For a good portion of my career I allowed stress to dictate my actions. I experienced burn out at least three times. Most of the time I either wasn't aware of how stress was impacting me or I chose to ignore it because I was 'too busy' to pay attention. When work or life was overwhelming, I'd make external changes in an attempt to find balance such as taking sabbaticals and even moving to a new country. Eventually I  defaulted to old behaviours and continued to allow stress to dictate. I couldn't bounce back because my mental resiliency was totally depleted. 

It was a third wake up call that got my full attention -  I was diagnosed with cancer. This set me on a path to empower myself and others with tools to reframe stress. In the process I made some interesting discoveries. Firstly, how much of the time I would race through my day and lose myself in autopilot mode (research shows that the average person is in autopilot 47% of the time).  Autopilot mode is similar to driving your car, arriving at your destination then discovering you don't remember a thing about the journey. Or, opening a bag of nuts, suddenly noticing the packet is empty and observing you've eaten a whole bag without even realizing. I became aware of how much of the time my mind was 'wandering' and how frequently I was getting lost in 'doing' and 'striving' to get more 'stuff done' instead of living fully. 

As I began training in mindfulness, meditation and interpersonal neurobiology it was intriguing to discover and experience, through direct practice, how much communication with others and self reflection is influenced by physical sensations in the body, emotions and thoughts. Prior to my training I had always assumed the mind and body were separate functioning parts. In fact they are completely integrated in how they operate. This could have ground-breaking implications for how we function and thrive in the workplace.