Reduce anxiety in the workplace and during photo shoots
Recently, I had an amazing chat with Bonnie Dickson, a Business Visibility Strategist & Photographer about how to reduce anxiety in the workplace and when having your headshot, or other photos taken.
We talked about the power of emotion and photography.
We also shared some awesome techniques to help reduce anxiety in the workplace and get comfortable in front of the camera. If you’re looking to improve your digital presence and create meaningful connections with your audience, check out the video of our interview below! You won’t want to miss it.
More info on Bonnie:
Bonnie Dickson is a Business Visibility Strategist & Photographer, helping business owners get more clients online through the use of customized visibility strategy and professional photography of their business.
To learn more business visibility tips to help you with your business, click here to check out Bonnie’s once-a-week newsletter.
#HumanConnection #DigitalFirstImpression #EmotionalIntelligence #PhotographyTips
Audio file (for those who like to listen):
Transcription (for those who like to read):
Hi, everyone. I’m Bonnie Dixon, and I’m a visibility strategist and photographer. And I am joined today by my guest, Cheryl Gregory. And we are going to talk about the idea of emotion, and photography. Specifically, we’re going to dive into techniques to reduce anxiety when you are triggered in your day to day or your workplace, and how to reduce it if you’re nervous about having your picture taken. So Cheryl, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you
Great. Hi. Hi, everybody. Thanks, Bonnie, I have a company called master the art of human connection. And that deals a lot with people who run into situations that quite often they get emotionally triggered. So you can feel overwhelmed, you can feel stressed. And in the moment, you can’t think straight when you do that. So I teach people techniques to bring those peaks down a little bit and lower that curve. So you can be calm, and think better make better decisions.
I love that. And so I want to dive right in, because I know I want to keep this short and sweet, a nice little nugget for people to kind of enjoy in their day. And so when we talk about emotion in the day to day life or within the workplace, what are some of the things that people would maybe be triggered by? And do you have any tips on how they could handle this?
Absolutely. Well, what happens is we get to when when we’re getting a bit stressed, we’re in our heads a lot. And all the questions come up, Do I look okay, am I gonna look like a goof is someone gonna make fun of what I’m wearing, this isn’t the right color, you know. And next thing you know, by the time they reach your photo studio, and they’re ready for a picture, they’re sitting there like, you know, they can’t, that’s not the kind of headshot you want. So that’s because the amygdala, which is deep in our brain is triggered for a flight fight, or freeze response. And it’s only natural, because your body’s going to respond to that and all the resources in your body, go from your brain, your frontal lobe, which is where you think and make logical decisions. And you can keep yourself calm and all that it goes into your body so that you’re ready to run away or fight or make yourself smaller. So what what I like to do with these techniques is fine, I call them four relief strategies, because there’s an emotional relief strategy. There’s a mental or cognitive, there’s a physical, and there’s a sensory, we won’t go into all of them today. But there’s four relief strategies that you can use to literally take yourself down. I think everybody knows about breathing exercises, nice deep breathing exercises. But when you’re at work, sometimes you know you’re in a place where you can’t sit at the desk or in a meeting and start to do deep breathing exercises, because it’s kind of noticeable. So one of the things that I can teach, teach you to do right now to reduce that stress is in your left hand, there were certain points here that I guess you’d say reference points in your body. So the heart and the stomach are very close to the center of your palm. And so of course, when you’re nervous, your heart’s going, right, it starts beating faster, your chest gets tight, your stomach might start to get tight, and don’t feel too good. So you can take your knuckle or a couple of knuckles and go right in the center there. And just I do circles, some people do repeated presses just circle in there nice, fairly strong. So you can feel there might be a little tender spot in there. If you feel it. That’s good. Just keep rubbing that. So if you’re in a meeting, you can literally with your knuckle in that palm and close your other hand. And you know, I’m doing it right now you can barely see it. So if you do it in your lap or under the desk, when you’re feeling a bit anxious, at some point, you’ll have what I call, like a deep breath or are a yawn. So you might go that’s your signal that your body goes oh, I can be calm now. So you’re you can literally feel energy returning to your body, not frenetic energy, but just a nice, nice, warm, healthy for a healthy feeling or flow of energy in your body. And you can think better. So you’re not going to go blank and you’re not going to sort of react emotionally, like you would to some emotional trigger. So that’s just one of the things but there’s lots, and you know, I include them in my latest program that we’re going to talk about a little while.
Awesome. I really love that tip because it’s so simple. And it’s like you said something that you can do in a boardroom meeting or in a workplace situation that isn’t oh my gosh, look at you know, what is Bonnie doing right now. It’s very subtle, but something that you can do to self soothe and really help that anxiety level come down and I’m going to keep that in mind with my photog Have you clients because so often, business owners come to me, and they’re so anxious about having their picture taken. You know, they’re business owners, they, they’re a chiropractor, they’re a pizza shop, their lawyer, they, you know, they’re not models and used to being in front of cameras. And I understand that all too well, that’s partly why I’m a photographer, I don’t like being in front of the camera, I want to be behind it, capturing the moments. And so that’s a very simple technique with your left hand, to just concentrate on that and to help take away that anxiety. So I love that tip.
Awesome. Glad to help.
I know the one thing I also do with clients who aren’t very comfortable in front of the camera or maybe anxious about it, one of the things I like to do is really take my time with them as well. Because a too often, business owners would go for a branding photo session or an updated headshot, and they have 30 minutes, and then bang, bang, bang, get them out. And then it’s the next client. And I don’t subscribe to that method. I think that we all deserve to have our time, take our time, bring different outfits, feel comfortable, go through different poses, I love to build a rapport with with the customers and clients so that they feel comfortable, and, you know, get them out of that anxious state. So I’d love that tip, I think that it’d be really helpful to share with my clients. And so you mentioned your program. I would love to know more about that. And if there are more tips like that, that I could maybe share with future photo clients.
Absolutely, yes, I call it the stress, stress, whispering mini course it there’s three modules, but there’s sort of multiple modules within one and I, I basically go into what stress is where we what causes it, obviously, where we feel it in our body, because I love to create a mind body connection. Because that way you can start to communicate with between brain and body. And they say there is a brain in our gut. So that tells you when you talk about the gut feel that’s all connected there. So I do talk about the three stress responses, flight, fright, and freeze, I always get those. But we’ve all heard of those. But we talk about why that happens. And I mentioned I alluded to it a little bit with the amygdala earlier. And then we go into for stress relief strategies that help you reduce that stress. And so again, I’ll just mention them again, because it’s really expand a bit one is emotional. So it’s not that you’re feeling distress, emotionally, but you’re using your emotions to relieve the stress. So in other words, when you’re talking about something emotional, like petting a cat or petting your dog is something that is an emotional stress relief, you’ll always feel better. I mean, that’s, that’s a really good example. There’s a cognitive or mental stress relief. So it’s not that you feel the stress mentally, but you are literally choosing to think about something. So you can’t think about this. So the stress doesn’t get in, you can’t be stressed and not stressed at the same time. They don’t exist in the same world. So, you know, there’s things like crossword puzzles, Sudoku puzzles, that sort of thing. But even one of the examples maybe from my course, is because I love music. And sometimes when I’m listening to it could be abandoned, it can be an orchestra, you just close your eyes. While the music’s playing, I just focus on say the drums only first, and then switch from the drum to a cymbal sit switch from the cymbal to the saxophone. And where you just you just really hear what the saxophone players doing all the different instruments, maybe the vocals as well. When you do that really laser focus. You can’t be feeling stressed at the same time because you’re literally using your mind to focus on something else. So it helps reduce the stress. Laughter is a good one. We all know that. I’m where my physical, physical means getting out. And working out. Sweating has sweating, actually, you release negative hormones, the extra adrenaline and cortisol through your perspiration. So you literally like go to the gym or lift weights, something like that. And then finally, the sensory ones, which are my favorite, are getting into like tapping. I don’t know if you’re familiar with tapping, but there’s different energy mediums in our body. So I take people through a video where we literally tap and there’s tapping there’s things something called Halo ring, which is a really nice self-soothing process. And there’s I can’t remember how many I think there’s about 18 or 19 suggestions in the sensory alone in the course plus for videos that I take people through guided processes and it’s very it’s very short, sweet, but it gives people an idea and experience of what it’s like to work with me. And then if they want to go further, well, then we can chat about that and work something out.
I love that. And this course sounds really interesting. And you really connected with me on the music part, I when I am not behind a camera or on a rock climbing wall, which is my other passion of many people, no, I am listening to live music. And many times I have been at a concert and closed my eyes and just absorbed the sound of the instruments around me. So I really love that.
Yeah, it’s amazing what you can actually hear because of the combination of the instruments is awesome, but if you think I’m going to listen just to the symbol, I’m going to tune into the symbol only. And all of a sudden, you’ll hear Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, which you’re not aware of when the whole song is playing. It’s really cool. Or even a vocal, a background vocal. It’s like, that person’s like singing something every eighth note there’s doing something but they’re not singing all the way through. That’s interesting, you know, or the bass or, yeah, like, it’s just you’re amazed at how everyone has sort of do something different yet. It’s all together.
Yeah, music has such a powerful music is such a powerful way to affect emotion. And so yeah, something I do in photo sessions is also I play very lounge, kind of chill, calm music, not spa music, because I don’t want photo clients to fall asleep. But you know, something very chilled. They do have anxiety, or any stress about having their picture taken, they already walk into a very calm and friendly environment. Something with a little malady, no lyrics. So that’s, you know, they don’t have anything to worry about in paying attention to the lyrics, but just music to help soothe and create a happy energy. So the modules in your program sounds super exciting. I’ll be sure to include a link to that in the in the notes below so that if anyone watching this video would like to check out your program and see some of those techniques on how to reduce anxiety and the things that they can do, then it’ll all be there in the notes. And for anyone who is watching and would also like more business visibility tips, or just updates and news on interviews like this with Cheryl that I will be doing. I will also include a link to my newsletter there it goes out once a week, usually on Wednesdays, and you can check that out. And Cheryl, I’d love to thank you for being here today. And your time to discuss, you know, emotion, and photography and anxiety and some of the simple, quick tips that we can do to help reduce that anxiety.
Well, thanks for having me, Bonnie. I really enjoyed it. Thank you