Why your health and wellbeing is the foundation to skyrocket your performance (and 3 key things to focus on)

We expect athletes to eat well, get good sleep and probably do some exercise (I know that bit is pretty obvious). Of course they do. They are under huge pressure stood on that 100m race line and they would be really disappointed in themselves if they felt they hadn’t given race preparation their all. 

Unlike the athlete who puts hours and hours into preparation for a stressful moment, in the office we are exposed to 100s of stressors but respond by reaching for another coffee or consoling ourselves with a bit of chocolate. 

So why are we any different? 

You might not identify as a 100m sprinter or an olympic skier, but bear with me. As leaders, as parents, as partners, as part of a team, we are continually standing on that 100m line. Be it a pitch, be it a client meeting, be it a job interview or even a difficult bath time. 

One thing is a given. We are continually exposed to stress. It’s how we prepare ourselves for stress and how we choose to respond to it that is where we can learn from the athlete. 

Let’s talk stress

Stress is a physiological response to something the body perceives as a threat. It is an incredible response that has allowed us to be so successful as a human race. It keeps us alive and puts us in the best physical position to be able to ‘fight or flight’. This stress could be being chased by a lion, but it is the same response at feeling stressed about a deadline, feeling overwhelmed by workload, feeling not good enough or feeling like you’re going to fail. The same chemical changes happen at the cellular level. 

So what’s happening when we are stressed? 

Say’Hi’ to cortisol and adrenaline. 

The body prioritises keeping you alive when stressed and will down-regulate all non-essential body processes. So that’s more blood being pumped into your muscles, more sugar and fats in your blood ready to make energy, but it’s also less blood going to your digestive system, less blood to your thyroid and less blood to your reproductive organs. We are designed to be able to deal with this for a short period of time, it actually has lots of benefits; it makes us focused and driven. However, the chronic expression of cortisol and adrenaline doesn’t do us any favours. Stress contributes to high blood pressure, digestive issues, menstrual cycle issues, nutrient deficiencies and problems with your thyroid.

I also refer a lot in clinic to something I call the ‘trip wire effect‘. If our baseline level of stress is already elevated, it takes very little to push us over into very stressed. Whereas if we can work on lowering our baseline, dipping more into ‘rest and digest‘ mode, we have more capacity to respond to stress before we hit the tripwire.

So whilst we can’t always control our stressors, we can control how we support our nervous system to be able to respond to and recover from stress in an optimal way. The opposite side to our ‘flight or fight’ response is our ‘rest and digest’ aspect and we want to be able to flex between the 2 and not get stuck running away from the lion. 

3 key things to manage stress better

By looking at your stress response you are setting your mental and physical wellbeing up as a foundation for improved performance and more energy. Try focusing on these 3 key things:

• Supporting your body to switch into ‘rest and digest’ whenever possible even for a short period of time
• To see rest as a tool to use before stress to help you respond better to stressors
• Giving your body all the nutrients it uses up when stressed to limit the negative impact of stress on all your body systems (mainly your menstrual cycle, digestion and thyroid)

See these 3 things as part of your athlete’s preparation handbook.

See how much more confident you now feel standing on that 100m start line or in the meeting room with these 3 principles in play?

They might seem small, but these 3 things are a huge mental shift and allow you to see your body and your stress response as something to support, nourish and respect rather than ignore and try to just battle on. 

How much better would it feel if…..

Do you think your performance would be better if you were able to walk into a meeting feeling energised, confident and assertive, rather than rushed, a bit nervous and fuelled on caffeine?

What would your loved ones say if you came home from work energised, with some emotional reserve intact rather than exhausted and drained?

How would you feel about your true potential if you found you were able to manage all the pressures of work and have space to think of more? 

So my key question, ‘what are you going to do next?’. What small change can you make Ito support your stress response and skyrocket your performance?

---

Hey I’m Becca, I help female leaders optimise energy, balance hormones and get cortisol working for them so they can show up with resilience, confident that they will find a way through whatever uncertainty comes their way. 

I run She Thrives® to help you with exactly that. Our first module, ’Strong Foundations’, does exactly what it says on the tin; it gets your body and health working for you so we can then grow to develop you as a resilient leader who is confident in who they re and what the do. 

Here are some of the things we cover: 

• Becoming a person of action
• Emotional eating
• Visualising your goal
• Understanding stress hormones
• Understanding reproductive hormones

How you will feel at the end of this first stage:

‘I have a clear understanding of where I am now and a vision of where I want to be at the end of this journey. I know what it looks like, how it feels and the next few steps to get me closer to this reality’

If this sounds like where you want to be in 4 weeks time, get in touch.