Welcome to the September Edition of The#MTL Monthly. In this month’s video, Sara and Kelci discuss the Trilogy Survivor Pool, Good Neighbor Month, Trilogy Restaurant Week, and more! Click on the image above or here to watch.
Featured Club: Shenandoah Lodge & Athletic Club
Each month, we feature the #MTL Calendar’s spotlight community in a fun video. This month, learn about Shenandoah Lodge & Athletic Club in Trilogy at Lake Frederick in Virginia. Click on the photo above or here to watch. Want to learn even more? Click here!
Sign Up for the Trilogy Survivor Pool Today!
The Trilogy Survivor Pool is back for the 2023 professional football season!
It doesn’t matter if you’re an avid football fan or not, the Trilogy Survivor Pool is fun and free for all Members – from those who can name every QB in the League to those who root for a team based on the color of their jersey.
Each week, Members will choose one team to win outright. If your team wins, you move on to the next week. If your team loses, you’re out. No picking the same team twice. If you do not make a pick, you will be eliminated. It’s as simple as that!
Those who make it the furthest at each Trilogy community will win!
Click here for full contest details and information on how to sign up.
Celebrate Our Chefs During Restaurant Week
Give your kitchen a night off and grab a table during Trilogy Restaurant Week,September 11th – 17th.
Your culinary team invites you to join them for the ultimate dining experience, featuring an exclusive prix fixe menu, signature cocktail, culinary demonstrations, and more! Enjoy an evening out to indulge in the culinary excellence that Trilogy has to offer.
Don’t forget to make your reservations early – you won’t want to miss it! More information on your community’s specific offerings will be posted to MTL soon.
Up to 70% Off in the #MTL Shop!
Enjoy up to 70% off Trilogy gear with the #MTL Shop End of Summer Sale!
Grab last minute summer items, a Trilogy hoodie for fall, or the perfect hostess gift. For a limited time only, get these summer steals while you can!
Discount will automatically apply at checkout, no code necessary. Offer valid through September 10th, 2023.May not be combined with any other offers. Valid on new purchases only. Not applicable to past purchases. No cash value.
Emotional Intelligence, Health, and Resilience with Dr. Roger Landry
As we continue with our 2023 theme – The How of Healthy Longevity – we’ve learned the important role of resilience: what it is, its complex nature, and how we can strengthen it. In this article, we’ll address the role of Emotional Intelligence in building our resilience and thereby moving toward a healthy longevity.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is not anything like our Intelligence Quotient (IQ) which relates to mental ability. EQ has to do with emotional ability and is defined as: the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. It is understanding not only our own emotions, but those of others we interact with. It is impossible to be resilient if in challenging times we cannot manage the associated powerful emotions.
Why Emotions?
Emotions are normal adaptive mental and physiologic feeling states that direct our attention and guide our behavior. They are survival mechanisms, prompting us to act quickly and take action that will maximize survival and success. They can be both powerful and automatic, but if this were consistently the case, we would cease to be the rational species we are. With our higher-level brains, we can manage our emotions, thereby demonstrating EQ.
Examples of emotions are anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise. =There are many more, but these are considered core emotions driving our behavior. People with low EQ are usually swept away by powerful emotions, which drive behavior they would not have chosen in a more rational, less emotional, situation. So, it’s easy to see how in a challenging situation, whether acute or chronic, runaway emotions would not be consistent with resilience i.e. the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.
Blessing and Curse
Another definition of EQ may further help us understand our emotional self: “EQ is the ability to identify our own emotions and those of others, to self-motivate ourselves and know how to monitor our emotions and those of the people around us.”
The words identify,self-motivate, and monitor imply a higher brain activity than a mere survival reflex. Other mammals experience emotions which drive behavior, but as far as we know, it all happens as reflex activity. We humans are blessed with a brain that allows us to identify, self-motivate and monitor.We can, for example, identify when we feel anger, self-motivate to suppress that anger, and monitor our emotional self in order to maintain our equanimity.
However, that same brain is capable of tricking our bodies with thoughts that produce emotions normally activated by outside stimuli. This is the basis for our self-induced stress response which we discussed in a previous article. So, whether it’s an external situation or our thoughts, emotions are triggered which then drive behavior.
But once again, our higher-level brains can intervene in this process and stop inappropriate or non-resilient behavior. So, although our human brain can be a cause of stress (and usually is) and non-adaptive behavior, it is, in fact, the solution to these challenges and, more importantly, can help us strengthen our EQ and, as a result, our resilience.
Building EQ and Resilience
And so, we must ask, how can we build the EQ we need for resilience when we are both the problem and the solution? Certainly, the strategies addressed in our previous three articles (and our ongoing four-part video series) are part of the solution, however, relative to EQ, it requires that we dig deep and examine how we process the world around us.
Quiet Your Chattering Mind. We are all plagued with active minds. We have up to 60,000 thoughts every day, most of which are negative and repetitive. Since these thoughts trigger emotions and potentially non-resilient behavior, it’s important we identify, monitor, and limit those thoughts. This is mindfulness, that very healthy state of presence. By being present, we reign in our runaway, destructive thoughts. Presence comes with paying attention, on purpose, to what we are doing, no matter how mundane. Something as simple as feeling the sensations associated with climbing stairs, or gardening, or with art, or a walk in the woods – this mindfulness mutes unwanted stimulation and calms our emotional roller coaster self.
Likewise, mindfulness allows us to monitor what’s going on in our mind and body. By identifying emotions we are experiencing, we can eliminate automatic negative behavior and promote an internal milieu more capable of preventing or recovering from, challenges in our lives i.e. resilience.
When You Are With Others, Be There. This too is mindfulness, but in this social context, it is being present in order to be fully engaged with those you are with. They too, are emotional beings, and are, like you, experiencing positive or negative feelings. Rather than being lost in thoughts of your to-do list, or whatever drama there may be in your life, being present will make it more likely you can better determine what emotions they are feeling. Paying attention to the words, but also the facial expressions, gestures and body positions can give us a more authentic understanding of what the other person is experiencing. Non-verbal communication is a major part of our interaction with others, and is a window into one’s emotional state.
Being completely present with others promotes understanding, compassion, empathy and authentic engagement, thereby reducing he likelihood of confrontation, misunderstanding, and alienation. Social engagement is a key building block of resilience.
In a Nutshell…
To summarize our last four articles, Resilience is critical to our survival and healthy longevity. A robust, holistic lifestyle, abundant mindfulness, positivity, willingness to grow, openness to other ideas, and attention to our emotional internal milieu, will ensure that no matter what life may throw our way, we will continue to flourish.
Live Long and Well!
Did You Miss August’s Presentation? Click here to watch Dr. Landry’s lecture on The HOW of Healthy Longevity. Then, mark your calendars for Saturday, October 7th for our next virtual presentation with Dr. Landry on Mindset, Health & Resilience.
