Hi. I’m Rick Sessinghaus. Right now, I am measuring performance. Since I’m a performance coach and trainer, the hardest thing to do is quantify if your performance is getting better, and in real time. Right now, I actually am measuring my heart rate variability. What the heck does that mean?
Well, we can actually decipher your stress response and how does that stress stay with you. So, I’ve talked about, in other videos, where emotional management, stress management, energy output, are the key parts of a performance. And now that I work with a lot of leaders, a lot of leaders go, “Well, how do I know it’s getting better?” Well, one we can tell now is through the use of heart rate variability training. So right now, this sensor now is picking up my heart rate.
Now, it’s not just about beats per minute. It’s the quality of the beat, and if we start seeing a stress response, it actually can stay with me for hours and hours and hours. Has there ever been a time when you’re going to work, you get cut off in traffic, and you just … Your blood’s boiling, and then by the time you walk into that first meeting, it’s going to affect how you communicate and how you make your decisions.
But it happened an hour ago? So you really have not dealt with the situation. So, we don’t want an ear clip on all day long. So you can actually have a chest strap on, and what I do with my clients is we can measure for 24 hours. You’re sleeping, going to work, you’re with your family, you’re in the middle of a meeting, and we can now chart what is happening in a 24-hour period.
And what’s interesting about heart rate variability training is that one event, one triggered event, could cause a cascade of stress for the rest of the day, and you just, at the end of the day are feeling tired and fatigued and irritable, yet you never dealt with it in the beginning.
So we actually now can quantify stress response and your ability to become more resilient. So heart rate variability training is something that I do with my clients, and there are now tools that, once we measure it, we now know are there are specific situations where we know is changing your stress response. But two, do you have strategies now, to be able to minimize that? And I’ve talked about in other videos, and a quick recap would be breathing, changing your emotional state through appreciation and gratitude. And with heart rate variability training, a lot of it’s done actually through the heart. Breathe through the heart. Feel through the heart, and take that little time out that you may need during the day to regroup.
So we can now quantify performance, and now we can actually create strategies to improve performance so we can perform for success.