The Mindset of Resilience With Petra Kolber

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, it's a great question. Never thought of it that way. Adam? Yeah, I think so. I think it's that who said it once it was like, you know, like negative words, right. They kind of chip away at us from other people. And what happens is it's not that we make a mistake, it's how we view it. Do we view it? I say there's also, there's data in the disasters and there's research in the rejection. But I think it's those little, the little misses that we, we take out of proportion. We, when it's not viewed as data or research or just more proof that we're trying something new, we're stretching our courage muscle and we, our own internal dialogue of like see, I told you you weren't smart enough. See, who do you think you were to be all those voices of like Christmas past coming forward? And when we just, and it's not that we're going to ignore those feelings of hurt or like the disappointments. There's a very big difference I think Adam, between being disappointed in something not working out and then almost like viewing like not that we made a mistake, but that we are a mistake. So it's just this subliminal little self conscious, unconscious rather conversation that we probably would not share with anyone of how we really view our own failures, our own misses. And what does that mean about Us in the bigger picture of trying to, you know, stand up for something, stand out in some way and make a difference in the world.

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

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

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

Such a good book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kind of standard is exhausting. Right?

Oh, my God, I did. I tried it for seven years.

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

I know you got it. What does that mean?

Yeah, I'm bald. So folks are, you know, seeing. Maybe seen the. Even just the picture on the, you know, the podcast. I think my face is on there. Yeah. I lost my hair when I was a lawyer sort of midway through my career. I was so stressed out, and one of the first signs of the stress were physical changes in my body, including right at the top of my head. Plus, I, you know, have a think my mother's father was. Was also. So there's some genetics to it, but the. The joy of being bald for me is that I don't have to worry about my hair anymore. And I used to. That's the. You know, hair is such an important thing, and many people, you know, it's like their thing, and I got to take care of their hair. They got to wash, they got to comb it. You got to get it just right. Products and all that stuff. Which, at the time, I remember I loved having hair, but it was constantly a burden in that respect. And so I don't have that burden anymore. So that's one less thing I have to maintain perfection about. Although I still shake my head. And that I can. That I can do in, like, five minutes in the shower, which is totally easy. But back to perfection. It can be exhausting just even taking care of your physical appearance, let alone your. Your professional appearance. Yeah.

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

But I never really stiff up our lip.

Oh, yes. And then there's also the British, like, who don't think too big, don't stand out, don't get too big for your britches. So there's all these things going on that were a part of my DNA. And then I became a fitness expert. Long story, but I rose the ranks very, very quickly. And what happened was those voices on my past. And then somehow I put on this idea that, oh, to be an expert, I needed to know everything. I needed to be able to look a certain way, because in the fitness world, I had to eat perfectly, and it was exhausting. And just like you, that stress will show up somehow the world will throw you a pebble, a rock or a brick wall. And I had a pebble. That was anxiety. That was not sexy for a fitness person. So I just pushed it away. That pebble grew into a rock, which was panic attacks. And one of my symptoms, Adam, was like, if I was having a panic attack with you right now, literally within 60 seconds, it would look like I had run a marathon. So I could hide everything. I could hide, like, racing hard. I could hide my mind running rampant. I could hide my blood pressure spiking. But then all of a sudden, we get, like, a little sparkle of sweat here, but it cracked, and then it would start dripping here, like, oh, no. And then my back was. And then literally within 60 seconds, I would be drenched. So then my brick wall moment was I started to turn down work for the fear of the fear itself. And so this is why the work is a Burden, right? Like your hair wore you down. That extra worry me as I get older, if I worry about my wrinkles or whatever. Look, I had cancer. I lost my hair. It was quite a freeing moment. I'm not going to say I wish that I have a great shaped head. I learned a lot.

No divots in your head, right?

I have no divots. I have a good shaped head. But with that, it's just. And at the end of the day, the last thing I want to go to my grave is saying, she died perfectly. And she died not trying. Because to do anything perfectly means you don't try. Because to try means you've got to learn, you've got to fail, you've got to fall, you got to get up, you have to ask for help. Perfection. How can I ask Adam for help? I should know everything. I'm the perfect expert. It's exhausting, it's debilitating, it's unrelatable. And when I let go of that burden of trying to hide it, that's when I became relatable. Because I didn't realize people saw Petra as the perfect fitness person. You know, people loved what I did and I was inspiring, but they never really connected to me. It was always like this little separate between me and them. And then when I brought to light this idea of like, man, I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks like you do. And then it was no longer me and them, it was us. Yes, we were in it together. I knew enough to get them through to the other side, but I had the empathy now. I had the compassion to say, while your story is different, I understand the struggles. That's what I meant before Adam, that perfection. How do you relate to perfection? Because there are no struggles.

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

Oh my God, thank you.

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

5Am is no longer earlier.

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

Oh, absolutely. I, and I think what's so refreshing when you shared that Adam is like there is a little bit even in this day and age of like entrepreneurship shaming. Like I love a lot of the entrepreneurs who say we should be up at 5am but just because who said why have we worked so hard to create our own businesses? And one of the most refreshing things was recently a friend of mine, Dory Clark, who is brilliant. I heard her say, yeah, I get up at 8am I went, what? And all of a sudden I was like, yes, you know, we, I Think when we look at others, right, look at others for inspiration and be really mindful of not comparing ourselves. Compare our yesterday to today. Can I show up better today than I did yesterday? Let's hope so. But we really, even the people that get up at 4am, 5am, their goals of success, their definition of happiness and joy might be very, very different to ours. And I would venture to say there's a backstory even there that when you have perfection, let's say, okay, the perfect entrepreneur is getting up at 4:00am in the morning, meditating, reading five other books before 5:00 clock and then going out for their hour long workout and then they're going to have a shower and a completely vegan breakfast and then they're going to, you know, hit the track 9 o'. Clock. I'm just. But I would imagine there's a part of their other life, something has to be sacrificed. So what are you sacrificing? And only we can decide what we are willing to sacrifice. Is it your relationship with your loved ones, with your family, with your sleep, with your. Whatever it is. And here's the hard thing, only we can decide that. And however many books we read, however many podcasts we listen to, however many documentaries we're looking for that answer, right? What is that? Only you can figure it out. And that to me is the work. That is the work of resilience. It's getting really quiet and going, what is it that I want for my life? How can I do trials and errors and try? Maybe I'll read this book and I'll try that, and maybe I'll try this method. But at the end of the day, the greatest coach anyone listening will ever have is their intuition.

Exactly.

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

Exactly. And that's one of those things that sits on the, on the head of a pin. These tiny little distinctions that are so important that can seem like paradox. It's like, how do you have both, how do you feel your emotions, but yet at the same time also be, be free of them, be not attached to them, because that's that any form of attachment is ultimately suffering, at least in Buddhist principle. And I ascribe to that. I feel like letting go is an art form. In fact, there's an old book called, I think it was the Art of Courageous Living or something like that by Osho. And after watching it, I love Osho. Yeah, so I just, I read that book so many years ago. And there was one part in the book that talked about forgiving every moment. And I thought back then when I read it and I read most of my books in the hot tub. So this was back when we were living on the east coast and I was at this gym and I was reading that book and I thought to myself, what do you mean? Like, do I have, is there something I have to forgive? Every minute of the day, every second of my existence, I have to forgive. So I didn't quite get it. But years later, as I kept thinking about that and I would even sort of put it out there to people because I was like, you know, I'm still thinking about this. Anybody got any ideas? You know, what do we really mean there? But what I feel now is that you can forgive every moment if you're not attached to the way things have to be. Again, perfection being one of those things that we would sort of strive for being like the 430 person. Like there's nothing wrong with the 430 person. Good for them, in fact, you know. And I just find myself going, don't be envious of that shit. Like calling bullshit on me for being envious of them for getting up at 4:30 in the morning. That's about me, like good on them. All right, well done, you know, but it's like I, if I forgive in the moment, everything that doesn't live up to that sort of standard, to that made up bullshit perfection standard that I'm creating or that the media might be creating but I'm buying into, then, then I get freedom out of it. Like there's tremendous freedom in simply being able to let go of the things in the, that are in them, that are, that are infecting the moment, right? Because look at this beautiful moment we have. We're just, we're alive and breathing, we're looking at each other, we're on this, this contraption. All this technology, it's a computer. I mean like when we grew up, there wasn't any of this crap, that none of this existed anyway. So all of this is a flipping miracle and we're sharing a moment together. And I mean, if we think about, oh, you know, I don't like my answer from 10 minutes ago or I wonder how many people are going to listen to this or you know, what will happen to my business a month from now and any of that other stuff, it's like it's poisoning this moment, right, Petra?

Well, I just, I think, you know, you actually just reminded me of the answer I would have given you 10 minutes ago, I was still going, damn, that wasn't a perfect answer. But when you asked about how do we have the feelings, right, Acknowledge them, but also let them go, I mean, that's. Again, this is the deep inner work that. No manual, you just gotta. This is the difference between teaching it and living it. And like one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Pema Chodron, says, and I think this is maybe where I could weave it back into how do you notice the feelings but let them go? She says there's a difference between pain and suffering. I love this pain we will all feel. And right now in the world that we're in is a global pain. Right. But the suffering is optional. When we pull up those feelings into our head and we spin them over and over again. And at the end of the day, what she says is suffering, like you had mentioned is wanting things to be different than they are. And so when we can be with those feelings, the good ones and the not so good ones, and just sit with them and not get attached to them, but also be okay with how things are in this moment, this moment. Again, it sounds so simple, but it's not easy. That is the work where we get to be resilient and bring our joy and work hard, but not from a place of fear and doubt, but a place like you said, when we're one year old and two year olds and before someone said, what are you doing? From curiosity and possibility and from the front of our brain that allows us to see all the good versus our reptilian brain that's always protecting us from what might go wrong.

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

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

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

Oh, I think one is it doesn't happen in a vacuum. And this was part of the book and this was part of the article, I think, where we connected. I love this idea by Edith Grotberg, and she works with resilience in kids. And I think we often think that we have to do it ourselves. And this is why I love your work, Adam, because what I'm saying, especially to larger companies now, these are the soft skills of the past that are now the hard skills of the future. The things that we could thought, oh, I'll get to that. I'll learn how to be more empathetic as a leader down the road or I'll learn how to do active listing down the road or I'll learn how to be a coach because there's always something more immediate to be done, right?

EQ is interesting. It's nice.

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

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

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

A global grief.

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

Oh my God, what a concept. What a concept. Transparency, honesty, vulnerability.

What I know.

Don't even say it, Petra.

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

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

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

Hmm.

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

Oh, please say it.

Okay. I feel like there might have been another option coming down the road that we hadn't seen yet, like a World War Three dire. I think there was something way worse than this that we could not anticipate. And this Is the Pebble rock brick wall moment where the world went, guys, I got to shake you up. Because we. I think this is the bit where I would love to see opportunity rise even. We need competition. We need healthy competition. But it becomes such a world of us versus them, me versus you. What happens if now it's like, maybe it's not. This is the first time as I can remember, this is a global grief, global pandemic. It's not us versus them. We're better than you. We needed to wake up. So why can we not as a waking up on a global scale, why not wake up on a humanity scale and the world that you get to contribute to, it's a choice. You don't have to take it. But if this doesn't shake us up for good, what a waste.

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

You know, I love that. What a great idea. And just really quickly, I forgot to actually get back to my point of like, with resilience. Like, I like this idea by Edith Grotberg of the triangle, Right. This is the time I am. I have. I can. I am. Is all your strengths, right? I am. You were amazing before you. Let's. Let's elevate our strengths. I have my team. I have podcasts to listen to. I have people around me that I can rely on. It's not just us and them. And then I can. Maybe I'm not empathetic yet. I don't know how to use technology yet. It's all the skills that we can do. So resilience is. It's who you are. It's who you can lean on, and it's what you can still do in the future, should you choose to. It's like a muscle, right? You got to use it.

Yes.

Or you lose it.

That's so true. So true. I love this conversation. I've got one last question for you, which is about your resilience, which I ask everybody. What's one ritual that you have right now? And has that ritual changed even? Because I know some of us have had rituals, the same ones for, you know, many years, etc. So is there one ritual in particular in this time that you are. You have adopted or that you're doubling down on right now to produce that greater resilience in the midst of a lot of uncertainty for you, for me, for everybody. I don't know anybody that's got total clarity at this moment or. Or the. Or the transparent, you know, the. The ability to see too far ahead. So what's that ritual for you?

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

It's like, what's happening?

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

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's. I think in the Bible it's referred to this as a term that's difficult to define as kind of an ineffable thing called meekness. And that concept of meekness is really. Yeah, because it's. It's this humility, it's this getting small or for being able to experience smallness to also be big. No, the opposite of sort of arrogance that you can say, yeah, I am pretty insignificant. I'm just this, this little, you know, we're. I mean, I'm not just insignificant. The earth itself is a tiny speck of dust, right? This tiny little speck of dirt spinning in an infinite universe. And you go, okay, so what does that do for me to recognize that? Well, in part it's this. It's this humility. It's this ability to. To give yourself a freaking break, right? Give everything a bit of a break. So with that sort of removing the judgment, you can just be right. I mean, what else are we here to do? Anyway, I've loved our conversation and the twists and the turns of where we took it. So way cool.

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

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

I did.

You did. How cool is that, right?

Pretty awesome.

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

At the beginning of the day.

So I ask you, Petra, do you love your life?

I do. And it just gets better and better, you know, all of it. And I think we. I love my life when I love all of it, not just the highlight reel.

No matter what.

No matter what. Life is good.

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

Thank you so much for having me.

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

Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own Pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies and support as you contact Pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.