could be maybe, you know, practicing 10 minutes of mindfulness or reading my favorite book or picking up a new hobby or something like that. So, from five o'clock to 7:00 AM in the morning, I have the house all to myself and nobody to trouble me at all. And that really helps me to compartmentalize. So, my focus is on myself and I teach my concepts on myself in those two hours. I get a good grip of myself early in the morning. And then I go on to have my day with the children and my husband working from home or not having any help at home and all of that and my own work schedule. And it works very well. But I also make sure that I get to sleep very early and it’s working out fantastic so far.

Grant: Love that. What I'm hearing in that is that everyone's got their own schedule, right? Because some people that would be listening now, might not have the same setup we’ve got. I’m a morning person as well. So early in the morning, when everyone’s still sound asleep in my house, I go out for a walk, I go to my botanic garden in my backyard, listen to podcasts and meditate and all that stuff. And I have to get out of the house because I’ve got this beautiful toy poodle who idolizes me that she never lets me have any ‘me time’ either. So, whatever it is, I think the key point here is to have a ‘me time’. And to get that ‘me time’ we first need to build our Personal Power so that we know that we are worthy of that ‘me time’.

What would you say about that Rushdina before you give us some practical tips as well?

Rushdina: Yes. I actually run. It's so important having that me time, but this is how I see it: even though there are people around me, I know it's my time. Even though there are noises, my daughter's making a lot of noise, trying to distract me, but she knows that when mom is doing some sketches, because that's what I do during my ‘me time’. So, she knows that she is not allowed to make any noise and even if she does make any noise, it does not affect me. So, I kind of closed myself to all sorts of noise that happens outside my body. That’s something I ensure. So even if you have the poodle, I think it is still possible to disconnect from the world around you.

So, I tried the disconnection and I'm able to do that [especially when I do something that I’m passionate about], like sketching. Everyone in the house knows that I’m into sketching, [so when I’m sketching], it means I cannot be bothered. Even if they talk to me, I hold the answer. I usually do not answer. Not that I’m being rude, but I can really disconnect that way. So, it really helps.

Grant: Fantastic. So, going beyond ‘me-time’ now, and thank you for that, what's another practical strategy that you utilize to fit your stress in a very stressful city that you live in, keep it in a manageable state?

Rushdina: One thing that I do primarily is this positive self-talk. So, it's kind of reframing the contents in my mind. That helps me deal with the stresses that I'm about to face. I know and I'm kind of prepared that there will be a lot of things that are unprecedented, that I cannot predict from beforehand. So, I prepare myself with this positive self-talk. So, if someone doesn't pick up my call, I usually tell myself; ‘That person must have left his phone at home. And because he never memorized my number, which was not as important, he can’t call to inform me that he has left his home to go to the meeting or if the meeting is cancelled or whatsoever.’ So, this is how I reframed the contents of my mind. That’s Positive Self Talk. That’s one thing. I usually use this positive self-talk method for a lot of things: for people's behavior, for the attitude they're projecting or demonstrating. If I see someone frowning, I tell myself that was not meant for me and that he must've had a bad day or the previous hour must have been really hard on him. So, this is how I tell myself.

The next thing I do is exactly the question that you have mentioned. So, when I’m about to face these stressful situations, when I know that I’m in the middle of a chaos, there’s a mishap and I can’t avoid it. I can’t go past it; I have to walk through it. So, what I do is ask myself: ‘what is the worst thing that could happen out of this?’ And that helps me prepare. And then I ask myself: ‘what is the best thing that could happen?’ That gives me the assurance.

And then I come back to the worst thing once again, and that's when I ask myself: ‘how do I handle it?’ ‘What do I do and how do I handle it?’ So, like we always say the what’s and the how activates our neocortex, our prefrontal cortex. I'm not going to go into all the neuroscience anymore, but let's just be practical in our tools and our discussion, but it helps us into logical thinking.

So, it really helps me in very stressful situations. Even when nothing around me is working or is right; when nothing around me is working as planned. So, if I talk about my personal experience during the last eight months of this pandemic, that was one thing I did that has actually brought in this paradigm shift of my physically attending trainings to online trainings.

So that's how I prepared myself. I'm not bragging, but I need to put this up as an example for the learners online today; that I've used Emotional Intelligence to bring in this positive transformation in our practices and in my operation and the work I do, to connect with people, to stay on with the training, and to help people in their learning. So, these are the questions that helps me build Resilience over stress. And that gives me a lot of courage, a lot of strength. And of course, the Personal Power.

Grant: Love it. Fantastic. Wow. This is an awesome conversation and I'm sure, people are loving the reframes and that's the thing what's coming to me is, as you were saying: ‘we can choose the dialogue. We can write the script of what we allow to go.’

I love how you were saying there that even though we don't know, it's true, like seriously, like from the outside again, now that guy had his phone with him, he didn't leave it at home. But if we choose to believe that it's not about us, it's not personally about us, then it's a totally different dialogue that goes on.

As you know, I like to call our inner dialogue, our mini me - it's that small voice that's trying to keep us safe. It's like a two-year-old child. If we don't give it the attention that it needs, it'll get our attention. So, acknowledge it and go: ‘now, hang on, we’re choosing to believe this.’

Rushdina: Just to add to what you just said, even if I see that someone's frowning and I keep telling myself that the frown’s not for me. Often, I am asked by my learners: what if the frown is for me? What if he is frowning at me? What if he means it for me? So, my answer to them is: ‘if he means it for me, he has to say it. It has to come out from him. If he brings it out, if he says it out, I have my answer because I have prepared myself for the worst.

So, ‘how did I prepare myself for the worst?’ Because that's the first question, I ever asked myself. ‘What's the worst thing that can happen?’ Thank you.

Grant: Love it. That's excellent. All right. So, anything else? Anything else Sandhya, where you’re using Emotional Intelligence or Positive Psychology, to manage your stress in yourself or with your clients right now?

Sandhya: So, I want to try the Positive Psychology or the Positive Mental Talk. And I find that a lot of clients in the very beginning, find this a little difficult to practice through because you’re talking about Positive Psychology throughout. So, another technique that I use, in fact it is one of my favourite techniques, is a deep centered breathing or diaphragmatic breathing. You do your abdominal breathing, just do 10 counts, you take a deep breath, hold your breath and breathe out. That's it, that's the technique. So, you breathe a deep breath using your abdomen, you feel your abdomen coming in and out. You have to make sure that for the deep center breathing or abdominal breathing, you use your abdomen and you just do 10 counts of it. So, this is something that would hardly take a couple of minutes, but as soon as you've completed it, you can even try it right now and see it as soon as you complete it, you feel very light.

The reason is the stress hormone cortisol actually goes out of your body because cortisol, disintegrates as carbon dioxide and so you're pushing it out of your body - that makes sure that your stress levels actually come down. So, what I tell my clients and what I also practice is that a few times a day, something like five times a day or six times a day, I do abdominal breathing whether I'm stressed or not. So, when I space it out really like that, I can actually make sure that the factors that are causing me stress, whether I'm aware of it or not, I am able to peak my cortisol levels less. So, my ability to withstand stress actually becomes better. This is a technique that I love the most and what I also keep telling people. And people have also told me that they do some small techniques to remind themselves, to keep it spaced out five times or six times. So, every time you sit down on a chair, after you've come back to work or for any reason you sit down and you just remember to, do the deep centered breathing. Because on a typical work day, a person actually comes back to the seat five to eight times. This is what we have found out and research also says so. So, this is my favorite technique along with the positive talk.

Grant: Yeah, love that. And it's all about, for me, just making sure that I control the emotional anxieties and the ‘why is this happening?’ And all the things that we can get into that story in the dialogue, and bring it back up into my prefrontal cortex, bring it back up into the logical brain.

And, you know, practically, how I love to do that, is make sure that I ask myself logical questions; ask myself ‘what’ questions rather than ‘why is this happening?’, ‘Why did he do that?’, ‘Why did she say that?’ It's going to invoke emotion in me as opposed to going, ‘what was said?’ And the other thing for me is that I work a lot with people, and I see is they always make up stories for themselves and so they do the other person's part as well. If we use the example of the frown, they decide that the person is frowning at them and so they already make that decision and they make the decision then as to why they must be upset with me or whatever it is.

So, one of the big ones for me that I now do, is if I do have any doubts and uncertainties, I ask questions. If I felt someone was frowning at me and they kept doing it, it wasn't just a fleeting glance, I'd go over and go: ‘hey, can I just have a chat with you for a sec., It's probably me, not you, but are you upset with me about something right now? And get it out in the open because that unknown, let’s us go crazy in here (points to the head) and will come up with its own dialogue and its own story. And we'll start catastrophizing, and we'll start making up the end result, and we'll decide: ‘Oh yeah that must be why he's upset with me or whatever it is.’ Then, when we do have that next interaction with that person, we are ready with that ‘evidence’ to duke it out with them and to get into conflict. So, for me, it's being able to make the unknown known by asking questions. I love that.

So, do we have a practical tip or exercise from each of us? We've got a few minutes left and Sandhya, you've just done one. You might even want to take us through that. But what's a practical tip, I taught one yesterday about being able to go through the process of being able to work out what our emotion is and then, do an audit on our thoughts and decide on the outcome and then to control the sabotage and then decide on the strategy. So, you can go back and you listen to that one tomorrow. But do you have something like that, Rushdina, that you can take us through.

Rushdina: Right. I'll talk about two, which I often practice almost every day. One is the exercise. So that's in muscle contraction and loosening. It's called PMR (Progressive Muscle Relaxation). You can try it with your hand muscle with your lower arms, upper arms, jaw muscle, abdominal muscle, your feet, or your calves or your thighs. So, you contract the muscles, hold it for 10 seconds and let it lose. Stay for 20 seconds and again contract it for another 10 seconds. You can repeat three to four times. You can do this twice a day. It really helps get the oxygen circulated well, and you feel a lot fresher than before. So, that's one thing.

Another thing which I felt really useful in terms of exercises is when I rub my temple, the joints on the back of my ears really helps. And headlining the border of my head makes me feel good - it's very refreshing. So those are the two exercises that I usually practice. In addition to that, one thing I do, just like Sandhya does her meditation, the breathing technique, the fragmenting, I do that and I leave myself to disconnect to some other scene. I’ve learned it from the local therapy Dr. Victor Frankel has mentioned in his book. It's like disconnecting from the present and going into somewhere, connecting yourself to somewhere; to a place or to a situation that you really cherished and love being at. It could be a place you visited in your childhood, or it could be a holiday destination you visited last year, or a destination you dream of visiting.

There are many video tutorials on the YouTube giving out the background music, the forest green waterfall background, and raindrop music. Those video tutorials help bring in the background sound for you. So, as you're closing your eyes, you can feel yourself that you're physically there. So, you try to connect with your vision, by closing your eyes. First, you try to see what you want to see and you try to smell it. If you're studying in the grass, if you're imagining you're standing in the grass, you need to try to smell; imagine the smell of your grass, and then the feel of the grass, the sensation that it brings on your skin. So, these are the feelings you need to connect with.

This particular technique helps me a lot. I feel that as the dopamine rush, getting back, I feel energized. And especially when you're stuck at home for such a long time, you can't get anywhere. You can't go anywhere. No holiday is possible. It's really helpful.

Grant: Love that. One of the things I've been telling people all along since this pandemic started is that; ‘it's not what we do that's changed; It's just how we're doing it.’ I just heard you go on a holiday on YouTube, so it's getting those same things that we want but getting them in different ways. I love that.

For me, I love to get into nature and I'm blessed that I live on the largest botanical gardens in the Southern hemisphere. It’s is literally just there- It's just in my backyard. So, I go walking in that and to get into nature and see lots of huge trees. We’ve also got kangaroos and little rabbits running around. So just getting into nature is something that really helps me.

So, thank you Rushdina. What about you Sandhya? You can finish this off with something that you do.

Sandhya: Other than breathing, another technique that I really find very useful, especially these days. And it’s a counting technique. It is like this:

When you're feeling anxious or you're feeling very disturbed, frustrated- any emotion that you do not want to experience at that point – remember to look at five different things.

You look at five different things and then you touch four different things, all four should have different textures. So, you just have to experience different textures – it can sometimes be in front of you or the opposite of you. It can be a pen or paper, your phone or your laptop. Then you listen to three different voices. So, you can listen to somebody speaking, or something in the background, like the wind or the traffic. Then you try to smell two different smells. Sometimes it is there. Sometimes you can just remember the memory of a nice smell. And one thing that tastes. If you have just had coffee, then yes, you could feel that or something. If you have a candy or something, you could actually feel that.

So ,you do these five things; five, four, three, two, and one, and that helps you to ground yourself and helps you take a grip on your frustration or anxiety that you're actually feeling. So, this is one technique that I find very useful, especially when I'm anxious or frustrated.

Grant: Love that. I’m not going to go deep into the neuroscience around Emotional Intelligence in this session, but, let me give you a short explanation on how this works: all our sensory data comes into our brain via the thalamus, which is in the limbic system in the emotional brain except the smell. The olfactory system does not come in through that channel. So, it's so powerful. And it's one that people don't often use. And I love when I'm coaching someone and I'm taking them back to a time when they felt empowered. I always ask them to notice the smells that they were smelling. And it's such a powerful thing, which is another reason, and my exercise is a grounding one as well; that's another reason to get outside, to get out in nature.

I know you've got to do that within the constraints of what your different rules and regulations are right now, but even within our own homes, we can do these practical tips.

One of the things right now, and I'm going to say it again: I'm not lessening the challenges that people have, and they're all different around the world right now. Even looking at things differently and going: ‘I get to stay inside as opposed to, I'm not allowed to go outside.’ So, reframe. The power of reframe and then be able to go: ‘Okay, it's not that I can't do this because I can't go outside. What can I smell, touch, feel, taste, look at inside my home? So, putting ourselves and saying our environment is conducive to what it is we that want to do, rather than the other way round.

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