Becoming Resilient

Tony: You’re listening to The Present Professional, where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development.

John: To change your experience of life and work with every episode.

Tony: So tune in, grab your notebook, and let’s go. Let’s go.

John: Welcome to another episode of the present professional. Today, we’re going to be talking about becoming resilient and what that means for you, how you can bring that into your life and what that looks like, how to notice it along your path. Right. And I want to start with. What is resilience? So defining resilience in my words right now is really the ability to bounce back from difficult situations that happen in your life and grow from challenges. So it comes back to that growth mindset that we talked about in episode eight and Really having that helps to develop resilience. There’s a lot of things that come into developing resilience, and they’re all tied together. It comes back to self-awareness, your growth mindset, being able to move through those challenges and realize the reality of the story that you’re in, the reality of what’s happening, and what you might be telling yourself that’s not really true at the moment. And we’re going to go into some more things so you can recognize that in yourself and move forward. But before we get into the topics here, Tony, how do you define resilience?

Tony: Man, you know, I think you defined it very well. I would define it with more like a metaphorical example too. Think about, like we talked about this on the last episode, being on the battlefield. We talked about, you know, if you were at war or a battle, and how do you define resiliency? For me, I think of resiliency as your shield. Resiliency is your defense. Resiliency is your way to overcome what may come against you. You may even have to be rebuilding yourself, be repairing your defense, be repairing your shield. The tools that we’ve given you so far are more of how you can use those as ways to attack or to become a better individual and use those things, use those characteristics, those attributes, those ways of being as an offense. But now we’re telling you how to build up your defense so you can be stronger mentally, emotionally, and in your personal and professional life. And so I’m super excited for this topic. I think resiliency is extremely important, especially in today’s society where we have overcome or still in arguably a pandemic. We had to shift our entire culture. From being a normal in-person society to now a virtual, more isolated society, a lot of people still haven’t recovered from that. And then you think about our youth and the next generation, and then children who have had to grow up in a society that said hey we’re gonna go to virtual learning and we really don’t have a plan and that is cause a lot of suffering for our education and the future of education is even in question so with all that being said we gotta be stronger tougher and more resilient so i’m super excited for this topic john what i’m hearing a lot of is just

John: Also change, like being able to be okay with changes, unexpected and expected, and being able to kind of move through that. So not even just challenges or negative situations, but just something that may be different than what you’re used to.

Tony: Yeah, change is the only constant. That’s what they say, right?

John: Get a tattoo of that one or put it on your wall or something. We talked about tools and things that we’ve given listeners in the past, and I think that’s a great thing to just come right into. I’m going to go ahead and just give you guys the ABC model. And this is based on the work of Albert Ellis. And it’s a model that you can look at the ways the things that happen to you and see what’s getting in the way of the things that are happening, feelings, negative emotions, things that are coming up. So it’s adversity, beliefs, and consequences. So in the base case, we feel that there’s adversity, there’s adversity, and then we experience negative feelings. There’s adversity, then we experience negative consequences, what you do or feel as the result of the situation, of the adversity. But really, it’s your beliefs or your interpretation of the situation that is causing the feelings in what you’re doing. So again, I’ll say that again, there’s the adversity, so being in the challenging situation, the beliefs, how you’re interpreting the situation, the stories you’re telling yourself, what that means about you going into your identity, and then the consequences, what you do or feel or react. as a result of the situation.

Tony: Wow. John, I got to ask a question. So are you saying that at the B, the beliefs is really the cycle? That’s where we get caught up and it can either become a truth or a false reality that we live in that causes C. Is that what you just said?

John: Wow. And we’re irrational beings, right? We like to think that all of our thoughts are rational, that all of our beliefs, our stories come from a place of making a rational decision, and that’s just not the case. It’s this adversity that happens. And the belief that it caused you to have, that can be based on things that have happened in your past, that can be based on things that have happened to you that have caused you to feel a certain way. We’ll go into a little bit more about the pessimistic and optimistic view of that, because moving toward optimism and explaining the situation in that language can start to create rational beliefs. We’ll get into that a little bit more. But yes, Tony, that does. create the situation, so it’s like you have a rational belief, you have a healthy negative emotion. Negative emotions inform us. They are a messenger to show what need is not being met, and that’s it. Negative emotions are not bad, but they can be healthy and unhealthy. The irrational belief goes into an unhealthy negative emotion. For example, something happens to you and you can tell yourself the story from a pessimistic view to where it’s a negative event, means something, it’s pervasive, it’s always going to stay here, it means something about me, I must be wrong, this is something that I always do, I’ll never be able to overcome this. Then it feels like it’s going to last forever. It feels like I’m wrong, and not there is a wrong situation. And then you feel that unhealthy emotion, that shame, that guilt, the things that kind of bring you down there. And then there’s the other way to look at the negative event or situation is looking at it rationally. and saying, here are some of the factors that could have caused that. Here are some of the factors that maybe I couldn’t have controlled. What could I have controlled in this situation? What can I learn from it? And thinking, OK, I can learn from this. This is a temporary situation. It’s not going to pervade through the rest of my life. and mean that I’m fixed in this new way. In that way, you can feel a little down, you can feel a little sad, maybe even anxious or something. That’s fine. What is that telling me? What is that sending me? Okay, maybe next time I’ll make a different choice when it comes to setting myself up before that situation. Maybe next time I can choose a different way to respond to my spouse. maybe next time because then it doesn’t mean something about me. It’s in that center there. We’re really predisposed to making connections between thoughts, ideas, actions, and consequences, whether they’re connected or not. It’s like having that rational time. Is this story really connected to what happened? Or is this coming from my childhood? Or is this coming from another past trauma? It’s like really, really starting to take a look back at, you know, what am I telling myself about this?

Tony: Wow. You know, you’re saying that there’s a lot of dots that need to be connected when it comes to resiliency and past behaviors. You’re speaking to something that I’ve been working on for a few years now, which is, and it sounds basic and simple, but it’s really being able to control your emotions. because they say that emotions are just, it’s not natural human behavior to control your emotions. It’s very natural to be extremely emotional. I have a one-year-old. He just wears his emotions as soon as he opens his eyes in the morning and all the way through to the end of the night when he goes to sleep, which sometimes we have to force him to go to bed. So, I mean, emotional states is very human nature, but what you’re saying is it’s important to check into each storyline behind the emotional experience that you’re having.

John: Exactly. Wow. There’s the thinking cycle where it goes around in these four things. There’s your thoughts, your feelings, physical sensations that happen, and then the behavior, the consequences. So even in that ABC model, you can even add in a couple more steps and seeing your thoughts and feelings. Now think, okay, you’re in a social situation or you’re feeling a certain way, something negative has happened in your life. Maybe you got laid off or something. Then the thoughts start to come in. I’m not good enough. People are going to judge me. It was my fault that I lost the job. Everyone’s going to think that I was. slacking or that I don’t have the work ethic to be good enough, and people were just going to judge me. Even saying that feels, I feel like my body’s starting to get hot, I’m saying it. Then the feelings about that, a little anxious, upset, feeling guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, maybe even a little isolated. And then there’s that physical sensation, like I mentioned my body getting a little hot, like maybe palms a little clammy, maybe your chest a little tight, that kind of anxiety attack type experience that’s coming up. And then you act from that place. Oh. That’s where the consequences come from, right? I mean, in your life. So then we see a lot of those behaviors, right? The numbing behaviors, right? Drinking too much. Isolation, you know, I might as well not even go because I don’t I don’t even want the opportunity for people to judge me. I’m just going to stay home or overeating, like looking for that little dopamine hit of give me all just one little bit of sugar, one little bit of sugar. So it’s like, how do you interrupt that? So you notice those things. OK, I got laid off. That means that there’s something going on economically with the company. What could I have done differently? What are the things that were in my control that were not in my control in this situation? And what is in the past and what is here? What can I do right now? So the truth is, so think about these truths. So it’s one, you can feel profoundly that it’s true, that I’m not good enough. If I was good enough, they wouldn’t have chosen me. You can live in that place. Yeah, creating that reality. Or it’s like we can choose to focus on what you were doing right. Or you can choose to focus on getting the feedback from that situation, reaching out to some of the people that you worked with, learning from, maybe there was a couple of things I could learn from this situation to apply into my next role. It’s like moving from not it being about me, But being about the situation itself, and then you’ll start to feel differently. You start to notice those feelings coming up in a different way, like feeling a little bit more optimistic, like, oh, this is just temporary. This is a roadblock until. for something that I’m going to learn from and I’m going to be better. I’m going to be better in my next role. I’ve learned from this situation.” Even if there were some things that set you back. You have to notice that story that you’re telling yourself and catch the thoughts. Right. Notice when you’re in that spiral, the spiral of I’m not good enough. People will judge me. I need to get out of here. Maybe I’ll just avoid the situation. A lot of the defense comes up as offense. Yeah. Wow. Right. Whenever you think of the ABC model. And listeners, when you’re applying this in your life, you experience some adversity, right? And then your beliefs come up in these thoughts, feelings. And so I could notice the things that you’re spiraling on in your thoughts, whether they’re in your control or not in your control, whether they’re actually true, like really question the things that you’re thinking when you experience adversity. What is true about this in this moment? What will myself? So it’s like, what will John 10 years from now say about this situation?

Tony: I love that. You know, I use that personally in so many ways. I’ve used that phrase to overcome so many things when I’ve had to make big, scary, difficult decisions. And, you know, you said what’s true about the situation for people who are going through adversity or you’ve been through adversity recently, also ask yourself what’s temporary about this circumstance as well. What is actually tattooed to you forever? And what is just, you know, a moment, a wave of the sea? What is just you just literally having a moment? And most of the times you’ll realize that it’s all moments. And even if it’s tattooed, you can get it covered up because life is not so permanent. It’s not as permanent as we think. And then with social media, that does not help the pressure because then you feel like you’re behind or you feel like you are not living up to some expectation that society has set. And what you really could do is install some principles in your life that hold you accountable and hold you up. when you’re going through those moments of failure, if you feel like you’re failing or whatever it may be, a layoff, a failed relationship. Maybe you feel like you failed as a parent. Maybe you feel like you failed as a leader. And that’s the power of community. That’s the power of mentorship. That’s the power of coaching and relationships. That’s the power of therapy for many people as well. You know, I remember when I had to make some really difficult decisions over a few years ago. And, you know, I have to thank my spouse because having a partner in those kind of moments really allowed me to fact check. It allowed me to see it from another perspective to say, OK, so you agree and I agree. OK, cool. I’m not crazy. Let’s keep going. Because sometimes you’ll go through things or you’ll walk through life and you’ll see circumstances or You know, for me, some of my biggest resiliencies have been in when people have failed to do what they said they would do. And that kind of, for me personally, that built or eroded trust. So I began to like really not trust what people said. And I’m really like an individual where If I say I’m going to do something, I pretty much do it, or I tell you when I’m going to do it, or I’ll tell you what’s going on while it’s happening. If it’s not happening, how we talked about it. I’m transparent enough to work through things, but when people on the other end let you down and don’t have that same kind of they don’t hold their word to the same level of you, it’ll start to erode. You’ll start to be like, man, I thought that people, especially people who you hold in high regard, or people you have certain respect for, or even people of a certain age. A lot of my, when I was really building my resiliency up from past experiences, the people who let me down were way older than me. So I was like, wow, I thought that when you got to being 50 or 60, that you just operated with a certain level of integrity. And I was wrong. And so I really saw that in real time. And it just kind of changed my perspective and shaped my perspective. And I also have to say thank you to my mentors who I was able to check in with, who were the same age as the people that I’m speaking about, who were able to show me what I thought and hoped in people because they still existed. People who are still integrable, people who are still leaders, people who still did what they said they were going to do, and that allowed me to believe in people again. Don’t forget the power of community when you’re building your resiliency.

John: I love what you said there and just moving into, I’m so glad you said it. I was coming to this point of integrity. Do you remember the integrity article that we read, Tony?

Tony: Yeah, I remember it was deep. It was years ago.

John: It was deep. We could do a whole episode on integrity for real. I’m going to bookmark that. You said the one thing that really I feel like defines integrity is doing what you say you’re going to do. And now, what can our listeners learn from that, from integrity, right, to build resilience?

Tony: I mean, you know, doing what you said you were going to do is, when it comes to resilience and building resiliency for yourself, you really want to do that for yourself. You want to do what you say you’re going to do to yourself. Hold promises to yourself and be honest with yourself and fact check and check in as you go through things. And it’s OK If you aren’t on target 100% all the time, but what you said you were going to do for you, don’t make yourself your worst enemy. Like I personally want to wake up at 430 every day when the last time I woke up at 430. I don’t know, I have a one year old, I have a job, I have a business, I have this, I have that. So I don’t hold myself to the fire and say, I’m a failure. No, I look at the truths in my life like John said earlier, and then I ask myself, is it temporary or is it permanent? Am I never going to wake up at 4.30 again? It’s like, no, one day I will again. But for now, I hold myself integrable to make sure that I do what I say I’m going to do, I do the tasks that I say I’m going to do, and for you, As you’re building resiliency in your life, you may have simple things that you want to do differently. Like, for example, John talked about what happens when you are kind of going through that moment of what you may consider to be a catastrophic event, and maybe now you have picked up some weight. Well, an integrable thing you can do to build up resiliency is say, I’m going to walk. X amount of time every day or this many times a week so I can build up myself to now run. And that’s something I want to bring up, which is the compound effect. So the compound effect is an idea that you can take these small, seemingly insignificant actions. And what happens is just by you taking those steps that seem like you’re not really doing much, it leads to huge results over time. So let’s say you want to run and you want to lose weight. but you feel like you don’t have a starting place. Well, just walk. Just start walking. And that can apply to so many things in your life. If you just start walking and you promise yourself that you’ll start walking that integrity, you’ll be able to build up that resiliency. So it starts with believing in yourself and having that truth. That ABC model, that belief part, you got to start spinning that towards the positive. You got to start saying that I believe in myself. I believe in other people. I trust people. I believe that there are good people in the world. If you’ve been burned, whatever it may be, you want to do that. So I just implore people to have a positive mindset. I remember a few years ago, I was really spinning positivity on my personal social media, and a few people were like, you can’t be positive all the time. And I’m like, well, you can, actually. You really can’t find positivity in anything. It doesn’t mean, like Sonya said in our last episode, it doesn’t mean that you’re so nice that you can’t find a way to just be kind, meaning you don’t have to believe things that aren’t true. That doesn’t mean that’s not a positive lifestyle where you believe things that aren’t true. That’s just that’s not reality. But you can find positivity in anything, you know, and that’s something that will help you as you’re building your resiliency is finding positivity. There is so many reasons and ways to find negativity in life, in things. You could literally wake up in the morning from the moment you open your eyes and find something negative. And you can let that just walk you down the entire day. But if you choose to find something positive, it will uplift you and others and your spirit and your energy for the rest of the day. So just remember that positivity is okay. Promise you.

John: Wow, there’s a lot there that we need to unpack. Let’s do it. Positivity. And, you know, I call this so there’s a lot of coaching themes that you just went just went through there. And I want to help our listeners be able to integrate those. So the number one coaching theme that you ended with there is I call right spotting. It’s like what’s right in the situation. What’s right about me? What’s right about my partner? Exactly what you said, you can choose to find what’s wrong with every situation or you can choose to find what’s right. When you start choosing to find what’s right, you’ll notice that positive compound effect. It will start building positivity in your life without you even thinking, I’m being positive. I’m just looking for what’s right. I’m just looking for what’s right with this situation, this person. That’s all, baby. Just looking for what’s right. Look, let me find one thing that’s right. about this situation, and the positivity comes. Then we come to the compound effect when you come to action, like you mentioned with walking to running, it’s create small achievements for yourself. Let the achievements be small. Make the goal in the process to be, I’m achieving something every day, even if it’s walking for two minutes, and then it’s five minutes, and then it’s 10 minutes. And then after three weeks, you’ll find it’s so ingrained in your subconscious that something feels off when you don’t go on a walk. Just building those small achievements to compound. Keep them small. Keep them consistent. It’s the same thing with your meditation practice. And I want to say this in every episode. There is far more power and impact and consistency than intensity or duration. So a little bit every day goes so much farther than just burning yourself out. And you talked about one other thing at the beginning of that that I wanted to unpack was catastrophizing. That’s one of those thinking traps. So when we come to that ABC model, It’s never going to change. This means everything’s going to get worse. I’m never going to get over this. This is going to be a disaster. That’s one of those thinking traps. Another thinking trap I see in coaching, so each of these three things we’re unpacking here, all very much in a lot of coaching conversations and engagements. Some other ones that I see all the time are all or nothing thinking, like black or white. It’s like I either do this, I’m either going to get I’m either going to get straight A’s this semester, or I might as well not even go to school. Why am I wasting my time? I have to either choose to go with this industry, and if I work in this industry and on this career path, I’ll never be able to start the nonprofit that I want. I’ll never be able to do that kind of volunteer work or travel or do it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. How can they coexist? That all or nothing thinking is something I see all the time and help clients find the middle ground in their decision-making and be like, oh, wow.

Tony: Both things can be true. When it comes to that, I also see that as binary thinking, this or that. And one thing that can help you with that, especially if you’re in a place where you don’t believe or you’ve never seen it, is, again, get in community. When you meet people or you know people who have done things that you thought were impossible, you will stop believing that it’s impossible. You know, I have a mentor who he is taking a really big role in from Houston to city of Houston to the city of San Diego. And I mean, this guy is retiring from the city of Houston, going to the city of San Diego and going to live out basically a dream life. He’s going to retire in San Diego and he’s from Arkansas. It’s just his whole entire story and makeup of who he is and the way he shaped his life and even his children. I mean, he has a daughter. He has a son at Morehouse who’s working at Google for internship and a daughter who, she is at University of Texas and she’s already a junior in her first real year going to UT. And she is, did her, I think she did two years at Lone Star College. So it’s just, it’s the way that he shaped his life. But what people don’t know, a lot of people may know this about him personally, but some people wouldn’t see that He’s super resilient. I mean, this guy lost his wife seven years ago in the midst of all this drastic change in his life. So I witnessed him rebuild and reshape and retool himself and get remarried. And now he’s moving to San Diego to live out his retirement years while working It’s a chief operating officer i just say it because it’s public information super super super cool to see that but what i what that done for me is from a resiliency standpoint i seen someone overcome some things that most people it was just completely take them out and then i also. seeing him accomplish really huge, great feats where if I did not have an up close and personal seat to that, I may not even believe what I could achieve. And a lot of times I’ll speak for, you know, a lot of people of color, sometimes we’ll get in situations where we don’t believe because we’ve never seen. I’ve met so many kids in my journey of working in nonprofits, social services, volunteering in those areas where I’ve met kids who have never left their neighborhoods. And I’m like, you talk about traveling the world. These kids have not even traveled their city. So when you see that, what you can do for those people and those kids or anybody in general who may not believe in what they cannot see is show them something different. And that’s why for me, I try to show things on online or, you know, in my doctor program just to be transparent enough for people who Maybe watching from afar and may not say anything or maybe down or maybe they’re only watching and not posting. Maybe they’re in a position where, like you said earlier, they’re in that ABC phase and they don’t even want to post anything online because they are so hurt by the things that they’ve went through in life. When you open yourself up to see what other people are doing and you connect with other people and you build these relationships and build your community, that is the way that you can sustain your resiliency and actually become and reinvent yourself to be something that you’ve never been and never thought you could be before, period.

John: I couldn’t agree more. There’s also the opposite side of that coin, right, is you notice your community. And maybe sometimes to make that shift, into a supportive community that supports where you want to go in your life, you might have to let some people go. You might have to let some relationships go that really served a purpose in the past, that really fulfilled you in the past, a past version of yourself. And sometimes that ego death It’s necessary. If you want to move into the next phase of your life, if you want to expand your horizons, if you want to travel outside your neighborhood, if you want to grow, sometimes people have to fall off and that’s okay. I notice what you’re telling yourself about that too because that can come up that I’m a bad person. I shouldn’t have to lose that friendship. And the people that are your real friends, the people that want to support you, and the people that truly support you, they’ll show up whenever you go to upgrade. Whenever you go to up level and expand, they’ll show up for you. And the ones that don’t. That’s OK, like they’re on their path to support them in that, you know.

Tony: Wow. That’s super powerful. I just want to comment on that, because when you can find a way to support them on their path, I think that speaks to the growth that you say that you’re on or you say that you’re moving toward. You can still find a way to support other people on their path in a positive way. Even if that means just supporting their business or participating in something that they have that’s positive, that can uplift others. I mean, that’s great advice. It’s great advice, John.

John: Thanks. And moving into this, we’ve been talking a lot about noticing your thoughts. We’ve been talking a lot about the ways that you can build this incremental growth in the moment. And when it comes to resilience, there’s something to be said about mental and emotional agility. It’s like being able to bounce between, move between different mental and emotional states. And I find that one powerful tool for this is just noticing your language, right? Specifically how I’m speaking about a situation and verbalizing it, right? Can help you realize the way that the thoughts are coming up. So maybe it’s a voice memo, maybe it’s journaling, that getting those thoughts out to see the way that you’re speaking about yourself or hear the way that you’re speaking about yourself. And this is a powerful thing in coaching. And I found that clients that I work with for a long time, they eventually begin to coach themselves in a lot of ways. And it starts out with, so there’s a client I’ve been working with for about a year now. And I remember at the beginning, There were just a lot of things that had to be direct and just show her the way that she was speaking about herself, the way that her thoughts and language was coming up. And when we were talking about the catastrophizing or the perfectionism or the black or white thinking, it comes up in language. One thing that I always say with my clients is not speaking indefinites. When it’s like, I’ll never do this or I’ve always been like that, that’s just who I am. I’m like, hold on a second. You’re always like that. Or it’s just who you are. How can you say that differently? I mean, it’s, oh, I’ve struggled with this in the past, and I’ve really been working on it recently. Oh, my gosh. There’s so much more possibility in that. And after I would work with my clients on reframing certain thoughts like that, they would start to notice even before I say anything. It’s like month 1 through 1 to 2, maybe 3, it’s bringing that to light. Then month 3, 4, 5, they just see the look on my face and like, oh shit, let me reframe that. Then later in the coaching engagement, she catches it. She catches it now and she catches it in her life. Like, oh, I noticed when I was going down that trap that causes this anxiety in me. And I chose to choose a different thought path. I chose a different thought path at that moment. And then it’s really starting to see a lot of that practice take hold. And being able to shift and hear and see your thoughts, it can really take you out of that belief trap. Notice that thinking trap, because the first thing you have to do is notice. It comes from that self-awareness. That comes from daily practice. And you can move from being coached to coaching yourself. And if you’re even going to enter a coaching engagement, That is temporary. You can move from a place where you are to a place that you want to grow, your coach supports you in that, and then you have a lot of these skills. You have a lot of the practices and things you can keep in your life. And then return to it. You can return to a coach when you want to grow in a different direction, or you just want to refresh some of those, right? It’s all temporary in this growth process.

Tony: Man, that was good. You said a few things that kind of resonated with me. And one of the things is, when you’re kind of walking through the timing of like being a client or working with a coach and you’re building up that resiliency, you now have not only the tools to work within yourself, but also build up your community. And when you think about yourself as you work with a coach and you and you start to change your deficit thinking or your deficit mindset of this is how I’ve always, always am or I’m always this or I’m this or that. You can start to now unpack that for yourself and ask you where that came from. Who said that you are always this? Who said that? Where’d that come from? And then as you start to unpack that, you’ll start to see the roots of your own life and also maybe even the triggers that have caused you to think like that. Because I always ask people, do you think people can change? And if you, based on your answer, I mean, that determines a lot of how the engagement’s gonna go. If you don’t believe people can change, then that is part of why you could be in your current circumstances, because you need to believe that you can change. And in order to believe that you can change, you have to believe that other people can change. Change is constant. And so for me, When it comes to now building up your community or building that resiliency in others, when you believe that people can change, now you can develop knowledge and skills and behaviors and apply them in a way where other people can see it in you. And you can also teach because you can tell people how you went from this to that, how you went from believing one way and now you believe a different way. And you can use that information to now build up and enlighten other people around you. Because we all need the ability to improve ourselves, even if we think we may be perfect. There’s always something you can glean from other people that can help turn the light on, turn that light bulb on for other people. And so that stuck out to me so much when you talked about that binary thinking, because you really want to find out where that came from. Maybe it’s a family member, maybe it’s your family period that says, oh, that’s just little Johnny. And you’re like, no, I’m Jonathan Simmons, and I’m a VP at my job. And I don’t want to be treated like little Johnny anymore because I’m not little Johnny anymore. I’m a different person. I’m responsible. I’m this or that. And that alone can cause people to have so many triggers in the view that people may have had on you for 20 or 30 years. You see someone trekking a long life and they’re doing well and they say, oh, but I remember when they used to. And it’s like, what does that matter? The real thing is, are you still there? Are you still in that mind frame or that time when that person was like that that you’re describing? I hope that people are using these tools and I hope that you have information to even build up your community so that we can have a more resilient society. Because right now, based on stats, we aren’t doing so hot. And as millennials become, and I’m speaking to my generation, our generation, as we become more in charge, you know, eventually it’ll be on us. And then we can’t blame the generations before us of why things are the way they are. will be the ones to blame. So we got to step it up as leaders too.

John: It’s interesting. It’s interesting saying that there’s like stepping into our own leadership, stepping into our own resilience there. And You know, one thing I want to, I want to bring up is again, the permanence of things, right? The permanence, the pervasiveness, like how they, how it shows up in your life. And I think that, you know what, let’s scratch that whole section of what I just said. So when it comes to resilience in the community, and, you know, I want to talk a little bit about relationships and a resilient relationship. And we talked about it a little bit in relationship management, that part of the emotional intelligence series that we did and building some resistant, resilient relationships. There are a couple of different things that a couple of tools that I think are really pertinent to that and one I want to represent from that episode is active constructive responding. You can choose to, the resilience of your relationship is directly correlated to how you celebrate things. It’s not as much about how you fight, it’s more about how you celebrate. So it’s like when someone or your spouse or someone kind of tells you something that they’re excited about, how are you responding to that? Are you responding in an enthusiastic, supportive way that helps them relive the experience and be engaged in it? That builds resilience and relationship, and that’s active and constructive. Eye contact, being authentic, engaged, wanting to know more, pausing what you’re doing, setting your phone down, and really listening. When you talk about building your community and you want to uplift those people that uplift you, one way to do that is through active constructive responding. So you notice the other ways are there’s passive constructive, where it’s like, oh, that’s nice. Good for you. It’s constructive, but you don’t really care. And then there’s destructive and passive. You’re kind of dismissing the whole thing. Like, eh, I don’t really believe that’ll be great for you. Sounds like a stressful promotion. It’s like, oh, you’re destroying their happiness and you don’t really want to learn more. Then there’s the worst of the worst and destructive and passive, which is just avoiding the entire situation, turning back to your phone like, well, I just got something new. You want to check it out? It’s like, what? You didn’t hear what I said at all? That’s just destructive and passive. Notice if you’re doing things like that in your romantic relationships and your friendships, can you be really engaged with the people that you want to have in your corner? Build resiliency in that relationship. One other thing, one other tool in that, one thing that I really learned from my last relationship that was really one piece that I’ll continue with was having a check-in. the last romantic relationship, this thing where we came up with a list of questions ourselves. It was a list of questions that we both agreed on and it was like our commandments of questions that we’d return to once a month. Having that relationship check-in, not moving the date, and being like, hey, let’s go through these lists of questions for each of us, answer them, and make it unique. Make it things that fit within your relationship. And it’s like checking in with, what’s something I could have done differently last month to support you? What’s something that I did well that really lit up your day? What are some difficult things that you have coming up in the next month that I can support you with? It’s like having that awareness in the relationship really helps to manage things and not let things get swept under the rug and let them build up, build up until you can’t walk over the rug anymore without tripping and falling. So those are two things. First one is really… The act of constructive responding can apply to all your relationships, and the relationship check-ins more in your romantic relationships, but it’s just one thing that I found was really, really powerful.

Tony: Well, yeah, it’s nothing like working on building resiliency in your relationships. I love that example that you gave, man. And, you know, quick example I’ll give for me for when it when it comes to that relationship management piece that you just mentioned. Know your partner or those that you want in your in your corner, like you just said, and know what sets them off. Know what makes them happy. Know what gets them excited. And, you know, what I like is that for me and my wife, one thing that I’ve noticed over time is she’s the social butterfly. So when it comes to celebrating others and and just kind of showing up for other people. She’s the best at it. And that means I got to be good at it, too, because I’m coming with her to things to celebrate other people. So what I do is really try to be super present in those moments. There were times when I would show up to other things and be disengaged because I’m thinking about or focused on things that I may have going on personally that I’m working on or work or school or whatever it may be. And I’m thinking that that is okay because I’m physically present. But if I’m emotionally disconnected to the event, then that does no one any good. I might as well just stay home. So one thing that I worked on as far as resiliency is making sure that when I show up, I’m present for all parties. Like, I’m just as excited as she is in my own way. because she’s real bubbly. I’m not bubbly, but I try to be communicative and talk with people who are there and make relationships and make other people feel warm and just do the things I’m good at. Resiliency in relationships is super important too. Love that.

John: I love what you said, in your own way. I think that’s one thing to close this out for our listeners. is this is going to look differently for everyone. This is going to look differently for every person that goes down this path and builds more resiliency in their lives. Let it be yours. Let it be your path. Let it be messy. Let it be clean whenever it is and appreciate that moment. Appreciate the messy moments and let yourself grow with it. And number one, give yourself some grace. Know that it’s a process, an iterative process. And I hope you can take some of these tools, bring them into your life right away. Start to notice the thought patterns that are creating the stories and the consequences in your life. The feelings, the poor behaviors that just are not supporting where you want to go and who you want to be. So take all of this, bring it into your life, make a difference for yourself and those around you by being yourself. We want to get you closer to that best version of yourself that all this conditioning and other things have started to take away. And that can be built through resilience, my friends. So thank you guys so much for listening. You can find more and connect with us on the presentprofessionalpodcast.com. Look out for the next episode. Thank you guys so much for listening. And please rate us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Much love, my friends.