‘Story follows state’ is the intrinsic truth of our human condition.
Our modern life presents more and more situations that cause us to activate our stress response cycle.
We often think we are at the mercy of circumstance and have little choice or self-agency over our stress levels.
The good news is that that is simply not true.
We are capable of harnessing our human design in a very simple way to manage our responses.
Meet heart rate variability (HRV), the measure of variation in milliseconds between each successive heartbeat.
Research confirms the heart is a key component of our emotional system and HRV offers a physiological basis for the long-acknowledged link between the heart and emotion.
HRV is one of many neural signals flowing from our bodily organs that impacts our ability to regulate our emotions.
HRV measures coherence, the harmony between the electrical signals of our thoughts and our physiology. As we increase coherence, we increase our capacity for emotional regulation and thus, our capacity to lead.
Coherence can be trained through measurement and feedback.
Given emotional intelligence is cited as the ‘most important leadership skill’ for us to cultivate, how might your capacity to lead be enhanced by using HRV measurement?
How Heart Rate Variance makes a bridge between the heart and the brain
