Resilience In Pivotal Moments: Getting Unstuck From The Status Quo Bias With Sandra Halling

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 guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change Proof. Hi there, it's Adam Markel and I'm so happy you're joining us for another episode of the Change Proof podcast where today my guest is Sandra Holling. She is a recovering corporate consultant. I absolutely love that recovering corporate consultant turned anti hustle pro equity pro productivity coach. She is dedicated to helping heart centered entrepreneurs, passionate academics and mission driven professionals find harmony between genuine self care and getting stuff done. I, I, if you, if you've listened to any of our shows previously, read any of my books, you know, just hearing that she is like she's a sister and we are simpatico and this conversation is going to be very valuable. I absolutely love her language. I love how she frames things and looks at things and I think for sure you are going to love her as well. So sit back and enjoy this episode of the Change Proof podcast. Okay Sandra, so you have a very interesting and I mean that interesting, not as a word like I don't know what else to say, but you have an intriguing bio experience, business wise and personally. What's one thing that is not included in your standard bio or introduction that you would love for our audience to know about you at the outset?

Well, when I was 9, maybe 11, I don't know, somewhere around there, I announced to my family that I was going to replace Sandra Day o' Connor on the Supreme Court. But after I finished being a prima ballerina, that was my life plan when I was like nine. Right. So I think that's a good, that's.

A good life plan.

It's a good life plan. Right. So I have not achieved either of those aspirations yet. But it's a good analogy or kind of metaphor for like who I am and how I show up in the world. Because both I'm not afraid of a lofty goal like never have been, probably never will be. And that feeds into the, the, the story that we'll talk about today. Just my journey, but also I really value both detail oriented things, but also things that are technical and intelligent and intellectual. There' threads there that I have woven together throughout my journey and my career that just show up on repeat.

Interesting. Yeah, I, that's, I'm going to sit with that for just a second without creating too Much pause in the, in our conversation. But what you said there about there being these, these threads, common, common maladies, common denominators if you will. I think that's true for all of us. I think a lot of things repeat. We don't always see the similarities. I think you've really got to do a bit of sitting quietly and a bit of self analysis and develop more self awareness to actually be able to see those common threads. Whether it's in how relationships succeed or how they fail or in other struggles, other challenges you've had in your life, they're usually not random. And you can usually not too. It takes a minute but you know, I mean you can create some, some connection points between those things. You're nodding up and down 100.

Yeah, yeah. It's never random. In fact, in the community that I run we do this exercise often where we write our life stories backwards. So you start with where you are and you ask yourself well what, what's the most like recent sort of pivotal moment that led me to where I am right now? And then you do that again and again, you kind of work your way backwards because it help you rewrite the narrative that the things that may have happened to you in your life that required particularly things that required change or resiliency were you know, air quote bad. So you can, you can do this process and you can pick positive pivotal moments but you can also do it and pick challenging pivotal moments. And it can be so enlightening and it takes a lot of pressure off and kind of helps us just reframe. Like a perfect example is I met my partner through my, at my best friend's wedding and they wouldn't have been together if they hadn't met through my ex husband. So there's like these threads in our lives like who could have predicted all of that would unfold. So anyway, I think that nothing is random really is where I was going with that.

I mean I'm in the non randomness camp and I know there's some people that, that believe differently about that and I'm totally, you know, respectful of that way of.

Sure, sure for sure.

I actually had a heated conversation with my son in law about that just, just, just last night. Funny enough but I remember earlier on in my career I got out of, you know, graduated my, got my four year degree in, and got a degree in English. Didn't know what to do with that, was searching for kind of a purpose. At that time I was you know, all of 22 years old or something. And I took a job as a teacher. I taught middle school English in the city for the city of New York when they were, and I think still are always looking for teachers. You didn't need to have an ed degree to teach there and get paid, you know, pretty decently. So I took it, I did it for a couple of years, which was wonderful, exhausting, but wonderful work. And I remember telling the kids as we were going through some of the curriculum, you know, like the poetry and things, and they're like, Mr. Markel, poetry that sucks. You know, And I'm thinking when I was your age, that's exactly what I thought. It's like, you know, just kill me now if I had to listen to another Robert Frost poem or whatever, right? And at that time, of course, I hadn't even heard any Robert Frostboys, but just the thought of it was just so I had a pretty high bar or hurdle. I, I thought at the time, you know, to kind of keep these kids or get these kids interested. And one of the things I said to them back then when I was just a baby myself, and I, I'm still a baby. I think we all are. But, but I'm maybe an older baby, let's say more, more, more seasoned baby, more wrinkly baby. I, I said to them, you know, life is, is this really wonderful thing that, that is not random. It's really thing. I think the, the higher skill set and the, and the higher, you know, the, the higher degree of difficulty, if you will, is to find the connection points between things. If you can find those connection points, if you can create, you know, sort of the connection of the dots, then, then you're going to experience so much more out of life, more joy and more, more success and all that stuff. And I don't remember you, of course, the words I used exactly then. But it was this idea that I wanted them to see that there connection potentially between that poem or that thing that they didn't understand and in other areas of their life. And of course, I was doing the Road Less Travel back then. It was a poem about making choices and Pivots. Wrote a book later on in my life called Pivot, all about that. So it's. I totally in that camp and I want to start with, in, in just following the breadcrumbs here with you, that, that exercise that you do with your community. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn that question on you. So what is one thing, a recent situation in your life where it's pivotal in some way Shape or form, whether for the. As you say, something really great's happened that's pivotal or where it's just brought out more resiliency in you because you have to, you know, deal with a challenge.

Yeah. So I would say, I mean, this really connects to my work if I look at it from a macro perspective, and that is that, you know, I kind of quasi jokingly call myself a recovering corporate consultant in the sense that corporate consulting is exhausting if it. Depending on how you do it. And one of the things that happened in kind of my recent history with the pandemic, and we moved right around then, there were just a lot of like, you know, personal life upheaval type things going on, and I had to take a pause and a step back and reevaluate who I was trying to become and what it was I was trying to do. There was like a lot of identity questions that were coming up. And so. And it was kind of a blessing in disguise. Like in the moment when the pandemic first happened and all my leads dried up, people I Talked to for 20 years, like, on and off during work together, just radio silent. And like, intellectually, I know it's. It wasn't like me. Air quote. Right. But that's still a hard thing to go through in the moment because the world is just. It was so, so crazy. And none of us knew what was. What was really going to happen.

And it triggers all this fear.

I mean, totally.

I mean, I think that's across the board, what it triggered. And I mean, there were CEOs of Fortune 50 companies that were literally shitting their pants about what was going to happen or, you know, where things were going to go. And anybody that thinks that's not. Not the case, you know, we're a few. We're a few minutes past that moment now, but. But that's what was going on. I mean, you pick, take Warren Buffett on Up or Down. Everybody was in that same boat, you know, of just feeling. Feeling a tremendous amount of fear in the uncertainty.

Yeah, yeah, well. And, you know, as awful as it was in some contexts, like, in other ways, we were very lucky, you know, in the grand scheme of what a pandemic could be, which is a sort of a scary thing to think about too. But at any rate, I view it as a blessing in disguise because it forced me to take a step back and reevaluate my work. And I shifted in that moment and I started working more with solopreneurs and helping them do pretty much the same Things I've been doing for years, CRM, email marketing, like marketing systems and technology. And it's really fulfilling. Like, I just really enjoy having the diversity in client base. And I really needed the kick in the pants to make the shift too. Like, it's. It. That's not an easy shift to make. I think independently. So.

Yeah. Oh my God. Everything you're saying is just dropping in for me. And I'm trying to think in my mind which story I want to contribute so that you didn't, you didn't have to answer that alone. I mean, look, we have a status quo bias. This is, this is a term of art that people maybe have heard it or not heard it, but basically it's that whole thing that, you know, when the choice is given between staying the way we are or things staying the way they are and things changing to a. To some degree that we can't predict, we almost always opt for the devil that we know and that, you know, it's. It's counterintuitive when you examine it, when you take it apart and look at it scientifically speaking or intellectually speaking, but on a visceral, personal, mental, emotional level, it's. It's nothing but just triggering of fear. So to challenge that without the kick in the pants meaning to break that status quo bias without a catalyst is just not the norm. There's a very small percentage. Yeah, I would say it's less than 5% that will do that.

Yeah. Well. And I even remember one time I read this article and it's kind of a sad story, but it figures into how. Just how we're wired physiologically, logically. Like if you have a child or a baby who's in an abusive home, they still want to stay in with the caregiver that they know. Like they, they don't have. And part of that they're too young to understand cognitively what's going to happen if they leave. But that's still our wiring. It's like we're safer with known surroundings. Like, as humans, that's what we believe. And change can feel like a threat, even if it's really positive movement in a good direction.

Yeah, I mean, it's the reason why the, the start of this book that I wrote, Change Proof, is a scene at the beach where a person is, is caught in a rip current. I was a lifeguard at a beach for many, many summers. Luckily enough in my. When I was younger and, and we would see it all the time as lifeguards, that there was a certain Change in the facial, literally the face would change of a person that all of a sudden realized that they were caught in a rip current. We used to call them sucks. That was the term that lifeguards in my day, you know, use for that and probably still do. But when they got sucked out from, from the shore and they were in three feet, now they're in six feet or, or deeper water, their facial expression, everything changed. And you could tell whether somebody was going to run out of gas and be a drowning, you know, like somebody that you're saving from drowning. And in that instant, we were proactive. We got in the water with our buoy and got to them before the panic struck them. And if we didn't get there quickly enough and the panic had struck, it was just, you know, it was a, it was a real save. You know, the other, the other times it was just kind of get on the buoy, I'm just going to get you, get you out of this problem, you know. And of course, you know, it's funny, you bring them in, you bring them to a place where they were safe or whatever, they literally would turn their back on you like you didn't, like they never saw you in their life because it, you know, was embarrassing on some level. They were panicking, needed help. But you know, as soon as they were safe, they were like, ah, thanks, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Yeah, that nervous system, man, like it has to regulate somehow. So, yeah, totally.

Yeah, yeah. So I will, I'll, I'll turn the question on myself and just quickly say that, that the concept of having a, you know, like a change that's, that's required on some level that you ignore is something that I can, I can relate to. I was CEO of a company for a number of years after I pivoted out of being a full time attorney. I had a practice in law for about 18 years and then made a pivot, wrote a book about that called Pivot to talk about this life, transition, career, transition, reinvention, et cetera. And then that gig that I was in for a number of years just went source and south and in the end needed to, needed to exit. And that was not it. It started out in my mind being my, about my, my choosing to do that. But then I paused because I got scared and didn't actually have the courage to just change the situation like you said earlier. You know, it was a crappy one, but yet it was familiar and it provided some level of stability for me and I had all the reasons why I Needed stability. I was father, husband, kids, colleges, I mean, you know, the usual, usual stuff, right? But, but I, I paused and I chickened out, you know, and then the universe just said, okay, nope, that's not the way this is going to work. And having to leave because I was asked to and I had to re examine my own identity. And part of that was, ironically enough, reading my book or not reading it. I listened to it, which was just brutal to like go out in the middle of the afternoon because I'm out of a job and I'm listening to my own words, talk to me about reexamining my identity, entering this thing called the, referred to as the pivot phone booth and, and then deciding, you know, what is that identity? So it's really interesting to be five or six years on the, on the other side of that really pivotal moment. And I've had many micro pivots in between. Look, when the pandemic hit, I'm a public speaker and NA consultant and as you said, everything just shut down. People didn't even know you could do an event virtually at that point. Like they were just figuring out, oh, we can operate our businesses this way.

Yeah, it's so hysterical. Like, yeah, 15 years of consulting with corporate clients, no one ever wanted to turn on their camera until the pandemic. And now they want, they suddenly all wanted to do video calls. It was just, it was like, yeah, it was really fascinating to see how fast the world changed when they had to. Which is part of what you're saying in your story, right? Like when you had to, when you, when you were forced to leave the job, it causes this reckoning. And I think there's also a thread there for me. What, what's resonating for me is this idea of like, there were, there was. It sounds like when you're telling the story, an inkling that maybe you, you could have or ough made the choice for yourself before you got to that point where you were asked to leave. Right. And we can see those moments, but we'll make that choice to stay where we are because it feels like the safer choice. Right. But maybe that's kind of a delusion on our part, right? Like, is it actually safer or is it safer to follow consistently follow our own inner wisdom? Right. Because I don't know about you, but I've never had a moment where I had a strong intuition about something, trusted it, and then regretted it later.

Never.

Like, it doesn't always play out the way I think it will, but I don't regret it because there's always some like, oh, I'm glad I listened to that because I wouldn't have seen this thing and then this wouldn't have happened.

And you know, like, Sandra, you're making the hair stand up on my skin.

Yeah, that's.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Holy smokes. Yeah. I mean, it's going back to that rip current analogy for a second. You know, the thing about a rip current is that it eventually spits you out. People don't know that, or some do and some don't. But there's, there's a way out of a rip current that doesn't involve waiting for the lifeguard to come and pull you out. That's okay. You know, if you need the help, you should take the help. And, and I've needed help and I've accepted it and I'm better at receiving that kind of thing now than I've ever been before. But, but there's also this other opportunity which is to just relax, you know, like you said earlier, pause and to take a beat and to consult, as you just said. So the. In the book, again, I'm referring back to the book. I apologize for all the self serving promotion here. In the book we talk about pause, ask, choose. It's just so uncanny how what you're saying is really just such a part of my own belief system and even the things that I share with people to this day, that pause is so fundamentally important to just take a moment, ask yourself what, what is my inner guidance here? Is my inner guidance that I should stick around as long as I possibly can or stick around until. Until somebody else realizes this is not a fit, or do I trust my own instincts that this is not a fit and that there's something better in store for me and that of course there's a lot of better options and, and certainly, you know, I wouldn't feel the way I'm feeling if there, if there wasn't this other opportunity that was. That that was calling out something was there. Right.

Yeah, I, I like your, your point about receiving help in that too, because I can't tell you how many times when I get. It's usually it's not at the beginning or even at the end, but it's like a third or a halfway through a consulting agreement. Usually with solopreneurs, this doesn't happen with corporate clients, but with solopreneurs, they will at some point admit purely on their own accord that the hardest part about saying yes to the project was admitting that they needed the Help?

Yeah, right.

Like that was the hardest part. It wasn't even necessarily spending the money on themselves, although sometimes that comes up. But it was like admitting that they wanted the help, that they were in over their heads and like, and it's like we're taught this sort of like rugged individualism and it, I don't think it works frankly. Like, just to be blunt about it, it doesn't work. Like it puts us in a position where not only are we not prepared to receive help, but we sometimes we don't even know how to offer help because we're so used to it not being accepted or, you know, and I think it makes, I think it makes selling services tricky because it figures into that like selling is a form of helping. If you're not offering your products and services in a genuine way, like people don't know that you can solve that problem for them. Like that's what selling is really. It's a form of helping. But because we have these hang ups about receiving help and giving help, we also have hang ups around selling. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think there's a correlation there.

I do too. I think there's a psychology that we probably, you know, won't use this, this show to get into deeply. We could do it another time, but, but because enrollment and, and we sell our corporate services and, and in a variety of ways we have keynote services, workshop services, and we do longer term engagements through our company work well and those conversations are, you know, if, if I'm not somebody that is, is willing to accept, receive help myself, if I don't value the help of others in my life, it's a projection that doesn't work in my favor when I'm enrolling or attempting to enroll someone else in buying my services or our company's services to help them. It's a disconnect. So yeah, it's such a really interesting point you're making there. I want to, I want to go back to something else too, which is the, the resiliency component. Like, so I wanna. Because this show is in many ways around, it centers around resiliency, personal and, and professional resiliency. And I was a lawyer for 18 years and it was, it was literally killing me or I thought it was killing me. If I knew then what I know now, I probably could have stayed in the practice and done it, you know, for a length of time more successfully. But I stopped doing that work even though I had a very successful practice, because in my story it was leading to something not Good. And I give myself credit for pivoting that time before, before, you know, the universe gave me a bigger message. Right. And so my, my question to you is, you know, when it comes to how you've managed to pivot out of. So I'm a recovered or almost recovered, fully recovered attorney. Right. And you describe yourself as a recovered consultant. I, I want to know what, what's been the recovery component for you. Because when we define resilience, we define it not as grit or grinding because that leads only to more exhaustion, which is what we're seeing in the workplace everywhere. We define it as recovery. How is it that you recover? And when you create the specific recovery rituals, then that's how you create longev for any, you know, anyone in any, basically any situation. So what's been your recovery go to. And how have you maintained or created resilience in your personal and professional life?

I love this question. So I'm a big fan of alliteration. So I have all these frameworks that pop into my head when I hear that. So the one that I think is most applicable though is what I call the three P's. So it's persistent action, patience, and I'm totally going to draw a blank on the third one. I love how I'm doing that to myself. I'll talk about the two and it'll pop into my head. So persistent action is really about leaning in to the idea that we can't be, we can't truly be consistent all the time. My personal belief, I think consistency is actually a lot harder than we make it out to be. That's, that's number one. So persistent action just pulls back the needle a little bit. Right. And so coming from law and corporate consulting, there is this expectation of like utterly perfect consistency. Right. And if we just allow ourselves a little bit more humanity and it's like, what if I was persistent instead? Like I just kept showing up even if it was imperfect, what would that look like?

So persistence instead of perfection. I freaking love that. Yeah, that's, that's a really interesting play there.

Or even persistence instead of consistency. Because the, the, the P that I was forgetting is this idea of perfectionism.

So. Right.

So when we, when we think about perfectionism, my view on it is that it's actually a closed loop cycle, like a merry go round. You're not getting off because we set the bar so high, we don't achieve it. So then we're hard on ourselves. So then it makes it even harder to take action the next time. And you rinse and repeat your way through this, right? And, and so persistent action certainly is a doorway out. It's like, oh, what if I could reduce the expectations for myself? And this is a really hard thing for some of us to grapple with. I had one of the women in my community said to me, we were recording an episode for, for my show that's going to come out this fall, and she's like, lowering the bar is the kindest thing we can do for ourselves. And she, like, didn't understand that for herself until she did the planning and productivity work with me. It's like lowering the bar really is a form of compassion and self kindness. So, so perfection is kind of the second one. It's like, how do we get ourselves out of that? And it really boils down to lowering the bar and allowing ourselves to be creative and curious with what we might create instead of whatever version it was that we might have come up with at first pass. It's like, is there a more interesting version that might be slightly less effort that we could finish sooner, get feedback on and iterate more quickly?

Right. I mean, I, I remember somebody saying this some years ago. He, he said, sloppy, see, prefers sloppy success over perfect mediocrity. And I think, yeah, perfect mediocrity, that's just, you know, nobody's after that.

No, no, I think what you're saying.

Is that consistent act or, sorry, persistent action is a way to overcome this. This, you know, perfect mediocrity, if you will, because you're constantly, you're getting feedback all the time. And, and some of that feedback is not great, but a lot of it just teaches you enough to move, to move on. Right. I mean, think about professional golfers. It's just been dawning on me lately because I've been into golf of late, more of late, and they lose almost all the time. These are, you know, successful, really successful athletes in the world. You know, make good money and, and they, they play all the time, but they lose almost all the time. You think about how you have to manage your mindset and a lot of other things to be able to get out, go on the course after week after week after week of not winning. Wow. Okay.

That golf takes a very intense mindset. That is a true statement. And you know, it's funny because it's a great segue to the third P, which is patience. And the reason I say it's the third one, that's on purpose, because what I find is that the process of persistence in action and the process of unwinding. The perfectionism is A slow but b iterative. And to do something that's slow and requires iteration also requires patience. Like being patient with ourselves when we catch ourselves being hard on ourselves. Being patient when ourselves when we're setting the bar so high that it's not achievable again. And then we have to re recalibrate. It helps support the other two goals because we're going to do these things. Three things imperfectly also.

So true. My God, I love your language, by the way. I just want to say that and then thank you. That's why we wanted to have you on the show because not every, you know, you just, I just vibe with your language so well. I mean, we have a lot of close loop systems I think inside of our heads, right. We're, we're constantly in, in a spiral of thinking. And do you have a strategy that helps you to break that loop, if you will?

Yeah, absolutely. I have lots of strategies for this, but my favorite is doing a weekly review. So that's a very common. If you're in the productivity circle, I'm sure you've heard of it. It like came from, I think it came from David Allen's getting things done like 20 years ago. @ least that's where I learned it. And what I will say is that a lot. There's lots of templates floating around on the Internet. I have one, I'm happy to share it. We can put it in the show notes for people if they want to check it out.

Love that. We'll do that for sure.

Yeah. My, my approach I think is a little more relational. It's not just task management. So a lot of the ones you see on the Internet and YouTube and whatever, they're very task oriented. And I ask questions that are more about your holistic self, like how are you showing up for the people in your life, your, your direct reports, your spouse, your kids, your partner, whomever. How are you going to practice self care next week? Like body, mind, spirit? Where is that on the calendar? Did we put it on the calendar first? And it's just these like little nudges because you mentioned earlier in the show about thinking about your future self and we do that a lot too in my community. And I'm always asking them, like, what is going to take you 1% closer to the future you that you're trying to create? It's not about 10% or 50%. It's like 1%. Incremental change over time is what is, what is sustainable and it's also more doable in the moment. Like if we go from, you know, couch and Netflix, just to use the cliched analogy, couch and Netflix to the gym five days a week, we're more likely to hurt ourselves and burn out than we are to achieve any sort of fitness or health related goal. But if we're like, you know what I'm going to do every day after lunch? I'm going to go for a walk for a half an hour and then a month after that you add in some yoga or whatever. But you, you decide what's that small change that you can make that you can actually do persistently, like without perfection and having patience when you are imperfect about it. Like kind of tying those two strategies together. That's my process really for, for making pretty much anything I want in my life happen. Like, I have people in my community of like cut their hours and doubled their revenue. And it's like, it's, it's just sort of mind blowing what happens. Because really what they're doing to your point in your process, in your book is like they're pausing, they're pausing to check in, right? Like that makes all the difference in the world.

And, and the ask is the, is that next piece of it. Pause, ask and then choose. And, and what you're showing us when I love what you just did was you gave us some questions because we're not all that great at asking questions. Now I say that in a way that sounds like I know everybody and I don't. I'm just going by my experience, which I think is like all of our experiences are nothing but universal. So what did I learn in school was that if I asked questions, it meant I was, didn't know the answers. And I can go on and on, but, you know, so if I didn't know the answer, then I was not as smart as somebody else in the class. I wasn't as smart as somebody else in the class then I was not as popular or I got my, made fun of or the teacher didn't give me a good grade. Like, and on and on and on. And what we learn a lot of the times is to just keep our mouth shut. Unless you do have the answers, you know, then that's, that's fine, but then there, then what are you doing? Because if you have the answers, then what are you curious about? What, what are you actually learning? So being a showoff to, you know, get attention is, it's not, it wasn't the goal then, even though that you saw that happen. It's not the goal now. It's being, it's remaining curious and learning new things that leads to greater and greater results. And even that, to your point, is what incremental improvement is all about. Constant, never ending improvement. It's incremental. And incremental improvement creates exponential results over time. That's what it does. It's. That's what's transformational. That's the hockey stick. That's the compounding effect. You know, that, that, that Einstein called the great miracle, you know, in life is a compound, the compound effect. So, but that the questioning is again, because we're, we're, we're taught to not ask questions, especially the ones that we don't, you know, we don't even have an inkling about, like the big questions.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you gave us a couple of questions already. Are there some other questions that you.

100. I was just gonna say I should give you my best questions while we're on this topic. Oh, yeah, yeah. Asking good questions is an art form. And so some of my favorites are. Well, the first one I'll ask is actually kind of the hardest, but let's start there because I think it's juicy. And that is. What is your deja vu goal? What's the goal you put on your list over and over again but you haven't achieved yet? And how would it feel if you put it at the top of the list and took everything else off or let it go? Completely love it. What's your deja vu goal? Because what it does is it forces us to reckon with that naggy thought in the back of our head that we're going to do whatever the thing is. Right. Even though we haven't actually taken any action on it yet. And it also forces us, I think, to kind of reckon with our own sort of mortality in a way. Like, we only have so many, like, years in our lives to achieve big, monumental goals. And the sooner we start, the sooner we're on the path. Yeah, right.

Hey, I got a great idea for. Because we've maybe, you know, five to 10 minutes that's remaining here. I would love it if we go back and forth with some of our favorite questions and then we'll leave a little space at the end. But I, I'm just thinking if I'm a listener right now, I would really, I would really dig that.

Yeah, go for it.

Let's do it. So I'll give one and then you go back and then we'll do back. All right. So one of my favorite questions is the question what don't I see? And I heard this question some years ago and I thought, oh my God, this is just such a great question. Because there's always something and many things that are in our blind spot, they're things that we just don't know about ourselves. So it's a question about. Of course it's, it's a question to me that's about humility because just, you know, again is saying, I, I need help, or would love help, actually to see those things that I cannot see and, and to know what some of those things are, to have that self awareness or aware, a greater consciousness around me means, means that there's just creative opportunities galore, like more than I could even want or, or imagine myself even handling. So what don't I see, I think is just, it's like asking for feedback. And I don't, I personally don't believe you can ask a question, not get an answer. I think there's a cause and effect relationship between those two things. And the only thing that I can't predict is when you get the answer. Ask a simple question, you're probably going to get an answer pretty quickly because it's simple. Yes. Complicated question, you're going to get an answer. It just may, it may take a minute.

It may take a minute. Yeah, I appreciate that. I tend to agree with that assessment.

So your next favorite question.

So my next favorite question is what's at risk? And it can be that simple, like what's at risk? But often I'll say it as what's at risk if you do, and what's at risk if you don't.

Love that.

Right. Because it forces us to like, face the sort of opportunity cost or the potential consequences of the two things that were or multiple things that we're contemplating. Right?

Yeah. Your scenario, you're creating sort of a future casting of what ifs, you know, what ifs they think. People think. What ifs are terrible. But no, they're good, they're good.

What if they're imperative, I think, because what. So this is like pro tip to just insert in these questions. If you find yourself in that mental loop of what if questions in your head or what if thoughts. The, the kind of secret sauce is to play the scenario all the way out. So what if you lost your job and your house and your car and your wife left you and, and like what if. Keep going. Just keep going. Play it all the way out. Right.

I do this, I do this with people Too.

It's right. Like, it's like, first of all, it starts to become comical at a certain point. It takes the stress off the question. Right. But also, like, if it. Even if it doesn't too, Too wild. Like, they start to see how resourceful they are in the moment, whomever you're asking it of. And it kind of calms that sense of, like, oh, like. Like there might be things at risk here, but I'm gonna figure it out.

Totally. I'm. I'm drawing a blank on the author, but I'm gonna look it up really fast. So. All right, I'm gonna do this. There's a book called 10% happier, and it's Dan Harris. That's who it is. So dan Harris's book, 10% happier, is. He poses. And it's a very comical. Great book, by the way. I highly recommend this book. He. He poses this scenario where all of his what ifs will always end in the same way. He's homeless, broke, of course, you know, like, just barely alive in. In. In like, Des Moines, Iowa. And my forgiveness, or. Or I. I beg forgiveness of the people of Des Moines. But in Dan's book, I think it's Des Moines or it's Minnesota or whatever, but some place that he just goes. That's where he always ends up. He's just, like, broke, he's homeless, he's on the streets and, like, you know, somewhere. And I. And I think when you play that out, as you said, and I will do this with clients when I feel like they're so stuck in. In the. In that status quo bias, you know, they're so fearful of making a change. So just tell me, play it out. I just want you to go to the end, like, to the end of whatever the worst scenario is you could possibly concoct. Shocked. I mean, because it always. There's only one place that is the ultimate end point as the worst case for everybody. It's always the same thing for everybody. For you, me, everybody. And that is death. That's it. I mean, it could be, you know, embarrassment. It could be death by a thousand cuts, you know, where you're humiliated and you lose all your friends and everybody thinks you're crap and then you die. Right? It's excruciating. But when we play it out to that degree, we. We can always pull back from that and realize rationally that I'm not likely to die because I have to give a speech, you know, and stand up in front of a bunch of people, or I got a Pitch to a group of folks that I've never, you know, like, and I've never pitched before, whatever, you know. And so it's just, it's just so interesting that you brought that up. So that's just a great question. I'm going to use a question in. We've got a couple minutes here that my wife always asks me and I love this question, which is what is the creative opportunity?

And if you, that's juicy.

Just you, you put yourself in any scenario where you're a bit uncertain or again, there's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now. We're living with tremendous, you know, a volume of unknowns we've never really experienced before. And they're paraded in front of us all day long every day as well. Like, so what's the creative opportunity in a mall, in that moment, wherever you find yourself situated. And when I ask myself that question, it's a great. To use your word earlier, it's a great reframe. It's an immediate way to see whatever's happening and, and be after the, the nugget, the, the little gem, as my grandmother would call it, of, of, of, of wisdom, knowledge, learning of something that will be a catalyst for growth down the road. You know, Viktor Frankl wrote this amazing book called Man's Search for Meaning and many people have read it, heard of it. You know, Viktor Frankl was a concentration camp survivor. He was in, in, you know, in a camp where people were being executed, you know, were disappearing all around him, you know, and the likelihood that he would survive was infinitesimally small. And yet his mindset as a very young person watching this, experiencing this, was someday I'm going to be able to share the lessons and the, and the experience of this and it's going to help people. And he started to work on his, his, his meaning therapy, which he became very well known for in that scenario. To, to be able to look at that and go in the midst of this is the most brutal, you know, what if scenario you could probably come up, come up with. He was already thinking outside of, outside of the, the literal prison that he was in to what it would mean to other people. And then, you know, again, magically, miraculously he survives. When they liberate that, that concentration camp, he, he goes about living again and, and then starts to share this and changes people's lives by the millions after that. You know, you go, wow, that's to me the definition of how you seize a creative opportunity out of, you know.

Yeah, seemingly the worst what strikes me about that is there's two things. One is creativity and curiosity are like such useful tools in our toolbox. No matter what's going on, that's the first thing. And then the second thing is that is I think the most important emotion, right? Because if you, when you have hope, there's also possibility. There's, there's an opening for more creativity and curiosity. And when the hope starts to, to dissipate or if you can't quite grasp it, that's when we start to see things in binary. Which I'm going to throw out my question here, which is what is the third option? What is the third option? I learned that one from a dear friend and I just think it's so brilliant because our minds tend to categorize and we come up with these either ors and just by asking that, like what's the third option? Almost always I will come up with five options. Like it just unlocks the creativity, you know, Thought train.

Oh wow. I'm writing that one down. I love it. All right, so my last question is going to be directed to you. All right, this would be a good way for us to conclude here today. I want to know if there's some common thread. So you ask yourself, Sandra, what's the common thread? If there is one that I can detect in the moment, what's the common thread that's existed in my career or am I, or some other area of my personal life? Do you. I'll give you the e. The binary choice there for you. Or, or choose a third option if you like.

Yeah, choose a third option. I'm going to choose the third option, I feel like, because I think it's both. What I'm detecting is like a desire for greater self awareness.

Love it. So that's, that's the common thread in both of those, those other scenarios. Personally, professionally, I love it. I asked myself this question a time ago and the answer that I came up with was teaching. Being, being a, a teacher of a sort. So when I looked back at my history teacher at one point out and I was a lawyer for a 18 odd years and then running a personal development training company and speaking on behalf and writing programs for that. And then when we created our company workwell and the work that we do now is in the area of training corporate people to treat, treat their employees and get more but by better treatment, by focusing more on wellness and resiliency, et cetera. But the common thread in all of that and even in the authorship in the book Writing and things has just been about teaching and so being, being an educator, that's been the common thread for me. So I love that, I love that question because I think when you do see what the threads are, it's, it's like for me it was easier to go. So to what extent when you have a myriad of options and that can also create its own paralysis. Right. Where you just don't know what to do because there's so many things you could do that, that. What's the common thread question? I think is helpful to narrow the things to a point where you go, this either is in alignment, congruent with that or, or nah, not.

Yeah, it helps you to narrow the choices and the options on your next move, for sure.

Like ballerina, you know, what were the two things you started with?

Ballerina and a lawyer.

So you go, ah, it would have been cool. But not really, you know, maybe not. Yeah, I don't know. Sandra, I so enjoyed this conversation. I could literally talk to you for days. So thank you for being on the show. We'll have full show notes. Everybody's used to that, knows that. So we'll find out more about the work that you are doing in the world. But I will say feelmoreproductive.com is the website. I know people will go anyway, but I want to say it out loud. And of course we would love your help. Sandra and I both would love for you. If there's somebody that would benefit from hearing this conversation, please share it with a friend, share it with a colleague. That's, that's helpful to us as well. And, and the other thing you could do is to actually rate the show in whatever platform you are consuming. This podcast, let's just say, for example, it's itunes or you know, Spotify or something. You get the option of giving it a five star rating. What that does is helps this show make it it in front of more people. The algorithm is what we're talking about here. And yes, I'm asking for your help, support, etc, and I'm all good to, to do that. I hope you do the same. So we appreciate that. And of course, if you've got a comment or a question. Questions. Wow. We focused a lot on questions today. You go to AdamMarkel.com forward/podcast. Leave your question or your comment there for Sandra and or myself and we will answer that as well. So again, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, really. Just a joy to speak with you today. So thank you.

Thank you, Adam. I had a Great time too.

Well, holy smokes. That conversation with Sandra, man, it was just so rich. It went in a number of really cool directions and I absolutely love, to me that is the joy in doing this actually is that there's just this opportunity for an organic conversation between people that, that see the world the way they see it. Sometimes it's a similar perception of the world, sometimes it's different. But the, the way those two things overlap, you know, kind of the Venn diagram, if you will, that, that you can track in these conversations is just thrilling to me. It's exciting. I'm curious. I learned so much. I love a lot of the, the way the conversation just sort of, of are, are happening organically. We're following these breadcrumbs, etc. So a couple of things that we talked about today. First of all, the power of questions. I will not soon forget how we spent, you know, a good chunk of the last part of this conversation just back and forth asking, asking these questions, sharing, actually sharing our favorite questions with all of you. It is definitely a part of the model in Change Proof. The book and, and the digital product that we have to paus Ask and Choose and, and the ask component is difficult for people often because, you know, we don't ask questions for a variety of reasons which we talk about during the podcast, you know, the what if scenarios and other things as well as the feeling, you know, that somehow we are, we're not as worthy or deserving if we don't have all the answers and, and all that good stuff. So we, we cover that, we talk about how it is that we sometimes question our identities and, and the pivotal times in our lives and we've got to, we often are stuck in status quo bias that we're often stuck in this closed loop system that keeps us doing the same thing over and over again and as the old saying goes, expecting somehow that we'll get a different result. We talked about resiliency and how we develop resiliency and Sandra shared with us these three really interesting pieces of it. How important it is to take persistent action and why that is. How do we unwind the perfectionism that often has us stuck in that one of those loops of doing nothing or just settling for mediocrity and how it is that we in both of those scenarios really must have patience and the requirement and the benefit to having patience. We talked about the common threads and how important it is to identify the common thread in our personal lives as well as in our professional lives and what, what Sandra had asked was what is the third option? And, and that as a question leads us in a different direction. So the third option there is that it's not even either or, it's actually both. We talked about some of the, the moments in our lives when we've been caused to pause, when it, it is a pause was required and, and the pause ultimately led us someplace special. We talked about the importance of incremental gain and how incremental gain over time produces transformational outcomes and the need for hope. My wife likes this to ask me sometimes, and a question that I didn't ask during the podcast, but is coming to mind right now is do you have a hopeful heart in this moment? Are you feeling that you have have me? Are you, are you feeling your hopeful heart? Because so often we can get into a cynical or, or a even skeptical mode, which, you know, sometimes healthy skepticism is really important, but we can, we can often lose, lose sight of hope. And when we do that, I think it erodes, it erodes a lot of the joy for living and the joy for the work that we do in the world, etc. If we chat a little bit about that as well, we make some references to, to some of the wisdom in some other books like 10 Happier by Dan Harris. Just a really good stuff. You're gonna love sharing this episode and I hope that you will share this episode with friends and colleagues and other people that you know and that you'll give us that 5 star rating as well. And in this moment, if you've not determined your own resiliency, whatever, you're in the moment. Snapshot in time Resiliency score is mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. Then you can do that by going to resiliencerank.com resiliencerank.com it'll take you just three minutes. It's entirely free. It'll give you not only your score in each of those four resilience zones, but it'll also give you access to some really wonderful tools and resources that are entirely complimentary as well. So I want to wish you a great rest of your day, whatever it is that you're doing today, this evening, wherever you are in the world, I want you to stay resilient. And I can't wait to see you again sometime soon on another Change Proof podcast episode. Thank 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@adammarkelle.com podcast test. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com BecomeChangeproof.