Insights & Articles by Resilience Institute Experts

How to Build And Practise Optimism

In RI’s own sample of 21,000 professionals, 95% of the most resilient 10% scored themselves as thinking and communicating with optimism “very often” or “nearly always.” Only 9% of the least resilient group scored the same way.
Psychologist Martin Seligman’s decades of research on “learned optimism” found the real skill isn’t feeling upbeat, it’s a specific, trainable explanatory style: how you explain setbacks to yourself.
A popular rule of thumb, aiming for three positive observations for every complaint, doesn’t hold up. The mathematical model behind it was formally withdrawn by the journal that published it.

Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson describes the human mind as Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones, and there’s a real evolutionary logic behind it. In a genuinely high-threat environment, a quick, negative, threat-focused explanation kept our ancestors alive. In most of modern life, that same reflex mostly just gets in the way. Pessimism doesn’t protect you from much anymore. It just disables you.

What RI’s Own Data Shows

Across a sample of 21,000 professionals, 95% of the most resilient 10% rated the statement “I think and communicate with optimism” as true “very often” or “nearly always.” Among the least resilient group, only 9% scored the same way. This isn’t a small correlation. It’s one of the more consistent splits across everything RI’s own data tracks.

Optimism Is a Skill, Not a Personality

Psychologist Martin Seligman’s decades of research on what he termed “learned optimism” reframed the whole idea. The core skill isn’t feeling naturally cheerful. It’s explanatory style, the specific, largely automatic way you explain setbacks to yourself in the moment they happen. Seligman’s research identified three dimensions that separate an optimistic explanatory style from a pessimistic one: whether a setback is explained as permanent or temporary, as pervasive across everything or specific to this one situation, and as entirely personal or shaped by circumstances outside you. People with a pessimistic style tend to explain bad events as permanent, pervasive, and entirely their fault, “this always happens to me,” “I ruin everything,” while people with an optimistic style treat the same setback as temporary, specific, and only partly within their control.

This distinction matters because explanatory style is measurably learnable. It isn’t fixed at birth, and CBT-based interventions targeting exactly this pattern have real, consistent evidence behind them as an effective approach to depression and anxiety.

A Popular Rule Worth Retiring

A frequently repeated piece of advice suggests aiming for at least three positive observations for every complaint. It’s worth knowing where that number actually comes from: a specific mathematical model, popularised in Barbara Fredrickson’s research and her bestselling book on the “3 to 1 ratio,” that the journal American Psychologist formally, partially withdrew in 2013. A rigorous critique found the underlying equations were borrowed from fluid dynamics and had no legitimate mathematical connection to emotional data. The researcher who built the original model declined to defend it.

What survives, and what Fredrickson herself continued to defend even after conceding the maths was wrong, is the softer, more honest version: noticing and voicing genuine positive observations alongside legitimate complaints is a healthy habit worth building. There’s just no precise ratio behind it, and chasing an exact number risks turning a useful practice into a performance.

Building Optimism: What to Do Right Now

Ask Someone Who Knows You

Ask someone close whether they’d describe you as more optimistic or more pessimistic, and ask for a specific example. Explanatory style is often more visible to the people around you than to yourself.

Notice the Actual Words

Watch the specific language you use to make sense of a setback. “This always happens to me” is the permanent, pervasive, personal pattern Seligman’s research flags directly. Just noticing the phrase as it happens is the first real step.

Reframe Toward Responsibility

Try replacing the blame-framed version with “what could I do differently?” That single shift moves the explanation from a fixed, personal failing toward something specific and within your control, exactly the shift that defines an optimistic explanatory style.

Stay Genuinely Alert for Good News

Make a habit of actively noticing and voicing positive observations alongside legitimate complaints. There’s no magic ratio to hit, just a real, worthwhile habit of not letting the negative crowd out everything else by default.

The Foundations Running in the Background

Fatigue, isolation, and ongoing distress all measurably erode optimism, which is worth knowing before assuming a pessimistic stretch is purely a mindset problem. Protecting sleep, staying genuinely social, making time to relax and play, and deliberately nurturing positive emotions, joy, gratitude, appreciation, hope, and kindness, all support the same explanatory-style shift the practices above are aiming for. Optimism doesn’t run on willpower alone; it runs on the same foundational rhythm everything else in resilience depends on.

Periods of genuine uncertainty, economic, social, or otherwise, tend to make optimism both harder to sustain and more valuable when it holds. The skill doesn’t get easier to build during hard stretches. It just becomes more worth having.

Optimism isn’t a mood you either have or don’t. It’s the sentence you choose when explaining what just went wrong, and that sentence is trainable.

Ten Health Claims Worth a Second Look

Some popular health advice genuinely doesn’t hold up: the French Paradox, the idea you can train yourself to need only 5 hours of sleep, and most supplements all fail to survive scrutiny.
Some claims need real nuance rather than a hot take. Depression’s exact biological mechanism is genuinely debated among researchers, but that debate doesn’t mean treatment doesn’t work, and it’s not a reason to stop medication without a professional’s guidance.
Sunscreen remains recommended by essentially every major health authority. The genuine nuance is about timing sun exposure for vitamin D, not about abandoning sun protection altogether.

Evidence-based medicine and the broader wellbeing movement are, on balance, a genuine achievement, aimed squarely at improving both the quality and length of life. And yet plenty of confidently stated health advice doesn’t hold up well under scrutiny, while other claims get dismissed too quickly in the rush to sound contrarian. Both failure modes are worth avoiding. Here’s a closer look at ten common claims, what the evidence actually supports, and where real nuance is worth preserving rather than flattening into a hot take.

“You Need 8 Glasses of Water a Day”

Outside extreme heat or heavy exercise, meaningful dehydration in healthy adults is genuinely rare. The thirst mechanism is a reliable signal for most people; the body generally finds a way to ask for fluid before it’s in real trouble. Young children and older adults are more vulnerable in hot conditions and deserve more attention. Overhydration, hyponatremia, causes more hospitalisations and deaths than everyday dehydration does, and the added sugar in most bottled drinks contributes meaningfully to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The simplest guidance holds up: drink to thirst, and reach for water over sugary alternatives.

“Sunscreen Isn’t Really Necessary”

This one deserves a direct correction rather than a myth-busting spin: sunscreen is recommended by essentially every major health authority, including the WHO and national dermatological associations, and that recommendation is well supported by the evidence on UV exposure and skin cancer risk, including melanoma. Skin cancer rates remain a serious and, in several countries, rising public health concern, and consistent sunscreen use meaningfully reduces that risk.

There is a genuine, narrower nuance worth knowing. Vitamin D synthesis does require some unprotected sun exposure, and brief, non-peak-hour sun exposure, morning or late afternoon, is a reasonable way to support that alongside diet or supplementation where needed. Some sunscreen ingredients have raised legitimate environmental concerns, oxybenzone’s effects on coral reefs among them, which is why reef-safe formulations exist and are worth choosing where relevant. Protective clothing and shade remain excellent additional tools, especially during peak UV hours. None of that adds up to skipping sunscreen. It adds up to using it thoughtfully alongside other forms of protection, not instead of them.

“Alcohol Is Good for You”

The French Paradox, the idea that moderate red wine consumption explains lower cardiovascular disease rates in France, has not held up well under more rigorous recent analysis. Large-scale research has moved decisively away from the idea that any level of alcohol carries a net health benefit. The combined social and health costs of alcohol, violence, road accidents, several cancers, mental illness, and family strain, are substantial and well documented. Enjoying a drink socially in genuine moderation is a personal choice most adults can make reasonably. Believing it’s actively good for you is the part the evidence no longer supports.

“I Only Need 5 Hours of Sleep”

Sleep researchers are largely aligned on a range of roughly 7 to 9 hours for most adults. A genuine, biologically rare “short sleeper” variant exists, but it’s uncommon, and most people who believe they’ve trained themselves to function well on 5 hours are simply adapted to chronic impairment rather than genuinely thriving on less sleep. Consistently short sleep is linked to elevated risk across cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, cognitive decline, and mental health difficulties. Protecting sleep is one of the highest-leverage things most people can do for both health and daily performance.

“I Have Burnout”

The World Health Organization formally recognises burnout in the ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon, resulting specifically from chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed, characterised by exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy. It’s genuinely distinct from clinical depression, though the two can share symptoms and sometimes coexist, which is exactly why the distinction matters rather than being dismissible. Telling someone experiencing genuine burnout symptoms that they simply have depression and should “accept and manage it” risks discouraging them from addressing either condition appropriately.

What’s fair to say: not every difficult week at work constitutes burnout, and the term does get used loosely. Maintaining reasonable boundaries and taking real responsibility for your own physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing remains genuinely important. But the right response to burnout symptoms is addressing the underlying causes, workload, autonomy, support, and recovery, not simply relabelling the experience and pushing through.

“Take a Deep Breath”

The common version of this advice, a quick inhale through the mouth, tends to elevate heart rate and activate the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) nervous system, the opposite of calming. The more effective practice under pressure is a slow, complete exhale through the nose. This lowers heart rate, restores vagal tone, and improves heart rate variability coherence, the physiological signature of a nervous system able to think clearly and reconnect with others. Building a daily practice of even a few minutes of slow, nasal, exhale-focused breathing genuinely compounds this benefit over time.

“Depression Is a Chemical Imbalance”

This one genuinely needs nuance rather than a flat verdict either way. A widely discussed 2022 umbrella review by Joanna Moncrieff and colleagues found no consistent evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin specifically, challenging the simplified “chemical imbalance” explanation many people have been given. That review has itself faced substantial methodological criticism from other researchers, and the underlying biology of depression remains genuinely unsettled and likely more complex than any single-neurotransmitter story.

Here’s the distinction worth holding carefully: whether the serotonin explanation is correct is a separate question from whether antidepressants work. Multiple large meta-analyses, including a 2018 network meta-analysis in The Lancet covering 21 antidepressants, have found real, evidence-backed efficacy for antidepressant treatment in major depression, regardless of debate over the precise mechanism. Exercise, time in nature, structured social connection, and dietary patterns like the Mediterranean diet all have genuine, growing evidence behind them as well, and for some people are highly effective either alongside or instead of medication. None of this is a reason to stop or avoid prescribed treatment without guidance. Depression treatment is a personal medical decision that should be made with a qualified professional, not settled by a single research debate read secondhand.

“Detox With Hot Lemon Juice”

Detox diets rest on a flawed premise: the digestive system isn’t a tube that benefits from being “flushed.” The gut hosts roughly 50 trillion bacteria that do genuine, ongoing work supporting both physical and mental health, and a consistently healthy diet and lifestyle is what actually keeps that ecosystem functioning well. A daily cup of hot lemon juice adds meaningful acid exposure to tooth enamel over time without any offsetting detox benefit. If gut health is a real concern, a diet rich in vegetables and fibre, occasional structured fasting windows, and medical evaluation where appropriate (faecal microbiota transplantation is a legitimate, clinically supervised procedure for certain conditions, not a home remedy) are the evidence-backed paths, not a morning glass of lemon water.

“Supplements Keep You Well”

Most supplements lack strong, consistent evidence of benefit for the general population, despite the confident claims on their packaging. Two genuine exceptions worth naming: vitamin D, particularly for people with limited sun exposure, has real evidentiary support, and nicotinamide (vitamin B3) has some evidence specifically around skin cancer risk reduction in higher-risk individuals. For most other supplements, the honest picture is that a varied, nutrient-dense diet delivers what a pill claims to, at lower cost and with fewer unknowns.

“Staying Safe Has No Downside”

There’s a genuine, ongoing debate, argued seriously by researchers and commentators on multiple sides, about whether contemporary risk-aversion has gone further than it needs to, sometimes described as “safetyism.” Proponents of this view argue that measured risk, real adventure, and the freedom to fail are genuine contributors to resilience and character, and that excessive caution can leave people, especially children, less equipped to handle the adversity life inevitably brings. Critics of this framing point out, fairly, that many safety improvements, reduced road deaths and workplace fatalities among them, represent genuine, hard-won public health wins that shouldn’t be casually dismissed.

Both things can be true at once: safety measures have delivered real, measurable benefits, and there’s a reasonable case that some environments, particularly for children, now over-index on caution in ways that may carry a genuine developmental cost. The productive question isn’t picking a side, it’s building the judgement to tell the difference between risk worth managing and risk worth removing entirely.

A Framework for Evaluating the Next Health Claim

Whatever confident health claim shows up next, a few questions travel well: Does this align with how the body evolved to function, or does it require ignoring that entirely? Who benefits financially if I believe this, and does that change how sceptical I should be? Are my basic daily rhythms, sleep, movement, relaxation, and diet, already solid, since most quick fixes are trying to compensate for gaps there anyway? And for anything touching a genuine medical decision, treatment for depression, sun protection, medication of any kind, has this been checked against a qualified professional’s guidance, not just a persuasive article?

A good myth-busting instinct still needs to land on the truth, not just on the more contrarian answer. This article is informational, not medical advice; personal health decisions deserve a qualified professional, not a blog post.

Digital Technology and Resilience: What Actually Helps and What Actually Harms

A 2025 study of more than 35,000 people found deactivating Facebook or Instagram for six weeks produced a measurable, if modest, improvement in wellbeing, comparable to roughly 15 to 22% of the effect of a structured psychological intervention like CBT.
The harm isn’t the technology itself. It’s largely about design choices built to maximise engagement, and the dose and context in which people use it.
The same category of technology that can erode resilience, when engagement-optimised and unbounded, can also build it, when it’s collaboration tools, sleep tracking, or structured mindfulness practice used deliberately.

Organisms adapt to their environment over millennia to improve their odds of survival and reproduction. Humans mastered fire and complex language, gaining an edge over apex predators and the elements. We’re a species defined by relentless invention, and that impulse hasn’t slowed down. We’ve gone from tribal groups of roughly 150 people to a global network carried in a pocket. It’s worth asking honestly: is that shift outpacing what we’ve had time to adapt to?

What Resilience Actually Means Here

Amit Sood, executive director of the Global Centre for Resiliency and Well-Being, defines resilience as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back and grow despite life’s downturns. Resilience Institute takes largely the same view: high resilience is the capacity for growth, mental, emotional, and physical, amid and beyond adversity, not just surviving it intact. Some call the more advanced version of this antifragility: genuinely relishing chaos rather than merely tolerating it.

The New Atmosphere We’re All Living In

Weather has shaped human behaviour for eons, which is exactly why it’s still the default conversation opener. “Lovely day out there?” is really a way of reading someone’s mood and establishing basic trust. There’s now a second atmosphere surrounding each of us, shaped by algorithms that understand our attention and emotional triggers better than we consciously do. A full inbox or a stream of notifications functions like weather: some of it moves us toward useful action, and some of it brings nothing but overwhelm and distraction.

The Real, Documented Risks

Digital technology’s benefits are genuinely indisputable. It’s also not without real costs, and several of them are well documented rather than speculative.

Social isolation. Social platforms were meant to bring people closer together. Research has found the opposite can also be true: heavier social media use is associated with less in-person socialising and correlates with higher anxiety in large longitudinal samples. Separately, research on device presence has found that simply having a phone visible during a conversation, even switched off, measurably reduces people’s sense of emotional connection with each other. The device doesn’t need to be in use to interfere.

Attention and compulsive checking. A meaningful share of adults report real anxiety after just a short period without checking social platforms, and a smaller but notable share admit checking in situations most people would agree are unsafe, while driving, for instance. This pattern reflects deliberate design, not user weakness; platforms compete directly for attention, and engagement-optimised feeds are built to make disengaging difficult.

Cyberbullying. Young people who experience cyberbullying show a significantly elevated risk of suicidal ideation compared to peers who don’t, and researchers note this form of bullying can carry an added weight: it plays out in front of a far larger, more persistent audience than traditional bullying ever did.

Harmful content moderation. Content promoting self-harm remains a genuine, ongoing challenge for platform moderation, particularly for younger users. Platforms have made real investments in detecting and removing this content, but enforcement is inconsistent, and harmful material can persist under alternate framing even after direct terms are blocked. This is a serious, unresolved problem, worth taking seriously as a parent or an organisation supporting young people, without needing to catalogue the specific ways it currently evades detection.

Misinformation. Misinformation spread at real scale during the COVID-19 pandemic, and popular misinformation sources at points generated more views than major public health institutions. This remains a live, ongoing challenge rather than a resolved one; platforms have taken varying and evolving approaches to moderation and labelling, with real debate, from multiple legitimate perspectives, about where the line between harmful misinformation and legitimate dissent should sit. That’s a genuinely contested policy question, not one with a single settled answer.

What the Best Current Research Actually Shows

The strongest recent evidence on this comes from a 2025 study published through the National Bureau of Economic Research, run by Hunt Allcott, Matthew Gentzkow, and a large team of independent academics in partnership with Meta, with the academic authors retaining full control over the analysis and findings. Involving more than 35,000 participants, nearly 20,000 deactivating Facebook and over 15,500 deactivating Instagram, it found that six weeks of deactivation produced a measurable improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety. The effect was real but modest, roughly 15 to 22% as large as the effect of a structured psychological intervention like cognitive behavioural therapy. The Facebook effect was concentrated among users over 35; the Instagram effect was concentrated among women under 25. Deactivation also reduced participants’ knowledge of current events, a genuine trade-off worth naming honestly rather than glossing over.

The honest takeaway from research at this scale isn’t “delete everything” or “it’s all fine.” It’s that the effect is real, directionally consistent with smaller earlier studies, and meaningful without being dramatic, exactly the kind of nuanced finding that gets lost in more dichotomous popular framing of the issue.

Where Digital Technology Genuinely Builds Resilience

The same broad category of technology that can erode resilience when engagement-optimised and unbounded can also build it when used deliberately.

Collaboration tools. Knowledge workers spend a substantial share of a typical week on email and searching for information, time that real-time collaboration tools can meaningfully reduce by cutting down the back-and-forth of collecting feedback and comments separately from each contributor.

Mindfulness and meditation apps. Because this category is relatively young, large long-term studies are still catching up to adoption, but the research available so far is consistent: users report measurable stress reduction that can persist for up to two weeks after a session, and some show physiological markers of reduced stress even when they don’t consciously report feeling calmer. Reported secondary benefits include better focus, improved mood, reduced fatigue, and greater self-acceptance.

Health and fitness tracking. Apps that track diet, movement, or vitals make it straightforward to monitor progress and notice patterns worth adjusting. The tool itself won’t supply motivation, that still has to come from the person using it, but tracking consistently correlates with better sleep, more consistent exercise, and improved dietary awareness simply by making patterns visible in real time.

Sleep, the exception worth flagging. Devices used near bedtime are a clear, well-documented exception to “technology can help.” A controlled study comparing e-reader use to print reading before bed found e-reader users experienced delayed melatonin release, slept worse, and felt less rested the following day. The pull to check a device “just quickly” reliably extends into longer use and makes falling asleep harder. This is one place where the evidence points in a single, unambiguous direction: keep devices out of the bedroom, or at minimum off in the hour before sleep.

Technology doesn’t have a fixed effect on resilience. It has a dose, a design, and a context, and all three matter more than whether the technology exists at all.

Vitality Is a Super Skill: What the Research Shows

In RI’s own sample of 21,000 professionals, the statement “I enjoy vibrant, good health and high energy” reliably separates the most resilient 10% from everyone else. Only 9% of the least resilient group scores it favourably.
Vitality has a real academic home: self-determination theory defines it as the felt sense of energy available to the self, and it’s been actively studied and re-validated as recently as 2025.
A key nuance the fitness-and-sleep framing misses: research finds people can feel genuinely vital even after real physical exertion, provided the activity was autonomously chosen rather than imposed.

Some people walk into a demanding week and seem to generate energy as they go. Others start depleted and stay that way regardless of how much sleep they logged the night before. The difference isn’t just biology. It’s a specific, well-studied psychological state researchers call vitality, and it turns out to be considerably more than the sum of good sleep and regular exercise.

What RI’s Own Data Shows

Across a sample of 21,000 professionals, one statement reliably separates the most resilient 10% from everyone else: “I enjoy vibrant, good health and high energy.” Among the least resilient group, only 9% rate that statement as true “very often” or “nearly always.” Vitality functions as both an output and an input here. People who wait passively for it to arrive via doctors, public services, or luck tend to suffer. People who actively invest in the foundations, or simply decide to be vital, tend not to.

Vitality Has a Real Research Home

Vitality isn’t just a motivational phrase. Psychologists Richard Ryan and Christina Frederick formally defined subjective vitality within self-determination theory as the felt sense of energy available to the self, feeling alive, alert, and enthusiastic rather than simply not-tired. It’s been an active area of study ever since, and 2025 alone saw new validation research applying a refined Subjective Vitality/Depletion Scale across both older adults and adolescents, confirming the construct holds up as a distinct, measurable state across very different life stages.

Self-determination theory frames vitality as arising largely from the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, the sense of acting from genuine choice; competence, the sense of being effective; and relatedness, genuine connection to others. When those needs are met, vitality tends to follow. When they’re chronically frustrated, depletion does, regardless of how many hours were spent asleep the night before.

The Nuance Most Advice Misses

Here’s the part worth sitting with. A 2025 review of self-determination theory research on physical activity found that people can experience genuine vitality even after significant physical effort, provided the activity was willingly embraced rather than imposed. The same workout, the same hours, the same physical output can leave one person energised and another person drained, depending largely on whether it felt chosen.

This reframes the usual advice. “Be fit, sleep well, eat well” is necessary but incomplete. A rigid, externally imposed fitness regime someone resents can cost vitality even while technically improving fitness markers. The research points to something more specific: build the foundations, but build them in a way that feels genuinely yours, not merely compliant.

Building Vitality: What to Do Right Now

Decide, Don’t Just Endure

Resist fatigue and apathy actively rather than passively absorbing them. Commit to the pursuit of vitality as a deliberate choice, not a hope that it shows up on its own.

Open Your Posture and Exhale Fully

Lengthen through the spine, head back, chin level. A closed, collapsed posture reinforces low energy; an open one gives the body somewhere to put it.

Breathe With Intent

As you inhale, imagine energy moving up through the body in a spiral. It sounds simple because it is; the physical act of a full, deliberate breath genuinely shifts physiological state.

Let It Show on Your Face

Let your eyes carry the crinkle of a genuine smile. Facial expression and felt state run in both directions; this isn’t performance, it’s part of the actual mechanism.

The Foundations Running in the Background

Alongside the moment-to-moment practices above, vitality rests on habits that need to run continuously rather than being invoked once: protecting real sleep, building genuine all-round fitness, making time to relax, breathe, or meditate, and staying playful enough to keep extending your own creativity. None of these work as a one-time fix. They’re the ongoing infrastructure vitality is built on, and per the autonomy research above, they hold up best when they feel like your own choices rather than an externally imposed regime.

Vitality isn’t just what’s left over after enough sleep and exercise. It’s what happens when effort feels genuinely yours, not merely correct.

What is Spirit in Action in Resilience Spiral Part 3

Life is a storm. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you human is what you do when that storm comes. – Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.

Part 1 explored what Spirit in Action is and Part 2 scoped out why this is important at individual, community and planetary levels of function. In Part 3 the question to address is: “What exactly should, could or will I do?”

This is the most difficult challenge to engage with. Our personal responsibility is contentious. Some strive for decades in abject poverty, accumulating tens of thousands of hours in prayer or meditation. Others simply relax into the moment. You might choose to punish the body, discipline the emotions or train the mind. Or, you may choose bacchanalian revelry.

For many today, drifting about in mindless fidgeting, distraction and impulse gratification becomes the default. As we see in burgeoning reports the impact is clearly evident:

We spend 10 hours in front of a screen versus 17 minutes active (National Geographic, 2017)
The average person will touch, swipe or tap a phone 2,617 times a day (Lewis P, 2017)
Our fitness, strength and posture are in decline (Journal of Physical Therapy, 2016)
Over 70% take medication and 2% take over 5 medications (Mayo Clinic, 2015)
Adults sleep an hour less than needed – teens 2 hours less (Walker M, 2018)
We are self-centred and lonely – teen togetherness dropped 40% 2010-15 (Twenge J, 2017)
Anxiety (and worry) is a constant companion
Depression and suicide continue to increase
We have pushed our planet into the 6th great extinction (McKibben B, 2019)

Gyms, diet books, mindfulness, mental health professionals, medicine as a whole and medication have little impact beyond a lucky few. We desperately need a fresh approach.

The question “what should, could or will I do?” becomes interesting. With unlimited freedom to choose combined with the irresistible compulsion to react to short term gratification, most of us have surrendered the quest for higher levels of consciousness.

Many religions have been used on a “should” basis. Authorities decree that people should follow the rules of the church. If we look at the state of many lives, perhaps the approach has merit in our modern world.

What we “could” do is extraordinary. Imagine if we applied modern wisdom, technology and medicine with respect and resolve to human life. This is incredibly exciting. We are clearly capable of immense greatness – peace, vitality, love, clarity and flow. We watch this achievement amongst our athletes, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

This vision of actualised human beings has guided the great work of William James, Abraham Maslow, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Ken Wilber and those at the Mind & Life Institute. It is a vision of optimism and hope. In the face of the many challenges facing humanity, it is essential to remember and drill this possibility.

Spirit in Action is a method to frame and guide this journey. If willing and able, here are five deliberate practices that will take you to a much better place.

First, strive to be calm, steady and still in the storms of life. Caught up in the adrenaline surge of fight or flight, we sink to a reptilian level of consciousness. When calm you are healing, moving, feeling and thinking better.

Drill: learn and master contemplative/breathing/relaxing practice 5 min per day

Second, strive to be healthy, energised and dynamic. Illness, fatigue or lethargy makes the experience of enlightenment impossible to sustain. Being able to enjoy vitality is a key part of the experience of connection and joy.

Drill: be non-negotiable in your sleep, activity and nutritional disciplines

Third, strive to be positive, empathic and caring. It is essential to consciously feel and flex your emotions with an orientation towards generosity. The experience of peace, love and joy is diagnostic of enlightenment for many theologians.

Drill: restrain your impulses, generate joy and respect the joy of others

Fourth, strive to be present, focused and clear. Ruminating on the past or fretting about the future causes suffering. When present, we experience each moment in its fullness. Suffering drops away.

Drill: catch your thinking and focus 100% on the present moment

Fifth, live with skill and purpose – particularly in the testing moments. Flow is the state of full engagement with a meaningful challenge. Whether this is in loving prayer, skilled acts of compassion or creative pursuit, your spirit (little self) is in action and you will feel one with Spirit (greater reality).

Drill: define how, where and why you get flow and get a little every day

Accepting wise mentorship on this path of deliberate practice will accelerate your quest. It is very easy to get stuck in eddies when one area consumes too much attention. Many who exercise fanatically clean forget to relax or develop their emotions. Many meditate at the expense of their physical capabilities. Sometimes too much love, can distort our altruism into destructive sympathy.

Our development framework for Spirit in Action

Each of these base categories of discipline can reach levels of enlightenment. Consider the advanced yogi (super-calm), your favourite athlete (grace), Buddhist compassion (love), mathematical brilliance (clarity). They all trend towards flow.

There are many paths available for enlightenment. We live in a wonderfully diverse and creative world because humans courageously pioneer untrodden paths. Use the basic concepts and the lessons of our great spiritual traditions to stabilise and direct your journey. Seek truth, respect and practicality.

At the end of the day you have to choose and walk your own path.

As Gandhi reminds us:

To remake the world, you have to remake yourself.

Original Source: https://resiliencei.com/blog/spirit-in-action-part-3/

What is Spirit in Action in Resilience Spiral Part 2

What might a contemporary wisdom embrace? Can we seek to better express a shared narrative that seeks truth and goodness? How do we make this wisdom fit for purpose in 2020?

Part 1 explored spirit from two perspectives. First, the outer journey of connecting to a greater reality (Spirit). Second, the inner journey of integrating our physical, emotional and mental resources to nurture our essence (spirit). Both are basic freedoms for which we are each responsible.

We recognise and acknowledge different spiritual narratives – or religions. Many (see Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy) believe that they share a core wisdom. The core wisdom seeks truth and goodness. Humans, as story-tellers, are free to express the stories that help us make sense of, and apply, wisdom.

Purpose and Direction

More people die from suicide (800,000 per year) than are killed by human violence (21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Noah Y. Harari, 2018). While fulfilment of basic needs has improved, human wellbeing is in decline. Suffering – particularly in terms of anxiety and depression – is overwhelming. Despair is widespread.

The core purpose of spiritual wisdom is to reduce suffering. As we reduce suffering, we experience more joy. This is the direction of spirit in action. It is simple and clear.

Understand and reduce suffering.
Seek to build wellbeing and joy.

The fuel for this journey is hope. Modern wisdom must deliver a message of hope to people. That hope must be built on a good narrative and practical steps one can take to reduce suffering and increase joy. Each person must learn from an early age how to take responsibility for their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing. The must believe in growth for it is here that hope lies.

Subjectivity and Inclusiveness

Usage of “I” has trumped “we” in recent decades. Does spiritual wisdom serve the individual or all life? We express a wide range of subjectivity. Some risk health and life to boost muscle mass for a fleeting sense of pride. Others seek a drug or alcohol fix to serve an impulse of joy. Many fiercely serve and defend their tribe, race or nation as we see in modern populism. We may even seek to serve all sentient beings and the resilience of the planet.

This is a wicked challenge. It may be the most crucial responsibility of wisdom. While humans are easily seduced into selfish impulse, we are equipped with empathy and altruism. We spontaneously seek to reduce suffering. We can care so much for a child, money or a cause that we can neglect ourselves and others who need us. Unrestrained sympathy can cause more suffering.

Religious conquests with noble objectives to serve ‘god’ and secure a place in heaven, destroyed communities and their cultural achievements. Today we serve money with a devotion that has squandered the beauty of our planet and put all forms of life at extreme risk. Many put their own life and wellbeing at risk on a daily basis to earn an extra dollar.

At the end of the day, the dilemma is what to love? Myself now, my place in heaven, my children, my tribe, money, humanity, the rhinos or pangolins, all life, natural beauty, truth…? One can understand the frustration of rural leaders when billionaire naturalists want to protect animals by taking land, food and hunting rights from their people. Conservation is a war zone driven by love. What irony.

Personal Enlightenment

When resilience fails our behaviour becomes increasingly deluded, short sighted and destructive. We suffer, those around us suffer and hope for a better world is extinguished. The foundation of spiritual wisdom is to support and nurture this inner journey.

The higher we rise the more important it becomes to reinforce this inner discipline. When leaders lie, steal, self-aggrandise and abuse, the community and natural environs suffer. We see this in corrupt nations, churches, NGOs and businesses.

Maybe spiritual wisdom is to serve personal enlightenment only. Ultimately, working on both the inner journey of integrating self and connecting to a higher reality is the only show in town. This is the choice of the contemplative in a cave or monastery. Everything else is secular – cultural, political or scientific.

The commandments might be:

Respect, discipline and love yourself
Respect, acknowledge and be kind to others
Take care of your body
Regulate your emotions
Use your mind to see the truth
Act with wisdom and compassion

The Social Contract

We are social creatures. Our individual wellbeing is intimately connected to our community resilience. When we jointly debate and resolve how best to move away from suffering and towards joy, we become an enlightened and just society. The community is a powerful catalyst and support of the personal, inner journey.

A spiritual wisdom can be the mission and values that bond individual and community into a just, compassionate and creative force. When leaders and community hold each other to account, good will prevail. The different perspectives of a community increase the probability of truth and goodness.

When spiritual wisdom is absent, we have corrupt communities (or failed states). Self-interest, greed, corruption and mass suffering follows. Evil prevails. It is extremely difficult for personal enlightenment to proceed.

The extensive suffering and destruction to people, economies, environment and all fellow species is a catastrophic tragedy that takes generations to repair. Our ‘western’ attempts to intervene have failed miserably. This becomes a challenge to the next level.

Planetary Wisdom

We live in the age of the Anthropocene when human activity is the major shaping force on the planet. What we do over the next decades will shape the future of life. For 30 years we have known clearly the threat to human life and ecosystems. Yet, we continue to play a game of blind Russian roulette with nuclear arms, carbon emissions, population growth, and waste.

Neither the individual nor the community – not even a group of nation states – can solve this particular problem. Governance has evolved from tribe, to region, to nation and now wrestles with integrated regions such as the European Community. The pressing challenge is wise and just governance for all humans and the ecosystems we rely upon.

Our actions or non-actions have profound implications. How much plastic waste is enough? Do we leave failed states to the pillage of their leaders or do we intervene? Do we close coal plants and face economic decline when a coastal population is threatened? Do we leave Africa to double its population knowing full well that many species, habitats and entire ecosystems collapse? At what point do we obliterate a rogue state threatening nuclear attacks?

It is possible to construct a spiritual wisdom that might guide the decisions of global bodies such as the UN or WHO? We are facing questions of what is sacred and what is not. Religions have long restrained our impulses and excesses. It feels like a time when a new wisdom might be needed to restrain our consumptive hedonism so that there is something beyond suffering and despair left for our children’s children.

The call for a spiritual wisdom for humanity is loud. It may go by many names. The principles or commandments might be:

Seek and communicate the truth
Live with restraint and compassion
Respect and steward our planetary ecosystems
Act with courage and creativity
Keep a sense of humour and radiate joy

We will need enlightened individuals and resilient communities to help us debate, construct, guide and maintain it. The alternative is dark.

Part 3 addresses the personal practice of spirit in action.

Original Source: https://resiliencei.com/blog/spirit-in-action-part-2/

Choosing a Workplace Wellbeing App: What to Actually Look For

The digital wellbeing app market consolidates fast. Two once-separate major players, Ginger and Virgin Pulse, have each merged and rebranded since 2023, into Headspace Care and Personify Health respectively.
Rather than chasing a list of named products, the more durable approach is choosing based on category: mindfulness-building, clinical mental healthcare access, self-guided skill-building, or comprehensive analytics platforms each solve a different problem.
A well-designed programme in one 2015 study improved attendance, lowered health risk, and increased every measured productivity metric over two years, evidence that the investment case predates any specific app.

Employees increasingly weigh work-life balance and genuine wellbeing alongside salary when deciding where to work, while anxiety, stress, and burnout keep climbing in parallel. A NIOSH survey found 40% of workers described their job as very or extremely stressful, a figure that predates and has outlasted any single news cycle. Teams that are genuinely engaged and well tend to be more productive, which is exactly why enabling people to handle a complex, fast-moving workload without burning out has become a real competitive question for employers, not just a wellness nicety.

Why This Actually Matters for the Business

Employee wellbeing used to mean physical safety alone, preventing injury and accident. Mental wellbeing was largely absent from the agenda. That’s changed, and the data backs the shift up directly. A study led by Brent Hamar, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, tracked a medium-sized firm implementing a wellbeing improvement strategy over two years and found employees showed up more reliably, carried lower health risk, and, notably, every measured productivity metric improved. That case for investment doesn’t depend on any specific app or platform. It’s a case for taking the category seriously at all.

Why a Named List Goes Stale Fast

The digital wellbeing market consolidates quickly, more quickly than most “best of” lists account for. Ginger, once a well-known standalone provider of on-demand mental healthcare, merged with Headspace in 2021 and has since been fully absorbed and rebranded as Headspace Care, the same company, not a separate alternative. Separately, Virgin Pulse merged with benefits platform HealthComp and rebranded entirely as Personify Health from January 2025. A workplace wellbeing list built around specific product names risks recommending a company that no longer exists under that name within a couple of years. What holds up instead is understanding the categories these tools fall into and what each one is actually built to solve.

The Categories Worth Understanding

Mindfulness and Meditation Apps

Built around guided meditation, breathing, and sleep content, this category is preventative rather than clinical. A workplace mindfulness intervention study led by Wendy Kersemaekers found organisations that built a genuine culture of practising mindfulness saw increased productivity, wellbeing, and cooperation alongside reduced perceived stress. This category won’t suit every employee in a diverse workforce, but the evidence for it at an organisational level is solid.

On-Demand Clinical Access

For more serious, ongoing concerns, mindfulness alone isn’t sufficient. With roughly one in five people experiencing a mental illness in a given year, this category connects employees discreetly to coaches, therapists, or psychiatric care, often with tiered levels of support depending on need. Research into app-based clinical interventions in the workplace has found employees reporting lower stress and higher productivity that held up even six weeks after the programme ended, evidence the effect isn’t just a short-term novelty.

Self-Guided Skill-Building

Rather than connecting users to a professional, this category walks people through structured activities grounded in cognitive behavioural therapy, positive psychology, and psychoeducation, often organised into goal-based programmes a user works through at their own pace. It’s a strong option for employees not yet ready to talk to a person, and a genuinely evidence-backed alternative rather than a lesser one.

Comprehensive Analytics and Benefits Platforms

Aimed squarely at larger enterprises, this category combines coaching, benefits navigation, wellness education, and organisational-level analytics into a single platform, letting employers track engagement and wellbeing trends across the whole company. It’s the heaviest-weight option, best suited to organisations that already run comprehensive benefits schemes and want one system tying it together, rather than a starting point for a smaller team.

Resilience-Specific Diagnostic and Coaching Tools

A narrower but distinct category, purpose-built around measuring and building resilience specifically, typically combining a diagnostic assessment with micro-learning content and brief coaching sessions rather than general wellness content. Resilience Institute’s own app falls here: a digitised version of a framework built over two decades of organisational work, measuring resilience across 60 factors and pairing the diagnostic with ongoing coaching content. It’s designed to complement, not replace, in-person workshops and training.

Choosing Between Them

An app-based programme over a traditional Employee Assistance Programme gives employees more privacy and freedom to engage at their own pace, part of why EAPs were historically underused despite being available; workplace stigma kept people away from an in-person referral in a way a private app on their own phone doesn’t trigger. No single category is inherently superior. The right choice depends on what problem you’re actually solving: prevention and culture-building points toward mindfulness tools, acute or ongoing clinical need points toward on-demand clinical access, self-directed employees might prefer skill-building content, and larger organisations wanting a unified system should look at comprehensive platforms. Whichever category fits, verify the current company name and offering directly before committing, given how quickly this market continues to consolidate.

The category you choose will still make sense in five years. The specific brand name might not. Choose based on the problem you’re solving, then verify who’s currently solving it.

What is Spirit in Action in Resilience Spiral

“You have covered physical, emotional and cognitive but surely spiritual is the key factor in many people’s resilience?” the question came from a black South African business woman last week. Even across our team she will get a range of answers. Spirit in Action can be the end goal, quietly ignored or actively rejected.

The topic is contentious and potentially explosive. People can react with anger or contempt. The increasing prevalence of substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and suicide suggest a crisis of meaning. Without constraining the liberty of religious choice, perhaps the spiritual path could do with some cautious and curious dialogue.

Our Resilience Diagnostic and Development model puts “spirit in action” right at the top of our spiral. In a dynamic world of multiple spiritual pathways and secular alternatives, we owe our participant a considered response. We welcome your participation in the dialogue.

I address her question in three parts:

What we mean by Spirit in Action
What a modern belief system might embrace?
What practices underpin progress on a spiritual path?

Let us be respectful and inclusive of the many positive contributions that faith brings to our lives.

Spirit in Action: Part 1

Humans seek meaning. We’ve generated a diverse array of stories to make sense of existence. Some are more helpful than others. Hunter-gatherer communities came up with naturalistic magic. Agricultural – largely patriarchal – communities gave rise to the major spiritual traditions about 2,500 years ago. Some hold to traditional beliefs, while others embrace aspects of modern life such as electronic donations, apps and science.

Today, new spiritual promises compete with the older traditions. Science, sport, designer drugs, music, technology, biological diversity, and money compete successfully for our attention. In the past, you were a loyal convert or dead. Now, we are free to believe and do whatever we like. The thought: ‘god watches over me and might send me to hell’ is less scary.

Without the threat of hell or social sanction, a spiritual path is voluntary. It can be a lonely struggle of self-deprivation, deliberate practice, tenacity and patience. Few take it seriously. On the other hand, the decline in spiritual belief and practice correlates with increasing substance abuse, anxiety, depression and suicide.

As we pursue our own selfish and impulsive desires, we create tremendous suffering, threaten much of the life on earth and even our own existence.

Given the pickle humanity has created, perhaps we actually need a spiritual quest more than ever. But it must be fit for purpose in 2020 – not 500 BC. To work, it requires the principals of evidence-based (true), integral (respecting body, heart, mind and the huge diversity of life) and practical (actionable in effective ways right now).

What is “Spirit in Action”

One can be a force for good without being spiritual. Medicine strives to reduce suffering and disease, NGO’s tackle worthy tasks, and individuals change lives. Secular humanism – a non-religious, evidence-based and coordinated endeavour to improve the lives of humans does not prescribe a belief.

Curing disease, educating women, providing clean water, and delivering justice changes beliefs and delivers extraordinary outcomes. The dedication, self-sacrifice and noble aspirations are actually quite ‘spiritual’. ‘God’ becomes ‘Good’.

Beyond secular humanism, mapping a spiritual path to enlightenment is no easy task. The delicate and all-important question is: “Do I have to believe in God?”

Our hypothesis: spiritual is an experience of union with a greater reality than our small, temporary individual existence.

Your greater reality may be nature, truth, evolution, love, the universe, or simply GOD. This reality – let’s call it Spirit (capital ‘S’) – is vast, largely unknown but integral to the existence of your small self (little ‘s’). When your little self feels fully at peace with and connected to Spirit, we feel the emotions of joy, bliss, love and awe.

As we grow, learn and develop wisdom, our conception of Spirit matures. White, bearded, old man on cloud becomes awe in the presence of nature, and then settles into an abiding peace, love and joy. Eventually, we experience total unity with all in the unfolding moment.

It is humble and wise to honour a higher force beyond ourselves. To make sense of Spirit is a basic freedom that liberates the small self from suffering. The more integrated and connected to Spirit we are the more peace, love and joy we will experience and radiate. While this quest is challenging, without it we face an existential crisis. This quest for meaning and connection is Spirit in Action.

As a scientific mind, an alternative perspective is attractive. Let’s say I recognise the reality of my body, my emotions and my thought. I know they can be quantified. It is clear to me that certain practices and skills lead to a healthier body, positive emotions and clarity of thought. This is good for me and others.

It is possible that my spirit (small ‘s’) is in action, when I experience peace (calm physiology), vitality (healthy body), love (positive emotions), and focus (clarity of thought)? In other words, when my physical, emotional and cognitive resources are at their best, I experience myself at a higher altitude. I am integrated and have become more whole.

This experience of integral being is not just body, emotion and mind. It is something more. Could we call it spirit? I think so. When we are in the integrated state that many call flow, we serve ourselves and others much more skilfully.

In fact, both perspectives are necessary.

Having faith in Spirit, Nature or God, is clearly a source of resilience. Specifically, faith has been shown to help us bounce. It most certainly helps us connect with others. Spiritual community is essential to nurture practice. Our connection to a greater reality is the outer path of the spiritual quest.

When physically compromised, angry or depressed, or confused in mind, it is much harder to connect and integrate with a greater reality. When spirit emerges from a flourishing body, heart and mind, the outer path is clear. We feel resourced and motivated to embark on the spiritual quest. This is the inner path.

My conclusion is that a greater reality – what we call Spirit – is part of Spirit in action. To understand, connect with, and honour this greater reality is the goal of your resilience journey. Each one of us is free to explore this path.

Equally essential, this challenging quest demands that you cultivate and grow physical, emotional and mental strength. This is your source of power for the quest. It is, in our view, also a key part of spirit in action. Once again, each of us is free to embark on the practices that work for you.

In part two, I explore what a modern belief system might embrace.

Original Source: https://resiliencei.com/blog/spirit-in-action-part-1/

How Micro Habits Build Big Change

“It takes 21 days to form a habit” traces to a 1960s plastic surgeon’s offhand observation about patients adjusting to a new face after surgery, not a study of habits at all.
The real research puts the median at 66 days, with a genuinely enormous range, 18 to 254 days, depending on the habit’s complexity and the individual attempting it.
Missing a single day doesn’t meaningfully derail the process. The habits that actually stick are the ones built small enough to survive a bad day, not the ones chased against an artificial deadline.

Big, ambitious change usually fails for a predictable reason: it demands too much, too fast, from a system, a person’s daily life, that has limited capacity to absorb sudden shifts. The more reliable path runs through small, deliberately designed habits that compound quietly over time. Understanding how that compounding actually works, and how long it genuinely takes, changes how realistically you can plan for it.

The 21-Day Myth, and Where It Actually Came From

Almost everyone has heard some version of “it takes 21 days to form a habit.” It’s a genuinely useful story to trace, because the real origin has nothing to do with habits at all. In 1960, plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz published Psycho-Cybernetics, in which he observed that his patients typically took about 21 days to psychologically adjust to a new face after surgery, or to phantom sensations following an amputation. That’s the entire basis for the claim: a clinical observation about adjusting to physical change, generalised, decades later, into a rule about behaviour change it was never designed to describe.

The actual research on habit formation tells a different, more useful story. A landmark 2010 study by Phillippa Lally and colleagues at University College London tracked participants building a new daily habit over 12 weeks and found a median of 66 days to reach near-automatic behaviour, with individual results ranging from as little as 18 days to as long as 254, depending on the habit’s complexity and the person attempting it. A 2024 meta-analysis covering more than 2,600 participants confirmed a similar median, somewhere between 59 and 66 days, with some more complex habits taking considerably longer still. One further finding matters as much as the headline number: missing a single day along the way did not meaningfully disrupt the overall trajectory toward automaticity.

This reframes the whole project. Chasing a fixed 21-day deadline sets most people up to feel like they’ve failed right around the point real change was actually starting to take hold. Planning realistically for something closer to two months, with room for the occasional missed day, sets expectations that match how change actually works.

Why Small Beats Big

James Clear’s Atomic Habits popularised a version of this idea worth taking seriously: habits compound the same way interest does, small, consistent actions producing outsized results over a long enough timeframe, precisely because each repetition is small enough to actually survive contact with a busy, imperfect life. Stanford behaviour scientist BJ Fogg makes a closely related point in his own research: the size of a habit matters more than most people assume. A habit so small it feels almost trivial, two push-ups, one sentence in a journal, a single deep breath before a meeting, is far more likely to survive a bad day than an ambitious routine that collapses the first time real life gets in the way.

Both frameworks point toward the same underlying mechanism the Lally research confirms directly: consistency across a realistic, forgiving timeframe beats intensity chased against an artificial deadline, every time.

Building a Micro Habit That Actually Sticks

Shrink It Until It Feels Almost Too Easy

If the habit still feels like it requires willpower to start, it’s still too big. A genuinely tiny version, one that feels almost silly to skip, is far more likely to survive the weeks it actually takes to become automatic.

Attach It to Something Already Automatic

Anchor the new habit to an existing one, immediately after your morning coffee, right before you close your laptop for the day. Borrowing the automaticity of an established routine gives the new habit a stable, repeatable trigger rather than relying on remembering it independently.

Plan for Weeks, Not Days

Set your own expectations around a genuine two-month runway rather than a three-week sprint. Simple habits may click sooner; more complex ones will likely take longer. Knowing that going in prevents the discouragement that comes from measuring real progress against a made-up deadline.

Let a Missed Day Be Just a Missed Day

The research is specific and genuinely reassuring here: missing a single day did not meaningfully disrupt the overall path toward automaticity in the studies tracking this. Treating one missed day as proof the whole effort has failed is precisely the thinking pattern most likely to actually end it. Pick the habit back up the next day and keep going.

Big change rarely arrives as a single decisive leap. It arrives as a small, repeated action, given enough time, closer to two months than three weeks, to actually take hold.

“Take a Deep Breath” Is Bad Advice!

Taking a deep breath will create arousal, anxiety, distress, and reduce CO2 even more. “Experts”, from physicians to coaches, default to this faulty recommendation.The science of breathing demonstrates how this advice is scientifically and practically wrong. Rather, apply the correct practice to counter distress, calm, focus and connect to reality. This is how you prevent and beat “burnout”.

Table of Contents

The Science Behind Breathing and Heart Rate

1. Heart rate changes with breathing. Inhalation accelerates your heart. Exhalation – particularly when sustained longer than inhalation – slows your heart.

2. This is called sinus arrhythmia or heart rate variability. When it follows a sine curve it is a very reliable marker of good health and reduced risk (1).

3. Exaggerating inhalation engages chest muscles shortening and accelerating the breath. This causes CO2 to drop and is part of hyperventilation syndrome (2).

4. Hyperventilation happens when anxious and, if sustained, leads to low CO2 (carbon dioxide) and a range of symptoms including anxiety, pounding heart rate, chest pain, light-headedness. It is estimated to affect 10-30% of otherwise healthy people and can lead to hospitalisation.

5. Arousal, with increased heart rate is associated with the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and calm, with lower heart rate is associated with the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS, mediated by the vagus nerve) and called vagal tone or vagal brake (3).

6. Neck and upper chest (secondary) muscles ventilate the upper lung. These are only required in extreme situations of physical effort

7. Diaphragm and intercostal (primary) muscles ventilate lower lung. These muscles facilitate heart rate variability, calm and good health.

What Really Happens When You Take a Deep Breath

You will activate your chest and neck muscles, trigger the sympathetic system, strain your neck muscles, accelerate your heart, and activate a state of increased arousal. The vagal brake is switched off and you can compromise both muscle and brain function as CO2 falls.Advice to “breathe in through the nose” further strains secondary breathing muscles. Adding “out through the mouth” causes the loss of CO2 and a shorter exhalation. If you continue to take this advice you can drive your physiology into an acute or chronic case of hyperventilation.There is no point in voluntarily taking a deep breath. Your neurophysiology takes care of it in the background. Remember the last time you dived under a big wave!

The Key to Calm Is in the Exhale

The first step to calm and focus is to exhale voluntarily through the nose. As you lengthen the outbreath, the diaphragm relaxes, domes upward and the vagus (PNS) nerve activates. Heart rate slows, muscles relax, and blood returns to the prefrontal cortex and empathy circuits.Whether on stage, in battle, on the court, needing to connect or be creative, experts in all fields have to master this simple technique. Below is a short demonstration of heart rate variability showing these effects.

Figure 1. Heart rate changes through three conditions:

Concern about conflict in a family (heart rate accelerates from 55-60 up to 70 bpm)
Advised to take three deep breaths (irregular pulse, wild acceleration 50 to 70). It counters the natural calming that was taking place prior to advice.
Slow exhalations creates high amplitude heart rate variability and calm

For more on the physical, emotional and mental effects of breath and vagus nerve read The Power in Your Vagus Nerve.

How to Use Breath to Calm the Body and Focus the Mind

Whenever you notice agitation, worry, fatigue and any distress symptom, simply exhale for 5 or 6 seconds with a pause at the end. Then breathe slowly into the lower ribs and abdomen through the nose for 3 or 4 seconds. Repeat as needed.

Tactical Breathing: The 4×4 Method for Calm Under Pressure

All special forces are now taught a variation of this which involves: 4 seconds exhale, 4 seconds hold, 4 seconds inhale and 4 seconds hold. This is used to get combat ready (condition yellow) and effective by being calm, focused an connected. The yogis have recommended this explicitly for over 2000 years. We recommend reading Breath by James Nestor (Penguin, 2021) and for those wanting to stretch adaptation, The Wim Hoff Method by the iceman (Penguin, 2021)

Sources:

(1) Matthew Mackinnon, Psychology Today.

(2) Dinah Bradley, Family Doctor.

(3) Sven Hansen, Breath, Revive, Connect: Insights.

Original Source: https://resiliencei.com/blog/take-deep-breath-bad-advice/