October 17, 2023 • 25 mins
I’m thrilled to bring back Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier, better known to her colleagues as “MH” (which is also a handy reference for “mental health”, so the short form is a great fit).
She’s a psychologist with a systems mind – and has both a PhD and an MBA. She has over 20 years of experience as a practicing psychologist and as a senior leader in the corporate, insurance, governance and health care sectors. MH’s unique talent is bringing together workplace and psychology – translating concepts into “take- aways” that listeners can put into action the minute they finish the episode. In 2024, Dr. Pelletier will release her new book, The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health.
I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier.
Pre-Order the Book: https://theresilienceplan.com/
Website: https://drmarie-helene.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Doctor Maria then, welcome back.It's great to see you.
Doctor Greg, pleasure to see you, too.
All right, So you've been on theshow before, so I'm not going to
get into the back story. People can check that out if
they choose to. But really excited to have you
back because of course, mental health and resilience remain a
significant challenge and remainto be critically important.
(00:21):
And you have a really cool idea in your new upcoming book, which
we're going to deal with today. And specifically, it's beginning
with why successful people are at risk.
So let's explore that a little bit.
First of all, let's talk about what is success look like for
most people and why is that actually a risk for us?
Yeah, great questions. The book emerged out of that
(00:44):
striking. Gap between We know so much
about what we should do to maintain our resilience and yet
the burnout rates that are same or worse in many areas.
And so then looking at, yeah, all those fabulously successful
professionals and leaders accomplishing magnificent,
(01:07):
complex things in their work andin their leadership and.
Finding themselves at risk and at times actually burning out.
And so it's looking at, OK, so what's happening to these
individuals who are so fabulous in so many ways that at the same
time will be putting themselves,their health, their performance,
(01:31):
that their brand as professionals and leaders at
risk. So that's what was the idea
behind the book. I'm really interested in
unpacking a little bit this tension between people who are
able to function at a very high level, yet really struggle in
the background regarding their health.
(01:53):
It's literally the kind of question I was hearing in my
work. I was hearing it by from
audiences and from individuals in individual work I do as an
executive coach and as a psychologist.
Literally, people would tell me MH I.
Accomplish such a level of complex type tasks and
(02:14):
leadership and situations and I go through all this.
I've been resilient all these years that's in fact how I got
here. How complex can that be?
Because they look at, well, really they and then they look
at their recommendations that they're they're hearing that
we've all heard even more so in the past few years with the
(02:35):
pandemic and additional awareness to.
Burnout from the World Health Organization and mental health
generally in the world. And so they're looking
themselves at this, at the fact that they've trained for all
these years to do very complex things and they are doing
accomplishing these with successand then finding themselves at a
(02:56):
moment where they can't keep producing.
They can't keep being innovativeand creative and continuing to
bring their amazing skills and expertise.
Because of what? Just how their resilience is not
going well and so it is not extremely complex.
It has complexities to it as youand I know you've written
(03:19):
fabulous books about it as well.And research continues and is
part of what keeps people like you and I in this field.
And so thrilled to be in it Ultimately though.
What I found is part of what needs to happen is to be
strategic about what are you going to implement in a
realistic way in your context? People are getting overwhelmed
(03:42):
by the number of recommendations.
Read these twenty articles you receive in your inbox.
These twenty articles will tell you all the areas you need to
pay attention to. They don't have time to read
these articles, and even if theydid, they would not have time to
implement. 1/5 of them. And so as I was working with
(04:04):
individuals who have often a business background, who use
approaches from the business world to what they do, I used
that analogy and started seeing the traction.
And that's how it happened when we start to apply some of these
simple tactics strategically in the individual's context.
(04:27):
So let's say we have someone or any listener, if you know who's
on on this show, fair enough, because you know, let's be real
about this. There have been moments over the
last few years where I fully admit I was exhausted, I was
burned out like pivoting to digital now pivoting from
digital back to hybrid and then hybrid to uncertain, live versus
(04:51):
virtual. Like it's been, it's been, it's
been a lot and that definitely took its toll.
And as you mentioned, there is so much information coming at us
from whatever newsletters we've signed up to, whatever podcast
we've listened to, whatever social media we follow with tons
(05:11):
of recommendations. But it's almost like you have
too much in order to be able to make a decision and you get
paralysis by analysis. And I'm curious, but how we go
from that state to being strategic in our context about
what to do? Yes, exactly.
That is exactly the question that this book answers.
(05:31):
And and I'll tell you how, how Igot there.
So I was working, as I was saying, with individuals, many
of which are in the business world.
And at some point found myself coming up with this analogy and
said, look, because they were telling me seriously, how
complicated can this be, right? And I said right, exactly.
It is not that complicated. But we do need to be strategic
(05:52):
about it. And then I said, OK, wait a
second. If you were to launch or when
you've launched a new service ora new product, whether it's in
your organization, if you are aninterpreter or an interpreter,
when you've launched something new in the world, have you just
decided, Oh yeah, I'm going to launch this and then you just
(06:13):
put it out for sale? Or did you have this wonderful
idea and then turned and looked at?
The context Who else is offeringexactly this or something
similar to this? What's missing from their
offering? Who is buying this thing right
now? How much are they willing to pay
for it? What could put this product at
(06:34):
risk in the world, in the economy context we're in, in
different countries. And then you'd be looking at
what allows them to produce thisthing so efficiently and
profitably, right? You would ask all these
questions about the context you would look at.
And this firm over here that's offering something similar, from
(06:54):
which values are they operating from?
What's their mission? Where are they going?
As an organization, you'd look at all this and then you'll come
back. You would come back at what you
have in mind, refine this and that.
You see, all this process is something that.
Either, if you're a very sort ofstructured MB, a type, you would
do a business plan that would allow you to answer all these
(07:16):
questions. If you're more a free spirit who
does not write these things down, you'd still be thinking
about it. Because that's in part what
makes you successful. That's what ensures that you are
catching your blind spots. You're not just looking towards
the shiny light over here, you're making sure you're
turning around. It forces you to do this.
(07:37):
So the same approach. Came up here where I said same
situation. If we're all we're doing is
saying yeah you should exercise more, eat better, sleep better,
spend time with people, go in nature, all these things that
just stays here and it may not work.
What we may need to do is also look at your values.
(08:00):
So what's going to make this meaningful looking at?
What's happening in your context?
What sources of supply do you have right now?
What sources of demands do you have?
Not just professional, personal as well, because it's all coming
in the one person. And what's part of your context?
Literally adapting the SWOT analysis to you personally.
(08:22):
And again, none of these things takes forever.
In the book I've got worksheets exercises and they vary between
1:00 and 5:00 minutes because I know the one has time.
But once you've done this, yes, go no.
I was wondering once we've done this, I'm sure then that leads
to a host of other steps that wecan take.
(08:43):
And you've mentioned a couple things that I want to dig into a
little bit further. The word risk has come up a
couple times and I'm sure that everyone listening to this has
understands like risk and if you're in a business context
obviously have to do risk analysis where could things
potentially derail your businessand in the railroad context.
But then also in a personal situation, we need to think
(09:05):
about like risk. It's why we have house insurance
or car insurance. I like we're used to thinking
about these things. But when it comes to our health
and wellbeing, we don't often think about it and we don't
often do that sort of an analysis and thinking to figure
out where could we potentially be at risk from a health
perspective if we keep working the way that we're working.
And so many of us are pedal to the metal redlining still and
(09:30):
given the uncertainty and the change and the pace, that
probably isn't going to change. So I'd love to hear a little bit
more from you about this idea ofrisk when it comes to our health
and Wellness and how we need to consider that in order to
maintain our ability to keep performing at a high level on an
ongoing basis. Yes, I think that one of the key
misconceptions that keeps us from approaching our health
(09:56):
Wellness resilience from a risk management perspective at times
is that. Positive bias and it being
optimistic in our perspective ishelpful in a number of ways,
obviously, right, expecting thatthings will go well, expecting
that we will have energy, expecting that this new service
(10:16):
or product that we're launching will go well and it's very
appropriate and helpful. Without being positively biased,
being optimistic in our perspective, there's many things
we would just not have ever tried.
So it is very helpful to have it.
However, there is a degree of this that sort of tips on the
(10:36):
other side and becomes a liability.
This constant assumption that wedon't need to do anything about
our resilience, it's always going to be there.
The level of energy I have rightnow is going to be there
forever. That's who I am.
All these assumptions, they get in the way of us being realistic
about what's going to happen. So wherever we are right now,
(11:00):
when? We're having this listening to
this conversation or even you and I having it today.
If we take a moment to look at, OK, we're feeling the way we are
right now, assuming we're feeling fantastic, OK.
And we don't want to just assumeit's going to stay like this.
We are in this potentially this moment in time where the next
three months will be fairly busy, possibly the busiest in
(11:24):
general on a 12 month rotation for us.
Knowing that even if after thesethree months you have maybe
planned one or two weeks of vacation, some of these two
weeks will actually become work.And the moment we return after
just two weeks following three months very busy is still we're
still not going to be like we were after our longest, most
(11:47):
recent vacation, whenever that was.
So then as we have opportunitiescoming our way.
It may give us time, a moment topause and and actually reflect
on how's going to be my energy in two months from now.
What can I put in place to either maintain it or mitigate
the demands, knowing realistically that it will still
(12:10):
need a bit more time to climb back up?
And then that makes us adjust our choices more realistically
and more efficiently, Got it. So it's almost like prehab
versus rehab, right? Like you're preventing it from
happening in the 1st place, rather than trying to figure out
how to get back in the game after having a problem like an
injury for example. It's like avoiding the injury in
(12:30):
the 1st place rather than rehabilitating the injury
afterwards. Am I reading that correctly?
It's a good analysis, yes. And often if we continue on that
physical analogy, athletes usually get to this point.
High level athletes, but even everyday athletes, people like
it that you exercise like you and I, we typically don't.
(12:50):
We love this logic. Makes sense.
Do we do it? We only do it after we've paid
for it for a few times, where wehave not been preventative.
We've got hurt. We did physio for months.
We got back at it again. We again did not prepare
adequately and only after a few rounds of this we said OK, fine,
(13:13):
now I will do it right. So same thing here.
The logic itself, Yeah, it makessense.
No, I have not yet met someone who would disagree with it.
The challenges doing it. And so in creating an approach
that is straightforward, clear, based on principles we're
already using in business, it makes it easier to implement.
(13:36):
So let's let's explore that a little bit more deeply because
two days ago in New York had a conversation with a friend of
mine and it was all around the idea that we know what to do,
but we don't do it. And that is a common refrain.
Everyone knows needs exercise more and we still don't exercise
enough. We know we need to eat more
(13:57):
vegetables. Maybe that's not happen, like on
and on and on and on and on. We know what we need to do.
Yet we there's a gap between what we know and what we
actually do. I get the idea of being
strategic about it, using our experience in business to
develop the same approaches, buthow do we actually get up in the
morning and go for the walk? How do we actually put down the
(14:19):
tablet, turn off the lights and go to sleep?
Like, how do we actually do this?
From your experience, who, what are, what are successful people
do that actually make these lifestyle adjustments to improve
their health and wellbeing? Yes.
And the key, a key part of the, the of the answer to this is
they make one adjustment. They don't make these
(14:41):
adjustments, they make one adjustment.
And once this adjustment is in, the strategy can evolve for the
next one adjustment. Because the reality is no one
has two hours a day right now waiting for your and my
recommendations and constants like no.
(15:02):
And that includes you and I. Exactly, to your point, and
absolutely true. True for me as well, so.
What this does is it makes it sorealistic and that's what I'm
hearing from workshop participants after they step out
and they're like okay. I thought this would be
complicated and I've never been clearer and finding things as
(15:22):
simple as right now I am crystalclear on my next action.
I absolutely know I can implement it and I will, simple
as this. So the way we get there is
through brief exercises that just.
Focus us on our core values, which are individuals to each of
us. We all have some ideas of what
they are. We put them in the right things
so they are in front of us. Okay.
(15:45):
Then we identify the sources of supply and demand we have right
now in our lives in a realistic way.
So we're not positively biased about.
Oh yeah, no, no, I'm good. I've got not much going on.
Wait a second. Your child's experiencing some
challenges in their friendships right now.
That's on your mind as a parent.Your parents health is fine
(16:09):
right now, but you never know itmidshight that's on your mind
right now. Things are going on that
sometimes people have even said to me in workshops.
Well, you know, my partner is dealing with this health issue,
but I cannot write this here. Yes, it goes on the list.
You want to support them. That's wonderful.
And it still represents a demand.
(16:31):
So we want to be realistic with this, right.
So being clear on all these and being clear on the context so
that we don't go out saying I will exercise five times a week,
half an hour, if the current context is constant
international travel that makes it absolutely impossible to do
this. So we're not going to move away.
(16:53):
Right. We're not going to move away
from it. We will find versions of it that
are absolutely doable right now so we can maintain it.
And that's what shifts the direct testing.
So it's that realistic realism and really understanding your
priorities and then working within the context of our real
(17:15):
situation, our real priorities, our real demands.
Because we could want to train for two hours a day.
But the reality is you got to take your daughter to gymnastics
and then you've got to take yourson to hockey, and then you've
got to make sure that you do what you need to do at work and
it's hard to fit it all in. So given all of that, how do we
actually do this on a daily basis?
(17:36):
That means that maybe you do 5 minutes of walking after you
drop off your daughter at gymnastics, and maybe you're
doing some push ups against the park bench while your child is
at hockey and Mike is that, is that really?
We're just trying to fit this into our real experience and
that's what makes it easier. Yes, that's what makes it
implementable. And it also means that different
(17:59):
people will choose different strategic pillars, different
directions, and different actions given where they're at
right now. You may discover, for example,
as you write your values and as you write your sources of supply
and demand and all the things wedo here.
You may realize that one of the key things you need to do even
before you get to the point of implementing with more
(18:22):
confidence some of these behaviors.
You may have a pillar that's called called boundaries, where
part of your actions is to experiment.
Train yourself with either saying no if it's possible, or
let me get back to you tomorrow.For a lot of people saying no,
it's not possible. I know there is a rarest rare
(18:43):
circumstances where it's possible.
Often we cannot say no immediately, but very often we
can say I'd love to say yes. Let me get back to you tomorrow.
And what you're doing between today and tomorrow is you're
going back to your list of demands to look at ways in which
this may be done later, partially now, partially now,
(19:03):
with support options may come, may come up.
So it will help identify different types of pillars.
Interesting. You've spoken about values quite
often in this chat, and I've been thinking a lot about
identity and how once you shift your identity that many of these
(19:24):
practices become very easy. If my identity is that I am an
athlete who runs a business, then it is easy for me to
rationalize going out and doing a workout.
If I have a client for example, and we're chatting about this,
she she may say, look, I'm I'm running a business, I'm a mom
and I like to be fit. So therefore I am a fit mom who
(19:45):
runs a business that is my identity with fitness being
first, being a mom second, running the business 3rd.
So when we craft these values and identities, that helps us to
guide the decisions that we make.
Am I reading that correctly fromyour comments?
Yes. And in the book ultimately
there's a lot of theories in psychology that connect with
(20:07):
each other from different sources, right.
Research in a certain area at some point will connect with
research in other areas and leadto similar conclusions.
In the book I'm I'm referring tocognitive behavior therapy and
specifically strength based CBT both in terms of the thoughts we
have right now in trying to makechanges, for example also in
(20:29):
terms of the beliefs we've had for decades at times related to
how we approach our work. Beliefs that may come from our
personal life but they may come from our industry.
Sometimes we'll be in in an industry where the belief is
that a highly successful professional works all the time
or if you're a doctor, you you're not a client, you don't
(20:52):
need anything, you're not a patient.
And some of these beliefs at some point become not helpful.
So in shifting these beliefs, inshifting our thoughts which then
can be reflected, for example, in how we define ourselves, how
we define our identity. You'll even see links between
this and what we know now from research on primy, the kinds of
(21:16):
images and and sentences we can expose ourselves to and how
they'll help us attain our goals.
So wherever it comes from, all of these go in the same
direction of having clarity on where you're going with your
goals, connection with your values, and then moving forward
(21:36):
with these actions which do include, yes, the language we
use. I love the idea of priming and
using media and language and words to get our brain into the
state that we need to be in to accomplish the things that we
want to accomplish or simply do the things we want to do.
I'm wondering if you could expand upon that a little bit as
well, because it's always fascinating to me about how the
(21:57):
information in our world around us has such a powerful impact on
our brains and on how in our mind and how we function and
controlling that, managing it and crafting it actually is so
powerful for us. Yes, yes, the the one of the
interesting pieces of research that has emerged in the past few
years is that on priming, And mostly one part of it is priming
(22:22):
in the context of goal setting and goal attainment.
And a lot of the research about goal setting and goal attainment
involves things that many of us are familiar with, like having
smart goals. Goals that are attainable not so
high that you can't reach them, but high enough to be
motivating. And all these and all of these
are very conscious processes, things we think about and
(22:44):
prepare and implement. And the two of the researchers,
Gary Latham and Doctor Locke in the US, have done decades of
work on goal theory, goal setting theory, recently adding
the principles that are coming from nonconscious processes like
priming. And what priming is, is exposing
(23:06):
our brains to words or images that represent our goal.
And what we know from research is doing this will actually
increase our chances of reachingthese goals.
Now couple of key elements here,you still need all the conscious
thinking and preparing and decision making.
It doesn't go away and there arefascinating pieces of research
(23:29):
on this. But it is fairly established in
different contexts with different types of goals, with
different types of people. It's it's there, The impact is
there, that if we use priming, whether it's a word or an image,
although we now know that imagesare even more powerful, we are
going to increase our chances ofreaching these goals.
So concretely for us here, OK, let's say my resilience plan is
(23:51):
to increase more my resilience. And let's say I am very
comfortable and confident in theresearch about meditation.
I have still not done it. OK, well I probably want to
identify realistically a moment and amount of time that I can do
it for. For example, 2 minutes before my
(24:12):
lunchtime. And if I were to use priming,
which I do use of course, is I could have an image of someone
meditating and you all you need is to have it somewhere you're
going to see it, have it here onmy wall, and that contributes to
reaching my goal. That's one of the ways to use
priming. I love it.
(24:33):
What's your resilience plan right now?
What are you working on? The mindfulness for me so it has
elements. Someone Some of my actions are
that to keep the meditation witha certain amount of time,
ideally on a daily basis and a minimum amount of time as well,
so it's never zero. Basically that's the the goal,
(24:53):
which most of the time I I reachnot 100%, but that's OK You miss
one day or whatever you get backon it the following day.
That's all we need to do. So that's one of mine here.
Both because seriously, this phase for me with the book
coming out that you're familiar with, this is extremely busy and
I want to enjoy it. And so that's that.
(25:15):
That's the big part, why that was one of my goals.
Yeah, well, hopefully you enjoy it because all the people on
this show buy your book and if they wanted to do that and learn
a little bit more about. Your work.
Where should they go? The resilience plan.com.
They will get everything there. The book, the website, the kinds
of things that I do as well. Theresilienceplan.com.
(25:37):
Mathia, then thank you so much for joining us.
I really appreciate. It was great to have you on the
show. Again, thank you for all your
work. Thanks for what you're putting
out into the world. It's super helpful and we're
really grateful for you taking your time to hang out with us
today. Oh, great.
Thank you. Pleasure is all mine.
Doctor Maria then, welcome back.It's great to see you.
Doctor Greg, pleasure to see you, too.
All right, So you've been on theshow before, so I'm not going to
get into the back story. People can check that out if
they choose to. But really excited to have you
back because of course, mental health and resilience remain a
significant challenge and remainto be critically important.
(00:21):
And you have a really cool idea in your new upcoming book, which
we're going to deal with today. And specifically, it's beginning
with why successful people are at risk.
So let's explore that a little bit.
First of all, let's talk about what is success look like for
most people and why is that actually a risk for us?
Yeah, great questions. The book emerged out of that
(00:44):
striking. Gap between We know so much
about what we should do to maintain our resilience and yet
the burnout rates that are same or worse in many areas.
And so then looking at, yeah, all those fabulously successful
professionals and leaders accomplishing magnificent,
(01:07):
complex things in their work andin their leadership and.
Finding themselves at risk and at times actually burning out.
And so it's looking at, OK, so what's happening to these
individuals who are so fabulous in so many ways that at the same
time will be putting themselves,their health, their performance,
(01:31):
that their brand as professionals and leaders at
risk. So that's what was the idea
behind the book. I'm really interested in
unpacking a little bit this tension between people who are
able to function at a very high level, yet really struggle in
the background regarding their health.
(01:53):
It's literally the kind of question I was hearing in my
work. I was hearing it by from
audiences and from individuals in individual work I do as an
executive coach and as a psychologist.
Literally, people would tell me MH I.
Accomplish such a level of complex type tasks and
(02:14):
leadership and situations and I go through all this.
I've been resilient all these years that's in fact how I got
here. How complex can that be?
Because they look at, well, really they and then they look
at their recommendations that they're they're hearing that
we've all heard even more so in the past few years with the
(02:35):
pandemic and additional awareness to.
Burnout from the World Health Organization and mental health
generally in the world. And so they're looking
themselves at this, at the fact that they've trained for all
these years to do very complex things and they are doing
accomplishing these with successand then finding themselves at a
(02:56):
moment where they can't keep producing.
They can't keep being innovativeand creative and continuing to
bring their amazing skills and expertise.
Because of what? Just how their resilience is not
going well and so it is not extremely complex.
It has complexities to it as youand I know you've written
(03:19):
fabulous books about it as well.And research continues and is
part of what keeps people like you and I in this field.
And so thrilled to be in it Ultimately though.
What I found is part of what needs to happen is to be
strategic about what are you going to implement in a
realistic way in your context? People are getting overwhelmed
(03:42):
by the number of recommendations.
Read these twenty articles you receive in your inbox.
These twenty articles will tell you all the areas you need to
pay attention to. They don't have time to read
these articles, and even if theydid, they would not have time to
implement. 1/5 of them. And so as I was working with
(04:04):
individuals who have often a business background, who use
approaches from the business world to what they do, I used
that analogy and started seeing the traction.
And that's how it happened when we start to apply some of these
simple tactics strategically in the individual's context.
(04:27):
So let's say we have someone or any listener, if you know who's
on on this show, fair enough, because you know, let's be real
about this. There have been moments over the
last few years where I fully admit I was exhausted, I was
burned out like pivoting to digital now pivoting from
digital back to hybrid and then hybrid to uncertain, live versus
(04:51):
virtual. Like it's been, it's been, it's
been a lot and that definitely took its toll.
And as you mentioned, there is so much information coming at us
from whatever newsletters we've signed up to, whatever podcast
we've listened to, whatever social media we follow with tons
(05:11):
of recommendations. But it's almost like you have
too much in order to be able to make a decision and you get
paralysis by analysis. And I'm curious, but how we go
from that state to being strategic in our context about
what to do? Yes, exactly.
That is exactly the question that this book answers.
(05:31):
And and I'll tell you how, how Igot there.
So I was working, as I was saying, with individuals, many
of which are in the business world.
And at some point found myself coming up with this analogy and
said, look, because they were telling me seriously, how
complicated can this be, right? And I said right, exactly.
It is not that complicated. But we do need to be strategic
(05:52):
about it. And then I said, OK, wait a
second. If you were to launch or when
you've launched a new service ora new product, whether it's in
your organization, if you are aninterpreter or an interpreter,
when you've launched something new in the world, have you just
decided, Oh yeah, I'm going to launch this and then you just
(06:13):
put it out for sale? Or did you have this wonderful
idea and then turned and looked at?
The context Who else is offeringexactly this or something
similar to this? What's missing from their
offering? Who is buying this thing right
now? How much are they willing to pay
for it? What could put this product at
(06:34):
risk in the world, in the economy context we're in, in
different countries. And then you'd be looking at
what allows them to produce thisthing so efficiently and
profitably, right? You would ask all these
questions about the context you would look at.
And this firm over here that's offering something similar, from
(06:54):
which values are they operating from?
What's their mission? Where are they going?
As an organization, you'd look at all this and then you'll come
back. You would come back at what you
have in mind, refine this and that.
You see, all this process is something that.
Either, if you're a very sort ofstructured MB, a type, you would
do a business plan that would allow you to answer all these
(07:16):
questions. If you're more a free spirit who
does not write these things down, you'd still be thinking
about it. Because that's in part what
makes you successful. That's what ensures that you are
catching your blind spots. You're not just looking towards
the shiny light over here, you're making sure you're
turning around. It forces you to do this.
(07:37):
So the same approach. Came up here where I said same
situation. If we're all we're doing is
saying yeah you should exercise more, eat better, sleep better,
spend time with people, go in nature, all these things that
just stays here and it may not work.
What we may need to do is also look at your values.
(08:00):
So what's going to make this meaningful looking at?
What's happening in your context?
What sources of supply do you have right now?
What sources of demands do you have?
Not just professional, personal as well, because it's all coming
in the one person. And what's part of your context?
Literally adapting the SWOT analysis to you personally.
(08:22):
And again, none of these things takes forever.
In the book I've got worksheets exercises and they vary between
1:00 and 5:00 minutes because I know the one has time.
But once you've done this, yes, go no.
I was wondering once we've done this, I'm sure then that leads
to a host of other steps that wecan take.
(08:43):
And you've mentioned a couple things that I want to dig into a
little bit further. The word risk has come up a
couple times and I'm sure that everyone listening to this has
understands like risk and if you're in a business context
obviously have to do risk analysis where could things
potentially derail your businessand in the railroad context.
But then also in a personal situation, we need to think
(09:05):
about like risk. It's why we have house insurance
or car insurance. I like we're used to thinking
about these things. But when it comes to our health
and wellbeing, we don't often think about it and we don't
often do that sort of an analysis and thinking to figure
out where could we potentially be at risk from a health
perspective if we keep working the way that we're working.
And so many of us are pedal to the metal redlining still and
(09:30):
given the uncertainty and the change and the pace, that
probably isn't going to change. So I'd love to hear a little bit
more from you about this idea ofrisk when it comes to our health
and Wellness and how we need to consider that in order to
maintain our ability to keep performing at a high level on an
ongoing basis. Yes, I think that one of the key
misconceptions that keeps us from approaching our health
(09:56):
Wellness resilience from a risk management perspective at times
is that. Positive bias and it being
optimistic in our perspective ishelpful in a number of ways,
obviously, right, expecting thatthings will go well, expecting
that we will have energy, expecting that this new service
(10:16):
or product that we're launching will go well and it's very
appropriate and helpful. Without being positively biased,
being optimistic in our perspective, there's many things
we would just not have ever tried.
So it is very helpful to have it.
However, there is a degree of this that sort of tips on the
(10:36):
other side and becomes a liability.
This constant assumption that wedon't need to do anything about
our resilience, it's always going to be there.
The level of energy I have rightnow is going to be there
forever. That's who I am.
All these assumptions, they get in the way of us being realistic
about what's going to happen. So wherever we are right now,
(11:00):
when? We're having this listening to
this conversation or even you and I having it today.
If we take a moment to look at, OK, we're feeling the way we are
right now, assuming we're feeling fantastic, OK.
And we don't want to just assumeit's going to stay like this.
We are in this potentially this moment in time where the next
three months will be fairly busy, possibly the busiest in
(11:24):
general on a 12 month rotation for us.
Knowing that even if after thesethree months you have maybe
planned one or two weeks of vacation, some of these two
weeks will actually become work.And the moment we return after
just two weeks following three months very busy is still we're
still not going to be like we were after our longest, most
(11:47):
recent vacation, whenever that was.
So then as we have opportunitiescoming our way.
It may give us time, a moment topause and and actually reflect
on how's going to be my energy in two months from now.
What can I put in place to either maintain it or mitigate
the demands, knowing realistically that it will still
(12:10):
need a bit more time to climb back up?
And then that makes us adjust our choices more realistically
and more efficiently, Got it. So it's almost like prehab
versus rehab, right? Like you're preventing it from
happening in the 1st place, rather than trying to figure out
how to get back in the game after having a problem like an
injury for example. It's like avoiding the injury in
(12:30):
the 1st place rather than rehabilitating the injury
afterwards. Am I reading that correctly?
It's a good analysis, yes. And often if we continue on that
physical analogy, athletes usually get to this point.
High level athletes, but even everyday athletes, people like
it that you exercise like you and I, we typically don't.
(12:50):
We love this logic. Makes sense.
Do we do it? We only do it after we've paid
for it for a few times, where wehave not been preventative.
We've got hurt. We did physio for months.
We got back at it again. We again did not prepare
adequately and only after a few rounds of this we said OK, fine,
(13:13):
now I will do it right. So same thing here.
The logic itself, Yeah, it makessense.
No, I have not yet met someone who would disagree with it.
The challenges doing it. And so in creating an approach
that is straightforward, clear, based on principles we're
already using in business, it makes it easier to implement.
(13:36):
So let's let's explore that a little bit more deeply because
two days ago in New York had a conversation with a friend of
mine and it was all around the idea that we know what to do,
but we don't do it. And that is a common refrain.
Everyone knows needs exercise more and we still don't exercise
enough. We know we need to eat more
(13:57):
vegetables. Maybe that's not happen, like on
and on and on and on and on. We know what we need to do.
Yet we there's a gap between what we know and what we
actually do. I get the idea of being
strategic about it, using our experience in business to
develop the same approaches, buthow do we actually get up in the
morning and go for the walk? How do we actually put down the
(14:19):
tablet, turn off the lights and go to sleep?
Like, how do we actually do this?
From your experience, who, what are, what are successful people
do that actually make these lifestyle adjustments to improve
their health and wellbeing? Yes.
And the key, a key part of the, the of the answer to this is
they make one adjustment. They don't make these
(14:41):
adjustments, they make one adjustment.
And once this adjustment is in, the strategy can evolve for the
next one adjustment. Because the reality is no one
has two hours a day right now waiting for your and my
recommendations and constants like no.
(15:02):
And that includes you and I. Exactly, to your point, and
absolutely true. True for me as well, so.
What this does is it makes it sorealistic and that's what I'm
hearing from workshop participants after they step out
and they're like okay. I thought this would be
complicated and I've never been clearer and finding things as
(15:22):
simple as right now I am crystalclear on my next action.
I absolutely know I can implement it and I will, simple
as this. So the way we get there is
through brief exercises that just.
Focus us on our core values, which are individuals to each of
us. We all have some ideas of what
they are. We put them in the right things
so they are in front of us. Okay.
(15:45):
Then we identify the sources of supply and demand we have right
now in our lives in a realistic way.
So we're not positively biased about.
Oh yeah, no, no, I'm good. I've got not much going on.
Wait a second. Your child's experiencing some
challenges in their friendships right now.
That's on your mind as a parent.Your parents health is fine
(16:09):
right now, but you never know itmidshight that's on your mind
right now. Things are going on that
sometimes people have even said to me in workshops.
Well, you know, my partner is dealing with this health issue,
but I cannot write this here. Yes, it goes on the list.
You want to support them. That's wonderful.
And it still represents a demand.
(16:31):
So we want to be realistic with this, right.
So being clear on all these and being clear on the context so
that we don't go out saying I will exercise five times a week,
half an hour, if the current context is constant
international travel that makes it absolutely impossible to do
this. So we're not going to move away.
(16:53):
Right. We're not going to move away
from it. We will find versions of it that
are absolutely doable right now so we can maintain it.
And that's what shifts the direct testing.
So it's that realistic realism and really understanding your
priorities and then working within the context of our real
(17:15):
situation, our real priorities, our real demands.
Because we could want to train for two hours a day.
But the reality is you got to take your daughter to gymnastics
and then you've got to take yourson to hockey, and then you've
got to make sure that you do what you need to do at work and
it's hard to fit it all in. So given all of that, how do we
actually do this on a daily basis?
(17:36):
That means that maybe you do 5 minutes of walking after you
drop off your daughter at gymnastics, and maybe you're
doing some push ups against the park bench while your child is
at hockey and Mike is that, is that really?
We're just trying to fit this into our real experience and
that's what makes it easier. Yes, that's what makes it
implementable. And it also means that different
(17:59):
people will choose different strategic pillars, different
directions, and different actions given where they're at
right now. You may discover, for example,
as you write your values and as you write your sources of supply
and demand and all the things wedo here.
You may realize that one of the key things you need to do even
before you get to the point of implementing with more
(18:22):
confidence some of these behaviors.
You may have a pillar that's called called boundaries, where
part of your actions is to experiment.
Train yourself with either saying no if it's possible, or
let me get back to you tomorrow.For a lot of people saying no,
it's not possible. I know there is a rarest rare
(18:43):
circumstances where it's possible.
Often we cannot say no immediately, but very often we
can say I'd love to say yes. Let me get back to you tomorrow.
And what you're doing between today and tomorrow is you're
going back to your list of demands to look at ways in which
this may be done later, partially now, partially now,
(19:03):
with support options may come, may come up.
So it will help identify different types of pillars.
Interesting. You've spoken about values quite
often in this chat, and I've been thinking a lot about
identity and how once you shift your identity that many of these
(19:24):
practices become very easy. If my identity is that I am an
athlete who runs a business, then it is easy for me to
rationalize going out and doing a workout.
If I have a client for example, and we're chatting about this,
she she may say, look, I'm I'm running a business, I'm a mom
and I like to be fit. So therefore I am a fit mom who
(19:45):
runs a business that is my identity with fitness being
first, being a mom second, running the business 3rd.
So when we craft these values and identities, that helps us to
guide the decisions that we make.
Am I reading that correctly fromyour comments?
Yes. And in the book ultimately
there's a lot of theories in psychology that connect with
(20:07):
each other from different sources, right.
Research in a certain area at some point will connect with
research in other areas and leadto similar conclusions.
In the book I'm I'm referring tocognitive behavior therapy and
specifically strength based CBT both in terms of the thoughts we
have right now in trying to makechanges, for example also in
(20:29):
terms of the beliefs we've had for decades at times related to
how we approach our work. Beliefs that may come from our
personal life but they may come from our industry.
Sometimes we'll be in in an industry where the belief is
that a highly successful professional works all the time
or if you're a doctor, you you're not a client, you don't
(20:52):
need anything, you're not a patient.
And some of these beliefs at some point become not helpful.
So in shifting these beliefs, inshifting our thoughts which then
can be reflected, for example, in how we define ourselves, how
we define our identity. You'll even see links between
this and what we know now from research on primy, the kinds of
(21:16):
images and and sentences we can expose ourselves to and how
they'll help us attain our goals.
So wherever it comes from, all of these go in the same
direction of having clarity on where you're going with your
goals, connection with your values, and then moving forward
(21:36):
with these actions which do include, yes, the language we
use. I love the idea of priming and
using media and language and words to get our brain into the
state that we need to be in to accomplish the things that we
want to accomplish or simply do the things we want to do.
I'm wondering if you could expand upon that a little bit as
well, because it's always fascinating to me about how the
(21:57):
information in our world around us has such a powerful impact on
our brains and on how in our mind and how we function and
controlling that, managing it and crafting it actually is so
powerful for us. Yes, yes, the the one of the
interesting pieces of research that has emerged in the past few
years is that on priming, And mostly one part of it is priming
(22:22):
in the context of goal setting and goal attainment.
And a lot of the research about goal setting and goal attainment
involves things that many of us are familiar with, like having
smart goals. Goals that are attainable not so
high that you can't reach them, but high enough to be
motivating. And all these and all of these
are very conscious processes, things we think about and
(22:44):
prepare and implement. And the two of the researchers,
Gary Latham and Doctor Locke in the US, have done decades of
work on goal theory, goal setting theory, recently adding
the principles that are coming from nonconscious processes like
priming. And what priming is, is exposing
(23:06):
our brains to words or images that represent our goal.
And what we know from research is doing this will actually
increase our chances of reachingthese goals.
Now couple of key elements here,you still need all the conscious
thinking and preparing and decision making.
It doesn't go away and there arefascinating pieces of research
(23:29):
on this. But it is fairly established in
different contexts with different types of goals, with
different types of people. It's it's there, The impact is
there, that if we use priming, whether it's a word or an image,
although we now know that imagesare even more powerful, we are
going to increase our chances ofreaching these goals.
So concretely for us here, OK, let's say my resilience plan is
(23:51):
to increase more my resilience. And let's say I am very
comfortable and confident in theresearch about meditation.
I have still not done it. OK, well I probably want to
identify realistically a moment and amount of time that I can do
it for. For example, 2 minutes before my
(24:12):
lunchtime. And if I were to use priming,
which I do use of course, is I could have an image of someone
meditating and you all you need is to have it somewhere you're
going to see it, have it here onmy wall, and that contributes to
reaching my goal. That's one of the ways to use
priming. I love it.
(24:33):
What's your resilience plan right now?
What are you working on? The mindfulness for me so it has
elements. Someone Some of my actions are
that to keep the meditation witha certain amount of time,
ideally on a daily basis and a minimum amount of time as well,
so it's never zero. Basically that's the the goal,
(24:53):
which most of the time I I reachnot 100%, but that's OK You miss
one day or whatever you get backon it the following day.
That's all we need to do. So that's one of mine here.
Both because seriously, this phase for me with the book
coming out that you're familiar with, this is extremely busy and
I want to enjoy it. And so that's that.
(25:15):
That's the big part, why that was one of my goals.
Yeah, well, hopefully you enjoy it because all the people on
this show buy your book and if they wanted to do that and learn
a little bit more about. Your work.
Where should they go? The resilience plan.com.
They will get everything there. The book, the website, the kinds
of things that I do as well. Theresilienceplan.com.
(25:37):
Mathia, then thank you so much for joining us.
I really appreciate. It was great to have you on the
show. Again, thank you for all your
work. Thanks for what you're putting
out into the world. It's super helpful and we're
really grateful for you taking your time to hang out with us
today. Oh, great.
Thank you. Pleasure is all mine.
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