Mindset Reform: Finding Success In Resilience With Dr. Ryan Gottfredson - REPLAY

Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate you trusting me to put me in front of your audience.

Way cool. Ryan, I'd love to just look at— you've got a very— what we used to refer to as a CV. I know that's still a term that is used. You've got an impressive CV. What's not written or part of that introduction I just shared that you would love for people to know about you?

Great question. I think the thing that I would love people to know about me is that I am very purpose-driven. I feel like I have gone through experiences in life and I've also gained a certain amount of education that is all catered towards helping people develop and improve and helping organizations to develop and improve. So I hope that if anybody gets anything from what I'm doing, that they feel like I'm doing it because I'm interested in helping people, not because I'm interested in something for myself.

Beautiful. And you are, as I am, holed up. It's kind of a funny, funny old term, but we're quarantined. We're taking the quarantine seriously. I know most, most, most, most, most people are. I know somehow young or old perhaps are taking it maybe a little less seriously. But in any event, you and I are both in Southern California. We're doing this remotely. I've got actually 2 kids in the UC system that are taking their classes remotely and learning how powerful that medium is, how it really is possible It's possible for us to, from our various places globally, to reach into the hearts and the minds of people. This is a beautiful creative opportunity, right? Just sort of unfolding before us, don't you think?

It's unreal. And I love the title of your podcast. And one of the reasons why I love it is because there's a change guru that I follow. I love his work. His name is Bob Quinn or Robert Quinn. He's out of the University of Michigan and he's written some great books on the topic. But one of the things that he says is that people and organizations transform for one of two reasons. One is a crisis, or 2 is deep learning. And only one of those is something that we have control over. But also, the thing that's really unique about our situation is that we're all experiencing a crisis right now. And I agree with your points earlier. I think that this is going to be for the better good in the long term for all of us, although it's going to have surely some short-term pains for a lot of people, unfortunately. But what this means is that for this situation that we are facing is an opportunity for us to transform. We are given the opportunity to upgrade our entire operating system. Now we've got to take advantage of that, right? Because we've got to bring in that second component that Bob Quinn talks about is, okay, so that first component was crisis, but then that second component is deep learning. And when we can combine those two together, that is when we bring about what you call this conscious pivot, where we are intentionally creating transformation as opposed to having it forced upon us.

Yeah, that's such an interesting point, Ryan. Sometimes when we think about pivot and the book that came out by that name— well, there's several books with that name now, but when we published our book a few years back, we were talking on usual circuit radio podcasts and some TV appearances as well. We were talking about the process of change. And there is a process. It's very much what we think is process-driven. And that means it's intentional. There's a conscious that goes into creating a change. Versus the kind of change that is more often the case, I think, in people's lives and the thing that really does catch many of us off guard by surprise, change happens by default. We look at the seasons, right, Ryan? We know that change is a constant in nature. It's a constant in the universe. It's probably the greatest constant. Nothing ever stays the same for very long. And yet in our own personal lives, we crave this sameness. Or the security of sameness, and then we feel shocked and often get thrown into this major tailspin when things happen kind of unexpectedly. Isn't the unexpected always sort of expected?

Well, I think mentally we can get there in terms of talking through this. Yeah, that makes sense, but emotionally, that's where it's really difficult, right? Don't you think?

The intellect can grasp that concept for sure, but on an emotional level, it comes back to what you were saying earlier, which is that if the ultimate good in all of that's going on right now and all that's always going on is transformation or the opportunity to transform, to become the proverbial butterfly from out of the chrysalis, then what about the person who might be sitting there and saying to themselves, you know what? I hear you guys. That's fine, except I didn't ask to be transformed. There was nothing necessarily wrong with my life before this showed up. And now I'm being forced into all this discomfort and there's all this uncertainty. And so how am I supposed to feel good about that? What would Bob Quinn or yourself say about the person who says that?

Great question, because we kind of don't have a choice given our circumstance. So when we recognize, then the onus is on us. What I've learned in terms of my focus on mindset, and we're seeing this revealed more and more as we get further and further into this crisis, which is that our ability to get through this crisis in the best way possible is primarily and foundationally contingent upon the quality of the mindsets that we have. So let me give you an example. We've got down the street from me, we've got 2 pizza places that are on opposing corners of the street. And one of these pizza places has been very proactive about this situation, right? They know that they're going to take a bit of a hit with their business, unfortunately, but they're doing everything in their power to build relationships within the community because they know that when the economy comes back online, now go out and eat in public again, that if they could build those relationships now, people are gonna be flocking to their restaurant. So one of the things that they've done is they've made at-home pizza kits. So you could buy a pizza kit that you could take home and then have this experience with your family making pizza. In addition to that, they're throwing in toilet paper into their purchases.

No way.

Which is such a fantastic idea. And then we've got the pizza place on the other corner. They're not really doing anything, at least not that I could see and not that it's very visible. It's kind of like they've got their head in the sand hoping they can outlast this. Whereas the other pizza chain across the street is they're being proactive. They're recognizing that they're in the winds and the storms of the sea, but they've still got a destination in mind that they're headed towards and they're doing whatever it takes to get there.

Yeah. And they're improvising. We think about the word resilience. I want to introduce that into the conversation, Ryan, as well, because before we turn our cameras off anyway today, I'm wearing a shirt that says resilience. And it's in part because I love this concept and have for many, many years since actually since the book came out. We have been researching and speaking about resilience including in organizational situations, settings, and among leaders in terms of how is it that you can create resilience. Can you create resilience? Can you cultivate resilience both personally as well as within a team structure within an organization? One of the things that comes up when we think about what does resilience look like and how do you create it. And being proactive, the word you just used, as well as improvisational, this ability to sort of make a change, pivot if you will, small or large in the moment is a big part of that. So that's a wonderful example of that in that pizza place that has developed that way to, as you say, engage with their clientele and meet them where they are, which is that they're wanting probably to be able to create some normalcy at home and adjust to a new normal and spending time with their family or their kids or whatever. And to be able to make pizza at home, which we do in our house, is such a— That's a ton of fun. And then to throw the TP in on top of it, it's just hysterical. So what a great response. And that concept of proactivity or improvising in the moment is a big part of creating resilience. So I'd love to know, since you're very much dialed into the mindset and how it is that we are making meaning in our lives and what that ultimate meaning-making results in, in terms of our behaviors, what can you say about resilience and mindset? And what if there are certain ingredients to creating a resilient mindset from your experience? What does that look like?

One of the words that you use is you've got to cultivate resilience. Resilience isn't— I don't think of resilience as a skill per se. It's a way of being. And that's ultimately what led me to talk about and do research on mindsets. And because I come at this from the leadership perspective, and the last 70 years of leadership research and development has primarily focused on behaviors. Here are all the things that you need to do to be effective. I'm not saying that's bad, but I think it's short-sighted because I don't know about you, but I think that leadership is more about being somebody, being somebody that other people want to follow and be influenced by. So how do we tap into this being element of leadership? And so what I'm going to say here is how do we tap into this being element of resiliency? And it truly is founded in our mindsets because our mindsets are the mental lenses that we wear and they shape how we view the world around us. Now, there can be some individuals who see failure as being something that's bad, because if they fail, they may internalize that as though they are a failure. But other people can see failure as being perhaps the best way to learn and grow, that there's no better way to develop ourselves than to experience failure and to rebound from it. And so depending upon how we see failure, and really what we're talking about here is the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. How we see failure shapes how resilient we're going to be, because somebody who sees failure as something that's bad, they're going to have a really hard time being resilient. And I could probably give you a couple of examples of that. But those that have a growth mindset and see failure as being an opportunity to learn and grow, they're going to be much more resilient. So what I'm trying to say is our mindsets shape how we think, how we learn, and how we behave. And so if we can start at that mindset level, we can improve all of the aspects above that— our thinking, our learning, and our behavior. And And consequently, our resilience in this instance.

Yes. It's— I think that the being element of resilience, which you said earlier, is really fascinating. So when you think about resilience, a lot of people find it in like sort of Rocky Balboa terms. Remember the old Rocky movie? The first one, Ryan? So I've yet to go back and watch this movie, but I'm going to do it, not just because I love the movie and did when I was— I don't even know how old I was when I saw it first and was just ran out of the theater. Singing the Rocky theme song and my dad having to like sort of corral me and get me into the car and stuff. But Rocky gets knocked down again and again and again. I mean, the guy gets knocked down dozens of times probably in that movie and every time he gets back up. And I think a lot of people define resilience more along those physical lines. That is the ability to get back after a setback or to get up from getting knocked down and physically rise again. And you're talking about something that's non-physical. And is much about how the mind can create or be— I won't even use the word create at the moment, but to be resilient in our minds. What does that look like, Ryan? I mean, is that something that we do by what we intentionally putting our focus on? Because I think that a lot of people have that challenge of, I get what you're saying, or I'm bought in on an intellectual level, but yet my mind habitually thinks about what if. My mind habitually gravitates toward my fears that my business will never be the same, or that somehow 6 months from now, I I will have to leave my home or any number of other things that will be creating this low-level or not even a low-level, kind of a high-level spike in anxiety from that. So could you help us to understand how it is that the mind can in fact be or learn to be more resilient?

For sure. And to preface an answer to the question, let me tell you about a really fascinating research study. And this deals with what we've been talking about with fixed and growth mindset. So what the researchers did is they had a group of individuals take a mindset assessment and that allowed them to identify those that had a fixed mindset and those that had a growth mindset. And then they gave these people all the same task, which is essentially an exam with 8 easy questions that they would all get right, and then 4 difficult questions that they would all get wrong. And then they analyzed how they performed and responded to the failure that they hit after those first 8 questions. And what they found is that those with the fixed mindset, they went from being rather pleased with themselves to quickly becoming depressed. Their thoughts quickly deviated and they stopped applying themselves. Even afterwards, they asked them, how many did you get right and how many did you get wrong? On average, said that they got 5 right and 6 wrong. So they underemphasized their successes and overemphasized their failures. Whereas those with a growth mindset, they didn't get depressed at all. In fact, they started to engage in positive self-talk thinking, oh, I was hoping this would be a challenge. And they continued to apply themselves and they were much more accurate in knowing how many they got right versus how many they got wrong. And I find this research so fascinating because I think if we were to ask these individuals afterwards, did you deal with that situation the best that you could? I think all of their answers would be yes. The reason why I say that is because what we've learned is about 90% of our thinking, feeling, judging, and acting is driven by our nonconscious automatic processes. It's our mindsets that drive our nonconscious automatic processing. And so if we're not conscious of our mindsets, we're going to be the victim of our mindsets, whether for the negative or for the positive. So in general, we tend to think that how we see the world is the best way to see the world. So I've got a personal mindset assessment that is free. It's on my website at ryangottfredson.com. And I've had about 10,000 people take this assessment. And what I found— and I focus on 4 different sets of mindsets— but I've found that only 5% of people are in the top quartile for all 4 sets of mindsets. Which suggests that most of us have some work to do in terms of shifting our mindsets. To answer your question, if we could first identify what mindsets are critical for resilience, second, identify the mindsets that we currently have, and then we could start to track a course for improvement from where we are to where we need to go. But until we put labels and understanding on these mindsets, our mindsets are going to continually be conscious to ourselves. As soon as we put labels and start measuring these mindsets, we're making what is normally not conscious to us, and thereby we become empowered to enhance our life in a variety of areas, in particular resilience.

Is it accurate then to say that a person who has a resilient mindset is one that is a growth mindset? Is that fair?

Yes, I believe that that would be one element of that, but I think that there's more than just a growth mindset. So I don't know how— if you're familiar with Carol Dweck's fantastic book called Mindset, Which I love her book and I love her research, but one of the things that I found in her book is she actually clumps together different types of mindsets and kind of under this large umbrella that she calls a growth mindset. She doesn't do that so much in her academic research. And what I found scouring the academic research on mindsets is that there's 4 different sets of mindsets that have been studied for the last 30 years that demonstrate an effect on how we think. And I was thinking when I started to have people take my mindset assessment, I was thinking that there's going to be a pretty high correlation between these positive mindsets. So if somebody has a growth mindset, it's going to be really likely that they also have an open mindset or a promotion or an outward mindset. What I'm finding is that there's really not much of a correlation between these different sets of mindsets, which is interesting because is that these distinct and different mindsets And so what I could find is that sometimes somebody has a growth mindset, which is great for resilience, but they may also have what's called a prevention mindset where their primary focus is on not losing, which is different than a promotion mindset, which is a focus on winning and gains. So even if we have a growth mindset, if we simultaneously have a prevention mindset, we're probably not going to be as resilient as somebody else who has a growth and a promotion mindset. Does that make sense?

It does. What it seems to mean is that sometimes you can have sort of a mindset that would equate to the gas pedal and another mindset that might equate to the brake.

Yep, precisely. I love that analogy. That's perfect.

And we all know what happens if you got one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, right?

I do. You're bringing back memories. Literally, the first time I drove a car, we were at the top of a hill at a friend's house and my mom let me drive our car home when she came to pick me up and I was going down the hill And I didn't realize you're supposed to use only one foot. And so the whole way down the hill, I've got both the gas and the brake going. And we pull into the garage and I'm like, what's that smell? And my mom's like, oh, that's our brakes. What were you doing? So anyways, that's a fun flashback there.

Yes, I am familiar with that one as well. I didn't get 10 feet before my father yelled at me to tell me to stop driving with 2 feet. So the 4 mindsets that we're talking about are growth mindset, open mindset, Prevention mindset and promotion's

the positive one.

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, 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 So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. So I guess if I'm listening to this as someone who's maybe not heard it before, I'm asking myself, so am I born with this particular kind of mindset and then I just have to know about it because I can't change it kind of thing, or give us a sense of Are these fixed? Because as you said, there's the research of fixed versus growth mindset, but are the mindsets themselves fixed?

Yeah, absolutely not. And that's why I love focusing on mindsets, because our mindsets are things that we can change. Now, they're not the easiest things to change in the world, but they're also not the most difficult. In fact, research is finding that even just engaging in watching a 3-minute video or writing 2 paragraphs or doing a 15-minute training can shift our mindsets for 2 to 4 weeks after that intervention. Now, that intervention isn't gonna— the effects won't last after just one intervention. So we've got to stack interventions on top of each other. But let me give you a personal example of this. So I think that our mindsets are created in 2 ways. One is essentially based upon our upbringing, and then 2 is our current culture. Current culture, that could be our home culture, our work culture, whatever that might be, or this COVID now culture, right? Because what's happening for all of us in this crisis is this culture is causing us to want to self-protect. I don't know about you, but we've got this pressure to kind of go into our shell and protect ourselves.

Hmm.

What this crisis is doing is it's activating our negative mindset neural connections. And the more that we allow that to happen, the more those mindset neural connections will become stronger and we'll come to rely upon them more and more into the future. So what we've got to do is we've got to be really intentional about activating and strengthening our positive mindset neural connections. And so let me give you an example of this that folks might be able to relate to. It was about 3 years ago, I took a leave of absence from the university to do some consulting work with a consulting company called Gallup. And as I got into this, I kind of realized that this wasn't a great fit for me. And kind of as I pushed against that poor fit, one day my manager— I was talking to my manager and she just said, okay, this isn't a good fit. We're going to have to let you go. So just in a blink of an eye, I was out of a job and I was thinking that would be a long-term career path for me. I just imagine all these people that are out there that are getting furloughed and things like that, which is terrible. But what I realized is that this situation woke me up. And the way that it woke me up is it helped me to see that really I had this prevention mindset where my primary focus was on not losing. I wanted to put myself in positions where I was safe, where I wouldn't have any problems. So some examples of this is I never wanted to be an entrepreneur because I saw it as being too risky. I saw debt as being bad. And in fact, I graduated with my undergraduate degree and PhD without going into any form of student debt. But as I realized after this layoff is that while I may have avoided problems in my life, I wasn't necessarily where I wanted to be in my life. I wasn't the person that I wanted to be. And so I was given at this point in time a book I'll recommend to anybody. It was handed to me and I looked at it. I read the title, which is The 5-Minute Journal. And in my mind I said, you got to be kidding me. There's no way in hell I am journaling. But the guy who gave it to me is this pretty successful business owner and CEO and said, this will change your life. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I took it, I brought it home. And what the 5-Minute Journal does is it invites you to answer 3 questions in the morning and 2 questions at night. So the questions in the morning are, list 3 things you're grateful for, list 3 things that would make today great, and then fill in some daily affirmations. So some I am statements. And then at night, what are 3 amazing things that happened today? And then how could I have made today even better? And so I decided to give this a chance. I said, I'll give this 2 weeks, and if I feel a benefit, I'll do it. If not, then I'll toss it in the trash. No harm, no foul. So I ended up doing this, and I couldn't believe the difference that it made in my life, because as I was writing down what are 3 things that would make today amazing, I was now becoming this intentional and conscious creator of making awesome days. And as I did this on a regular basis, what I was doing is I was strengthening my positive mindset neural connections that I now was making the shift from having a prevention mindset, which is primarily focused on avoiding problems, to try to figure out how do I reach my goals? And I credit this book and this process to me then starting up my own consulting business, to writing my book, to now to the point we're having this conversation where we would have never had this conversation had I not picked up that book. And in the process of all this as a way to opportunities and to ultimately reach my goals. So that's an example of a tool and how we could shift our mindsets and the effect that it has in our lives.

Beautiful. And folks, just knowing that we have show notes that will provide more information about Ryan, his work, his website, in fact, to get that mindset assessment tool and to use it and get results, etc., you can do that as well. We'll have all that information there. So Ryan, just in looking at the world as it is right now, how important do you think from From, again, a mindset standpoint, how important is it that people create and are able to cultivate resilience between their ears?

I don't know if there's ever a time that it's been needed more. And I think that a lot of times when we focus on our personal development, we primarily focus on— it's almost like we're adding a new program into our computer. So it allows us to operate more efficiently and more effectively without changing much, right? Because the operating system stays the same, we're just adding in a new program Allows us to operate more effectively. And I think that's most of the time, that's the way we go about changing and growing. While that's not bad, what we are now being presented with is we've not only got to just change the files on who we are and improve those. I believe that this is now an invitation for us to literally upgrade our operating system. We're going to have to not only think differently, but at a much higher level than what we've ever had before. So this is a concept that's called mental maturity. mental complexity. And the more that we can improve our mindsets is the more mentally mature and complex that we're going to be to be able to navigate these difficult situations. And so the only way I think that we're going to be able to work through this successfully is by improving this mental maturity, upgrading our operating system, and by doing so, that creates resilience. So I think that's where we need to focus. And then the byproduct of that is on building this resilience.

So I know this is not going to be an easy question, Ryan, but do your best to just let us know what are one or two things that people can do to upgrade that mental maturity, that mental complexity that's going to be required even more so now than ever before?

Yeah. I think one of the best things that we can do, and this is something that experts on these topics talk about, is we've got to be able to look at What we typically look through. And really what we're talking about here is mindset. So we're typically used to looking through our mindsets to interpret our world. We've got the capability to stand apart from ourselves and look at the quality of our mindsets. And so that's why I developed my mindset assessment. That's why I wrote my book, Success Mindsets. So I think that that's one of the first things that we need to do. We need the deep learning that needs to happen is needs to be about ourselves. We need to introspect about ourselves at a level that's deeper than any other. But then at that same time, I think that there's tools that can support with that. So I think the 5-Minute Journal is one of those. I think that there's additional other books that I could recommend. One that comes to mind is Ray Dalio's book Principles, which talks about our ability to be open-minded is going to be really critical in this situation. Mm-hmm. And then the third thing that I'll say is, if we could even just ask ourselves, what is this an opportunity for me to do? And if we can ask ourselves that question, I think that we'll be inspired to take advantage of the situation. It may not be the prettiest situation, right? But it still is an opportunity. In fact, I heard one person say that, I suspect that for a lot of people, this is going to result in either having a baby or getting a divorce, right? But not so much in terms of our relationships with our spouses or things like that. By divorce, what if we thought about it as this is a chance for us to pivot? And what about having a baby? This is a chance for us to create something new. And even though this is a terrible situation, about opportunities that we wouldn't have otherwise, and if we could focus on capitalizing on that, I think that we'll be creating

Without a doubt. It sounds like we are very much talking about mindfulness in different terms, but the book that first sort of had me looking inward, and it wasn't the Bible, even though now having read that book sometimes and looking at interpretations of parts of the Bible, it's all there. I mean, that piece of everything we're looking for is within. The kingdom of heaven, as it's stated, is within. And as within, so without. The going in is not necessarily something that many of us were taught in school. In fact, I was never taught that in school other than, of course, in some religious context, people are introduced to that. So I can't say much about that because I don't know much about it personally. I wasn't a big religion guy and have not been, but I'm very spiritual. But this idea of going within, in my own first exploration, was with a book called The Road Less Traveled, Dr. Scott Peck, which was very, very well received and sold, gosh, millions of copies at the time. And so I highly recommend, in addition to the ones you just recommended, Ryan, is that book, The Road Less Traveled. For us in our research, we look at— and you triggered this with what you were talking about, how you were looking at the advent of either babies being born 9 months or so from now, and also the work for matrimonial attorneys that may also be on the horizon. You provided us a reframe. And in our research, when it comes to how people create resilience and what do those resilience traits look like, there's 3 things we've come up with. And one of them is that ability to reframe, to look at something and simply shift the way you see it. If nothing else, To go back to the car, it's like putting your car in neutral instead of it being in drive or in reverse, and drive maybe being this sort of forward-looking positive bias and reverse maybe being a looking backward negative bias. That neutral, just to be able to put the gear into neutral for a little bit of time so that you could potentially see the situation a little differently. And then ultimately, the question that my wife reminds me about all the time, she says, well, what's the creative opportunity? And that's everything you just said. There is some creative opportunity that's literally being birthed out of all of this. And yes, the birth of a baby, there's no question that that's a creative opportunity. And potentially, the change in a relationship may also equate and be reframed as a pivot. Now, that's the first trait. And the second trait is the ability to recalculate, which is to see where you are presently, and then imagine that instead of being stuck in that place, That you can, just like you when you got your pink slip, and I've gotten the pink slip in my life as well, so I know what that feels like, that you recalculate from where you are. Similar to, again, seems like the car analogies come back a lot for us today, that you're in your car and you make a wrong turn and your GPS doesn't berate you and tell you you're an idiot and remind you how your parents used to tell you you never follow directions or whatever. It just simply recalculates.

Mm-hmm.

It simply recalculates a route to that new destination. And so resilient people do that. That's what they do. They recalculate. And often that recalculation involves the thing you said earlier about improvising and just saying, okay, well, can't get there the way I thought I was going to get there. Does that mean I can't get there ever? Does that mean I'll never get there at all? It's like, no, I'll change my route. I'll do it a little bit differently. I will improvise. That kind of thing. And then the third trait of resilient people, and this is the one where I want to ask you about now, is that they have rituals. They adopt and create rituals for resilience. So they ritualize how it is they actually recharge their battery because so much research done on this topic indicates that resilience is not about how we endure, but how we actually recharge ourselves. So Ryan, what are the kind of rituals that you have for your own personal resilience? Something you could share with us because I know our folks love to get those tips.

Great question. I think the first thing that I do is with the 5-minute journal. I think for me, that's the first thing I do every morning and it really sets the tone for my day. It also level sets. It helps me to be more intentional by doing that. I will say that I am so incredibly fortunate that I get to eat, sleep, and breathe mindsets every day. And just doing that is a consistent introspective reminder to me to check in on my mindset. I think that I found mindsets probably because I've needed the most work possible with mindsets. I mean, go back to your situation or when you mentioned when I got the pink slip. At the time, I was devastated. But I now look back on that situation just under 3 years ago and I think there is nothing better that could have happened to me at that point in time. As hard as it might be for people right now, are we going to be in a position 3 years from now saying, I'm not so sure that there was a better thing that could have happened to Now, not everyone would be able to say that it was, partly because of the mindsets that they had along the way. And so I think that one of the things that's really helpful for me is to continually remind myself and check in on my mindset. So I've, I've got a bunch of introspective questions that I'll ask myself throughout the day or throughout the situation. So for example, I will continually come back to, what is my goal? What is my purpose? Because that's incentivizing a promotion mindset. I'll ask myself, am I seeing others as people or as objects? And what that's doing is it's helping me check in. Am I having an outward mindset where I'm seeing others as people, or am I having an inward mindset where I'm seeing others as objects? And so by asking myself some of these introspective questions, or at least talking about these different mindsets, it's just giving me this ability to look at what I typically look And just by doing so, I'm able to kind of level set and get my mind straight. And so that's always beneficial.

That's wonderful. So appreciate how tangible that is that everybody can simply uplevel the questions you're asking yourself and even just to start asking questions of yourself because not in the course of a busy day, we're all familiar with feel like and be like to not ask yourself any questions. It's just kind of going through the routine. It's you're on default mode. I will say that I had a very similar experience in post-pink slip as well, looking back and really seeing that situation as couldn't imagine it being any different. At the time, super stressful, uncertain, filled with anxiety, all that kind of stuff. And yet look back now, wouldn't change it for a second. And even just so full transparency, yesterday I was— just happens to be that you and I are taping this on a Tuesday. Yesterday, therefore, was a Monday. I'm really clever, right? So it was one of those Mondays. I haven't had one of those Mondays in a very long time, but it happened to be that the day got started out with some disappointing news and client that we thought we would continue to be able to serve that ultimately just decided from his standpoint of experiencing this sudden change and the fear that comes up and anxiety and some other stuff going on at home that it was just not a good continuing situation for him. I started out on that trajectory in the morning with this disappointment.

Yeah, that's tough.

Yeah. Early evening, we're watching the sunset. And it's ironic to say this now because we're sitting out on a deck watching the sunset in the Pacific Ocean. I'm sitting there with our youngest daughter who's home and living with us during quarantine as she's taking her classes at University of California, San Diego. And my wife and I, we're sitting on the deck and I'm just in a pissy mood. I mean, I'm in a not good mood. And it was interesting because she's going to finish up her freshman year. I look at my daughter and she says to me, you're in a crap mood. And I go, I am. And I said, I'm not going to make any excuse for it. I am. She said to me, she goes, you know what? Sometimes, isn't it just the case that you're going to be in your mood and somebody might want you to sort of pep you up, to get you to change or whatever? She's like, I just want to be in my mood. I just want to sit in my crap right now. And when I'm ready to emerge from that, I will. And we had a chuckle, the two of us looking at it, and we're very simpatico. I could tell that we are, with 4 kids, There's definite things that you see that are similar in some of them and that are quite dissimilar. But in that moment, I knew she got me and I got her. And yeah, we just sat there quietly. She didn't try to help me to feel better and make it right. And I didn't try to work on myself in that moment. I sat in it. And looking back at it now, I go, well, you know what? That was fine for the moment. And I can also see it through a very different lens today. And I can see that my mindset really traversed into that space where it was really closed. It was really fixed because I was just in a pissy mood. So I say that only because for people that are— they are right now listening to this, that it's okay. I'm just saying, great that you're inspired by everything you heard and that we can all be inspired, in fact, to be more conscious. And that's what we're talking about today. And yet when you're in it, and sometimes you're in that place, it's also okay to be there, I think. And I'm not trying to make you agree with this, Ryan. I'd love to get your thoughts on it. But for me anyway, I just wanted to sit in it for a little bit. And the good news is that years and years ago, I want to say at least 10 years ago when I was a lawyer before I pivoted into this space, and I know it did, it would go on for days. It would go on for weeks. In fact, I was really miserable at a certain point, which led me to that book, The Road Less Traveled, because it was months that I just felt like total shit. And now what I realize is I will have moments like that. And maybe even like last night, just an evening where that's where I was at till pretty much the time I got in bed. And then woke up this morning with routines, with rituals that allow me to see that's not in my best interest, that's not in the best interest of the people that I want to serve, my family and others that I absolutely love and adore, and the work that I love and adore. And that's the difference. There's a means to pop yourself out of those situations so that you can show up as the absolute best you're capable of being. So Ryan, as we wrap this up, Any thoughts on what I just shared there?

Yeah, I love that situation because really what you're doing is you're modeling something that I think is critical when it comes to resilience. Resilience isn't inability to stay standing. Resilience is the ability to pop back up when you fall. And we're all going to fall and we're all going to have our wins. We're all going to have our loses. And taking this mindset approach to this is, in your situation, what is critical is that when a client leaves or a bad thing happens, that we don't internalize that as though This is me. This is indicative of who I am, that the failure is part of me, because the reality is that's not the case. There are so many other factors that's going on, and so it's not bad that we get knocked down. If we get knocked down, one, we can't internalize it like you didn't internalize it, because what we realize is tomorrow is a new day, and tomorrow comes with all of the opportunities in the world, many of which you may have never expected. explored if you continued with that particular client. You know, I don't know how much they're taking of your bandwidth, but if they were taking a significant portion of your bandwidth, you may have been restrained in terms of the opportunities you can now have moving forward. And so if we could see these things not as indicative of who we are, but as opportunities to learn, grow, adapt, and improve, that's the key to resilience, and that's founded primarily on our mindset. So I appreciate you being willing to model This idea of getting knocked down a little bit and being able to back from it, because ultimately that's what resilience is.

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 Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. I think there's one last thing I'd say to our audience about this too, which is more from the, I guess, the Buddhist philosophy, which in my upgrade for 2020 was to really dig into more of my own mindfulness practices. So when I gave my TED Talk about a year and a half ago, I declared out loud that I am a crappy meditator. I am not any longer able to declare that. I declare that I'm not a crappy meditator and I put some time into being able to see what all the fuss is about. Why is this thing really good for anything? And I have found tremendous benefit from it and in part because it also really overlaps with my practice of prayer. But in Buddhist principle, there's this— the fact that everything's impermanent, this sort of a law of impermanence which we see everywhere. And that's again one of those natural things. It's not unnatural that things live and die and then things are here and not here. Yeah. And of course, our mind— we'll sort of dig into this now, won't have the time to, but we are very much creatures of attachment. We attach to things. We attach to possessions, people, and places, and the times of year, and things we like, and other things as well. And so for me, I remind myself of this morning, and now sharing this with all of you as well, is that we can want things and feel that we even deserve things or want things to happen in a certain way. And there's tremendous freedom that comes from the recognition that things are in fact permanent. And to be able to let go of those things and to not cling and be of a clinging mindset is very, very powerful. And it doesn't mean that you don't mourn when there's a loss, somebody passes or you do lose a client. Look, I love this client. I mean, I love all my clients. So I genuinely was going through my own grief stages because they want to lose somebody that I love or the ability to help somebody that I love. So that's just the way it is. And yet I recognize in the grand scheme, the important scheme of things, that nothing is permanent. This is just another place where I get to practice not clinging and not being attached. That gives me great freedom. I don't want to be clinging personally to anything in life other than— not even other than. As you said earlier, I just want to be grateful. And so right now, I feel tremendous gratitude for you, Ryan, for the gifts that you shared with us today. I know the folks that are listening to this have felt the same way. I want to remind everybody, of course, that today's a brand new day. And if you are listening to this, in fact, you got the blessing of a brand new day. And when we all went to sleep last night, wherever it is that you're— people may be just waking up now, some of you may be just going to sleep depending on where you live. There's no guarantee that we will get the blessing again tomorrow that we wake up. And if you do, and I hope when you do, you will also realize how sacred and special and holy that moment is so that it allows you to be grateful even for only a few seconds before you get on with your day and all the busy and all the things that are going on, that you can feel that gratitude for even a few moments. And the final component of this waking ritual that I've been sharing with people for a lot of years is maybe declare something out loud at that moment upon waking and upon feeling grateful. My words are very simple. They're 4 words and I'll share them with you now. And again, I have no attachment whether you use them or not. It's always cool when people from all over the world will share how they've used them or how those words have changed things for them over time. But whatever your words are, pick them, choose them. And embody them, I suppose, is how I feel about these words for myself. And that is, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. Ryan, how do you feel about your life, brother?

I love it because I get opportunities like this to meet people like you and to spread a message that helps people hopefully awaken more to themselves so that they can unlock greater success in their life.

Perfect way to end, Ryan. Thank you so much for your time today. Everybody, check out the show notes so you can find out more about Ryan Gottfredson and all the wonderful ways that he is impacting Impacting the world for the better, as well as we'd love to hear from you.

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 over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, Visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproop.