Successful leaders need to think and learn on a consistent basis. It’s been proven that stress reduces our ability to learn.
Fight or Flight
Our response to stress is born from the “Fight or Flight” response that is critical in danger. In these types of situations like a car accident, we need the rise in heart rate, blood pressure, and sugar in our system to boost our energy.
This short-time reaction to a short-term situation is not only beneficial, but it is required for survival.
Long-term exposure to the “Fight or Flight” response causes physiological changes that reduce our ability to learn.
The Franklin Institute reported that Robert M. Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroscientist, showed that “sustained stress can damage the hippocampus, the part of the limbic brain which is central to learning and memory.”
The institute goes on to say this about chronic stress:
“Chronic over-secretion of stress…
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