Change Proof: Building Resilience Through Uncertainty With Adam Markel | Replay

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Barkel and his inspiring guest explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change Proof.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Change Proof podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I can't believe it, but it's been a year since Change Proof originally hit the shelves, hit the stands, all that good stuff. It was 2. 22, 22. That's a lot of twos. We found that date, which was selected by the publisher actually to be really an auspicious one. I'm not, I'm not a superstitious person, but I certainly do believe in, in the power of numbers and in numerology, actually, which is a very interesting science and, and something that I, I consult with and consider. So that was a pretty cool date for, for us to see Change Proof get out into the world. And it's amazing that it has been a year since then. I have said this too many times now to count, and I'm actually hesitant these days to even keep saying it. But you know, we blink our eyes. It's like, just like that. In the snap of a finger, you know, time just passes and it passes in a beautiful way. I mean, this last year has been amazing. I'm going to take you through a little bit of a journey today of, of where we've been with Change Proof over the last year, give you this little taste of maybe behind the curtain, behind the scenes of that and share some insights and things that we've learned along the way. And, and I look forward to the continuation of this Change Proof journey. If there's anything that we've learned, it is that change is not going away. And in fact, the pace of change, the velocity of change is even greater and will only continue to get greater. I think actually the pandemic slowed it down. As much as there was pretty, pretty significant sizable chunks of change then the kinds of things that changed on a macro level were pretty breathtaking and notable. The micro changes that are happening constantly now and the speed of those changes from AI to everything else you can think of, is just, again, it's enough to take your breath away. So one thing we know is that navigating change is, is going to be something that we have to do individually and as, and as professionals, as career professionals, leading, leading others, leading ourselves, leading organizations, which is is very much the work that I do in the world now and for the indefinite future. Change is part of that. Managing it. Not just managing it, not just tolerating it, not just weathering it, but rather utilizing it, maximizing it, optimizing it. That's what we're talking about. You know, Change Proof is not, is not a book about how to white knuckle the experience of disruption. It's a book about how we leverage adversity and leverage uncertainty as catalysts to build long term resilience. Because as our theory and, and based on much research that we've done, that resilience is the unsung hero in every success story. It is the competitive advantage that people individually, in their, in their lives, personally in their family lives and, and in every aspect of their personal lives as well as in their professional lives. That resilience is like a competitive advantage that that many, many people just aren't aware of and even fewer people have mastered. So part of the value of Change Proof and what makes it relevant today, even more, even more than when it came out on February 22, 2022, is that it is in greater need now than it was even then. So our capacity to, to have energy ready energy to resolve issues, to outperform challenges, outperform problems is more profound today than it has ever been during my 50 plus years of trips around the sun. And I think I would venture to say regardless of how young, what your current age is, you can probably identify with that level at which we are being challenged today to resolve problems quickly, to out outperform the things that are showing up that might otherwise take us out. That the need for that, the, the value of that is, is more, more than, than probably most of us have have seen called for in our lives to this point. So what is this book? How did it make its way to the, to the, to the marketplace? What have we learned? Let me, let me share a couple of those insights. So first of all, producing a book, in case you've done it or you haven't done it, I will say it's for, for a, a person who cannot give birth to a child, which I cannot, I will say that this is as close to giving birth as I could imagine. And I've been witness to the births of four children now, so I know how excruciating that process is and can be and how arduous it is over a period of many, many months, nine months in particular and somet, of course, so it is, it is not something that, that we did Lightly. It is the second independent book that we've done. We've done some collaborative books before, but my first book was called Pivot, which was a book about reinvention, personal, professional reinvention. That book came out with Simon and Schuster as a publisher back in 2016. And, and in that book there was a chapter on resilience. As is the case with pivoting, we understand that to be successful, or maybe we don't understand, but that book was about how you successfully plan a pivot. For me, my own story was having the sort of perfect storm of events producing what could have been a midlife crisis in my life that turned into a midlife calling. And how important calling is in, In Change Proof, which is a book that's committed to resilience, that has content in it, that's about how you create agility and flexibility and are able to be pivotable, that you're. You have a pivot ability. And so what I realized was in producing that first piece of content called Pivot, I realized later on that, that the bigger topic was really the chapter on resilience, that in my life, the one through line that's been consistent from the time that I was very young, was this, this capacity to utilize what was happening in my life to some advantage. I had a propensity, if you will, for using, for looking at situations that were going on in my life and finding something valuable in them, even when those situations were, were disappointing or were painful or anxiety inducing. And I'm not saying I was, I was ever and am not perfect at doing that. I still get, I can still get caught in, in, in the riptide of fear, of doubt, of worry. I can still have that happen. But what I know how to do now, that I didn't even know how to do then, was to. To hold on to this buoy that, that I call resilience or that, that I refer to as, as being resilient and my resiliency. And there are markers for our resiliency. And one of those markers that I talk about in the book, Change Proof, is how it is that we, we are able to find value in our life situations and leverage what we learn from those situations to actually advance, to move forward. So in Change Proof, we talk about this ever present change as, as a kind of a rip tide, as a rip current, like a rip current at the beach that pulls at us, that feels like it could drown us, that it could take us out to sea, that, that it could take us into oblivion, it could just Take asunder and how it is that we navigate that riptide or that rip current. That undercurrent means the difference between not just survival and, and, and, and living, but really the difference between struggle and, and success at the very highest levels and learning how to leverage any of, any of the situations that are happening for us so that we cannot just bounce back, if you will, but can bounce forward, can bounce back stronger than we were before. That has been a through line in, in my life because I've been able to reinvent myself now numerous times personally, professionally, develop success in, in at least three careers that I can think of right now. Having been the CEO of large and small companies, having been an attorney for 18 years and retiring from that practice, having had a successful run at that in, in different jurisdictions in the United States, but recognizing that it was not my continued calling to do that, but finding that calling to, to replace it. Not jumping ship from that work that I was doing, but finding something that felt better, that felt more in alignment, felt more congruent with, with what was important to me from a purpose standpoint, from the standpoint of, of. Of what, what I wanted to devote myself to that I was able to reinvent and seek after that to follow, follow that. So having been able to do that, I could never have done those things without developing this, this change proof resilience, which is this, not an ordinary resilience even. That's what I'm so, you know, very happy about where the book has, has, has been and what people have said about it. I'm going to take a minute here, just a second to read some of the things that people have said about the book. But I'll say this. If you have thought about writing a book or again, if you've done that, you know what it's like. It is excruciating. As I was mentioning, it's, it's the closest thing that I've come to in terms of just the, the, the, the, the process to giving birth to something. And it takes a village, it takes people to help you to do it. You have to have a team. You have to have people there to act as the midwife or act as the nurse and the doctor and all the support staff to see it through. I couldn't have done it myself, nor would I have ever tried to. And even with all that support, wow, man, what a task. So with change proof, we, we went with a great publisher called McGraw Hill. It's a business, I think it's the largest business book publisher in the world actually. And they fell in love with the concept and, and helped in, in the, the formulation of the concept as well as, you know, provided fantastic feedback throughout. There were many, many rounds of edits and, and it really, it really was a. Just a wonderful combined effort to produce what we now see as, as a, as a very valuable book, a book that really gets granular. I think what I love about the book is it's a bit of a biz mar. Somebody said that once that I thought was really cool. Is it like a business memoir? So there's, there's a lot of my own personal story in the book, but there's a lot of stories of other people, of business leaders, of sports figures, of, of artists and musicians and, and, and people that have just really understand through, through their own, their own philosophy, their own ethos how it is that you succeed in the, in the face of just about anything and that you, you're able to constantly be moving forward, elevating, raising, raising, you know, the bar, if you will, not just seeing life as a series of experiences and, and saying, well, everything happens for a reason, because that's just a hollow statement. It just doesn't tell a story. To me, that's comforting, but rather to understand that, that everything's happening for a reason. And the reason, the reason underscore is that it. It gives us an opportunity to serve. So the things that are most adverse, the things that are most challenging, things that are most uncertain are, Are the greatest catalysts for our growth. And usually if we don't shy away from them, if we don't run in fear from, from those opportunities, we are better for them and sometimes dramatically better for them. And other people are also better for them. And that takes, of course, we know an level of courage, I suppose, but. But it also is so helpful when, when you just can know that other people have done it, understand how they did it, be able to model or, or at least take. Take for yourself their nuggets of wisdom. Copy even what, what you've learned of their, their capacity to navigate and, and to accelerate and utilize that for yourself. That. That's really just. There's kernels of wisdom in this book. They're not mine. Maybe there's some that are mine, perhaps, but there are lots of other people's wisdom. There's tons of research that we've done over the course of several business leaders across the globe. Everything from startup companies to Fortune 50 organizations and everything, almost everything you can think of in between. And it's through the, The Assessments that we've done about resilience in four specific areas that are included in this book that, that serve as the foundation for what, what it is that, that we share. And it breaks down into mental resilience, emotional resilience, physical resilience, and even spiritual resilience. I can tell you that statistically speaking, in, in the surveys that we did, the median score out of a possible 100 across the board was a 64, meaning individuals and organizations that, that participated in our Resilient Leader assessment, on average scored a 64. And you can just ask yourself, 64 out of 100, how good is that? You know, how, how well it's, it's good because that means that, you know, there's a level of resilience in those four areas that's, that's tangible, that's usable, that you can build upon. It's a foundation. And it also tells you that there's, there's capacity to become even more resilient as well. In, in those four zones, you know, typically the physical zone was the weakest in some organizations. The emotional intelligence, the eq, the, the emotional areas were the strongest. Not in every, but in many. The mental side was also often weakest. After the physical side, though, people are really good at giving themselves a good hard time, as you know. And you probably are one of those folks that can identify with a mind that just doesn't stop cogitating and chewing on things, especially things that create some discomfort or fear. And people have not developed effective practices for quieting their own minds and don't create a great many boundaries between their, their thinking on a, on an intentional level and, and just allowing their thoughts to run wild. So one of the things that we talk about in change proof is how it is that you, you can do that. How it is that you can be better able to control, not so much control your stream of thoughts, but what to do with those stream of, with, with that thinking and how that actually can become a catalyst for better mental health. Less anxiety, more clarity, greater capacity to stay present and to stay focused, that kind of thing. And that's hugely important. And on the spiritual side, what we find is that more often than not, and I mean like at, at to a tune of almost 90% of the time, people that we've surveyed are engaged in, in a livelihood, in a war, in work that is in alignment with their highest values and beliefs. And yet the very next assessment that we, that we take in that spiritual zone identifies whether there are significant gaps between what they say is important to them in their lives and how they actually allocate their own time, resources and energy. And often whereas the first question is, you know, are you, are, are you engaged in that livelihood, that work? That's, that's, that is in alignment with your values? And the answer is yes, you know, almost 90% of the time. But are there also gaps between the things you say are important and what you do with your time, energy, resources, etc? And that score is typically under 60. So that shows that there are great big gaps between those two propositions. And so there's some really, really interesting stuff to pick up on there. I'm going to read a couple of quick Amazon or reviews that have come to us about about change proof. I'll pick a few here. So it says, particularly relevant for those of us who lead teams. Provides an interesting perspective and simple yet impactful tools. Relevant, helpful stories and data for shifting my ability to handle change. Great insights on the importance of resilience and building our capacity as the foundation for our relationship with change and disruption. Engaging stories, practice strategies shared in a relatable manner. Here's one that says I had the pleasure of hearing Adam's message at a local conference where he was the keynote speaker and was completely invested in his message. And so I purchased the book. I found myself not being able to put it down. It resonates on so many levels. You know, the reviews have been, have been really lovely. I actually haven't found a review that said it was terrible, whether they didn't like it. I mean almost always, you know you're going to get some form of criticism when, you know, any time you put anything out in the world you can just pretty much expect that when my TED Talk came out, which is a talk about how you deal with anxiety in the face of, of, of you know, a number of things that are going on in your life. And I was sharing some stories of my own panic attack and ending up in, in the hospital, you know, and how the aftermath of that my shame around that and, and how I was dealing with it. And then ultimately I came out on the side of, of a particular ritual in, in the morning that starts my day that helps me to get grounded, get into gratitude quickly start on grandmother would say just get my head head right to start. And, and that's a practice with just involves four simple words. I love my life just saying those words in the morning when I wake up, put my feet on the floor and what that meant to me. And yet even in that TED Talk there were people that called BS on that and, and, and called me out for it. So you know, again with change proof. I would have expected at this point to see some negative reviews, but I just haven't seen them. So that's been a wonderful thing. I'll read another here. It says change proof Artfully unique stories Principles with stories that contextualize the principles to make them more understandable and applicable. The author weaves these two themes together to give the reader both a both the content to succeed and the context to apply them. He takes you on a journey through your left and right brain to continuously engage the reader, making it an enjoyable and practical guide to deal with the inevitable changes we all face. For example, in the chapter on disputing irrational beliefs, the reader has been told a story that is clearly folly about an ancient king trying to hold back the ocean tide. Then the author asks the reader, what self defeat, self defeating irrational belief do you want to dispute and surrender? He then offers this one from his own experience. I absolutely must be competent and achieving it all I do or else I am in an inadequate, worthless person. From an objective standpoint, it is an irrational belief and yet everyone raised in the US Education system believes it, exclamation point. He goes on to teach how to identify and reframe the irrational thoughts limiting our success. This book is the real deal. Well, that's, that's a lovely, that's a lovely review. And I can tell you that, that over the course of the last year, not only were we able to bring the book out and, and share the book in, in so many ways. Typically what happens is that people will find the book or they'll go to my website AdamMarkel.com and, and read more about this concept of resiliency and our philosophy and our research on it and, and find the book and, and then people will contact us and say hey, we'd love to have you come and keynote one of our conferences. Speak, you know, share your keynote on, on resiliency. Share, you know, the keynote on mental health or work life balance which we ref work life harmony or, or even stress management. And I, I speak on all those things and then they say and, and you know, we'd love to provide an opportunity for the audience for our, whether it's our teams or others to get access to the book. So it supports the work that, that we're bringing you in to share with our folks. So that's been a joy as a, as a, I'd say big difference between how we were able to initially market and Sell the last book. I did. And the way we have been marketing and selling Change Proof, it is for the most part been in connection with these keynote talks or workshops or even sometimes the work that our consultancy does and deploying the book as a tool for large groups of people across different geographies, different functions to get everybody, you know, literally on the same page. When it comes to how you operationalize resilience. One of the things that I talk about in the book and, and we've developed a specific program for which I'm going to share with you now. It's, it's something that helps an organization actually run this to ground, meaning that if they wanted to have a more resilient culture, if they, if they wanted their individual leaders and teams to be more resilient, how, how do you do that to the point of it becoming part of the culture? We decided that we would, we would create a product for that. In particular, in the event that people, organizations are not ready to bring us in to work with teams in a more consultative way, we have a digital product called the Change Proof program that's built for individuals, but also built for teams to work on collaboratively as well. And in that program we talk about how to operationalize resilience. What does it look like to operationalize it? And I'll just tell you what the four things are and then, you know, of course, you know, getting the book or, or getting access to the digital program, you can do all that@changeproof.com you can find out about how to make it available to teams and how to access it yourself as well. But for now, let me just say that the four areas of resilience from an operation standpoint are. Start with the value set. So initially, what, what has to be a sort of a first domino, if you will, is that everybody realizes that this is valuable, that it's not, you know, we're not discounting resilience as a quote, unquote, soft skill, but rather it's, it's something that becomes a part of our value set. So when you think about companies that, that are focused on their, their mission, their vision, their values, this has got to be among them. That we want our people to be resilient, that we, and that ultimately we're willing to go to bat for them. That's the first thing. The second thing is that the SOPs, the standard operating practices and procedures have to reflect that. That is in fact the case that it truly is important that an organization isn't just checking a box, ticking a box as we sometimes do on things like mental health or when we hear that people are quietly quitting or that they're resigning their positions and then we're reacting to those things, doing to stem the tide of attrition, that we're, that, that that has become epidemic on its own, that the standard operating procedures say to people, yes we do, we do care about resilience and we are looking to, to support you that, that this is serious for us, so that that has to be congruent. In other words, the third thing is modeling and permission and they're, they're sort of related. But a lot of times people, they'll get the modeling part. You know, that if you, if you want others. And the key to resilience is to ritualize it to create recovery rituals and, and if you want other people to do that, then leaders have to do that. That we get. But what often is, is lost is the fact that when a leader is not modeling those things, when they're still abiding by the old paradigm of resilience, that we should be gritty, you know, that we should grind it, that, that we should be burning our candle at every end, that you know, winning the night owl or at first in the morning and last to leave in the. And that's the, the mentality that's still running things. Other people are denied permission to take care of themselves in a different way because that's the standard. So modeling is not just that you're, that you're living as a leader in accordance with, with what you say is important so that you're not a hypocrite, in other words, but what it does on a much deeper level is it either gives permission to people to take care of themselves and, or it actually denies that permission. And, and where in organizations that's the case when permission is being withheld and people have to feel guilty or feel shame shame around going to therapy or, or getting to their kids dance recital or doing the other things that, that they have to do for themselves to be, to be the best they can be. Well then that's, that's a big issue in terms of the, the culture of that organization. And so the last thing is that we frame this as, as a got your back culture. And in, in the, in the best of scenarios it means that, that there are other people who are looking after you, that you are looking after others and they are looking after you. We all have each other's backs and that's a partnership. And so rather than thinking of it as accountability. We like to think of it as a partnership and, and we call it a got your back partnership. And that's what supports everybody in this, in this joint effort to create a more resilient organization. And in doing so, by operationalizing resilience within a team or within a larger structure, it creates a culture, a got your back culture. And that is really fundamentally important. So again, it has been quite a journey getting, getting to this point a year later and creating that digital product marketing this book as we have continuously through podcasts, through guest appearances, through keynote, these, these wonderful keynote events that I get invited to. Etc. I'll read one last review as I'm closing up for for the moment on this and that is to say and I wish I had this person's name, but this is just a beautiful review right here. It says in our world there have been more than 129,864,880 books published. I don't know where you get this number, but this is pretty interesting. I see them in two categories is said books and life changers. Number two, Life changers. This book is a life changer. The principles span all domains and modalities and set you up to succeed everywhere in your life. Take this book and pair it with the authors of other of the other incredible book Pivot and you will have a roadmap to guaranteed success. My recommendation, read it cover to cover and then turn it into a daily accountability and implementation guide. No other book needed. No more info needed. It's right here. Thank you Adam for pouring your years of experience and wisdom to helping millions transform and make it accessible to everyone. This book will be read 100 years from now and still be applicable. Wow. I gotta tell you that it's just beautiful to read, humbling to read. I hope that's true. I don't know if I. If I could say that myself without my own inner critic thinking. That's pretty arrogant. But to read someone else's words like that, that just is every reason, every confirmation for why I would I we did what we did in putting this together. As I said it was a team effort and in giving birth to a book like this was not easy and and yet for that to be the dividend, I would do it again and again and again. Just not tomorrow. All right. So I would say that I. I hope that if you've not yet experienced change proof that you go out and get it it. I'll remind you that if you do get the book, whether you buy it on Amazon or in, in some other store that you go to changeproof.com to just get the additional gifts that are yours for free just simply by sharing with us where you bought the book so that we, we know that, that we can, that the gifts that we give you will, will be, will have, will have their proper place. Because without the book to reference, then those, those particular gifts don't make a whole lot of sense. But there's some really great ones, so you can go and check that out on your own. And of course again, the Change Proof program hit, hit the, hit the airwaves or, or got into the ether space sometime in September and people are, are loving it, getting great reviews from it. It's something that I think is truly transformational because if you're a lifelong learner like I am, I, I like to consume things in a variety of ways. Reading a book is phenomenal. I also like to listen to the author. I like to listen to the people that the author has interviewed and the people that are the basis of that research. So the change program, it kind of blends all those things. This audio, this video, this walks with me. They're in short digestible bites which again, in the world we're living in right now, you know, consuming hours and hours of content is not easy to do. I know it can be done, but it's not easy to do. So these are more bite sized pieces that you can take on a walk with you or sit in front of your screen and watch. You can share it with your teams, you can watch them together, you could debrief them together. There are program guides, downloadable forms, their worksheets, their exercises and practices for yourself, for your family and for those that you lead. All those things are part of the program. So I hope you take advantage of that as well and leave us reviews like this or other reviews. I mean, you know, where we, we believe in feedback, we talk about that in the book. Feedback is like oxygen. So, you know, sometimes the, even the worst feedback is super helpful in terms of how you recalibrate and make things even better. So all feedback welcome. And as always, if this is an episode that other people would benefit from, please share it with them. Please feel free to leave a review on whatever platform it is that you're consuming this because your five star review, if you leave one, will help us, will help the algorithm to make sure that more people are finding the Change Proof podcast and that it's a benefit to, to them in their lives as well. Again, I want to wish you a beautiful rest of your day, your evening, wherever I'm finding you. Thank you so much. And for now, I'll just say ciao.

Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments. Comments over@adammarkel.com podcast for more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com BecomeChangeproof.