Invoke resilience: reflections on an emergent model
While preparing to write this blog. I returned to a three-part series I wrote this summer around resilience. I also reflected on how deeply I was touched by the natural world this summer; how much nature has to teach us about leading and resilience, if we listen.
This summer, a model emerged as part of my work and exploration into stress.
The Invoke Resilience Model explores a few things:
The nervous system involvement in stress
The experience of optimal stress & renewal
Concepts around an ideal stress window (taken from neuroscience research on stress as well as the 'window of tolerance' model)
Automatic responses to stress
And finally, 4 categories (in no particular order) that helped to make sense of the ways we build resilience -- 1) sensemaking, 2) movement 3) awareness 4) connection.
For a look back on the model and previous blogs I'm including the links below:
Video on the Invoke Resilience Model (just note that I have a brief 3-minute rant on leadership before I actually discuss the model -- enjoy!)
Previous resilience blogs:
A Resilience Menu (included below) which were created to go along with each blog.
This model has been a gift to me (particularly because… well, it’s 2020). I’m now also excited to share it with others, within the context of Invoke programs, coaching and organizational work. While this model is based on findings from research, many people I respect and neuroscience, it is also emergent. Each time I work with this model for myself or others, I see things from a new angle, and others share what they see. as such, the model takes on a shifting life of its own.
I find that using a ‘living framework’ much more helpful than those that are static. As we learn together, the model shifts. For me, some of the biggest shifts have been in understanding how stress can be positive, becoming more aware of individual stress responses, being able to consciously access my own renewal system (I even love how renewal system sounds) and learning evidence-based strategies that grow resilience.
What's interesting is how much of this work continues to come back to a recognition that humans are complex living systems, and unfortunately we are living with a larger cultural myth that our human systems can be treated like machines.
Moreover, in the last several months I've also noticed how connected ancient practices and ways of knowing are to these four categories. While they are all connected to current research and neuroscience, beyond these four words (sensemaking, movement, awareness & connection), I'm seeing thousands of years of wisdom. These have been practiced for centuries (and much longer), things we knew as humans before we had the neuroscience to back it up. While we're learning so much now about how these practices work in the human body, in my opinion, their value is not dependent only on the evidence. When I look at these four resilience categories I can't help but think of…
Dancing… to the beat of a drum (or a fiddle!)…
Rituals and medicines…
Community, culture & relationship with ecosystem…
Spirituality and myths…
These tie together multiple parts of the resilience model and they're valuable in growing resilience. They help us to calm, regulate our stress system, give us access to our renewal system. Moreover they can connect us to our aliveness, and the fact that we are rooted in community and living systems. For example, In dance and music our mirror neurons can kick-in. In this case, our renewal is shared and we're invited into a larger system -- connected to people, place and even though time to the larger story of humanity.
This is what it means to be alive. And, to me, that’s what it means to be resilient.
