[Alicia Davis] Okay, well, if you have had any higher levels of stress or anxiety or overwhelm about anything, and there’s so many things happening right now, that maybe that is true for you, we wanted to talk about a way that we approach that that perhaps could be helpful for you. Right, Stacie?

[Stacie Watson] Yes, you know when we began putting training sessions together way back, years and years ago now, I think one of the very first topics that we put together had to do with, “how do we find moments of calm when things feel very chaotic?”

[Alicia Davis] That’s right.

[Stacie Watson] I think it’s been one of the most popular topics since then, because whether it’s the pandemic, whether it’s all the uncertainty many nonprofits are facing right now related to funding, you know, it feels like there are always things that are contributing to the feeling of chaos, to the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty. And one of the things that can happen when we are experiencing that, are what we call ants. Do you want to get into a little bit of that? Because these are not little critters that come to your picnic, right?

[Alicia Davis] That’s right. No. Ants are automatic negative thoughts, and it’s the way that our brain works under stress. And I think we’ve talked about this in different ways, and you know, we have a negativity bias, and we are constantly trying to make sure that we’re safe, that we’re going to be okay. And that can mean anything like, is it our nonprofits going to be okay? Are we going to have funding? If we don’t have funding, how are we going to shift our programs? What are we going to have to do with us? Like, and we get, we can get so quickly caught up in the negativity bias that when we start thinking that way, we start becoming more anxious, and we can definitely start becoming overwhelmed, and then we just kind of the mind kind of goes off the rails a little bit. And so right, we talk about that as a strategy, or as a something to notice, and then the strategy is very much about being able to notice what you’re thinking and be a little bit more intentional about either reframing it or refocusing it. Right?

[Stacie Watson] Yes, I think that is such an important element of all of this, right? It’s being able to notice when we are going a little bit off the rails, or our minds kind of off to the races with all of the “what if” thing. What if this happens? What if that happens? And if we can just begin to notice that that is happening without judging it, just noticing it…

[Alicia Davis] That’s right.

[Stacie Watson] Then I think there are some really simple yet very effective strategies that we can use to try, as you said, to either redirect or refocus, so that we don’t have to be quite so taken down that path. Right?

[Alicia Davis] That’s right. And one of those strategies, just a little “plant the seed” is, instead of “what ifing”, focus on what is. Focus on what is right in front of you, what you have control over, and what you can actually do something about. Okay, and we talk about these. We’ve got a Finding Calm in the Chaos session coming up in our Learning Academy at the end of the month and we’ll talking about more strategies around these automatic, negative thinking patterns and what to do. And we just wanted to hopefully give you one that might be helpful right now,

[Stacie Watson] Absolutely.

[Alicia Davis] So I’m Alicia Davis…

[Stacie Watson] I’m Stacie Watson…

[Alicia Davis] And feel free to check out our Learning Academy. Go to TLStransforms.com and you’ll see it right there as part of our menu, and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you so much.

[Stacie Watson] Thank you.