It would have been hard to miss the announcement by the US government of freezing foreign aid.
Even if we do not directly work on projects or organisations funded by the US government, you’ll have some touch points. After all, in 2024, the US contributed more than 40% of the total humanitarian funding tracked by the UN's Financial Tracking Service (FTS).
(source: Thomas Byrnes)
I work with coaching clients who were directly affected by the recent announcement. They are in shock. They don’t know what will happen, yet they must show up—for their teams and colleagues. They are tasked with navigating the implications of this aid freeze, firefighting, and figuring out how to keep their programmes running. On top of it, they might worry about the implications for their own roles.
It’s hard to grasp the implications. The immediate humanitarian impacts. The communities that lose critical services due to the halt in funding. The implications for local organisations and their staff, who depend(ed) on this funding.
How can you stay calm and optimistic when the world around you is crumbling?
As I worked with my clients this week, the challenge was to stay calm, level-headed, and optimistic while navigating this chaotic environment.
But how to do that?
Let's back up a moment to go to science.
Every thought we have is essentially a chemical reaction in our body.
Science shows: Every experience and memory is encoded chemically in our bodies. Emotions are chemicals – charged neuropeptides that arrive at receptor cells and set off a chain of events that impacts every cell in our body. Those neuropeptides change the environment in those cells AND how we feel in response to our circumstances.
For example, our body’s cortisol levels, the stress hormone, rise when stressed. A high cortisol level impacts our immune system, focus, and cognitive function. The higher the cortisol, the less creatively and innovatively we can think.
So, every experience, thought and memory changes our body’s chemical makeup.
The good news: We can use that knowledge to help dislodge these neuropeptides.
Through simple physical exercises, we can actively generate the good chemicals we all want more off: oxytocin (the feel good hormone)
, DHEA (the high performance hormone)
, dopamine (the reward hormone)
, and serotonin (the mood hormone).
Here are two exercises you can do right now.
All you need is 10 min of your time to give this one a go.
(If you’re interested in the scientific background of these exercises, watch this 2-minute video where I explain the performance pathway. Feel free to send me an email with any questions you might have.)
❇️ Paced breathing: Decrease your stress level. Increase cognitive functioning.
>> Watch the video instruction <<
Time needed: 3 minutes.
The science? This move releases oxytocin - the feel good chemical, from the 40,000 neurons in your heart area. It’s also studied that emotions like pride move upwards; emotions like hope move upwards and outwards. All emotions we generate with this exercise.
Showing up for the work and people who rely on you requires you to be your best. Your best emotional, mental and physical state.
Turns out, we can integrate simple exercises into our day to help us achieve that.
I’d love to hear what you notice if you try any of the two exercises.
And please do forward this email to a friend or colleague who might benefit. We can all benefit from boosting our resilience right now.
P.S: This knowledge comes from my training as a physical intelligence coach. You might have heard of emotional intelligence, the ability to be aware of, control and express our emotions? Physical intelligence is the science of detecting and influencing the chemicals in our bodies and brains to show up as the best version of ourselves.