You, under stress. What’s your move? (4 options.)
The Change Question: How do you respond to the stress of the moment?
You are an animal.
Not like this. (🙂)
Mary Oliver gets us closer: You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
But I’m thinking in the most basic of ways: flesh and blood, beating heart, and lizard brain.
Under stress our clever prefrontal cortex throws up its hands and throws in the towel.
Our amygdala, that lizard brain, takes control and has four ways to respond.
Two you know already, fight or flight.
Flight: Run away and retreat. Go quiet, go silent, disappear.
Fight: Bluster up, attack is the best form of defence, so take no prisoners.
But there are two others: fawn or faint.
Fawn is to play nicey-nice. No conflict, no difficulties, make sure you cover up the rifts and pour oil on any troubled waters. You’re masterful at that martyr-like leap forward and take the blame and take the responsibility.
Faint? Well, you probably recognize this move. It’s a stationary version of flight, where you play dead for as long as you can, and hope no one notices that the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead.
Fight or flight, fawn or faint.
What’s your go-to?
You’re probably half-decent at all four, but most likely you’ll have a default response.
Mine? Faint. I’m still here, just pretending that I’m not. I’ve been called “the VP of Bottlenecking” more than once in my professional career.
How about you?
Pod Wisdom: If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail
It’s me, from the Change Signal episode "An MBS change tool: Audit what works (and what doesn’t.)":
"In the other plus-minus box, you have the frameworks that have high impact, but are underused. So why are you underusing them? I mean, who knows? You don't quite understand them yet. You haven't got to grips with them. They scare you a bit. Maybe they ask a bit too much of you. They're too challenging. But these might be worth taking a good look at because it's in that box you might find a breakthrough approach that can really boost the success of the transformation that you're leading right now."
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The Last Word
“I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.”
~ Christian Bobin
