CHAPTER 5

survive and thrive

the battle in your brain

Surviving means being able to live to function and work. It is not a simple biological process. Survival has emotional and even spiritual dimensions. In the most primal sense, survival means that our bodies continue to function and maintain themselves—breathing, eating, sleeping, and so forth. We make it through another day! Most of us would agree that it seems like a dismal way to live and a boring—if not depressing—way to work. (Of course, it beats the alternative!) And in some coaching situations, we do have to start with simple survival, as we will illustrate later in this chapter.

But in most situations as humans, we aspire to not just survive but also to thrive. We need both the PEA and NEA. Snakes, on the other hand, will rely heavily on NEA for survival, while we suspect that the PEA plays only a minimal role, if any, in their lives.¹ But people are different. We need PEA arousal to feel motivated to grow or change, to seek pleasure and to play. As we described in chapter 4, the PEA enables us to thrive by activating stress-alleviating hormones that produce feelings of safety, hope, and even joy. And we need the NEA too, because it helps us survive by activating our stress hormonal response to either fight or make a fast getaway or prepare for a defensive posture in a situation. The NEA also helps us to sharpen our focus cognitively and emotionally, which allows us to perform tasks with mental and physical acuity. When we try to help people as coaches, managers, or other kinds of helpers, we guide them to engage in both the PEA and NEA, and to find the best balance between PEA and NEA at that time in their life and work.

The most effective balance will change over time and depending on the situation, so the coach or manager or teacher should monitor changes in the person’s environment and experiences over time. The dilemma is that once a person is in the NEA, she may not “see” a way out and therefore feel stuck. That would block further movement and any self-initiated tipping point into the PEA. Again, the coach or other helper becomes critical to motivating change, learning, and development, which means helping the coachee learn to move back and forth between the PEA and NEA, while staying primarily in the PEA.

In this chapter, we will examine further how this back-and-forth movement can achieve a balance that helps people pursue sustained, desired change. Why? Because the PEA is both a tipping point to help someone move to the next stage of change through ICT, and the psychophysiological state in which a person is open to new ideas, other people, and emotions. This chapter will also explore in-depth the brain science supporting these ideas, including insights from our study of the neuroscience behind coaching to the PEA versus the NEA. Additionally, we will look at what occurs after invoking someone’s PEA—coaches and helpers need to pay attention to the dynamics of what emerges next in the person and help her move ahead. This is where balance becomes an issue, between the human instinct to survive and the human desire to thrive.

coaching to survive

Sometimes when helping someone, we might need to start with simple survival (tapping into the NEA)—such as when an individual has a medical condition or injury that warrants medical attention but is avoiding getting the help they need. There might not be time to examine the underlying causes or help her put it in the context of a long-term vision. She needs help right now. But even coaching someone to survive requires some PEA.² Think about it. Even when the person is experiencing symptoms or physical injury, if the coach frames the task of getting medical attention as something she must or should do, it might backfire. That is coaching for compliance, which as we’ve shown invokes the NEA—and for someone not getting medical attention in a timely manner, may trigger other physical problems. That’s why even if the NEA is needed initially, it has to be balanced with some PEA to keep the person upbeat and motivated, or in this example, increase the likelihood that she will take the medicine or rehab needed to heal.³

Take the situation in which Bob Shaffer found himself.⁴ Bob’s work as Chief Auditor and Executive Vice President of Fifth Third Bank was challenging and stimulating, and he was doing exceedingly well. But soon after enrolling in a leadership program offered through his employer, he realized he wanted to make some important changes. Working with a coach in the program from Case Western Reserve, Bob reflected on his life balance—specifically, his mind-body-heart-spirit balance, which we contend are the four key components of any process of renewal.⁵ Bob concluded: “I’m out of balance on all of them.”

Almost twenty years after playing college football and being at the top of his game physically, Bob felt the effects of a career that demanded significant attention and long hours. His life outside of work was also full with family activities that centered around his wife and three daughters. Physical exercise dropped behind personal and professional commitments, and he found himself a hundred pounds over his ideal weight. He could feel how this was depleting his energy and threatening his ability to survive—both as an executive and a person. Although this was both a health problem and a symptom of other challenges he was facing, Bob knew at some point he would have to muster the motivation to lose weight or risk shortening his life and sacrificing time and experiences with the people he loved dearly.

This was a clear invocation of Bob’s NEA—the instinct to survive. But the coach knew she would have to invoke the PEA as well if Bob was to have any hope of following through with the changes he knew he had to make. That’s why the coach began by asking Bob to develop his vision for his ideal life (and work) ten to fifteen years in the future. As Bob described it, it was the first time in his career where he was asked to focus on “not only my job skills, but more importantly, on my personal development as a leader. It was the first time that I felt it was okay in the workplace to talk about me.”

Although Bob knew he wanted a more balanced life in general, he decided to start by committing to improve his physical health. He’d heard about a good personal trainer his friends were using, and he called the trainer the next day. The trainer, like Bob’s coach, asked what he wanted to achieve. “I want to live a long healthy life with my wife and three daughters and walk my daughters down the aisle,” he said—and added, “I want to run a local 10-K Race.” Bob’s wife was a runner, and usually he’d wait for her at the finish line of the race. Now he wanted to run the race with her. He said, “I also want to be a positive role model to my family. I want to lose a hundred pounds!”

At this point, Bob joined millions of others around the world. The growth of obesity and evidence of Type II diabetes is an epidemic in both the developed and developing world. But in Bob’s case, his need to survive was guided by a clear personal vision and the support of an executive coach and a personal trainer. This changed his prognosis. Bob proceeded to reach some amazing milestones over the next year. He was working out six days a week. He lost 105 pounds and successfully finished the 10-K with his wife. His new energy was evident to his employees and peers at work. He was truly a changed person and it showed. Both his first coach from Case Western Reserve’s program who worked with him for a year and another internal coach from within the ranks of Fifth Third Bank who began working with him later were a major source of support for Bob. As he said, “I never had follow-up coaching after an executive program before. It really established the accountability . . . taking the excitement and passion you have in the workshop itself and sustaining it.” His coach had stressed the idea of being intentional about change, so Bob regularly committed his intentions to paper. “I’m a big believer in having a personal vision and a personal balance sheet,” he said, “and I constantly look at them and refine them.”

The sustainable power of invoking the PEA and Bob’s vision is evident now, seven years later: he has kept most of the weight off (i.e., a net loss of eighty pounds), he and his wife regularly work out together, and he continues to see his trainer three times a week. Bob still talks about the moments of insight with his coach, and about how developing his personal vision was an exciting tipping point in his life. His transition at work has been equally dramatic. Bob is now Chief Human Resource Officer for the bank, a job he says feels more aligned with his interests and passions—something he felt much more confident to pursue once he’d addressed his health issues and could envision a more positive, hopeful future for himself. He wanted to bring his enthusiasm and increased engagement to the entire bank. In his new role, he is able to put the employee—not compliance—at the center of all of his activities, and those around him respond positively. PEA begets PEA!

Making changes that require self-control is stressful, often depleting our internal reservoir of energy.⁶ But sometimes they must be done. “Change is tough, and sustained change is not always a positive experience,” says our friend and colleague, Anita Howard. In her coaching and research on coaching, she has become convinced that the NEA is critical to successful transformation and growth.⁷ Her father was a prominent minister and head of Washington, DC’s, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) chapter, and his church was a key staging ground for efforts to promote racial equality in the United States. On many occasions, leaders in the civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, John Lewis, and others would gather in various locations around the country to discuss strategy. Anita was invited to listen from the age of about thirteen. She remembers the feeling of the conversations; for instance, when they were planning the 1963 March on Washington. “What I learned,” she said, “was that these people were existentially trapped in NEA landscapes due to the threat and dangers of being black in Jim Crow America—but they were able to tackle the daunting task of social change because they always, always drew on core values and belief. Belief in God, belief in the American Constitution, belief in humanism, belief that all children deserve a better world, whatever their race or tribe. This informed their strategic planning and use of non-violent approaches and methods.” So while the NEA played a key role in the meetings Anita witnessed, she says it was the shared vision that provided the context and predominant force for the change efforts to continue.

To understand more about the NEA and how the PEA fits in, let’s look at what actually happens in the brain when either of those mechanisms is aroused.

the battle in your brain

A few years ago, the digital industry began talking about the concept of mindshare: How much (or what share) of your brain, your conscious brain, are you devoting to a particular thing? The developers of software, mobile apps, and video games, of course, wanted to maximize the share of consumer minds focused on their products. It was another way to ask: What are you paying attention to or focusing on? They were onto something big—that individuals can bring the power of their attention to focus on a particular thing.

The question becomes, then, are you focusing on the right thing? That is what the best coaches guide people to ask themselves. Underlying that question is a growing application of research using neuroimaging and neuroscience to illuminate how our brains actually land on that “right” thing. Our close friend and colleague Anthony Jack has led a team of researchers in his Brain, Mind, Consciousness Lab at Case Western Reserve to further document how our brains use two dominant networks of neurons. He currently thinks it is best to refer to these two networks as the analytic network (AN) (historically, the task positive network) and the empathic network (EN) (historically, the default mode network).⁸

Here’s how those networks relate to what we’ve already learned about the PEA and NEA: When a person’s PEA is aroused by some kind of positive guidance or experience, his empathic network was activated at the beginning of the experience. And when his NEA is triggered—by negative feedback or discouraging experience—it’s the analytic network that was activated at the beginning of the experience.

But there’s also a third component that fits into this system, which we learned about in chapter 4: the renewal system (technically, the parasympathetic nervous system, PNS) versus the stress response (technically, the sympathetic nervous system, SNS). These two states most often go hand in hand, so PNS is usually associated with the EN and SNS is usually associated with the AN. However, they don’t always go together. For instance, someone can find himself in a fight-or-flight stress response and experience activation of either his empathic brain (EN) or analytical brain (AN), depending on whether the situation calls for analytic thinking or empathetic thinking and feeling. Likewise, he can be in renewal (PNS) arousal and experience either empathic or analytic activation. In our work, we are most concerned about a specific alignment of a person’s inner state. That is, how we can evoke the PEA in ourselves and others by inciting positive (versus negative) feelings while simultaneously activating the EN (versus AN)? We can think of these alignments in terms of equations:

PEA = EN + PNS + positive feelings

NEA = AN + SNS + negative feelings

Graphically, you can see this described in figure 5-1. In the figure, the psycho-physiological state of being in the PEA is the solid-line oval on the upper-left quadrant. Imagine this in three dimensions: the upper-left quadrant is coming out of the page toward you. This oval also describes how the PEA can be mild (close to the center or tipping point) or intense (toward the outer edge of the oval). Similarly, the state of being in the NEA is “behind the page” three-dimensionally, and in the lower-right quadrant shown by the oval with dotted lines. It is behind the surface of the page moving away from you. This oval also describes how the NEA can be mild (close to the center or tipping point) or intense (toward the outer edge of the oval).

As Anthony Jack’s research has repeatedly shown, the important thing for coaches to understand is that the two networks, the analytic and the empathic, have little overlap and are “antagonistic.”⁹ That is, they suppress each other. If the analytic network lights up for any reason, the person’s empathic network gets suppressed, at least in that particular moment—and vice versa. So in our example in chapter 4 of Richard’s awkward moment with his wife, he was clearly in the analytic network, which was suppressing his empathic network (and keeping him from noticing his wife).

Both networks play important roles, but in dramatically different ways. We need the AN to solve problems, analyze things, make decisions, and focus (i.e., limit our awareness to direct attention on a task or issue). We need the EN to be open to new ideas, scan the environment for trends or patterns, be open to others and emotions, as well as moral concerns (i.e., truly understanding others’ perspectives, not the more analytic activity of making judgments about right and wrong).

For example, when a negative, shocking moment in life strikes—a natural disaster, a heart attack, getting fired, your spouse asking for a divorce—we sometimes call it a “wake-up call.”¹⁰ But in fact these things are more likely to predominantly arouse our stress response, and push us into the NEA, where we’re unmotivated to create even seriously needed change. Our minds react defensively and begin to close down. As we’ve described previously, people (some coaches but also managers, parents, doctors, teachers) often try to motivate others by adding more pressure and providing negative feedback. In the process, they induce anxiety and stress in the other person but don’t typically motivate change or learning in ways that stick beyond short-term fixes.

And yet there are times when a wake-up call serves as a galvanizing force for change for some people. It occurs when a negative experience is not only shocking but also results in the person taking stock of his values and committing to something meaningful and positive in his life. For example, after a natural disaster, you might have a desire to spend more time with your family. You might realize that responding to another three dozen emails or working a few more hours won’t give your life more meaning. If the experience invokes that kind of positive sense of purpose or a reminder of core values, then the wake-up call has lit up your EN and has converted into a PEA moment, engendering a positive vision of the future.

Note that since both domains are important to our work and life behavior—but they also suppress each other—we believe that effective coaches and other helpers cycle back and forth between addressing the EN and AN.¹¹ They can do it quickly, likely in under a second. The cycle time may be longer or shorter, depending on the activities involved. We also believe that the best coaches are good at matching a specific situation to the network in a person’s brain that they wish to help activate as most appropriate or needed in that situation.

For example, the two domains have been related to different learning styles.¹² People with a preference for abstract conceptualization in their learning process may be activating the AN most often.¹³ In contrast, a preference for concrete experience as a learning style is associated with EN activation. We do not know as yet whether more frequent or intense activation of the AN results from training, socialization, or an organization’s culture or individual dispositions. For example, the moment between Richard and his wife was but one of many in which he becomes so engrossed in an analytic task that he is virtually blind to the people around him. He attributes this to his years of training as a scientist, first in aeronautics and astronautics and later as a research psychologist—all of which play into his “disposition to be nerdy and analytic,” as he says.

The work done in most organizations these days, whether companies or nonprofits, seems to focus on AN activation because of an emphasis on budgets, problem solving, dashboards, metrics, and analytics. We have observed that a person who repeatedly uses her AN—and who is good at it—is given even more analytic assignments. It doesn’t take long for a subculture to develop within a department. The people in these clusters begin to see the AN as the most helpful or relevant approach to any situation. They have become a coven of analytics. Another dimension to this preoccupation with one network, in this case the AN and analytics, is that it can lead, in some organizations, to a kind of objectification of people (e.g., referring to people as “human assets to be utilized or maximized”).¹⁴

Because the AN inhibits or limits openness to new ideas, a person being coached to her NEA (e.g., being coached to meet certain job requirements) might give the coach lip service at best. In organizations, such a focus on AN, when combined with a certain pride and esprit de corps in the company, could devolve into competition neglect, in which key movements in an industry are missed because of inattention to competitors.¹⁶ But at the individual level, it manifests as a reluctance to change and adapt, a reluctance to learn.

Like the PEA and the NEA, we also need both neural networks. If we spend too much time in the EN, we may become distracted and make less progress toward specific goals; if we spend excessive time in the AN, we risk making a moral transgression of some kind. It is not that the person thinks he is doing a “bad” thing, and he typically does know right from wrong, but that he ignores the possibility of something being unfair or unjust because of his focus. For example, he might make decisions that are expedient in terms of budget analysis but still not be best for the organization in the long term. We need the EN to understand things from other people’s perspectives and appreciate how a potential decision will impact trust and the relationships.¹⁷

As a coach (or a manager, teacher, trainer, cleric, or other helper), you want to activate the EN early in the process to help the person become open to new ideas and the possibility of change. It also helps him enter the PEA state, which becomes a tipping point into the five discoveries of sustainable change (Boyatzis’s ICT), as described in chapter 3.

For more specifics on coaching to the PEA versus NEA, see the sidebar, “Insights from a Neuroscience Study of Coaching.” Also, in chapter 7 we provide further explanation of how to increase the positive quality of one’s coaching relationships.

beyond surviving to thriving

If we pursued life as a series of NEA challenges, we might earn points for perseverance and toughness, but the sustainability of change and learning efforts are likely shortened. Life becomes a chore. And we do chores for only as long as we must. So we need to find ways to tap into positive emotions (i.e., PEA and therefore the EN and PNS) as often as possible.

That’s what Mary Tuuk has managed to do. Repeated ventures into the PEA have driven her to new heights in life and work. But it wasn’t always that way.

When she began working with a coach, Mary (like Bob Shaffer) was a bank executive at a major midwestern bank. As Chief Risk Officer, she had helped steer the company through the turmoil of the financial crisis and the repayment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) federal money. Mary’s career in risk management was fulfilling—but she knew she wanted something more.

In working with a coach, Mary had the opportunity to contemplate her ideal life and work ten to fifteen years into the future. As she peeled back the layers of others’ expectations, traditions, and a siloed career in risk management, she created an exciting image of herself as something else: a line executive responsible for a profit and loss statement (i.e., a general management position). But she also wanted to give more attention to her personal life—she wanted to spend more time singing, and she wanted to visit her aging mother more often. As she discussed these visions with her executive coach, more and more ideas came to her. Being in the PEA was opening her up to new possibilities. Her excitement grew.

When she shared her dream with the CEO, he listened carefully and heard Mary’s desire for growth and change at the company. He knew that Mary’s law degree and sixteen years in banking had prepared her for a major functional role. He decided to promote her to be president of the bank’s affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He did this while knowing that the responsibility was really at a level for a chief executive. But the CEO thought the job would be a perfect opportunity and challenge for Mary. She would have to leverage and refine her full range of talents.

Fast-forward to one year later, and the results were dramatic. Mary was propelling the bank to new levels of revenue, profit, and growth. As a bank president, she had commercial and retail banking, consumer lending, and investment advisory services reporting to her. She also bought a condo on a lake in western Michigan, which she visited frequently to be close to nature and “recharge her batteries.” And she’d found a way to develop and share her love of music and singing: she began to sing regularly with several church choirs. Then, at the local River Run in May 2012, she broke from the stereotypical bank president’s role and sang the US national anthem to nearly forty thousand spectators, as well as twenty thousand runners participating in the bank-sponsored community race.

As a Michigan native, Mary soon embraced her new community in western Michigan. She now serves on numerous community boards and sees her role as a community builder. She also works to advance women in business, another priority from her future vision of herself that she developed with her coach, creating a program—the Young Women’s Business Institute—at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. Its purpose? To “help young women envision a career in business and dream big,” Mary says. The program brings high school students to campus and facilitates social networking with business leaders in the community.

Mary’s quest took another turn when her mother became ill and needed her. As she said, “How often do we get a chance to reverse the roles and help our mother?” With her personal vision in mind, she left the bank to spend time with her mother, which was important to both of them. It also enabled Mary to reconnect with her extended family.

Later, Mary took a job at a very different kind of organization: Meijer Inc., a big-box retailer that’s a family business, with dramatic growth aspirations across six US states and in Asia. Although her title was initially Chief Compliance Officer, she has now added to it Senior Vice President, Properties and Real Estate. These roles allow her to learn the business and focus on supply chain and suppliers. Mary loves the cross-functional teams in which she can add more value and finds it to be a deeply meaningful role.

Mary has continued her work with internal mentees and her Young Women’s Business Institute program, which will have its sixth annual event this year in Michigan. She feels she is living a completely different life from the one she was living before she developed a future vision for herself, having found true meaning in her life. Music is a key part of that, and recently Mary accepted the role as president and CEO of the Grand Rapids Symphony in addition to her regular work for Meijer Inc. Clearly, Mary has gone beyond simple survival, and is truly thriving in her life and at work as the culmination of the work she did to find her ideal self.

achieving the right balance

As Mary’s and Bob’s stories illustrate, coaches can help people find the best balance between PEA and NEA arousal. That back-and-forth in the brain is critically important. Repeated activation of our NEA results in cognitive, emotional, and perceptual impairment.¹⁸ As research has shown, we need the NEA. But along with the NEA comes arousal of the body’s stress response (the sympathetic nervous system, SNS). Even annoying episodes, like someone cutting you off in traffic or your cell phone dropping a call, will activate the SNS. In that moment, you are less creative, experience more difficulty with complex tasks, and reduce your field of vision to a narrow arc (thereby not seeing the people around you and missing a lot of things occurring nearby).¹⁹ Or as one friend—an executive who had a lifelong career in engineering—told us, in the NEA/SNS state, he saw “people as problem-bearing platforms.”

For sound ecological reasons, we are designed in such a way that negative emotions are stronger than positive ones.²⁰ It is difficult to explore flourishing and thriving if you are about to be eaten or die. But once our survival is somewhat established and maybe even ensured for a time, we have a choice: we can live our lives focused on the anticipated negative experiences (what will come up on Facebook or Twitter about me?), or we can move into the PEA.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Kleovoulos, one of the Seven Sages, told us that we should experience things in balance—nothing in excess.²¹ Reflect for a moment. When you think of the last time someone said something critical about how you were dressed, did you think about it for a few days, weeks, months? Perhaps it still bothers you. In contrast, when someone said you looked great today, did you continue to think about it for days, weeks, or months? Not likely. How do you achieve balance when negative emotions are stronger?

A creative colleague, Barbara Fredrickson, has developed the positivity ratio. She and her colleagues have done dozens of well-designed research studies to show that having more positive than negative feelings is good for a person’s functioning at work and at home. An early part of her work suggested a desirable ratio of 3:1 in teams. The mathematics of that article came under criticism but did not threaten the soundness of being more positive than negative. Her subsequent studies showed how a great positivity ratio leads to better health (a better-functioning immune system), better cognitive performance, and better social experiences.²²

In the intimate arena of marriage, John Gottman and his colleagues spent more than fifty years studying loving, stable couples. They found that a 5:1 PEA-to-NEA ratio is needed if a marriage is to thrive. For those of us who are married, that is a challenging target!²³

In another fMRI study about the impact of PEA versus NEA coaching, we looked at how much PEA would be sufficient to clearly activate the PNS and renewal systems.²⁴ We discovered that two PEA coaching sessions to one NEA-based session significantly activated the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that directly activates the PNS.²⁵

Of course, the specific ratio to achieve a desired balance would depend on a person’s current state, mood, and events happening in life and at work. While some claim work-life balance (or work-family balance) is a crucial goal, we believe it is more of an aspiration. No one ever gets there, but it is important to keep it in mind and continue to rebalance your activities and use of energy and time. Coaching to the PEA can help, whether you’re the person being coached or the coach/helper.

We need the PEA more often than we think. Most of us tolerate negative environments and relationships—sadly, we have come to expect them. Research on states described by the PEA and NEA suggests that, for sustainable change, a person needs to be in the PEA two to five times the frequency or amount of time as in the NEA.²⁶

For example, when using data-based feedback—like 360 assessment results—showing a person the data, graphs, or report will typically result in his focusing on the gaps, weaknesses, or negative comments. This likely activates the AN as he tries to analyze it, and the NEA as he reacts in a defensive manner. At this point in the process, he is becoming increasingly closed to new possibilities. While he may admit the importance of using the feedback, the sustainability of any effort is diminished because of the stress and strain it adds.

On the other hand, if he focuses on his personal vision before he hears any feedback (e.g., 360-degree assessments), he has a greater chance of creating a positive, strongly desired context for the feedback. That is, the context should be his vision and dreams. Our close friends and colleagues at ESADE in Barcelona, professors Leticia Mosteo, Joan Manuel Batista, and Ricard Serlavos, have shown that twenty-five- to thirty-five-year-old MBAs improve their personal vision dramatically, as well as their emotional and social intelligence behavior, as a result of a course focused on their personal vision versus other more traditional approaches of focusing on correcting weaknesses that appear from feedback of various sources, including their 360-degree feedback.²⁷ But even in helping individuals make sense of 360 feedback, the coach first should focus on the person’s strengths to further emphasize the PEA state and keep it going as long as possible. Then discussing the weaknesses or gaps in the context of one’s dream and vision as well as strengths becomes a useful aspect of the AN.

renewal and stress

As we’ve shown, when coaching someone to sustainable change, the coach—or manager, teacher, parent, cleric, doctor—must manage the person’s balance between PEA and NEA. This includes a subtler juggle: managing the balance of stress and counter-stress, or renewal. As with PEA and NEA, the desire is to have frequent cycling between the two experiences. The body’s stress response (SNS) is part of the NEA, and the body’s renewal (PNS) is part of the PEA. We need stress not just to survive, but also to help us focus and narrow our vision when needed. The dilemma is that in today’s world, we are dosed with too much stress. Often the stresses are minor, but they are persistent and in huge quantities. We forget that this morning was our turn for the car pool, or we miss an email about a change of meeting times, and on and on. When this is added with the occasional acute stress of a major problem at work or home, it tips us into the realm of chronic stress and strain—which is bad for us and those around us.

Coaches, managers, and other helpers can guide people to balance stress and renewal during the coaching process, but they also need to prepare people to handle that balance themselves in daily life. Both Mary and Bob were able to develop new, sustainable habits of renewal with the help of a coach. They learned to prepare for inevitable moments of stress, but also to give themselves the antidote to stressful experiences through activities of renewal—for example, meditation, modest exercise, yoga, prayer to a loving God, being hopeful about the future, being with someone you love, taking care of those less fortunate or the elderly, playing with a pet dog or cat, laughing and being playful, and a walk in nature.²⁸ Those are the kinds of experiences or activities that can flip a switch in our bodies, call for the PNS and hopefully the PEA.

Most of us know when we are feeling annoyed, frustrated, angry, hurt, or any of the correlates of a stress-induced, or SNS, experience. But fewer of us know how it feels to be in a renewal moment, since it is easily confused with rest, relaxation, or boredom. That is where mindfulness practices can help (see chapter 7 about being present and attentive with others). Training ourselves to recognize moments of renewal when we see or feel them (watching the sunset on the horizon, petting a dog), and then allowing ourselves to become present for them, helps us maintain that all-important balance between stress and renewal. So does variety and change.

variety is more than the spice of life

One reason Bob Shaffer had become unhealthily overweight and out of shape was because, over the years, he’d developed habits that turned his stress into serious conditions that created even more stress. Eating fast food because we don’t have time to get groceries and prepare and sit down for a meal is an example of a habit many people can relate to. Also, the quality of the food that we do consume plays a role in the nutritional value of what fuels our bodies. Overeating is often a response to stress. We seek the comfort of the fullness of our stomachs and pleasure of certain tastes or textures. Sometimes the process of eating is distracting and provides a moment of relief from the things haunting us.

Any addiction follows a similar path. Abusive drinking has been shown to result from feeling relatively powerless.²⁹ We seek relief and relaxation from a drink. Sometimes, we seek further relaxation and have two or three drinks. Once we develop a habit of having a few drinks whenever we feel stressed, it becomes associated with other sensations. Former cigarette smokers often report that they still feel the urge to smoke after dinner or with coffee. This is acknowledgment of a habituation, or addiction. It may start as a behavioral addiction—the action helps us. With time, when chemical substances like caffeine, cigarettes, or alcohol are involved, we begin to experience psycho-physiological changes. Now the habit is more than a pleasant moment. We come to expect it and then need it.

Whether a person is battling an addiction or merely trying to improve performance, substituting one less effective or even bad habit for another habit is a major mistake. It recreates the conditions that the person is trying to change. In addiction treatment circles, we call it exchanging addictions.

Variety, it turns out, really helps. To combat annoying or chronic stress, being comfortable with using a variety of renewal activities is a potent antidote.³⁰ Bob Shaffer succeeded in sustaining his changes because he engaged in renewal moments through consistent and modest physical exercise, competing in events with his wife that were fun, like running, changing his eating habits and routines, and even changing how he approached his work. Mary Tuuk did the same. She engaged in things like building relationships with the bank’s community, singing, teaching women to make positive career moves, and spending time with her mother and friends.

So variety is important, but so is dosage. Pharmaceutical companies worry about dosage. Our doctors worry about the correct or best dosage. The same applies to renewal activities. For example, studies show that if you were to spend sixty minutes working out as a renewal activity in a day, your battle to reverse the effects of stress would be better suited by breaking that into four separate fifteen-minute activities.³¹ For example, fifteen minutes of talking with friends about their lives; fifteen minutes of a breathing or meditation or yoga exercise; fifteen minutes of playing with your children or dog (or cat); and fifteen minutes of joking and laughing with friends or family. Of course, we are not saying you should not exercise. (And truly, you need more than sixty minutes of renewal in a typical day and spread out throughout the week.) But it’s a good example of how smaller doses, in terms of time and more frequent episodes of renewal activities, are better than longer, less frequent ones. And using a variety of activities in renewal is better than using the same one or two repeatedly.

Now that we have explained the basic processes going on in the body and mind, we can be more specific about what a coach or helper can do to bring a person more frequently into the PEA. In chapter 6, we will explore how creating a positive context for your future—a personal dream and vision—can help to sustain learning and change.

key learning points

1. To sustain a change or learning process, a person needs to regularly cycle into the PEA two to five times more often than being in the NEA.
2. Renewal activities in smaller doses in terms of time and more frequent episodes of renewal activities are better than longer, less frequent ones.
3. Renewal using a variety of activities is better than using the same one or two repeatedly.
4. The PEA enables us to thrive by activating renewing, stress-alleviating hormones that produce feelings of safety, hope, and even joy. The NEA helps us survive by activating our stress hormonal response to a threat, namely fight, flight, or freeze.
5. Our brains use two dominant networks of neurons regarding learning and change: the analytic network (AN) and the empathic network (EN). We need the AN to solve problems, analyze things, make decisions, and focus. We need the EN to be open to new ideas, scan the environment for trends or patterns, and be open to others and their emotions, as well as moral concerns. We need both of these networks. Because they are antagonistic and suppress each other, we need to balance time spent in each one.

reflection and application exercise

Go back to the exercise in chapter 4. What NEA experiences or activities can you avoid, minimize, or eliminate in your life and work? What PEA activities or experiences can you do more of during each week, either more frequently or for a longer duration? If you had the time, what new and different PEA activities or experiences would you try to add?

conversation guide

1. Discuss with friends or colleagues how most people do not feel as if they have the best work-life balance. How are people’s experiences the same or different? How can you move closer to a desired balance? What would others around you say about your ability to manage this balance?
2. After reviewing each day from last week, describe to others how many PEA and NEA moments you had each day. Do you or they see any patterns in the observations?
3. In the above discussion, explore which renewal activities you used typically each week and when? How many of the PEA or NEA moments lasted more than fifteen minutes? Which renewal activities could you add to your day or week that would require minimal disruption of current activities or obligations?