Back in 2021, towards the tale end of the pandemic, I co-authored a book called Winning Mindset with 30 other likeminded people. We all have a passion for high performance and wellbeing. Each chapter offers a different perspective on these 2 topics, seemlessly blending them together, after all they are two halves of the same coin. I invite you to purchase this 'best selling' book via Amazon (click on the image below, it take you stright there).
In the meantime I offer my chapter hear for free and I trust that you will find it interesting and useful.
Title: Empowered Action Changes Things!
“Be the change you want to see in the world [starting from within]” Ghandi (paraphrased)
The most successful people say that persistence is their secret ingredient...The first step is going from idea to action. Action that changes things, the right kind of action.
Yet poor wellbeing can scupper our plans. Challenging stuff can happen in life and it can, knowingly or not, be the reason why we ‘don’t’ or the reason why we ‘do’. Unknowingly, it can chain us to our past, depleting our best efforts to be a successful ‘some-one’, to break the mould and stand out, to be our desired future self.
My deepest ‘why’ is that I endured a big trauma in my early teens (family breakdown) before which there was lots of change and bullying. It unknowingly resulted in deep seated negative emotions (anger and guilt) which, with no one to talk to, incubated through my teens, culminating in rebellion at school. These unconscious emotions would pop up at times when I was advancing my career, in a stressful professional role, as unhelpful waves of emotion and relationship issues and, over time, caused an autoimmune condition. I had a hunch to listen to the bodily messages and to take action to protect my health from worsening. My health, wellbeing and peak performance has significantly improved, as have many other peoples, since founding Turn Over a New LEAF and integrating Havening Techniques into our inventive transformational LEAF model: Let-go, Empower, Act, Flourish.
I write this chapter with you in mind at home. I invite you to grab a notebook/app and engage a different perspective. Answer the questions along the way, to ignite awareness and action.
Peak performance simply means giving a specific task, or situation, 100% of one’s effort, energy and strengths. In a peak performing state, you create the internal conditions to ignite your potential and flow, to grow beyond your comfort zone, to embed and sustain that until it becomes second nature. To that end, I will demonstrate how we use Timothy Gallways formula for peak performance: Potential minus Interference = Performance (p-i=P).
Along the course of the 2020 pandemic, research by mentalhealth.org, Sleep Council, imperial.ac.uk and the United Nations has uncovered a corresponding rise in ‘ambient’ stress, a decline in the quality of sleep, diet and exercise. These 4 factors ignite the ‘Great Negative Stress Cycle.’ Neuroscience warns us that it generates a ‘vulnerable electrochemical landscape’ the mind and body, escalating unhealthy electrical brain waves and generating toxic chemicals, both day and night. This is what we call ‘interference’ when the body is in survival mode. According to CIPD, mayoclinic.org, Huan Song et.al, and bbc.com, when endured for too long, negative stress can become distress and chronic/traumatic, contributing to mental and physical ‘dis-ease’ and/or relationship challenges and various levels of stuckness; including inertia, problem-focus or foggy thinking. Negative stress affects work performance. The CIPD notes the correlation between a rise in negative stress during the pandemic and a concerning rise in presenteeism.
You, like all of us, are a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. You may have potential, which is hidden from you and the world at large. Our potential can be unknowingly scuppered by poor wellbeing habits and internal emotional interference. At any one moment, we have a mixture of conscious/unconscious and helpful/unhelpful emotions, thoughts and beliefs which drive our behaviours. Our own ‘inner stuff’ can sometimes be our biggest obstacle to letting the best version of us shine through. Our capacity to get out of the way of ourselves may be one of our biggest strengths. When you reduce the interference of stressful emotions from within you, and tune into peak performance states, you empower your potential to ignite and deliver your best performance, tapping into your creativity, flow and strengths.
Here we explain our LEAF model: Let-go, Empower, Act, Flourish:
‘Let-go’ can be achieved using Havening Techniques® (explained later), enabling you to weed out unwanted emotions, related symptoms and behaviours, stemming from past trauma, which might have accumulated over a lifetime, sapping you of the essential energy required for peak performance. Note down what unhelpful emotions or behaviours you’d like to stop in your personal or work life?
‘Empower’ involves using Havening Techniques/coaching/NLP to tap into what we truly want in life and using the power of imagination and intention to associate with peak performance, goals and outcomes. What is the goal that you need peak performance for? What desired outcome do you want to achieve from that? What is your ‘why’? What's so important to you about this? What energising, positive emotions do you hope to gain more of? What would you do differently if you took the braver path?
‘Action’ involves experimenting with and forming ‘little and often’ wellbeing habits to reduce the level of stress toxicity in your body and forge a path towards a positive stress cycle. Deliberate actions to improve your mood, breathing, nutrition, rest/sleep and fitness with the intention to optimise your brain, gut, heart, nervous system, and you to thrive, whatever the external adverse conditions. What ‘little and often’ actions do you/can you take to engage your positive stress cycle everyday? Action changes things! What action will you take every morning that will start you off in your optimal self?
All of this is aimed at helping you to ‘Flourish’. That is, to deliberately integrate a balance of the following wellbeing domains into your life everyday:
Healthy body
Emotional well-being
Productive thinking and creativity
Positive Relationships
Optimal Communication
Engagement/flow
And which help to generate greater levels of the following peak performing outcomes:
Psychological Safety (inner calm)
Energy (get-up-and-go)
Emotional intelligence (positive emotions)
Neuroplasticity (brain resilience)
Growth mindset (stretch)
Mental and Physical health (comfort)
Synergy (spark/creativity)
Community (belonging)
Meaning and purpose (spiritual)
Accomplishments (achievement/contribution)
Authentic happiness (joy)
In truth, peak performance is unique to everyone. Take a moment to note down which domains and outcomes are your strengths and where you may have gaps.
The remainder of this chapter illustrates how we use Havening Techniques® to help clients achieve various LEAF domains and outcomes. Havening Techniques is a subtle yet powerful psychosensory technique rooted in the latest neuroscience, founded by Dr Ron Ruden, 20 years ago. More recently, it has attracted research from UK universities, King's College London and Cardiff University, confirming its efficacy in helping to address internal interferences that result in stress-related mental and physical ill-health and work performance.
Havening Techniques® engages our inherent biological systems to permanently heal,
strengthen and empower our minds and bodies (Dr Ruden).
Havening reduces the internal interference caused by negative stress, traumatic stress and vicarious stress, all of which can too easily become ‘encoded’ into the amygdala (the trauma centre of the brain) when 4 conditions known as ‘EMLI‘ are met: a threatening EVENT takes place (i.e. job loss/change/incident, person dies, relationship crisis, mental or physical ill-health event, performance failure etc.), with the MEANING ‘I could lose something I’m attached to’ (i.e. not winning/attaining a much desired peak performance outcome), at a time when there is a ‘vulnerable electrochemical LANDSCAPE’ within the brain, and there is a perception of INESCAPABILITY, that is feeling trapped or unable to control or influence the situation. Encoded traumas can be big, small and/or incremental, momentary, endured in childhood and/or adulthood, experienced in the first, second or third person.
Briefly note down any big or small encoded traumas you have endured in your life that could possibly be interfering with reaching your desired peak performance and outcomes.
Once trauma is encoded, the biological alarm system is set up which can cause an array of ‘fight flight’ subtle to overt and distressing involuntary symptoms (i.e. fast heart rate, sweaty palms, butterflies, foggy thinking, anxiety, pain etc.). Unresolved traumatic stress endured over a long period of time generates an internal toxic environment that can quietly gnaw away at our capacity for peak performance, depleting capacity in our resilience bucket, over time, creating a fixed mindset, suppressing our immune system and gradually causing a range of stress related ‘dis-ease’.
Note down any ‘fight - flight’ symptoms you observe in yourself and in what situations?
Now, I invite you to do a basic Self-Havening session. Read through this paragraph first before following the procedure. Note down your desired peak performance goal. Momentarily recall any stress/tension linked to that which brings up any stressful emotions (e.g., fear, worry, anger, frustration etc.) into working memory to activate the amygdala. Note down your discomfort rating of the stress/tension out of 10 (10 high discomfort/0 low) - for learning, aim for no more than 5/10. Use Havening Touch by rhythmically stroking your face and arms in a downward motion and hands in a circular motion. Harper et al's research in ‘Taming the Amygdala’ found this generates calming delta brain waves, ‘feel good’ neurochemicals and a neurobiological sense of safety in the mind. After which, we use various subtle yet powerful techniques, involving a mix of distraction, imagination, sensory input and intention, to help measurably reduce the perceived level of stress, creating a window of time to let-go, build resilience and tune in to the empowered peak performance outcome.
Now identify 2 off-topic activities you enjoy doing, i.e. cooking, trees, hiking etc. and 1 fantastically positive experience in your life and how that felt, then imagine yourself actually doing them, describing each one in turn for 2 minutes out loud. After which, note down your out of 10 rating again. Then repeat, each time enriching the experience with what you’re seeing, hearing, smelling and positive feelings until you notice your score has reduced. Now describe your desired best peak performing outcome, you at your utmost best, in flow, with empowered positive emotions. Then repeat the following statements several times:
‘What if I was [positive feeling] more of the time?’.
‘I deserve to feel [positive feeling] more of the time’
‘I can see myself being grateful for [this feeling] more of the time’
Observe the results, note how you feel!
LEAF blends in a selection of Havening techniques for 4 significant outcomes:
L | To LET-GO of unwanted emotions caused by ‘encoded’ traumatic stress, thereby freeing up energy and capacity to focus more on the performance task. |
E | To EMPOWER desired outcomes, goals and performance mindset. |
A | To enact a momentum of resilience ACTIONS and routines to enhance neuroplasticity over time, for a growth mindset and to learn and adapt more easily and effectively. |
F | To ignite a shift from limiting to empowering beliefs to broaden potential to FLOURISH. |
With generous permission from 3 of our clients, I illustrate here how we’re using Havening and our LEAF model to achieve wellbeing and peak performance in various ways. All names have been changed for confidentiality purposes.
Our first case study is about Frank who’s peak performance goal was to optimise his personal relationships and to feel a sense of authentic happiness. Relationships are at the core of our existence. When managed well, they provide a well spring of happiness and vice versa. Emotions are at the core of all our relationships, whether personal or business related.
Frank has a strong belief in harmony and service through relationships, and an interest in helping to solve other people's problems and that doing good brings good. At times, he would find himself being accommodating to the detriment of his own desires or needs being met. He would also have sudden panic-like feelings, shortness of breath in his chest combined with feelings of inadequacy and would become overwhelmed with dread. This might occur when helping others, when doing day-to-day or performance activities. Not that people would easily have spotted this as he was skilled at hiding it but the level of energy it took being on guard ready for the next attack and then recovering each time, was immense.
It transpired that the root of the trauma stemmed back to as early as a young child when he felt a sense of responsibility to make his then distressed single mother feel better but was unable to do so. This was at a time when there was a long period of arduous ‘ambient’ stress. Both mother and child were vulnerable electrochemically and therefore increasing the likelihood of stress or trauma being encoded.
Multiple therapies later, nothing truly worked until Havening Techniques. Now he reports ‘I feel myself again’, ‘I had no idea I could feel this safe and resilient’ and ‘I’m free to communicate openly with people’ and ‘I have the choice to accommodate others if I choose to’. After just 3 sessions of Havening/LEAF, his peak performance goal was made far easier to achieve. Potential minus Interference = Peak Performance.
Our second case study is about Sandra. Her peak performance goal, as a paid-by-the-hour contractor, was to not let severe Hay Fever stop her from working, and working optimally. For 3 months of the year when the cherry blossom tree is in bloom here in the UK (March - May) she would have flu-like symptoms, swollen eyes and joints, she would be scared to go outside in case it worsened, causing a corresponding negative impact on her mood. This negatively affected her performance at work and she had to take time off work when it got really bad, she knew her contract could be ended on one weeks notice.
With some investigating, it became evident that the Hay Fever started after a traumatic pregnancy, 18 years before. We used Havening Techniques to let-go of the unhelpful traumatic emotions that were still attached to the memory of the event. After 2 sessions, the Hay Fever was gone and continues to be so 3 years later. Sandra no longer feels unsafe going out for those 3 months of the year and can actually stand underneath a cherry blossom tree with no ill effects.
The wellbeing outcome was that she got her healthy body back. The peak performance outcome was she was able to maintain the high level of motivation, commitment and performance her managers had come to expect during the rest of the year.
Whilst this relates to a transitory auto-immune condition, we know that the symptoms of autoimmune diseases can worsen with stress and Havard recently cited a study, by Huan Song et al (5), finding a causal link between traumatic stress and autoimmune disease for a higher proportion of people. Hence the use of Havening can have a radical positive effect on the pain and discomfort of such physical health conditions for the advantage of peak performance.
Our third case study is about bill, who’s peak performance goal was to declutter his property. Being a hoarder of many years he wanted to try again. Using Havening and LEAF he was able let go of the emotional crisis state he was in, and some emotional baggage with it, and instead engage in empowered emotions. By stepping into a more creative mindset, he was able to envision his room being clutter free and doing meaningful and joyable activities in the space enough to motivate him to take action to declutter his home.
So, to summarise: Potential minus Interference = Peak Performance means first having an empowered peak performing outcome, being clear on your deepest ‘why’, associating with what you want to see, hear and feel, and setting some short and long term goals with that end in mind.
Secondly, Havening is an effective tool to help you reduce inner interference and smooth the way to that end in mind. When you push beyond your comfort zones there is a tendency for the body, life, the universe to push back. It might feel stressful, painful and a struggle. If you push through those barriers and persist on, leveraging them as opportunities to heal, using Havening, you have the potential to break through your own wellbeing and peak performance ceilings. No one ever said this was going to be easy, yet it can be made easier using Havening and our LEAF model.
Join us on a LEAF workshop or for a 1:1 session.
Remember: Empowered Action Changes Things!
Bio
Jan Carpenter is the Founder of Turn Over a New LEAF, certified Havening Techniques® Practitioner and Trainer, Personal Performance Coach, NLP Practitioner and Qualified Social Worker, at managerial level.
Jan enables peak performance outcomes by helping customers to improve on 6 wellbeing domains through the lense of his innovative LEAF model - Let-Go, Empower, Action, Flourish - delivered through online one to one sessions and workshops.
Throughout he integrates the practical neuroscience of Havening Techniques to empower transformation. The overall outcome being enhanced wellbeing and performance, towards flourishing in the humdrum of life or in any particular endeavour we set our mind to.