#186: The Mindset Of Resilience With Petra Kolber

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, and I'm smiling and laughing. I had a good chuckle with my guest who I'm about to introduce you to a moment ago, but I flubbed the first go at starting this podcast. I haven't done that in a while and I thought, oh, that's just so perfect because Perfection is so highly overrated. I mean, just— and I guess I'm still a recovering perfectionist. I guess that's really true because I know that anytime I don't do it just the way I want to do it, there's a little voice inside my head that says, oh dude, really? Come on, haven't you gotten past that already? Or, you know, aren't you better than that? And that's total bullshit because life is just like it was when we were 2 or I guess 1 years old when we were learning how to walk and crawling and falling and, you know, and now I'm a lot past 1 years old and I'm still crawling and falling as evidenced by everything. And, and that's so perfect. I am really feeling enormously grateful to be here this morning and to be with a wonderful woman who has a just a really bright light. I'm not an empath or anything like that. I'm originally from New York, even though we live in California now. I'm not totally a woo-woo guy. I have I have a woo side to me and I have a really practical sort of ex-lawyer side to me. But this lady is really bright and you'll be able to hear that in her voice. And if you're watching on YouTube, of course, you'll be able to see it directly. So let me get right into telling you a little bit about Petra Kolber. She's a speaker, author, mindset coach, podcast host, DJ, and a wellness leader. Oh my God, how does she find time for all those things? We're going to find out. Who is known throughout the industry as a beacon of authentic happiness. As a keynote speaker, she inspires people people around the globe to stand up for their lives and live profoundly from their hearts. Her work is rooted in the science of positive psychology, and she coaches individuals and teams on how to get unstuck so that they can become unstoppable. In August 2018, in association with DiCapo Press, Petra released her first book, The Perfection Detox. Oh my goodness, I wonder why perfection was on my mind this morning. Tame your inner critic, live bravely, and unleash your joy, which made its debut at number 1 in new releases on Amazon. As a 2-time cancer survivor, she is passionate about waking people up to the precious gift of time. Her mission is to inspire people to move more and fear less— love that— so that they can stretch their dreams, strengthen their courage muscle, and build an inspired life full of joy and gratitude. I am very grateful to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Oh, it's such a treat to be here. Thank you.

So cool. So Petra, that is quite a bio. What is not a part of all that I just read that you would love for people to know about you?

Hearing that, I just want to go and take a nap. I'm like, how did— when did that all happen? Right? So I think what that brings up for me right away, Adam, is this idea, however this conversation is going to go, that we see someone's bio, right? We see someone's highlight reel and we immediately compare our middle or our start or whatever it is that we're doing at the time. And that one That paragraph that sounds so fancy right now is 30 years of wins and misses, of hits, and it doesn't show all the things that I didn't bring to cross the finish line, didn't show all the things that I wanted to start and never had the courage to do. So I think anytime we hear our own bio, it's sort of like— well, there's 2 parts that happen for me. It's like, oh my God, just stop talking about me. It's like that British pride. It's like, let's just move on with it. And then there's the other part, as a listener, you're like, oh, wow. She sounds fancy. But at the end of the day, we're all just human beings, especially in this new day and age, doing the best that we can and hopefully helping others along the way.

Yeah. And you're right, the misses are usually not included in the highlight reel. I mean, literally, because you're a public speaker, I'm also a keynote speaker, and in preparing those kind of the demo or sizzle reel, that kind of thing, you don't usually put in there, oh, and by the way. Although sometimes people have profound stories of overcoming something and that is used Frequently is one of those things. But it's those smaller misses, I think, that can be really depleting to our energy, don't you think? Because you and I are going to talk about resilience today. And just by way of how it is that I came to be introduced to Petra, it was through an article about resilience. And resilience has been part of our sort of DNA of our company, what we've been interested in, fascinated by for many, many years. And when I read this article, I thought, geez, I got to get this lady on our podcast to have a conversation about it. So let's go back to that question of the small misses. Do you feel like sometimes a small mistake that we make, they sort of have a compounding effect in some way that keeps people sort of energetically at a, you know, playing in the middle, playing in that mediocrity zone or something like that?

Yeah. It is a great question. I never thought of it that way, Adam. Yeah, I think so. I think it is that— who said it once? It is like, you know, like negative words, right? They kind of chip away at us from other people. And what happens is it is not that we make a mistake. It is how we view it. Do we view it— I say there is also data in the disasters and there is research in the rejection. But I think it's the little misses that we take out of proportion. When it's not viewed as data or research or just more proof that we're trying something new, we're stretching our courage muscle, and we allow our own internal dialogue of like, see, I told you you weren't smart enough. See, who do you think you were to be good? All those voices of like Christmas past coming forward.

Mm-hmm.

And it's not that we're going to ignore those feelings of hurt or like the disappointments. There's a very big difference, I think, Adam, between being disappointed Something not working out, and then almost viewing, not that we made a mistake, but that we are a mistake. So it's just this subliminal little— unconscious, rather, conversation that we probably would not share with anyone of how we really view our own failures, our own misses, and what does that mean about us in the bigger picture of trying to stand up for something, stand out in some way, and make a difference in the world.

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 and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. You know what, among other things, you're a mindset coach. I want to get into the mindset of this because for me, let's say if you asked me, and I'm going to pretend that you asked me, how do you deal with setbacks? You know, the little ones, not just the big ones that you got to take with both hands, but the little daily ones. Like somebody ignores you, they reject you, they don't respond to your emails or your texts, or somebody says no, or, you know, whatever the case might be. You know, like in our world, somebody doesn't give you the gig, right? You're in the shortlist, you get on the You have a great sales call with the company or with the bureau, whatever it is, and then they choose someone else, all those kind of little things. So for me, I've been working on this now for some time, just sort of shifting my mind into neutral. So as part of when we talk about the mindset of resilience, it's important that we adopt sort of a reframing tool or this ability to reframe something instantly. And for me, I can't sort of turn lemons into lemonade. I don't know about you, but I have trouble Just making lemonade immediately out of lemons. And I'm waiting. I'm waiting for that to happen more instantaneously. I have to get to neutral first, where I'm not in judgment of it in any way. It's not fair or unfair. It's not right or wrong. I haven't been slighted at all because the thing itself just doesn't have a meaning. Neutralize it of meaning because we're obviously meaning-making machines. So I just go, there's no meaning there. And to sit with it and allow it to be its thing without a judgment of it. That's the first step for me. What do you do yourself with these little, the little disappointments that, as you say, kind of chip away at your self-esteem, you know, bit by bit?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think what I do with them now, Adam, is very different to what I did with them in the past. The first thing is that little book, The Four Agreements. Don't take anything personally. And the more I can separate what I do from who I am, the easier it is, like you say, to come back to neutral. So it was like maybe right moment, right time, wrong talk, or maybe it was right talk, right moment, wrong— you know, so it's like all these little pieces that we have no idea of what it is. So like you said, bring it back to neutral. I love that. And I like the idea of, and then don't start writing a script. You know, stay with what you know for true. All I know at that moment is my talk, let's say for that bureau or that event, was not the right one for this year. And then stop writing. Don't start going, well, it's because you weren't good enough, or your reel should have been better, or— we make up all these stories. And so it's really like coming back to neutral and then really making sure that we stay with the facts, not the feelings, right? Mm-hmm. So we can have the feelings of disappointment, but feelings are not always facts. So we're disappointed. Of course, we wish that we got that speaking gig. We wouldn't be human if we didn't, and then we move on. So I love the idea, though, that you said of bringing it back to neutral. And it's the humanity. I think when we don't allow ourselves to feel the disappointments, the hurts, that's when they can come back and bite us.

Yeah.

Because I love this idea of what we don't own will own us. So, and as human beings, we're going to have great emotions and what we would consider negative emotions. It's the whole package.

There's, I think, maybe a paradox or just one of those little universe— I think the universe has got great sense of humor and it's not sort of toying with us, but just the riddles are hysterical when you look at just great ironies of life, including, okay, so you want me to both express and feel my emotions? I'm just playing like what we hear and many of us have practiced, right? Yeah. I'm a huge believer in being able to allow emotions to be felt and in fact to sort of pass through us without us having to We don't want to have it become tar on our hearts the way Michael Singer describes that in The Untethered Soul, which is a beautiful book.

Such a good book.

Such a good book, right? So you've got on the one hand, it's this, okay, you're going to feel your emotions. And on the other hand, we're saying, well, just don't confuse the emotions for facts. Now I'm playing the devil's advocate. I'm throwing this one, tossing this hot potato right back at you, Petra. I mean, like somebody goes, okay, Petra, how do you pull that off? All right. I'm feeling it. And what it's telling me is they rejected me and I've been rejected a lot in my life. You know, it reminds me of, you know, when I'm 10 years old, you know, and I was bullied or I was, you know, wasn't allowed to be in the cool kids club or whatever those things are that were giving us messages in the earlier iterations of ourselves. And now here we are, we're in our 30s or 40s or something and a rejection comes along and you go, okay, well, doesn't that mean I'm not good enough or something? So what do you do?

I think that— let me try. I'm trying to come up with a very witty and smart answer right now. I would say that it's, I think it's like really listening to the voice in the head. Right? So I think it's this idea of, we do have to question. I think there's nothing wrong in questioning, how did I show up? Did I give it 100%? Okay. If the answer's yes, okay. Did I give it my best? Did I write the, you know, did I really spend the time? Did I give it my all? And if the answer's yes, then however that works for you, it's time to let it go. And then it's also asking, are these thoughts that I'm having around this rejection, Are they helpful? And maybe that thought is, Adam, did you really give it your all? And if the answer is yes, okay, I can begin to like unpeel this, remove my feelings from it. If this feeling of rejection is asking me to question, did you really give it your all, or were you kind of phoning it in? Then there's really usable data in there. So it's not like ignoring the feelings. It's not writing stories though. Right? Right. It's not making it so, and again, this whole black and white magnifying that our brain loves to do. It's the black and white of rejection, from an event doesn't mean that you yourself personally have been rejected. Well, yes, we have, because we are our brand and our business, which is the tricky thing. But I think, Adam, that is the difference between those that are resilient in any type of entrepreneurial industry, their own businesses, their own brands. That is the thing that's going to separate the doers versus the don'ters for whatever. It's not necessarily even talent. But it's the ability to separate and work, what does the word rejection mean to us? And if it does stick to us like tar, like you said, we have some inner work to do. There's some background noise there that we haven't looked at that's going to be very, very important to do. Otherwise, we're going to consistently get stuck. And eventually, we'll stop trying because that tar is going to weigh us down so heavily. The risk of trying almost becomes worse than the risk of not trying, as J.K. Rowling says. And then, then we fail by default. Right?

So exactly. Yeah, we— the status quo becomes the default mode of being, which mediocrity is pervasive for sure. I think— what was it? It was Thoreau whose quote has been bastardized, changed a lot. So I don't even know what the original quote is, but it's something to the effect that everywhere people live lives of quiet desperation. And it is, I think, really true that the desperation, that quiet desperation, is just sort of the, the non-enthusiasm. You know how when we get enthusiastic about something, we get excited about something, we're like a child, really. That enthusiasm doesn't say, oh, the chances of our succeeding in this thing I'm enthusiastic about are probably 62%. There's no internal calculator going, yeah, your chance of success here is really just a little. You go, okay, so then you'd have no enthusiasm. That enthusiasm is sort of just assuming that only good can come of this and only fun can come of this and only something that's going to be good for our hearts can come of it. And living with that kind of light spirit, I think, is really powerful, especially in light of the fact that more often than not, we will fail at things. More often than not, things will not go— even if we get what we want, and I'm just speaking for myself here, I've gotten a lot of what I wanted. Pretty intentional person. I've set out intentions for things and then had them happen, but almost always they weren't what I planned. Meaning I got what I asked for, but not exactly what I thought it was going to be. And sometimes those things that I asked for weren't good at all. And sometimes those things created challenges that I didn't expect or want. And so, you know, just even getting what you want is not all it's cracked up to be if what you're attached to is that it has to be perfect. So to go back to your sort of the through line of your teaching, you know, that this idea that things have to be a certain way in order for us to be happy. I'd love for you to share a little bit of your You know, this is, this is your special something, I think, to the world, this, this book and, and your teaching. Share a little bit about what that is.

Yeah. Well, I think, Adam, it's this idea of what success should look like, right? At the end of the day, we have this idea of to be worthy of being called an expert or having success or being known or even having a loving relationship. We need to be a certain way. We need to show up a certain way. And that whatever we attach to it is often an idea of perfect. Well, if I just If I just lost the weight, or if I was just younger, or if I was just smarter. I call it your er. What is your er? I should be younger. I should be smarter. I should be thinner. I should be sexier. I should be fatter. I should, whatever. I should be funnier. There's always, like, gap, and our brain, as you know, you speak on resilience, it's this idea, and you talked about living lightly and joyfully before. And my bottom, my whole idea is, if we're going to work hard, which we have to do, to do work that's worth doing, why not have joy along the way? And, our brain's default is to focus on the gaps, to focus on all that we're not, all that we should still be, all the difference between who I am and the person I look up to. And so, when we do this heart work, I call it the heart work of really understanding the truth of what humanity needs and how we connect to individuals, we don't connect through perfection. And, I know so many people that I've met Who from my eyes are simply magnificent.

What do you mean we don't connect through perfection?

Because, okay. So Adam, you show up and you have this, you know, you have a perfect talk and you're perfect on stage and you look perfect and you meet me, you say the perfect thing. I am only going to feel comfortable enough to show you my perfect side because I'm going to start really unwillingly. We're always like, right? We're either comparing, despairing, or we're on the We are tribe. We want to fit in. We want to be part of the tribe. And so if I show up flawless, faultless, with no challenges, there is nothing that most humans can relate to. And we have to be relatable in my mind. We don't have to be, but I would encourage us all, if you're in a thought leadership space, people, if we're not relatable, why on earth would someone choose to listen to us? I mean, there are enough great thought leaders out there that talk about perfection or talk about resilience, but there's something about us, the humanness, that someone will lodge into and go, I see myself in her, or she understands me. And if I'm perfect, how on earth am I going to understand anyone who has any sort of challenges? So that's what I mean by that. We connect through the cracks.

And that kind of standard is exhausting, right?

God, I did. I tried it for 7 years.

I mean,

yeah,

this is kind of funny because I'm lucky in the sense that I don't have any, any serious sort of divots in my head. This is funny. What do you mean by that, Adam?

I know you got it. What does that mean?

Yeah, I'm bald. Okay, so folks are, you know, seeing maybe seen the even just the picture on the, you know, the podcast. I think my face is on there. Yeah, I lost my hair when I was a lawyer sort of midway through my career. I was so stressed out. And one of the first signs of the stress were physical changes in my body, including right at the top of my head. Plus, I've, you know, have a— my mother's father was, was also, so there's some genetics to it. But the joy of being bald for me is that I don't have to worry about my hair anymore. And I used to. That's the, you know, hair is such an important thing. And many people, you know, it's like their thing. They got to take care of their hair. They got to wash it, comb it, you got to get it just right, products and all that stuff. Which at the time, I remember I loved having hair, but it was constantly a burden in that respect. And, and so I don't have that burden anymore. So that's one less thing I have to maintain perfection about.

Right.

Although I still shave my head, and that I could— that I can do in like 5 minutes in the shower, which is totally easy. But back to perfection, it can be exhausting just even taking care of your physical appearance, let alone your Your professional appearance.

Yeah. And then at the end of the day, what does it mean? I mean, so again, often, Adam, I say, what does perfection mean to you? Because there might be people listening going, well, I want to— I try to bring perfection to my talks or my presentations. And then I just ask, perfect is only a word until you attach an emotion to it or a feeling or some sort of sense of self. A, who decides what perfect is? It's an illusion. And then B, if it motivates you to do your best work and you can still have joy, Don't change a thing. But this message is more for people like myself, Adam, who thought that all of a sudden I had the old voices of the past, right, that I hadn't dealt with. My dance teachers had said, you're never going to be smart enough. You're never going to make it. So I had that voice I didn't really look at. It's like, whatever, I'll get over that. I'm British. We'll like just suck it up and move forward.

Right. Stiff upper lip.

Oh, yes. And then there's also the British, like, who don't think too big, don't stand out, don't get too big for your britches. So there's all these things going on that were a part of my DNA. And then I became a fitness expert. Long story, but I rose the ranks very, very quickly. And, what happened was those voices of my past, and then somehow I put on this idea that, oh, to be an expert, I needed to know everything.

Mm-hmm.

I needed to be able to look a certain way, because it was in the fitness world. I had to eat perfectly, and it was exhausting. And, just like you, that stress will show up somehow. The world will throw you a pebble, a rock, or a brick wall. And, I had a pebble that was anxiety.

Hmm.

That was not sexy for a fitness person. So I just pushed it away. That pebble grew into a rock, which was panic attacks. And one of my symptoms, Adam, was like, if I was having a panic attack with you right now, literally within 60 seconds, it would look like I had run a marathon.

Yeah.

So I could hide everything. I could hide like racing heart. I could hide my mind running, you know, rampant. I could hide my blood pressure spiking. But then, all of a sudden, I would get like a little sparkle of sweat here, but crap, crap. And then, it would start dripping here. I'm like, oh no. And then, my back was— and then, literally within 60 seconds, I would be drenched. Yeah. So then, my brick wall moment was I started to turn down work for the fear of the fear itself. And so, this is why the work is a burden, right? Like your hair wore you down, that extra worry. Me, as I get older, if I worry about my wrinkles or whatever, look, I had cancer. I lost my hair. It was quite a freeing moment. I'm not going to say I wish that— I have a great shaped head. I learned a lot.

No divots in your head, right?

I have no divots. I have a great shaped head. But with that, it's just— and at the end of the day, the last thing I want to go to my grave is saying, she died perfectly. And she died not trying. Because to do anything perfectly means you don't try. Because to try means you've got to learn. You've got to fail. You've got to fall. You've got to get up. You have to ask for help. Perfection, how can I ask Adam for help? I should know everything. I'm the perfect expert. It's exhausting. It's debilitating. It's unrelatable. And when I let go of that burden of trying to hide it, that's when I became relatable. Because I didn't realize people saw Petra as the perfect fitness person. People loved what I did, and I was inspiring, but they never really connected to me. It was always like this little separate between me and them. And then when I brought to light this idea of like, man, I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks like you do, and then all of a sudden, it was no longer me and them. It was us.

Yes.

We're in it together. I knew enough to get them through to the other side, but I had the empathy now. I had the compassion to say, while your story is different, I understand the struggles. That's what I meant before, Adam, that perfection, how do you relate to perfection? Because there are no struggles.

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 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 and tools will accompany your score instantly. It's interesting because we— the social media scene has for a long time, I think, perpetuated so much comparison and comparison anxiety, which I'm just making that term up in this moment. I don't know if it's good, but it's just one of those things that— Good. I like it. I have an anxiety, not so much an anxiety story, but I worry. I've been a worrier since I was a kid. I used to bite my nails when I was a kid. I stopped doing that sort of right after I got married and I thought to myself, gosh, I wouldn't want to be married to somebody who was biting their nails. Good move. Good move. I really turned that around on myself. I was like, all right, so self-loathing 101. But that worry used to— I used to feel like it served me as a lawyer. That I would worry better than my competitors. So in a case, I would worry more than the lawyers I was up against, and therefore I could win. And I won a lot because I felt that that worry drove me. But where it was driving me after about 18 years in that practice was it was really driving me into an early grave. And I saw it happening for a lot of my colleagues, and whether they were succumbing to it physically, I certainly saw it But sort of mentally, emotionally, they were miserable and at 60 or 70. So these— I was just looking down the road at what my life might be like and it was a pretty ugly scene. So the desire to maintain a certain perfection or to keep up, let's say, with the people that you're seeing as your colleagues or folks that you admire even on social media, I think is a— again, it's a two-edged sword, right? Yeah. There are people to learn from for sure and to connect with, and yet there is this sort of script, as you call it, almost like a screenwriter's script that plays in our head that says, I have to look that good, or I have to be that good, or I should be— You know that person gets up at 4:30. This is something I really hate, right?

Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you.

The quote thought leaders who say this is the key to their success is they get up at freaking 4:30 in the morning.

5:00 AM is no longer early enough.

It's not even early enough, right? The meditation and the— rituals for the morning. And I, you know, I have my stack of rituals that do not start at 5 AM, just so we're clear. And I sometimes even catch myself going, well, maybe I should be doing that. Maybe they've got it and I, you know, somehow don't want it as much as they want it. You know, you still play that script in your head at all, Petra?

Oh, absolutely. And I think what's so refreshing when you shared that, Adam, is like There is a little bit, even in this day and age, of entrepreneurship shaming. I love a lot of the entrepreneurs who say we should be up at 5:00 AM. But just because— who said? Why have we worked so hard to create our own businesses? And one of the most refreshing things was recently, a friend of mine, Dori Clark, who is brilliant. I heard her say, yeah, I get up at 8:00 AM. I went, what? And all of a sudden, I was like, yes! I think when we look at others, right, look at others for inspiration and be really mindful of not comparing ourselves. Compare our yesterday to today. Can I show up better today than I did yesterday? Let's hope so. But we really, even the people that get up at 4:00 AM, 5:00 AM, their goals of success, their definition of happiness and joy might be very, very different to ours. And I would venture to say there's a backstory even there. That when you have perfection, let's say, okay, the perfect entrepreneur is getting up at 4:00 AM in the morning, meditating, reading 5 other books before 5:00, and then going out for their hour-long workout, and then they're going to have a shower and a completely vegan breakfast, and then they're going to hit the track. 9:00, I'm just— But I would imagine there's a part of their other life, something has to be sacrificed. So what are you sacrificing? And only we can decide what we are willing to sacrifice. Is it your relationship with your loved ones, with your family, with your your sleep, with your whatever it is. And here's the hard thing. Only we can decide that. And however many books we read, however many podcasts we listen to, however many documentaries, we're looking for that answer, right? What is that? Only you can figure it out.

Yeah.

And that to me is the work. That is the work of resilience, is getting really quiet and going, what is it that I want for my life? How can I Do trials and errors and try. Maybe I'll read this book and I'll try that, and maybe I'll try this method. At the end of the day, the greatest coach anyone listening will ever have is their intuition.

Exactly.

And it's like, how can we use others for inspiration without comparing what we're doing today with what they're doing?

Exactly. And that's one of those things that sits on the, on the head of a pin, these tiny little distinctions that are so important that seem— can seem like paradoxes. Like, how do you have both? How do you feel your emotions but yet at the same time also be Be free of them. Be not attached to them because that's— that any form of attachment is ultimately suffering, at least in Buddhist principle. And I ascribe to that. I feel like letting go is an art form. In fact, there's an old book called— I think it was The Art of Courageous Living or something like that by Osho. And after watching—

Oh, I love Osho.

Yeah. So I read that book so many years ago and there was one part in the book that talked about Forgiving every moment. And I thought back then when I read it, and I read most of my books in the hot tub, so this was back when we were living on the East Coast and I was at this gym, I was reading that book and I thought to myself, what do you mean? Is there something I have to forgive every minute of the day? Every second of my existence I have to forgive? So I didn't quite get it, but years later as I kept thinking about that and I would even sort of put it out there to people because I was like, I'm still thinking about this. Anybody got any ideas? What do we really mean there? But what I And what I feel now is that you can forgive every moment if you're not attached to the way things have to be. If again, perfection being one of those things that we would sort of strive for being like, like the 4:30 person. Like there's nothing wrong with the 4:30 person. Good for them. In fact, you know, and I just find myself going, don't be envious of that shit. Like calling bullshit on me for being envious of them for getting up at 4:30 in the morning. That's about me. Me too. Good on them. All right. Well done. You know, but it's like if I forgive in the moment. And everything that doesn't live up to that sort of standard, to that made-up bullshit perfection standard that I'm creating or that the media might be creating but I'm buying into, then I get freedom out of it. Like there's tremendous freedom in simply being able to let go of the things that are infecting the moment, right? Because look at this beautiful moment we have. We're just— we're alive and breathing. We're looking at each other. We're on this contraption, all this Technology. It's a computer. I mean, like, when we grew up, there wasn't any of this crap. None of this existed anyway. So all of this is a flipping miracle, and we're sharing a moment together. And I mean, if we think about, oh, you know, I don't like my answer from 10 minutes ago, or I wonder how many people are going to listen to this, or, you know, what will happen to my business a month from now, and any of that other stuff, it's like it's poisoning this moment, right, Petra?

Well, I just, I think, you know, you actually just reminded me of the answer I would have given you 10 minutes ago.

And

I was still going, damn, that wasn't a perfect answer. But when you asked about how do we have the feelings, right? Acknowledge them, but also let them go. I mean, that's, again, this is the deep inner work that no manual, you just got to, this is the difference between teaching it and living it. And like one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Pema Chödrön, says, and I think this is maybe where I could weave it back into how do you notice the feelings, but let them go? She says there's a difference between pain and suffering. I love this. Pain, we will all feel. And right now, in the world that we're in, there's a global pain, right? But the suffering is optional, when we pull up those feelings into our head, and then we spin them over and over again. And at the end of the day, what she says is, suffering, like you had mentioned, is wanting things to be different than they are.

Yeah.

And so, when we can be with those feelings, the good ones and the not so good ones, and just sit with them, And not get attached to them, but also be okay with how things are in this moment and this moment. And again, it sounds so simple, but it's not easy.

Right.

That is the work where we get to be resilient and bring our joy and work hard, but not from a place of fear and doubt, but a place, like you said, when we're 1-year-olds and 2-year-olds and before someone said, what are you doing? From curiosity and possibility and from the front of our brain that allows us to see all the good. Versus our reptilian brain that's always protecting us from what might go wrong.

Yeah. So, oh my goodness, so true. And that forgiveness idea for me is about being able to release, to just release things. Because when I forgive them, I'm letting them— I'm releasing them from whatever my judgments are around them. And I think it's the hardest thing in the world to practice that for ourselves. And I couldn't agree with you more. I'm so happy that you keep reflecting back and edifying the this is what builds resilience, this kind of inner work. We often talk about resilience as being holistic, that it's mental, it's emotional, it's physical, and it's spiritual. And there's a beautiful section in A Course in Miracles, I think it's chapter 30. I haven't looked at it in probably at least a month now. I'm gonna pick it up. I have the book right here, so it's good. I won't be too far from it, called The New Beginning, chapter 30, where the principle is how do you create the day you That you really want to have. What's the steps? What's the formula for creating a happy day? Just your work. It's so beautiful. Outline the steps because I torture myself to remember them anyway, although I do remember them, but it's better to read it honestly, take it in. Chapter 30 of A Course in Miracles. But the sort of ending point of this creating the day that you want is that we give ourselves the day we want because that becomes the offering That we get to give to the world, that we can't give the world anything we don't possess ourselves. So you can't give people love that you don't possess. If you don't love yourself, you can't love anybody any better. And that's just, again, it's one of those little riddles that sits on the, on the head of a pin and you go, what?

I mean, that to me is, that's it, right? It's like, you know, that saying, love thy neighbor as thyself. And I think that's why we're all struggling so much because Because when do we take the time to actually— I don't even go to love yourself. A lot of people are like, coach. I say, let's just get to you liking yourself. Yeah. You know, even that would be a win, because I've often said the longest distance any of us will ever travel is from our head to our heart. And that's the work of resilience. And the hard thing is, you know, Adam, resilience is not something you get to train for. You learn it. You live it by living the hard moments, by seeing the possibility, by seeing How can I come out of this better, not bitter? Victorious, not a victim, and look to grow from this, not just survive, and come out post-traumatic growth. How do we choose to do this? And, it's those pinheads. It's those moment by moment, breath by breath, seemingly small choices that add up to the end of our day, that when we've made these seemingly most small choices, not in service of us, Yes. But in service of the world, then it's work worth doing.

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 get 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. You know, the chart that we see on the news, and we don't watch too much news, but for a long time now, this COVID-19 chart that everybody's familiar with, which is this sort of hockey stick looking thing, you know, it's, oh, there's only 2 cases and then there's 6 and then there's, you know, 6,000. You go, oh my God. You know, and that compounding effect is not just a chart for COVID-19. It's a chart for how money grows, how the compounding effect that Einstein called a miracle, the greatest miracle, I believe, is how he referred to that, is this idea that small changes. So for us, again, in terms of the rituals for resilience, to create resilience, they're tiny little things that don't seem to add up to much, just like 2 cases of COVID didn't seem like it was a threat when we were talking about it showing up in the United States. Those small changes that we make, the small incremental improvements that maybe are just 1% even, over time compound. And as you say, produce a more resilient way of being so that you're really producing resilience before you need it. So there's no question that this will not be the last great challenge of our lives. If we're lucky, and that is the likelihood, is we'll face another challenge a year from now or 10 years from now, whenever it would be, our health or our family members or in our business or at some other macroeconomic area. Like we've all been hit with this thing that just came out of seemingly nowhere. So I'm curious, for people that are right now home doing their business, some of those people are recovering from a furlough or a layoff. Some of those people are entrepreneurs that are just trying to figure out how to maintain their outsourcing staff or the people that they employ, or even the larger organizations that you and I sometimes will speak to and their teams. Right. What's one thing, what's one small tip right now to build resilience for those people? And if you want to, if there's a tip that's more for that larger organization and the teams that are now for the first time perhaps working remotely and having to try to maintain connections and be able to be productive, or it's that person who's maintaining their own small business or maybe even somebody who's been laid off, what are some resilience tips we can provide?

Oh, I think one is it doesn't happen in a vacuum. And this was part of the book, and this was part of the article, I think, where we connected. I love this idea by Edith Grothberg, and she works with resilience in kids. And I think we often think that we have to do it ourselves. And this is why I love your work, Adam, because what I'm saying, especially to larger companies now, these are the soft skills of the past that are now the hard skills of the future.

Yeah.

The things that we could thought, oh, I'll get to that. I'll learn how to be more empathetic as a leader down the road. I'll learn how to do active listening down the road, or I'll learn how to be a coach because there's always something more immediate to be done.

EQ is interesting.

It's nice. Yeah, it's a nice option. You know, it sounds sweet.

Right. Sounds sweet. You know, in a perfect world, everybody would have some emotional intelligence. Right. Yeah.

Okay. Now, this is the global, like, pause. This to me, okay, for the bigger picture, if you choose to look at this because it's a choice, I'm not saying it's easy. You know, it's not easy, but is it a choice? We get to choose now, how do I want to show up as a leader moving forward? Do I want to stretch my resilience, my empathy, my courage? So there's 2 things. I think now it's seeing the human behind the human being behind the human doing. It's not the title. It's not what they do at work. It's everyone is suffering. So it's learning now to deal with these other things called grief, a global grief.

A global grief. Yes.

Global grief, anticipatory grief. We're going to go back, but we don't even know what we're anticipating for yet. I think it's also as leaders learning to say, I don't know the answer.

Oh my God.

What a concept.

What a concept. Transparency? Honesty? Vulnerability? What?

I know.

Don't even say it, Petra.

If the scientists don't know, how are you expected to know? And I think what your team does need from you is a sense of security that they can bring their whole self, not just their perfect self. So they can— to me, it's creating a new culture where it's hope and doubt. Possibility and dreams, worries and, you know, potential future. It's not just, I'm gonna bring my best self to work. We need to leave room for the emotional intelligence of the workplace. So I'm hoping we're actually gonna come back. It's gonna be a long game, but better than before. And then the one tip I would give to—

Why? I'm challenging you on this. And the reason I'm doing it is because I want you to do it to me. All right? Because I've said that I talk about this is The great opportunity of our day, just like in 2008 when people were freaked out about, as a result of the financial crisis, there were people who were seeing opportunities and created things, grew things, did things. Like when Polaroid was going bankrupt, Instagram was getting $2 billion, so at the same time. So disruption, as a friend of mine likes to say, disruption is only disruptive because you didn't think of it. Like the only reason you think something's disruptive is because you didn't come up with the idea for it, right? So you're talking about opportunity right now. And I'm asking you, so what— expand on that. Why is this a time when people should actually be thinking, yeah, there are great opportunities. I should be optimistic now when I can't even see, when I used to be able to see sort of 18 months into my future and now I can't see 18 days into my future.

I would say invite you to consider how did that 18 months really look like to you? I think a lot of us were so busy going, going, going. If we really look through that heart lens, right, through the lens of empathy, And what do I really want for my best possible future? Is that really what you want? I think right now is a great time for us to revisit our values. We become so busy, Adam, that we often, I think for many of us, we had gone down this fast lane. We now had moved into this road of should do this, where I've done this now, so my next step move is this, should, should, should. And when is the last time you actually sat still long enough to ask yourself, what do I want?

We

have gone, I should do this. I must do that. I should do this. I have got time for this. And now we have been put on this pause and that commute time or the extra time, instead of shoving in one more Zoom call, maybe get quiet for a second. I felt like this was the universe going, I cannot breathe anymore. I have given you this beautiful gift. This is a bit like, this is the woo-woo part. I felt like we— do I say this out loud?

Oh, please say it.

Okay. I feel like there might have been another option. coming down the road that we hadn't seen yet.

Yeah.

Like a World War III.

Pretty dire.

I think there was something way worse than this that we could not anticipate. And this is the pebble, rock, brick wall moment where the world went, guys, I got to shake you up. Because we— and I think this is the bit where I would love to see opportunity rise. Even we need competition, we need healthy competition, but it becomes such a world of us versus them, me versus you, What happens if now it's like, hmm, maybe it's not. This is the first time, as I can remember, this is a global grief. Global grief. Global pandemic. It's not us versus them. We're better than you. We needed to wake up. So why can we not, as a waking up on a global scale, why not wake up on a humanity scale? And the world that you get to contribute to, it's a choice. You don't have to take it. If this doesn't shake us up for good, what a waste.

I think it is shaking us up for good.

I hope so.

I see signs of it. You know, it's interesting, my book agent actually calls this a timeout. He says it's like, you know, he's a grandpa, he thinks of it, you know, when your kids are naughty or your grandkids are naughty, you gotta timeout. It's like, I think what he was saying, we gotta timeout. Like, we gotta timeout for good reason, as you said, because there are things that That are just in need of a recalibration. I mean, we know the environment, regardless of what you believe about the environment, to see the kind of extreme weather conditions and other things that just don't necessarily— you can't look at those situations and not question, what can we do about it? Is there a way to make that situation better? And certainly when major industrial nations are not producing the kind of— or putting toxins into the air and producing pollution the way they are for even a period of weeks or months. I think it was Lynne Twist, who's the The founder of the Pachamama Alliance said she believes the Earth got sort of 30 years of recovery. When we talk about resilience, it's not just our personal resilience or organizational resilience. How about the resilience of our planet, the resilience of our resources? So even in the midst of all of this, we've given our Earth some recovery time. And there's something for our grandkids or the generations ahead of us that will be thankful for this respite, I suppose. But we'll all find out.

I love that. What a great idea. And just really quickly, I forgot to actually get back to my point of like with resilience, like I like this idea by Edith Grothberg of the triangle, right? This is the time I am, I have, I can.

Hmm.

I am is all your strengths, right? I am, you were amazing before, let's elevate our strengths. I have my team, I have podcasts to listen to, I have people around me that I can rely on. It's not just us and them. And then I can, maybe I'm not empathetic yet, I don't know how to use technology, Yet it's all the skills that we can do. So resilience is, it's who you are, it's who you can lean on, and it's what you can still do in the future should you choose to. And it's like a muscle, right? You got to use it. Yes. You lose it.

That's so true. So true. I've loved this conversation. I've got one last question for you, which is about your resilience.

Okay.

I ask everybody, what's one ritual that you have right now? And has that ritual changed even? Because I know some of us have had rituals, the same ones for many years, et cetera. So is there one ritual in particular in this time that you have adopted or that you're doubling down on right now to produce that greater resilience in the midst of a lot of uncertainty for you, for me, for everybody? I don't know anybody that's got total clarity at this moment or the ability to see too far ahead. Yeah. So what's that ritual for you?

I think the big ritual is I get out into nature every morning. I try. Luckily for me, I'm in New York City. I live close to the park. I get out and I get into nature because like you had said, right now, oh my gosh, you go into Central Park, the birds are having a field day. It's like, I don't know what's going on.

It's like, what's happening?

Yeah, I know. So I literally go, I find a little quiet bench, all these places that I never— I lived by Central Park for so long, I find these little new sitting places, I get really quiet, and I just be with what— I just listen to all that is, all that's going on around me. And it reminds me of 2 things: that nothing stops, you know, nature doesn't stop. And it's also another side of it, it helps me remember kind of how insignificant in some way I am in this big global picture. And then from that place, what really has helped me in the resilience is serving. Be a servant leader. How can I help? And then through that, it just reminds me of my sense of purpose moving forward. So I So it's being mindful in the moment in the park, being a servant leader in the moment, and then helping hopefully move us all forward in a way that, in a small way that I can contribute.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I think in the Bible it's referred to, this is a term that's difficult to define, it's kind of an ineffable thing called meekness. And that concept of meekness is really, yeah, because it's this humility, it's this getting small or for being able to experience smallness to also be big, you know, the opposite of sort of arrogance, that you can say, yeah, I am pretty insignificant. I'm just this little, you know, we're— I mean, I'm not just insignificant. The Earth itself is a tiny speck of dust, right? This tiny little speck of dirt spinning in an infinite universe. And you go, okay, so what does that do for me to recognize that? Well, in part, it's this humility. It's this ability to Give yourself a freaking break, right? Give everything a bit of a break. So with that sort of removing the judgment, you can just be, be, right? I mean, what else are we here to do anyway? I've loved our conversation and the twists and the turns of where we took it. So way cool.

Thank you so much. This is absolutely, absolute treat. Thank you so much, Adam.

Oh, beautiful, Petra. I will remind everybody of the ritual. I remind myself I do this every time because I want to, I want to continue to double down on my waking ritual, which is to wake up to begin with. And Petra, did you wake up today?

I did.

You did. How cool is that, right?

Pretty awesome.

And this is the physical waking, of course, but it's also a metaphor that, as you said earlier, if we could just be a little bit more conscious, a little bit more awake each day, if that's the only goal we have for the development of our lives, we're doing— I think we're doing pretty well. If we can just incrementally, again, that hockey stick, that compounding effect, just a little better every day, 1%, half a percent, whatever it might be, you know, every day. So waking And then for me, I go to gratitude very quickly because if I don't go to gratitude, I find myself, I'll lean into what's missing or what's wrong, or I'll lean into aggravation. I grew up in New York. I have a good bit of angst at times. And that's part of, I think, what gives me drive. It gives me a fire for sure. But I also know that it can take me down some dark holes. And that's not a place I want to start my day. I think of the starting of the day as like your garden, and I want to plant those seeds, the right seeds. The right thinking at the beginning. So gratitude is second step. And for me, I express the gratitude verbally. So I'll put my feet on the floor. I take 10 seconds. And this was a topic that was the TED Talk I gave was all about just 4 simple words that can change life, change your life, change my life anyway. I don't know about anybody else's, but I say I love my life. Those are the 4 words I say. So I ask you, Petra, do you love your life?

I do. And it just gets better and better, you know, all of it. And I think we— I love my life when I love all of it.

No matter what.

No matter what. Life is good.

That's right. Can you love your life no matter what? And my wife asked me that in the midst of all this. She goes, so you still loving your life? Like, no matter what? Yeah. Okay. It is one. And you said it earlier too, that if you can't say, I love my life, like somebody might be listening to this going, okay, easy, somehow easier for you guys to say it than for me at the moment. Because if you knew what my life was like, and people have sent me those messages on YouTube and Facebook and other places, and I love them. I really respect them. I respect that people are comfortable enough in their own skin to say, I'm calling BS on that for me. And it may well be. So what else could you say? Could you say, I'll pretend. I'm going to pretend I love my life for a moment. What does that feel like? Or, I like my life. Or, I love life. Like, I'm in love with life. Maybe my life isn't the way I want it to be, but I'm in love with life. Can you say that? Or at least— And so I think that's the point here. Don't follow my ritual or Petra's per se. Create your own consciously. That's the name of the show is The Conscious Pivot. So it's about what we consciously create for ourselves that matter, not that we follow the influencer of the day or somebody who gets up at 4:30 in the morning or somebody looks the way we wish we look or any of that other bullshit. It's just create something that works for you and give yourself a break. Forgive every moment, I guess the social would say. So that's all I've got for now. And Petra, again, thanks so much for being a guest.

Thank you so much for having me.

Okay. Well, oh, finding out more about Petra, by the way, check out the show notes. So go to the show notes. You'll find links to the work she's doing, the book that she's got, the coaching she does. Everything will be in the show notes. Of course, leave a comment there. Tell us what you think. And of course, if you haven't subscribed, please do that as well. All right. Ciao for now,

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