Personal Sustainability Index (online assessment)

Are you struggling to manage stress and overwhelm in your life?
How are you getting renewed and replenished?

Introducing a self-guided tool that will help you take stock of the sources of stress in your life and identify ways to foster balance and restoration. Backed by decades of research on stress and renewal, Richard Boyatzis and Daniel Goleman’s Personal Sustainability Index (PSI) is now available to everyone.

What is the Personal Sustainability Index?

Through a series of reflective questions, the Personal Sustainability Index (PSI) assessment identifies the sources of stress and renewal in your life. Taking a look at how much and how often you engage in each, you’ll get a picture of your own stress/renewal balance.

How does life change when we infuse our lives with sources of renewal? As PSI co-creator Richard Boyatzis puts it: We can think again, love again, and can do all the things that make life worth living.

The Personal Sustainability Index is:

• Based on decades of science-based research
• Expertly crafted by renowned Emotional Intelligence researchers
• Focused on lifestyle, daily activities, and long-term stress, not just acute stress events
• Your own self-reflective tool to help you ameliorate the impacts of chronic stress
• Relevant and reusable for years of life-improving personal and organizational work.

How can I use the PSI?

In organizations, leaders and human resource professionals can take the pulse of their workplace culture to diagnose the stress levels in their work community and make changes to support colleagues.

As an individual, consider the PSI assessment a tool for self-care to help build a healthy, fulfilling lifestyle.

In families and social groups, we can use PSI to connect with one another and spark creative ideas for renewal (in fact, having a meaningful conversation with someone we care about is renewal activity itself!).

Teachers can engage students with PSI as a learning tool to support stress management.

What will the PSI show me?

Through the PSI assessment, you’ll take note of how much and how often stress impacts you—day-to-day and long-term.

The PSI assessment will:

• Show you what kind of stressors most frequently impact you
• Spotlight the types of renewal activities that most support you
• Uncover ways to bring more restoration into your life
• Help you move toward a healthy balance of stress and renewal.

What does renewal look like?

Here’s the great news: Renewal activities can reverse the damage done by stress. Renewal can look as simple as relaxing, laughing, or spending time with loved ones, but the benefits are much deeper. Renewal heals the body and bolsters the spirit.

Renewal is different for everyone—just like stressors. For you, renewal may be found in a meaningful conversation with a friend or while snuggling an animal companion. Time in nature, deep breathing, laughing, yoga, tai chi, acts of service, meditation, and moderate physical activity are all renewal activities.

Stress over-activates our sympathetic nervous system, the responses that keep us alive.
Renewal activates the parasympathetic nervous system, prompting our body to release healing, feel-good hormones that help us feel more creative, loving, perceptive, and open-minded.

Chronic Stress degenerates our brain tissue, shrinks parts of our brain used for working memory, and weakens our immune system.
Renewal supports tissue regeneration, lowers our heart rate, and bolsters our immune health.

Stress feels like energy is getting drained from us.
Renewal buoys us with energy and hope.