#147: Being The Picture Of Resilience

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel. You have me in the seat today. You have me in the seat today. It's a funny way to begin. I'm alone. I'm going to do a solo cast for just a little while here. I got a couple of things on my mind. I figured why not sit down and share them? In fact, my beautiful beloved wife, Randi, was just reminding me that some wonderful things that are going on in our lives are definitely things that are probably going on in a lot of people's lives, things that we're working on. And there's never a bad time to just share those things, I think. And this is the perfect moment. So I am grateful as I am more and more, just noticing my gratitude, probably because I'm giving myself some space these days to feel gratitude. That may not sound so profound, and yet As I'm saying it, I realize just how important that is, that there is actually space made in our daily lives. In the busyness of daily life, we don't always have space just to even feel, to feel ourselves being. What could we be more grateful for than to be? It's the essence of everything. Without that, we literally do not exist. So I am grateful as I sit here, feeling grateful for my body and my health, well-being. We talk a lot these days. I speak on stages. It's a privilege to be able to do around the world on the topic of resilience. Often we speak about how we create resilience and that resilience isn't something we're necessarily born with, although some people may think that. The research bears quite differently on that topic, that we are able to learn resilience as we grow and that our experiences are constantly giving us the opportunity to change, that our brain is the computer, if you will. It's the hub. It's the power, the air traffic control of our beings. And our brains, unlike what we may have been taught when we were younger, that sort of old dogs can't learn new tricks or old brains can't change, that's just nonsense. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources All the resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. All the research is clear on this, that neuroplasticity is the word that describes how our brains actually continue to evolve and change, especially when we're aware of it ourselves, that we are giving our brains time to adapt and be adaptive to new information, to new experiences, that that's part of how we remain able to change, that we can train ourselves to be more agile and more flexible and more able to adjust to the changing conditions of life and the experiences in our business and our personal lives, that these are all opportunities for us to actually continue the evolution of our brain, to train our brains, in other words, to make use of the things that are happening And to be able to then respond to them, as opposed to being in more of a constant state of reactions. Space is wonderful because when we have space between stimulus, between things that are happening in our experience and what we do about them or how we interact with them, that that space becomes very creative. And then we're moving from reaction to response. And why that matters is that in that interval, that space between what would be our reaction to something and ultimately a more thoughtful approach to it, that space becomes a way for us to make better decisions. It allows us to be more focused and in a way that we don't regret. I don't know how else to put it. I think a lot of times our reactions lead to guilt. They lead to going back and wishing we could redo things, that we could change how things went or how we were involved in— The decisions we made and where we could have done better. Universally, we make better decisions when we have more time to think and to create a clear plan for how to respond. That could be a breath. I mean, when I think of what space looks like, space doesn't have to be, I need a day, I need a week, or even an hour necessarily. Sometimes it's just the space of a mindful breath, a mindful moment that can be a game changer. Literally, in whether we've written something to somebody or responded verbally or done something else, taken an action in reaction mode, or whether we, in a mindful moment, in a breath or longer, were guided to a different type of response. And that just makes all the difference in the world in our results. So I'm fascinated, as you can probably tell, with how the brain is able to change, how it is that we can create new neural pathways and where brain science and brain science research has taken us in understanding the value of mindfulness practice, of meditation, of things that have been part of the spiritual world, more particularly Buddhist practices and other metaphysical practices that have been sitting in the arena, in the area, in the silo even of what we call spiritual And where those things overlap in other areas of our lives that we have segregated or kept siloed as apart from that, like business and being an entrepreneur or performance and innovation, things that are in that realm that you wouldn't think directly correlated and related to things that we would otherwise think of as spiritual or religious or ritual in nature. So resilience is a topic that's just so important these days because we want to Go the distance. And the distance to me has no end. I'd love to say I want to live to be 120. I don't even want to put a cap on it. 120 would be a great number, but 150 would be even better. If my brain and my body and all those things were constantly regenerating, why wouldn't it be possible? Is it possible? Here's a question for all of us, for the brain to regenerate the cells of our body Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the Resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free Resilient Leader Assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. We even get younger. What's to say that's not possible? The brain is the supercomputer of supercomputers, and there's no reason why, based on everything that I'm reading and thinking and feeling, that we couldn't— that our brains couldn't in fact accomplish that task. First and foremost, if we thought it was possible, and secondly, if we were actually treating our brains in ways that allowed that resource, that supercomputer to just do what it's capable of doing. We have really no outer limit to what the brain might be able to create. So I put it out there as a question. I was inspired to this conversation last night. Randy and I were out with some friends at incredible, totally amazing and credible club. Being corrected in my language right now from words The conversation in my head is one where my daughter says, why would you say something's incredible? Now, we use that term all the time. It's language. Talk about being able to pivot in our language, looking at that word and thinking to myself, yeah, why would I say something's not credible? Incredible. Just like something is unbelievable. We teenily will say, oh, that's unbelievable. And yet it's totally believable. It's totally credible. So we were out at a show last night to see A guy that I was first introduced to when I was about 19 years old in college. I was on the swimming team and my swimming coach had great taste in music and he mentioned this guy. And I was sort of listening to music back then and thinking, wow, I've never heard anything quite like this. I hadn't been really trained in blues music. A lot of music education growing up from my dad, but John Mayall was not somebody that my dad was listening to at the time. And so I had no understanding of his music. Until my college swim coach introduced The Turning Point. Incredible album, breathtakingly different and innovative and just like fusing jazz and blues and rock. And I mean, it was no wonder that John Mayall was also a guy that played with Eric Clapton in a project called the Bluesbreakers. And some people have said that the Bluesbreakers album with Eric Clapton and John Mayall is one of The greatest, if not the greatest blues album ever created. I know that I've listened to enough variety of music to be able to make that statement, but I'll just say John Mayall rocks, and he's just like tearing it up at age 86. We went out to see him play at the Billy Up last night, and this man is 86 and 86 years young. He's standing behind the keyboard. He stood for the entire show with his band behind him like the most rad group of musicians, eclectic group of musicians behind him, a bassist, drummer, and ridiculously just tearing it up lead guitarist. I mean, this woman had a set of pipes, was singing backup, and also did a number of songs on her own. And on top of that, was just shredding this Gibson and this beautiful old guitar. And he stood for the entire show. He played the keyboards, He played his own electric guitar in taking a few licks in lead and playing the harp. This guy was just hands on the keyboard, harp in his mouth, and the lungs that at 86 to control that harmonica and the sounds that he was generating and his song as well, just singing and hooping it up and smiling and laughing with his crew. It was just a picture of resilience. That's what Randy said to me last night. Look at him. Take a picture of that man. That's a picture of resilience. And so I wanted to get on this podcast as tribute to the whole concept that we can create resilience ongoingly in our lives at any age. You can model and be a picture of resilience, that our brains are neuroplastic. to our intentions, that if we want to get younger, we can get younger. If we want to stop that process of aging so that we can continue the projects that we're so passionate about in life, whether they're personal projects or they're entrepreneurial or they're something other, we just have the capacity. We have the ability to train and retrain and utilize our brains to get after those things at any age. It is never, ever, ever, ever, ever, It's never too late. And John Mayall is the testament to that. Can only imagine the life that he has had just through the '60s and '70s. I mean, to be standing is one thing, to be alive is one thing. I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, It's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. But to be doing what he's doing on stage, and I, by the way, just say this, it was a packed house. There wasn't any room. This man filling that space. And he was moving better and singing better and had better energy than a lot of the people that were sitting. You know, like, people were just sitting. A little bit of an older crowd. It was some younger folks in there too, but folks had to sit in a seat and others were standing and they weren't nearly as spry as this 86-year-old blues icon, Mr. John Mayall. Check him out. Go on YouTube. And find some of his music. And if you can go locate that epic album, The Turning Point, or The Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, then you will be transformed and transfixed. So I'm happy to be in the seat. Gonna sign off from here by reminding us all again how blessed we are to be here and to have this moment together and to be alive and breathing. As we know, it's— Absolutely true that in this moment, as we're taking this breath, doing whatever it is that we're up to now, that there are people taking their very last breath in this moment as well. And so our hearts are with them. We can acknowledge just how sacred this moment is, how special. And that's something to appreciate. And I appreciate all of you. I appreciate you for being loyal to the show, that you've given us feedback. We love the fact that you're still engaged and getting value out of it. And we'd love to know more of what you think and more of what you'd love to see and hear and experience through this Conscious Pivot podcast. And I wish you just the best of days, the best of lives. And I hope you love your life more than anything else. I hope you wake up in the morning and you put your feet on the floor and you feel gratitude and you love your life, you love life. And if you're not willing to love your life right this moment, maybe just appreciating your life, being grateful for your life and appreciating Life itself, life itself. All those things are possible. So, I'll say ciao for now, everybody. Have a beautiful rest of the day, the evening, the afternoon, wherever you are. Ciao. And again, thank you.

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