Be Resilient, Realize Your Peak Potential!

By Author: Chandra Pulamrasetti
Total Articles: 1
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Personal Resilience

Personal resilience is one’s ability to withstand, adapt to and recover from stress, challenges and adversities and continue to give the best.
Many employees and leadership go through several challenges – business lows, unmet expectations, attrition, financial pressures, chronical illnesses, family disputes, social problems etc. Neuroscience reveals that every repeated experience gets recorded strongly in the subconscious mind, and projects in one’s daily life, impairing personal health and work performance.
Detach from the subconscious mind programs
Research shows that people operate 90% of the time from what is stored in their subconscious mind and use only 10% of the conscious mind. Our subconscious mind stores our routine feelings, behaviors, habits, beliefs, and perceptions. When our present moment is colored by the unpleasant experiences of the past, we constantly judge, conclude and limit our performance in the current task.
To be resilient, one must first learn to detach from the memories of past experiences.

Right meditation techniques help to clear ...
... the mind and allow the limiting subconscious programs to be erased slowly. According to neuroscience, memories that are not recollected for a few days, automatically get weaker and disappear. Regular practice of breath-mindfulness meditation (Anapanasati) clears the mind of unwanted memories. One can easily feel the calmness in the mind after 3-6 weeks of meditation practice and move more into the present moment.

Develop self-awareness to overcome the present moment difficulties
This too shall pass.
One must be more mindful of the present difficult situations - these are temporary in nature and will pass soon. This requires self-awareness of thought patterns, emotional patterns and reaction patterns from moment to moment. Normally, it takes less than a second for the brain to fire a neural impulse against an environmental trigger like seeing a biased boss or hearing about a huge contract loss, and makes one respond negatively, often based on the past sub-conscious judgements and behaviors. This means there is little control on the response, and often the individual gets derailed, impacting the work on hand.

Many successful leaders have found a way to stay focused on their present plans and future vision and not get carried away by adversities. Meditation builds this quality naturally. A daily meditation practice helps us to become more self-aware and provides us the ability to choose a conscious response to situations. With self-awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and feelings, one can instantly navigate through adversities and stay resilient.

Few other factors that contribute to resilience include good relationships, strong problem-solving skills, overcoming fear of failures, proactively seeking help, living a meaningful life. Regular practice of meditation improves relationships greatly. It improves intuition to solve problems spontaneously. It makes people less worried about what others think of them and makes them value themselves more. In such a state of being, fears naturally drop and people do not hesitate to take help from others, as they see everyone in themselves.

How to use personal resilience to perform better at work and in life?

Meditation helps to make that transition happen.
Meditation increases focus for better performance
An average person has 50,000 - 60,000 thoughts a day. More than 90% of these are negative, redundant, and worrisome. Every thought generates electro-magnetic energy, and this is dissipated wastefully due to the relentless unwanted thoughts. Regular meditation drops them quite easily and helps us conserve much energy. In empty state of mind, all this energy is directed into the present moment. This increases the focus and attention onto the work at hand. The more focused we are, the more we create. We derive from Quantum Physics, that where our attention goes, there the energy flows and manifestation happens.
Hence, we become more successful with the increased focus and attention.
Meditation helps to go into a peak performance state called ‘flow’

The brain is an electrochemical organ in which electrical communication happens through neurons; this electrical activity is measured in frequencies called brainwaves. By altering these brainwaves, meditation helps one to slow down, recharge and connect.

There are five types of brain waves ranging between 0 - 100 Hz. For most people, the normal states are high beta and low beta.
High beta is the stressful, anxious, and worrisome state. In low beta, one is focused and executes well.
Meditation slows the brain waves to the alpha state, next to the theta state and finally to the delta state. Sometimes it moves the brain into the gamma state.

Alpha state helps to rest and relax well, get inspired to strategize better. It also provides solutions to ordinary problems. Theta state is great for creative solutions; intuition is at full play here. Delta state helps to go into deep rest and repairs the body.

Gamma is the peak performance state where the brain goes into full coherence.

Gamma brainwaves have the highest frequency of 32-100 Hz. In this state, the various areas of the brain work in unison to deliver maximum performance. Gamma state normally occurs when fully in the present moment, totally relaxed, open to all possibilities, more compassionate and grateful to all that is happening. The individual is not fearful of anything, inspired and aligned with the purpose. In this state, one is consciously aware of the environmental signals that are synthesized across all brain areas to receive the best outcomes.

It is also called the ‘flow’ state. This could be about delivering an inspiring client presentation, a path-breaking product design or a heart-touching employee act.