The ABCD of true resilience, with Dr Alia Bojilova - Part One - The Paul Taylor Podcast | Expert in Hardiness and Mental Fitness

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
What if you could train your mind to not just
cope with stress, but actually thrive under pressure, and as
well as that improve your resilience, your gratitude, and even
your cognitive function. Well, I have an opportunity for you.
For the first time ever. I am running a full
day public workshop that's going to be accompanied with a

(00:23):
six week hardiness program. And this is based on the
randomized control trial that I recently published, the title of
which is Effects of a Multimodal Psychophysiological Training Intervention on
Cognitive fitness, hardiness, and well Being of Corporate Professionals.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Basically, what you will get is a.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Full day workshop on hardiness training that has been shown
to prove all three elements control orientation, challenge orientation, and
commitment orientation and hardiness has been called the courage to
grow from stress. But as well as that, ticipants in
this study had a twenty seven percent increase in mood,
they had a twenty six percent reduction in their perception

(01:07):
of the stress in their life. They had improvements in
resilience and gratitude, all three components of hardiness and of
cognitive function. So the workshop is going to be a
full day workshop. It's going to occur on Sunday, the
twenty sixth of October at Deacon University Burwood Campus. The
doors will open at eight thirty am and the workshop

(01:29):
will run from nine to four thirty pm. And in
addition to that, you will get a signed copy of
my book before it's actually released, and you will get
six weeks on the Hardiness app that was part of
the randomized control trial. This has a whole host of
different things in the toolbox. It's got workouts, it's got meditations,

(01:51):
it's got guided breathing sessions. There's a ritual board, there's
a whole host of educational videos, and much much more.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
If you're interested in growing from stress, optimizing your health
and living longer, this is the workshop and program for you.
So more details can be found on my website www
dot Paul Taylor dot biz.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Hope to see you there.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Doctor Aliyah bud Ylova, Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Good morning, good morning, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I am currently reading a book called The Resilience Toolkit
by doctor Alia bud Jlova, and it says a proven
four step process to unlock your true potential, and it
should say underneath it written by a P. Academic in resilience.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
And I'll tell you what.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
If I hear another psychologist say that resilience is all
about self care and self compassion, I'm going to throttle somebody.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
There is a collection of us that will help you out.
If that's the case, we'll help you.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
So look, it's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
We've got quite interesting parallels, right, both from Europe, from
rather challenging parts of Europe at the time. Both immigrants
to the furthest flung part of the world.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
You're over the ditch in New Zealand and I'm in Australia.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
And both joined the military. Both did PhDs in the
area of resilient stress, hardiness, that sort of stuff. So
kind of both p academics in this area. So tell
our listeners, what was it like growing up in Eastern Europe?
When you were when you were there, what we are

(03:54):
memories of it?

Speaker 3 (03:55):
The first thing I wanted to say is every step
of the way when you were finding parallel So I
just wanted to high five you well done, well done,
but you'd know perhaps from your own journey. I don't
want to draw too many similarities or too many parallels.
Too early to me growing up in Eastern Europe was
all I knew. But more importantly, at that stage of life,
it was invigorating. The challenges were meaningful. There was some

(04:19):
kind of do you know the curious pieces? There is
this saying, and I don't know if it's in Bulgarian
or not, but resistance is existence and it just states perfectly,
isn't it curious? Do you know what I mean? Because
on the flip side of that, you have the kind
of the agony of indulgence where you don't have something
to grapple with, something to bite into and something to

(04:41):
struggle against. So perhaps it was because it was too
young to process the wider scope of challenges that exist
in my environment. I actually found it invigorating, purposeful, Yes, challenging,
but more importantly, it felt like it had deep meaning.
The sorts of challenges we confront, the opportunity to establish yourself,

(05:02):
to find your own voice in this messy environment was
very satisfying.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
And when tell me this, when did you come across
Victor Frankel? Because I read Man Search for Meeting as
a seventeen year old, and I had a pretty profound
effect in my life.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
When did you first read about Frankel.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Well, my godmother, who is an amazing woman in Bulgaria,
introduced me to Frankel, perhaps a test too early, and
then I had my second encounter with Frankel in a
context I could better understand that, which was actually in
New Zealand my first year at university. A dear friend
of mine gave me the book and the seren depity
behind that, you know, the connection made me really deepen

(05:46):
my appetite for it. But Victor Frankel, my first introduction
would have probably been about around about the age of
thirteen fourteen.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Oh my, wow, that's very cool.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
So we're going to talk all things resilience, and I am,
as you'll have noted, doing a PhD in resilience. It's
a kind of a slippery term really when it comes
to from an academic perspective.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Is it a state?

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Is it a t is it a process? Is it
an outcome? Is it something that we have or something
that we do? And I love flicking through your book
and reading the line resilience is a process. So tell
us the difference between the listeners between what I just
talked about that that st treat, process outcome.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
The first thing I want to underline is I hope
none of us have any illusion that resilience isn't the necessity.
It is a critical necessity. It is something we cannot
do without, even if it is making away from here
to your destination today, you know. And so I think
when we're thinking about resilience for the longest of time,
is being described as a characteristic that comes from metallurgy,

(07:01):
you know, like how much can you handle before you break?
And that infuriates me because it misses the whole point, right. So,
to me, resilience is a pursuit. It's not a thing
that you were born with necessarily. Yes, we all have
it to some degree or another, but it needs to
be something that is woven in subjectively through our own
experience of life and very deliberately nurtured in order for

(07:24):
us to grow it and to continue to rely on
it in different phases and stages. So to me, it
is a process. It is a state that is always elusive,
and that's the piece that we have to keep remembering.
You know, it's not just you know, you show up,
you've got it, you crack on with life in your
rock star sure for a hot second, but then the

(07:46):
job of life is to continuously challenge you. If you
live life well that is, you know, if you hide
under a rock, that's a separate story, that's another book.
But that's the piece I think that matters most.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Had you just reminded me of I've had doctor Stanley
Beacham on my podcast a couple of times, and and
he said something that's really stuck in my head. He
said that that in order to live your best life,
you need to take on as much challenge and responsibility
as you will tolerate as you can tolerate, right, which

(08:19):
is a friggin cool And and he, you know, he
said something else that I just know that you're going
to love. He said, every nine and then you need
to walk right to the edge of yourself and stir
into the abyss.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yes please, Yeah, How good is that? You nearly you
nearly had me at as much as you can handle?
And then I thought, how do you? How do you
know that? Right in my in my little community of
you know, reflective thinkers, we we are practitioners more than that.

(08:53):
We talk about the spinning edge of possibility, right, And
so that isn't it delicious in fact to call that
before my publisher said, you know, someone has to read
it in that title doesn't appeal, But you know, like
the spinning edge of just constantly nudging, testing, exploring, seeing
just what's possible for you, you know.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
I remember a maid of mine in the military. It
was a bit mad, it was a bit out there,
but he always said, if you're not right on the edge,
you're taking up too much room.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Do you already love this podcast? I was, do you know?
This morning? I was going to prepare myself, and then
I thought, no, I'm just going to flow with it.
Don't judge me for my hippie words. But and now
I'm realizing we have the perfect collection of sound bites
just spontaneously emerging.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
That's cool indeed, So let let's talk about you and
your background.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Let's talk about it.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Before we dig into the whole process. I think the
context is really helpful here. Let's talk about May two
thousand and thirty in Syria. First of all, what were
you doing there?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Then? Secondly, and then talk us through what actually happened.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
So twenty twelve, twenty thirteen was my final deployment with
the New Zealand Defense Force as an army officer. I
had completed a number of deployments beforehand, and this was
the greatest gift of all. So I was selected to
serve with a UN mission, the oldest UN military mission
on the planet called Anso, and it serves across five

(10:31):
different countries. So you know, you've got Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Syria,
in Egypt, and I got picked for the best of
them all, or the most happening as it was at
the time, Syria. So in May twenty thirteen, I had
been in the mission area for already four months after
some training in Israel, and in May twenty thirteen, after

(10:55):
a series of critical incidences, myself and two of my
colleagues were taken hosted out of a UN base in
the middle of the night, unarmed by over thirty eight
heavily armed militia members. This particular incident was quite narrowly
because it had all the markings of a new script

(11:16):
that UN had not experienced in the operation in the
area of operation at the time. So we have had
a number of UN military observers who had been snatched
from the road and returned. We had loss of UN
military observer's life over time over the years, but military
installations or buildings effectively were considered the no gos on

(11:39):
and that had not changed. And so the fact the
fact that this threshold was crossed basically meant that we
are well. We are toasted. We thought everyone else did.
The group that took us was notorious, not for good reasons.
And yet we managed to talk our way out of

(11:59):
our recmment. And I'm standing here teatting to.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
You today, and and was there a point I think
you kind of alluded to it already, the fact that
they crossed a threshold and had actually gone into a
un building and snatched you writing your brain is going
this is different, this is different. Already talk us through.
What was the conversation like amongst the three of you

(12:27):
at that come to Jesus moment.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
The beauty and the and the beauty if we let it.
Critical incidences of this nature is that they guide you,
you know, when you snatched in a situation that is
as acute as this. The element of surprise channels or
challenges you to channel your energy very intentionally. We didn't
have to dilly. Daily conversations were parallel the world with

(12:54):
one another. We were discouraged from having conversations with each
other for a while, right, okay, But in those initial stages,
you look to find the tiny opening that you have,
hoping that everyone is on the same on the same mission,
which is survived, survived the moment, you know, which is
really interesting. It's it's so as a context at the time,

(13:17):
the threatening area was quite high, and so we had
one of us at all times on beauty at night
to observe and monitor. One of my colleagues was already
aware that things were happening, but he didn't have a
full arch of sight, so he couldn't evaluate. He didn't
he didn't realize that there were, you know, thirty men

(13:37):
climbing over the fence whilst he was observing the handful
in front of him. So jumped over the fence that
had broken the way into our compound effectively. And by
the time when my colleague logged onto that and started
making madacres to our headquarters, I could see a bunch
of them creeping in from the back, which is where

(13:58):
my quarters were, my my quarters being a tiny room
in a container building. And at that point I actually
woke up with someone smashing a window in our building.
That stage, you know what I mean, don't. You don't
have time to sit there and put your lipstick on
and start, you know, there wasn't. We didn't have that
kind of luxury. And that's a good because actually I

(14:21):
reflect on this often. We know, we think about situations
like this where someone takes you. In our context, when
they took us, they told us that they're taking us
to make a bad.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Video of us with that straight away.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
So decapitation, right, Amy, you. I mean, we spent a
lot of time collecting intelligence from random equivalent of YouTube videos,
just killing time, observing and trying to work out what's
happening in our environment, so that threat didn't seem out

(14:55):
of context. The fact that we were in that threat
and we swimming our way to an uncertain future or
a certain death was hunting part. So yeah, all you
had time for is find a way through, you know.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
And talk to me about that process of finding the
way through. You said you talked your way out of it,
and just just maybe expand on O a little bit
for our listeners.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
You know, is when you have a wicked situation, the
process expands and shrinks depending on how much you've got
to work with. Any Right, this was a one not
a one off conversation, right, we had to continue to
dig in and try to work out what was in
the mind of our captors. We got taken away from

(15:45):
our environment, but before with it, we had a number
of different opportunities within which we could strike a conversation
with them or try to see what they see us as.
If they saw us as an embuggerance, you know, the
reactions and responses that would have to us would be
a particular kind aggressive, uncompromising, brutal like. We had few

(16:06):
of those nudges from the beginning, but one little thing
that got me and gave me a sense of hope
from the start. Here it is. It was the middle
of the night, it was a cold night, and when
someone broke through our building, they we had a couple
of little moments in between that were quite peculiar. For example,
our building was you know, soft skinned building. It was

(16:27):
a container building. I tried to negotiate with an individual
who was in front of us, who looked more like
a school teacher than a nasty rebel. His eyes were kind,
his disposition was one of confusion and kind of you know,
he was a little disoriented. So he was an interpreter
who had probably been picked up to speak to us

(16:47):
in English. I tried to strike a conversation, tried to
find kind of a calm way for us to negotiate
our way out of our predicament before we got dragged
out of the building. And I only stopped when someone
pointed an RPG at our door. And when you like,
when you have a container building and a tiny little
door and an RPG pointed at you, in thinking, dude,

(17:10):
you're just you're doing yourself harm. You know, the next
day you want to see that. Yeah, let's just slow
it down. And who we had to We had to abide.
The door has been smashed behind us by that stage.
And when I got picked up, a young man grabbed
my grabbed my wrists, but his hands, the palm of
his hands was sweaty and small little observation like that

(17:31):
felt like he was nervous, right, and he prepared for
him to be nervous. But I, in my endless wisdom,
did something like I said to him, just wipe your hands,
don't touch me with your hands, which is really weird
thing to do. And he reacted in a way that
surprised me. He was taken aback by my by my reaction,
he kind of hesitated for a minute and did what

(17:51):
I asked him to do, which is what I thought. Ah, Okay,
they're not all on the same page. These more continue
to stack up for us, and I think that's the
job to be done. It doesn't matter how acute the situation,
you look to find small little openings that can stack
up towards you go. Our goal obvious clear as anything.

(18:15):
There was no ambiguity survive or delay the inevitable long
enough to see if you can find another way through.
And so looking for those tiny, little micro moments to
stack up to your benefit is the job of life.
Whether this is in a cute situation like ours, whether
this traveling through the daily grind of another wet Wednesday morning,

(18:38):
you know. And so as we went on, we had
a number of these situations that worked to our benefit
that I think ultimately created the foundation for us to
start a dialogue and to find a common ground with
our worst adversary. There's something more to it, right if
you were in these moments. No, some of us would
assume that's military training. I think it's just humans, humans

(19:01):
allowing themselves to allow the best judgment in what they
perceived to be a crisis to drive them. You know,
not allowing fear to take you on a walk about
or to overwhelm you is somewhat easy when you're dealing
with the acute we occupied surviving, you know, decisions faster.

(19:21):
I have to tell you, we'd hand on heart. Whilst
this was probably the most confronting situations in some ways,
I found it way harder dealing with my boss in
my first corporate role after the military. Then, do you
know what I mean? Because you have so many different
different ways out and the strategy gets messy and there

(19:43):
are feelings, whereas in this instance it's very.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Clear and presumably you were ready a psychologist at this point,
were you yes?

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, So how much.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Of your let's show you you're both a psychologist and
independently you're an army officer and presumably in theater before
you went in they give you some sort of combat
survival resistance to interrogation training. What was more useful do
you think in that moment? Was it the military specific training,

(20:15):
was it your general understanding of psychology and human connection
or was it a mix of those things?

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Do you know? I I spoke to my mentor many
months later, many times not just about this incident, but
countless others. And I've come to realize it's not being
necessarily a psychologist or being an officer, but what he
calls being an averagely good human. And I actually I
reckon that's the recipe. So yes, the military training we

(20:46):
had conducted prior to that, I was privileged to have
served with one in that essays in the county, Theroist
Technics Group. Prior to this, we had really awesome preparation
actually in Australia, so thank you ADF. There were rock
stars us. In fact, some of the some of the
elements in the conduct that they kept. The training we
conducted in Australia were almost as if you know, Rebels

(21:10):
some months later had read that book. It felt like
a training exercise. The only difference is we knew you
and did not have the money to pull it off
in context. So yes, that did help because you condition
yourself to have these moments of delayed response so that
you can choose it.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, big, big yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
I remember when I did come back survival Resistance to
interrogation training when we were being tactically questioned, which you
know is not very pleasant in my head. When I
asked the question, I would go one thousand and two
thousand and three thousand.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
And then respond.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
And that gets to something we're going to talk about
in your book, the difference between responding and reacting. But
before we go there, what pulling in this journey? Did
you start to have some hope that you were actually
going to be Maybe that's maybe that's not the right question.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Because you probably had hope the whole time.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
At what point did you start to have some conviction
that you were potentially going to get out of this
with your head intact on your shoulders the very.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
So you've got the bombastic version of events and you've
got the real one, and the real one is always
so much more confronting because it's got a lot of dull,
strange moments. And so I say this because in our situation,
we were released and we were walked through progressively diminishing
number of people up the hill to the same place

(22:44):
we got snatched out of right. And what I mean
by that is we managed to negotiate our release or
talk our way out of our situation, and then a
handful of the men that held us ended up directing
us back up the hill. When we got there, the
only person left with us was one of the leaders,
and the condition for our release was that we had

(23:05):
secured an audience with the UN General in the region
for him. And it almost sounds like Alice in Wonderland
kind of a scenario. So you've just been through this
absolutely horrendous event. We got Drake from Mindfields on the
way in. On our way back, we knew the bypass
AIA and we were walking with the person who took
us up to our main main accommodation area, and literally

(23:29):
just before we reached the fence decided they decided that
they're going to make a video of us. And I thought,
oh my, come on, we've been through this, we've talked
about it, we've become best friends. You're going to make
that video of decapitation right now. So it felt quite
literally that you could see safety smell ad here, it
touch it, but you're not there. So we got there

(23:51):
and I had to record a video basically describing my
keptors as being quite hospitable and caring, you know, the
usual stuff that they wanted to have on film. And
then we got insight of our compound and we had
the U in general with the UN security forces that
you could see filing up for miles and we had
to serve a kept a cup of tea so that

(24:11):
they can have a discussion with it. So, just up
until the point at which we crossed the gates, we
didn't know whether we were safe, whether this is some
kind of grotesque staging, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Just LOCs of expectation, right, yes.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Interesting, So until the last safe moment, we weren't quite
sure that this is entirely.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Over, you know, And what was the gift that was
given to you through that whole process, if you like,
as in, what did you take away from that that
you think I'm going to use this for the rest
of my life?

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Countless countless gifts. So the first, the first one, it's
the gift that keeps on giving. And I mean, I
haven't left that particular incident has left me with loads
of opportunities to ask big questions of myself, of people
I work with, the environment, I mean, in a scheme
of things. It's a small event that became the catalyst

(25:16):
for many more conversations right over time. But the starting
point is humility. Humility and the ability through humility to
appreciate that you are vulnerable and that is fine. That
you can connect with other people even if they act
like your worst adversary. And most important, to allow yourself
to see through moments that appear to be finite, to

(25:40):
not let yourself be tripped up by a script you
think you need to follow, to constantly challenge and push yourself.
I think that that cannot happen without humility.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
You know. Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
And look, I'm not going to dive into the detail
of it NW in terms of the negotiation, because I
think that would probably come out when we talk how
about your book?

Speaker 2 (26:01):
So firstly, I want to talk about the book.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
When did you decide that you needed to write a
book on resilience and the resilience to.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Probably, I mean, it wasn't It was never my intention.
The incident died out in my mind as well, you know,
like relatively quickly, and the sense of closure was there
quite quickly too. But probably about a year into my
completing my doctorate, I'd already been working with individuals, teams,

(26:31):
and organizations for a very long time as a psychologist.
I think it was in my twentieth year as a
registered psych or nearing it, and I caught myself repeating
the same heuristics over and over and over again. So
to me writing the book was very much let's just
put it all together. Let's get those soundbites and those
components that have helped so many others out there in

(26:53):
order for others to be able to use them, as
that chapter in in Venus. Yes, the research much that
I did was very much sponsored by the incident in Syria,
but that was just the initial point. By the time
when I'd been in Syria, I'd again countless lessons learned
consciously or otherwise from some of the best people I've
ever worked with, and these are members of the Essays

(27:15):
and the Counter Theorist Tactics Group. Before I went to Syria,
I had started conversation about completing my PhD in resilience.
Completely by accident. I was actually about incable, and I
reached out to this researcher wanting to find the most
cutting edge tips and tools on rapid fire resilience built.
How do you do that in action now, in times

(27:38):
when you can't just pull out and sit via someone
on a meditation deck and contemplate life right, Yes, And
the response I got rather than a stack of tools.
Was serendipitously, someone is looking for a researcher in this place?
Are you interested in scholarship?

Speaker 2 (27:53):
So cool?

Speaker 3 (27:54):
PhD had started long before I had my crucible moment,
and when that moment had and you know, some of
the some of the hooks, some of the sayings, the phrases,
the practices in life, the processes that I'd observed amongst
those extraordinarily resilient human being side said with became very clear,
very evident. So genuinely I wanted it to be out

(28:17):
of my head and into the world because it wasn't mine.
You know, I'm just a small little threat that carries
it through. But the stories of the super troopers and
epic humans needed to be out there.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Tell me this.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
There's a lot of talk, and I'm quite rightly so,
about veteran mental health and how number one, the human
brain isn't designed to be put in very adverse circumstances
for long periods of time repeatedly, over and over and over,

(28:52):
which obviously contributes. But one of the other things, and
some of the criticisms. There's been a review over here
in Australia, as you probably we know, into veterans' mental health,
and what was the debrief process like that you guys
got having obviously been through something that is big T traumatic,

(29:13):
right pisses me off. This little T trauma that people
talk about that right center and my boyfriend broke up
with me and I'm having trauma. So there's a difference
between little TA and big TA trauma where big T
is genuine fear for your life or others.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Close to you.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
How useful or not was the debrief process that you
guys got from the UN really enough?

Speaker 3 (29:40):
I think my honest observation on this connects to what
we're observing with veterans these days as well, and that
I don't know whether the risk or the impact has exacerbated.
I think we are reporting it a whole key better.
It is a significant issue. You have to confront it.
But the best outcomes for me and for us didn't

(30:01):
happen when we spoke to a psyche some time later.
That happened because we requested we stay on the site
we got snatched out of for thirty six hours after
we were released, so what we wanted to do when
our incident was complete, we got taken back to our
holding area or the area that we were not living in.

(30:23):
We got taken through a whole heap of tests, traveled around,
you know, and then we requested that we stay in
the same place they took us hostage out of, so
that we can close the loop for ourselves.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
And yeah, that is a lot of people listening to
this will be going you did what.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
I know you actually are, so.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
I get why I talk talk our listeners through why
that process was important sins making.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Since I can't remember which one of us came up
with this idea, and I'm convinced the minute it was
uttered of someone's mouth it was like, come on, I know,
I have to agree now, but what a silly idea. Yet,
what we wanted to do is close the loop on
the event for ourselves, actually study every little nook and
crany of this incident. Face the fear, Face the fears

(31:15):
in the consequence of our experience, as opposed to let
you know, when you have situations like this, the world
wants to know about it. They want to kind of
creep in and study it and break it apart. We
wanted to close the loop for ourselves and complete that
circle of that cheered experience together. The first thing we
actually did is we went back to where we were
taken from and cleaned the building up, which was the

(31:36):
weirdest thing to do. It's like, why would you do that?
And it was an instinctive thing. Is let me take
control back of what has been snatched away from it.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, and psychologically I'm cleaning the space as well.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
It was strange. It was ubsolutely strange. And so and
then as you go through this process, you're thinking about
what's taking place. You're beginning to look at it objectively.
You're beginning to learn a how hit more about different
and responses, different reads on exactly the same trigger points,
and how different ones of us reacted at different stages
because of how we interpreted those pressure points. That was gold.

(32:12):
And so it gives you a ton of different opportunities
to look at this gremlin and go away, big T,
small TI, who cares Let me just as it's a
thing of beauty, you know, when you give it space
to breed, to process it, to learn through it. The
decision for us was, let us learn through it, let
us just not have some kind of thing that pretends

(32:34):
it has an opportunity to break us. And it was gold.
So hand on how this was the best thing we
could have possibly done. By the time when I got
to see a psychologist, it was you know, some time later.
I have profound level of respect for all people in
our profession, right, But the intimacy of that she had experience,

(32:56):
and most importantly, allowing yourself to work through the nuk
syncrnis of it, I think matters most.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
And how important was it that you did that together?

Speaker 3 (33:05):
One hundred virtually the most important thing, because it's then
when you face it as one which is not a
luxury that everybody has. Right. Yes, yes, it's a different story,
but the gaps in our own perceptions was closed relatively quickly.
We could understand the complete picture. We could study it

(33:26):
from different angles because we had the privilege of that
she had experience. Now, what happens when you have individuals
who have traveled that journey alone is a very separate story.
The remarkable thing about humans is that it doesn't matter
how unique we think our experience is. There's always someone
who has had something a little like it. Yes, and

(33:47):
we have to force ourselves or step ourselves out of
our insulating kind of trauma and start looking for those
parallels and similarities with the intent of growing from it.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Absolutely, So let's not talk about the book, and I
think all the listeners will have their ears pricked up
because clearly you're not just somebody who's sitting behind a
bunch of books writing theoretically about resilience. You have the
lived experience, which I love this the p academic approach.
So you talk about the abcds, awareness, belonging, curiosity, and drive.

(34:26):
So let's let's start with awareness. So how is this
different to from alertness? And then talk us through the
three components you talk about self, situation and others.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Oh, the unscribbling notes. Over the years, there's another A
that has been added to the mix. But let's talk
about the difference between alertness and a weirdness awareness. I
think that their most important thing we discovered on you
already when we stepped into a challenging, crucible moment was
the critical importance of choosing how you stand in this

(35:02):
particular context. So self awareness, interpersonal awareness, and situational awareness
relates to being where you feed are with absolute clarity
of where it is that you want to go right,
which most of the time I don't think we do.
I think most of the time we kind of stumble
upon someplace and try to find a reason not to react.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
I want you to.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Say that again, right, because it just took me a
few seconds to process it. Because there's a lot in
that being where your feet are and being clear are
whatever and where you want to go.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
So I'll just unpack that a little bit.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
So being where you feed, are being grounded in your
present moment as it is not as you wish it
to be without most clarity of where you want to go.
I don't know whether there is a better way to
face a tricky situation than that.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
There's a huge tookes of acceptance, commitment, therapy in there
isn't there.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
And do you know what's funny, I love that you
say that because that is purely an experiential observation, That
is observation based on experience. Right. The fact that there
is a theory that holds it together, that there is
a scaffolding that we have already discovered excites me to
no end, and I think we have to keep on
going that way. Rights, what's the experience showing us and

(36:18):
how can we better understand it? So the starting point
that awareness in the essays we used to call awareness
the selection gate to selection. So you could be as
strong as you think you can be in your life,
you could be as resourced as you like. But unless
you have that self awareness of understanding you triggers, the
ways in which different input points affect you, and the

(36:41):
clarity of how it is that you want to show up,
then you toast again, right. And so we had had
countess observations of individuals who are exceptionally well prepared against
all objective criterias that when they face a challenge because
the lack awareness, they fall by the wayside. You know,
they get some prized by things and how things affect them.

(37:03):
So awareness is understanding yourself words and all with all
your triggers. Also having the ability to read the context
as it is, not as you wish it to be,
and that comes with contextual intelligence right, reading the cues
in your environment, being able to adapt to tangle thems
with them again intentionally. And the final one, of course,

(37:25):
situational and interpersonal awareness, which is really respecting the context
that you're in but never losing sight of how it
is that you want to show up or what is
the outcome that you want to achieve. So awarness is
incredibly important. But I think a lot of the time
when you're thinking about awareness, we actually are showing up
with alertness, which is we show up anticipating the worst

(37:47):
case scenario, limiting the beautiful, rich parts of our brain
that are responsible for balance, reasoning, for creative thoughts, and
shrinking things down to nothing better than reactions, perhaps stress
up with few kind of you know, good looks around
the way, around the edges. But really, alertness is the

(38:08):
state that we find ourselves in when we haven't managed
pressure effectively, when we haven't accepted that pressure is a
galvanizing force as opposed to something that can trip us up.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
And where does at tension come into this.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's everywhere, It's in every part of it, right, And
so I think attention, if you think about it, in
a state of alertness, is to the worst case scenario,
is to the things that the thing that might overwhelm
you or trip you up. Whereas if you have attention
in a state of awareness, it gives you multiple touch points.
You can see the guide posts far ahead of yourself

(38:43):
as opposed to just where you are or where the
thread is.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, So I just just on that reason, I masking
because you did right about mindful attention, which I was
delighted to see in the book. I was involved in
a Delphi study recently on coggnitive fitness and looking at
the what are the identifiable trainable parameters in the brand

(39:08):
of performance under pressure? And it was it was organized
by my PhD supervisor, so I managed to kind of
get in there as one of the so called experts.
But they basically surveyed over sixty military psychologists, sports psychologists
and business psychologists and we were all asked to read
it and these cognitive trainable cognitive primaries that they had

(39:33):
identified and maybe suggest some others. The number one treate
our number one cognitive primary that everybody said across the
board for performance under pressure was attentional control.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yes, okay, and beg that and tag that for everyone please. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
So basically that when the ship is hit the fan,
were is the flashlight of your attention?

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Please? In that moment right are you in your own head?
Are you being distracted by stuff?

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Or are you completely focused on the present moment and
everything that has inputs into your situation right now? So
it's kind of that, I guess the umbrella of what
you're talking about with awareness. It's about self, it's about situation,
it's about others, and it's about not being distracted by

(40:27):
things that that aren't relevant right here, right now.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
It's that kind of feet on the grind thing.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, so absolutely beautiful. Can we can you just? I mean,
I hope you don't mind me asking you questions around that.
But this is quite important. So if you're thinking about it,
not just in a sense of acute acute events, but
the daily grind. Now I don't know this, but I
get to see many more individuals being affected by the

(40:54):
daily grind than critical incidences, right, And so if you're
thinking about the attention and where we cast that attention
based on a state we nurture ourselves into or select
ourselves into, you can have attention on the threat or
something that has the potential of obliterating you. That's kind
of one thing to mind, yes, But if you limit

(41:17):
yourself to this only, the conclusion is very much in
that interaction between you and the potential threat. Imagine yourself
being able to find a discipline and the capability which
all of us have to see a number of these
touch points ahead to actually start marking away from this
and not just see it as a giant boulder on
your way. You know, the thing of look around, look

(41:39):
on the lookover.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
That I like that look around, look on their lookover
and interesting the other thing where I think it's really
important for people. And I was delighted to see that
in your book you talk about gremlin's gremlins in your head.
We talk about gremlin and siege, right, And so the
gremlin is the little voice in your head that that
of doubt that you're not good enough all of this stuff,

(42:03):
and the siege is your best self, right, So it's
worries the flashlight of your attention place.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
And for a lot of people the flashlight is.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Turned in their own heads, struggling in this constant struggle
with their gremlin and wrestling with their thoughts, wrestling with
their emotions, all of these things, and not having their
attention on the right here, right now, and where I
want to be and my values and all of that stuff.

(42:34):
Because for me, attention drives everything in the brain. Right,
your attentional control and that reticular activating system is going
to put your focus somewhere and then emotions flow and
thoughts and all this, and then you can end up
just in this wrestle with your gremlin, all internal, with
no actual attention on all the things that matter, such

(43:00):
as the situation, yourself, other people, values, purpose, where you
want to go all of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
So that and I love that.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
I just wanted to bring up that you had at
tension in there under awareness and then but I guess
the big thing for our listeners is how can you
tree in yourself to respond rather than react?

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Right?

Speaker 1 (43:26):
And we know the difference, but firstly start off with
what is the difference between responding and reacting? And then
are there a couple of tools that you can give
people so that they can over time? Because this just
isn't that. Here's a tool from doctor Allien Bone. Now
it's fixed forever, but over time that process. Right, how

(43:48):
do you tree in yourself through a process so that
you can respond rather than react using those awareness tools.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
I'm scribbling notes because of quite love everything that you're saying.
It's incredible. But the first piece, it's kind of in
the it's in the the recipe is in the name
of it, right, So how do you how do you
condition yourself? How do you train yourself to respond rather
than react? So The reason why we're focusing on responding
rather than reacting is that response involves a degree of intentionality.

(44:22):
You can't be resilient, can't grow, can't live by design
unless you are intentional about where it is you're heading
and what are you trying to achieve. When you're talking
about attention and where your attention goes, that too, is
about intentionality. You have countless opportunities every day of your
life to be scattered by a thousand different trigger points

(44:44):
available in your environment that tango dance to perfection with
that gremlin on the insight, you know what I mean? Like, Yeah, Like,
if you want to if you want to just have
a really I don't know, entertaining life, all you need
to do is just show up, gremlins and all, and
watch the world trigger you. Yes, So it's kind of

(45:10):
a little tricky, right, because it has to start. We
have to start with the end in mind. Yes, so
many extraordinary humans out there aiming to develop some sort
of robust version of themselves. Any absence of context, you
can't You can't just show up and be super trained

(45:31):
and have done that. You can't do that in a bubble.
So if we're coming back to my Grandma's quod probably
which is existence is resistance. Can you build that stuff
through life? Again, coming back to Franco, you know you
do life by responding to life, which means you have
to engage with challenges to condution that ability to have

(45:56):
response rather than reaction. So the difference reaction is a
you know, you effectively find yourself forced into a minimal
range because you haven't given yourself any options. Response intentionality,
which means you start with the end in mind. So
the most important tool I think to build your capacity

(46:19):
to be responsive rather than reactive is to be clear
who it is that you want to be and how
it is that you want to show up and as
a consequence of that, to be very honest, to conduct
an honest audit. It doesn't have to be with professionals.
It can be with yourself of what it is that
triggers you, what holds you back, what fuels you, and
once you clear on that stuff to start going after it.

(46:43):
There are no shortcuts with this, you know, they don't.
These sorts of things don't happen in your own head.
They have to happen in interaction with life. With the
friction points in life start with the end in mind,
conduct an honest audit of what fuels and what deplets you,
and when you know it, don't tinker on a peripherace.
Go after those things. Allow yourself to notice that for

(47:06):
everything that triggers you, there are countless different responses that
allow you to just be a If you want a
passive observer of this gremlin, you don't have to engage
yourself in the tangle dance. The trick, though, is that
many of us are very much attached to the minor
white noise of the daily grind. If we are to
take that honest audit, we are going to recognize that

(47:29):
we are very much attached to that melody, the minor
drama melody. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yes, yes, So I think the people.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
I love the concept of the white noise, right, the
white noise of the daily grind.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
That because people just get sucked into it totally, of course.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
I mean it's very It can occupy you for a while, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
People spent years there, years, And I love the.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Existence is distance and I mean your your your grandmother
is a definitely a an.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Incarnation of the Stoics. I think the Stoic philosophers. But
the engage with challenges.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
For me, this is critical and I think, you know,
if we if we broaden the lens just to talk
about today, I think one of the worst things that
has happened today is this expectation that kids in our
youth are coming up and lots of people have, that
life should be easy, and that life should be you know,

(48:38):
kind of walk in the park, and that that stressors
are things to be avoided. And you know, the first
noble truth of Buddhism life is suffering duka, which actually
literally translates as hard to do. And for me, a
big step in all of this is understanding that life

(48:59):
is fucking amazing, but it will also be hard, but
that there are two sides of the coin. And you
have to with the Stoics talked about the contest is
upon us the Olympic Games of life, right, and if
it's the Olympic Games, you've got to engage it. You're
at the freaking Olympics. You've got to embrace challenges to

(49:24):
test and develop your character.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
You know that for me is a.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Psychological orientation that kind of drives everything else. Is this
what is your automatic mindset to challenges that will and
are inevitable. And the shit sandwiches from the universe, right,
are they something that you want to shy away from

(49:50):
and hide or are they too for you to use
to fully engage with, to actually give yourself that mean?

Speaker 2 (49:59):
And it comes back to the meaning and purpose.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Right, beautifully done. So I love this. The contest is
upon us should be lettered, right, and so I think
that's the absolutely beautiful. So if I walk my way
back to the starting point, is the expectation that life
is in some way going to have to be easy
and stress also are to be avoided. I can't think

(50:23):
of anything more frightening, seriously, but doesn't it, you know
what I mean? So virtually every system we have in
us that we recognize in the most rudimentary way is
designed for this experience, do you know what I mean.
I've got an epic ten year old next door on

(50:45):
school holiday, and we were talking yesterday about him having overtrained,
you know, and the physical pain that you have in
your body when you have overtrained. And even here was
observing that the human body is designed for this kind
of stuff. Yeah, because you know what I mean? And
so he was giving you a lecture on you know,
how muscles get ripped and then they grow. I mean,
everything about us is designed to seek this and I

(51:09):
don't know who decided to give us this little recipe
for life, but it's very wrong. It doesn't lead to
anything worth living with, you know. So I absolutely love
everything you had to say. And so it kind of
comes down to this word that has been overused over
the last little while too, mindset. And people do think

(51:30):
that this superficial thing called mindset is somewhat innate. It's not. Again,
it's tessted. It's developed in action. You don't just get
born with it. There are conditions that allow you to
find the nuances to it. Yes, some of us are
more predisposed to look for that hard stuff as profile.
I can say that there were probably personality predictors that
allow us to confident with that. Yes, But seeing that

(51:55):
resilience in life is very much a personal business. The
only thing to be done is to just step out
of that comfort zone, not get the edges of it
over and over and over again, and before you know it,
you develop an appetite for that stuff. Yeah you do.
Have you ever found yourself in moments where you may
have contemplated something as mildly overwhelming or slightly kind of

(52:19):
on a frightening side of the continuum, and then you
you get on with the journey of life. Anyway, look
back and go, really that was the remblin, Are you
kidding me? That tiny thing? How could I? Right? But
you don't yet. So anyway, the job to be done
is to build an appetite for that stuff.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Yes, I love that, that building an appetite. And you
know there's inferred in that is that you have to
eat right, So you have to you have to get involved.
And and this is you know, something I see in
parenting that just drives me mad. But also it's frustrating,

(52:59):
is that parents who are trying to bring their kids
up in a world devoid of stress. And I'm just like,
that is the.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Wrong answer, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Right.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
You show me one highly resilient person who's had an
easy life, you know, who hasn't been through adversity.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
You know, that's the I mean, the storics talked about
this ad nauseum that you know, this is.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
The fire that forges us. So let's talk about something
that's really important here. We mentioned it in your whole experience,
and that's belonging, which is the next part of the book.
How does that affect how we view deal with some

(53:47):
recover from stress.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Belonging, the feeling of being accepted again, words and all,
was a critical predicta of our ability to hold us
else together in this particular incident. Speaking of incidences itself,
right as my bread and butter used to be organizational psychologist,
so studying teams and what it is that make them,

(54:11):
you know, traversity and non effectively, So the feeling that
you are worthy, that you have something to contribute, and
that someone has you back is the single most important
predictor in challenging circumstances. Right, But oftentimes when we're thinking
about belonging, we are thinking of a team or familial group,
something along those lines. I've come to realize that over

(54:33):
time that it's about kind of the spine of belief
that holds you together, your own sense of purpose, the
values that believes that, the views that contain you and
give you a sense of drive. Really that's what belonging
can be about. It's appreciating that the person standing there,
holding the ground beneath your feet is worthy and By

(54:55):
the way, I don't know if I fully agree with
worthy as is. Yes, everyone is worthy as they are.
But belonging for resilience is worthiness that develops in action,
you know, is that feeling that anything that comes your
way is something that you could at least engage with

(55:15):
as opposed to avoid. That's that kind of belonging to
self in a moment.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
And is there a component about belonging to a tribe
that's important here?

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Absolutely? Absolutely, This little piece brings me back to some
of the crisis that you were mentioning earlier with our
veterans the world over. Actually belonging to a tribe, belonging
to a broader, bigger purpose than yourself, that's incredibly galvanizing.
It holds you because you know, it holds you on
behalf of others, on behalf of something other than yourself.

(55:50):
It's extraordinarily important. And perhaps one thing we all know
we've observed that for the last little while is the
erosion of community or you know, team. That stuff frightens
me even more than your avoidance of stress.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
You know, Look, I tend to agree, and I'm I'm
it's interesting because I'm a recovering Catholic right. I've been
in recovery for about forty years, so I'm not religious
at all, and there's not a religious bone in my body.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
But I do.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Believe more and more that a lot of societal problems
and stay them from the breakdown of religion and because
and and not from religion per se, but that whole
part of a group with shared values and and and

(56:47):
when and and and holding to account of yourself and
others to a certain set of standards. But you take
that away and absent somebody then doing the work around
what are my values, what is my purpose? We end
up with an existential crisis that's there. So it's not

(57:07):
that it's just religion per se, but it's the religion
taken away and that vacuum around shared tribe, belongings, values,
all of that stuff. I think that is a significant
contributor to the mental health issues that we're experiencing today,
and it plays into the whole resilience thing.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. She had purpose
shared values. I couldn't agree with you more. And there's
a see this is there's a galvanizing thing inside of
that too. I think one of the one of the
little lines that I had in my book was it
hit me. It's so simple, but you know, there's a
significant difference between belonging to a coffee club again, or

(57:51):
you know, a pig performing team for example, or a
nurturing community

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The ABCD of true resilience, with Dr Alia Bojilova - Part One

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The ABCD of true resilience, with Dr Alia Bojilova - Part One