Manda Scott

And then everybody will have the things that are our own particular triggers.

And that's what we're going to be working with today.

But if you can minimize the general things, then that too would be a good idea.

So let's have a very quick look at what fear is and when it can be useful.

Because clearly it's a survival mechanism.

If there is a saber-toothed tiger outside the window, it would be a good idea to be frightened.

If you're standing on the edge of a cliff with a 3000 foot drop, it's a really good idea if your entire physiology is telling you to step back from the edge.

But these things are transient.

Robert Sapolsky wrote Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers back in 1994, and there have been two updates since then.

And he describes the very obvious sequence of, there is a zebra, it is being hunted by a lion.

If the lion catches it, then the zebra is dead.

But if the lion doesn't catch it, the zebra gets on with its day.

And if the lions aren't hungry, the zebras and the lions will drink together from the waterhole.

The zebra is not walking around in chronic stress.

Chronic stress is what we as humans create when we have the moments frozen in time and we replay over and over and over inside the concepts of what might happen if there were a lion.

or if our boss says the things that we're expecting that they might say when we walk into work tomorrow morning, or any of the other things that could be going to happen in our world today and I'm not going to list them because that's not useful.

The point is, we need to get to be more like the zebras.

We can respond appropriately when there are fearful things around.

That response takes us away from the danger and then we settle back to our position of balance and connectivity.

we respond, we are not reacting.