CB LIVE! Courage to Leap and Lead with Deborah Gilboa, MD Episode 92

Hello everybody. This is part 2 of CB Live, and if you heard the first part on LinkedIn Live, you know this is a great conversation. I have so many questions coming up. Dr. Deborah Gilboa is a doctor who specializes in resilience. She has a family practice She's a coach and she specializes in resilience. And we have just been discussing what is resilience. So I'm just going to ask Dr. Deborah to repeat her definition.

Doc, welcome. Thank you so much. Resilience is the ability to navigate change, not just hard stuff, all change. So it's the ability to navigate all change and come through it mission-oriented. So for business people, that mission is usually top of mind for us when we try to take that clouds view of our work. But for individuals, that means mission-oriented as well, meaning pointed towards the kind of person that you mean to be.

So, you know, now that I have this understanding of it, I find it curious, and I think I'm going to be psychoanalyzed a little bit here. When I was younger, I used to say, oh, I love change. Change is my thing, right? But I've noticed that as I grew up, I would hesitate about saying that. And now I know that change is not my thing.

Yeah.

I like new, but then again, I don't like change. Like, if I have a doctor that's my favorite, a beautician that's my favorite, It really throws me off-kilter.

They need to stay with you forever. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, yet at the same time, uh, almost 3 years ago, I sold my house in New Jersey. My dog and I got into a taxi and on onto an airplane. We headed out to Colorado by ourselves, and we bought a house, and I decided I was gonna get married. And so with— didn't know anybody here, wasn't dating anybody at the time. And so within a year and a half, I was married. So now, yeah. And my husband is Italian and he is a riot. And but I don't like change, so I'm totally confused.

CB, as a kid in school, like in elementary school, Were you the kind of kid that really liked it when they said, oh, we have an assembly today, or there's a fire drill instead of math class? Like, did you like interruptions in the schedule?

You know, I'm a high introvert, so it depends. It depends. If it meant that I had to interact with more people, hell no.

Okay.

If it meant that I could do something quietly at home, Or in the class, oh yeah, that was okay. Yeah, it was interesting.

You know, one of the skills that make up— we mentioned on our LinkedIn Live that led into this that I said one of the things that excites me the most about resilience is that it's not a trait. It's not like your eye color. You're just born with it. You're stuck with it. You could, I guess, get colored contacts, but it is what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah. Resilience is a series of skills, and it sounds like As a kid, you really had developed one of those skills at least, which is being open to change. You were open to different possibilities might turn out okay.

Yes.

And that's a crucial skill for navigating change because if you really believe there's only one possibility here that could work out okay and everything else would be a tragedy, then you can see how it'd be very hard to get out of discomfort and loss And into making choices and navigating that change. So, it sounds like you still are open to change, that living in New Jersey wasn't the only possibility for you and your pup, that being single wasn't the only path to happiness for you and your pup. It was one of them, but it wasn't the only one. And that skill has probably served you really well as an entrepreneur, as a coach or an author, all the different things that you've done. I know you have a background in theater. People in theater tend to be open to change because it's a creative process that they don't do alone. They have to be open to other people's ideas.

Not a background in theater, but a background in the visual arts.

Okay.

Interior design.

I had thought from your conversation with Todd that you talked about the performing arts, and I know he has that background.

Yes.

But that idea of collaboration, if you're not open to change, collaboration is terrifying. You wouldn't be doing this interview with me. You would just make videos by yourself because who knows what I'm gonna say. And that if that felt untenable to you, you wouldn't navigate this change.

So it's interesting because I was going to go with, but I think my theory is wrong, that now that I'm an adult and I've seen the disaster and been through the disaster of racism, Maybe then there are parts— can you like parts of change, types of change, change that you are okay with and other types that you're not? I mean, I have a reputation and my motto is leap first and then figure out where you're going to land. And I'm okay with that because I know I can always get back on my feet and try something different.

Yeah.

But at the same time, the certain things I don't like to have changed, like I said, my doctor, my beautician, my dentist, certainly not my husband.

I think he'll be glad to hear that.

Yeah, I think so. Although there are times when I say I'm putting you up for sale.

I can't speak to all of the ways that systemic racism and individual aggression and racism has shaped you, but I can speak to the research, which shows that when you live, as we talked about a little bit earlier today, when you live a life that is constantly under threat for something you cannot control, like your ethnic background, the color of your skin, the shape of your body, then you become understandably and for safety's sake more vigilant. So I might hazard a guess, and you'll tell me, I hope, if I'm wrong, that one of the reasons that you don't want a new service provider, whether that service provider is caring for your health or your hair or something like that, is you vetted people. You vetted the person who's touching you that way to make sure that they are trustworthy with your body in their hands, you know, that they are going to listen. to you, that they see you the way that you need to be seen to feel safe. Whereas if you decide to take a risk on an action or an opportunity, that's okay with you because you know your own skills of perseverance and finding options and setting goals and taking action. By the way, all 4 of those are more of those 8 resilience skills.

Very interesting, because I've been having this conversation with myself. I am writing a book. And I keep saying, can you really do this? And I go to myself, shut up and keep writing.

Of course you can.

But it's that, that little voice in you that says, maybe not so much. And I have to go, shut up.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So we know that there's a difference between resilience and courage. To me— well, it used to be before I talked to you now— is the ability to do something that's recurring, right, with— in face of adversity. For me, courage is trying something new in face of adversity or support. What do you think about that?

I think that courage to me speaks to how you get out of that discomfort. So I mentioned to you earlier when we spoke that navigating change, what our brains do, because they're just trying to keep us alive, that's our brain's goal, is when our brain hears about a change, the possibility of a change or the reality of a change, good or bad, it says, wait, wait, you can feel relieved, excited, happy about it, but we're also going to check. We have these safety mechanisms. What could we lose? You know what? How could we be fundamentally unsafe if this occurs? Can we really trust it? Is this really happening? Is it really happening to us? Is it happening respectfully? Is it happening in the way we need? And what's uncomfortable about it? And courage is what allows us, while feeling those feelings, not stuffing them down or drinking alcohol until we don't feel them anymore or pretending, but while feeling those feelings. to still take the next step, which is remembering that we have choices, listing those choices, and picking one or more of them and acting on them. That's the cycle that gets us to navigate change and come through it pointed towards what we're trying to accomplish. So, it takes courage for you to say, I am uncomfortable, for whatever reason, writing this book. I am not sure that I trust that I can You know, what makes me think I can navigate this change? So you dig down for your courage and say, and, not but, and I'm doing it anyway.

Oh yeah, I'm a pistol-packing mama.

I think courage is strength in the face of that loss, that distrust, that discomfort.

Oh, I like that definition. Okay. Hey, I want to talk about your courage.

Yes, ma'am.

So clearly you've had a lot. You've gone on to be a doctor. Um, your, your family background, it sounds like you may have been the second to go through college or the first.

Yeah, my parents went to community college, CCNY, Community College of New York, um, which was, you know, like the focus, dream, and end result of every action their parents took. was to get from being illiterate immigrants literally off the boat into the Bronx to having their kids go through college.

Well, let me just tell you, I'm from the Bronx also. So we have that in common.

Nice.

Where in the Bronx were you from?

White Plains Road and Pelham Parkway, right around there. I was born at Einstein Hospital.

Mace Avenue.

Nice.

Oh my God, I went to Christopher Columbus High School.

My dad went to Christopher Columbus High School.

Get out of here.

For real.

It was the best. It was truly the best. Oh my gosh. Okay, let's talk about my question, my first question to you about courage. Talk about a time where you had to have courage to step out of the quagmire and see it as an aerial view. And then take those lessons.

My best answer to this question is actually what led me to do the work I do now. I was in medical school, and I was working my way through medical school as a sign language interpreter for deaf folks in the city where I was.

And I just gotta say, I'm so envious because I'd love to know sign language.

It's pretty, right? Uh, like, it's just fun to watch. So I was working a full-time job and I was going to school and I was hearing in the classroom as a medical student, I was hearing stress is the new smoking. Tell your patients to avoid it at all costs. And then I would leave the classroom and I would be told you should be doing more clinical hours to observe and learn better. You should be leading groups. You should be involved in research at the graduate level. You should— I also have to work this full-time job. I also have to clean the bathroom. I also have to study to ace all these tests. tests as best I can. And I thought, if stress is the new smoking, are my teachers trying to kill me? Right? Like, I couldn't reconcile it. I couldn't reconcile stress is always poison, abstain from it at all costs. And if you want to be a physician, you have to do all of these incredibly stressful, difficult things. And by the way, also, don't neglect your personal life or you'll be lonely and sad forever. And also pay rent.

Yes.

So I really like— I— and so I went looking for the answer to this paradox, and I looked by asking nurses and listening to patients and talking to mentors. And what I finally discovered is basically my teachers were wrong. Stress is not a poison. It's a tool, but it's a tool that can bash your head in if you get too much of it or you don't use it right or you don't learn about it. So I really went after this idea of I can't accept these 2 narratives. I can't accept if you want to have the life you want, stress is a piece and part of that because there's change to get from here to there, and stress is the new smoking. You should avoid it and you should never cause it for other people.

What was your answer?

My answer is that stress is like exercise. First of all, they both suck.

I'm so with you.

But if I want to get stronger, I need both of them. And if I want to be able to achieve the things I want to achieve and have the relationships I want to have and have the life I want to have, I have to learn to have stress and be less overwhelmed by it, not to avoid it at all costs. That's what I found out.

Okay. And can you point to a specific example how you use that in your student life, in your work life, or—

I think that this really crystallized for me. I'm an only child and my parents divorced right as I was starting medical school. And my mom had a—

Oh my God. Did you tell them that their timing was just—

Impeccable. Uh, I could not tell them that at the time. Um, so my mom— and by at this point, so 10 years later, I finished medical school, I'm practicing as a physician, I had 4 little kids of my own, I was living about 500 miles from my mom, and she had a series of health problems that culminated in her breaking her pelvis. And I got a call, you know, from her husband of about a year at the time saying, hey, this just happened. Can you come? I'm an only child. Of course I'm coming, you know, and I'm a doctor, right? Of course I'm coming. And I spent the next 6 weeks flying back and forth between parenting 4 littles. My kids at the time would have been, oh gosh, 11, 9, 7, and 5.

Wow.

And so, like, not little enough to not notice when I was gone, but little enough to need all the time stuff. And sitting at her bedside at this— in this hospital where she ended up on hospice and eventually died. And in that experience of thinking, boy, if stress is the new smoking, I'm going to be dead about a day after she was. And how do I navigate this in a way that helps me be the kind of person I want to be? And in that moment, I was really thinking like the kind of daughter I want to be and the kind of mom I want to be with 500 miles between me and one of those things. And so instead of looking at that huge question, I looked at each day. You know, there's this myth, CB, that a lot of professional women hear, which is that you can find some sort of elusive balance. And I think balance is a terrible goal. Unless you're looking over a season or a year or years of your life. I hope over years of my life to look back and be like, there was some balance there. I gave some of myself to each of my priorities. But in any one day, there's no balance. There's no balance. There's focus and Band-Aids where you're not.

I love that. Focus versus balance. What a concept. Thank you. Okay, so go ahead.

So the courage that I needed there was to figure out that I didn't have to avoid this stress. I just had to figure out how to be honest with myself about where my focus was going to be that way that day, and honest with the place where my focus wasn't to let them know that they were still on my mind and that they would soon be my focus next. You know, it meant my mom decided to have, uh, basically a palliative surgery during that time, and I spent the whole decision-making process weekend with her but left the day before her actual surgery because it was my youngest's birthday and he needed his mom more than my mom needed me to sit in the waiting room while she was unconscious. She needed me there, but slightly less.

Yes.

And, but I was really clear with her about what was happening and why. And when I left late at night on my son's birthday, I was really clear with him about what I was doing and why. And I gotta tell you, it felt awful all the way around, but I kept reminding myself that I was, I was living my priorities as best I could at the time.

Wow. Okay, I'm just gonna go to the next question because that is a drop-the-mic conversation. All right. Talk about a time when you had to have the courage to admit you were wrong. And talk about a time when you had to have the courage to admit when you were right, to stand up for your beliefs.

I thought about this question, and I have a pretty in-the-weeds example. But for people who are watching this and really thinking about their business, I, I had this idea. I had this idea that in my business I was going to be able to help individual people navigate change because as a family doctor, this is what I talk to people about all the time, whether I'm saying, hey, I think you need to take a medicine once a day when you've never taken a medicine before, or hey, smoking is bad enough for you that we got to really focus on how you might stop. Or you're stretched too thin and taking care of everybody but yourself. Whatever it is I'm talking about, even if it's, um, your kid needs to go to bed earlier, I'm often talking to people about how to navigate change. And so I thought, you know what I can do in my business to help support my family is I can create this online course that helps people figure out what change they want to focus on and then change a behavior. I can do that. And I did. I created like 9 or 10 different courses focused on this, and I spent years and thousands of dollars trying to promote these so that people would know about them. And when I gave this course to someone and they took it, I got all this amazing feedback about like, wow, that was different than anything I've done before because you didn't tell me what the change had to be. You helped me figure out what change I needed in my life. And then It worked. I made the change following your steps, and yet I could not get people to buy it. They would do it if I gave it to them, but I could not get people to buy it. And I was positive that this was the way to carry my mission forward. I was absolutely positive that this was going to be the thing I would do to make the world a better place. And it took a consultant I hired and the manager I work with in my business and my own partner All saying to me, okay, but it isn't working. Right? Like I don't. I'm not telling you that it's not great, but whatever you're doing isn't working. And I put so much effort and money, but also just personal belief system into it that it took me for flipping ever way longer than it should have to say I'm wrong. I don't know what it is that's wrong, but. It is demonstrably not working. I use what's called evidence-based medicine all the time in my practice. If I'm seeing a patient, they need a blood pressure medicine, I'm not going to give them the one that I think is prettiest. I'm going to give them the one that the science says is most successful in their population, whatever that means genetically.

Right.

Well, same thing. The evidence was really clear for years that I had been throwing good money after bad and hours and hours and hours, good hours after bad, trying to solve this problem in this way. And this— I've thought a lot about perseverance, CB, and you just, you just agreed with me when I said that you have a lot of perseverance. When we try and get somebody to be perseverant in our society, we tell them, you should try again. And then we give them examples of other people who failed repeatedly and eventually succeeded. That's how we teach perseverance. We tell stories of people who persevered. But we never give step-by-step instructions to persevering. And when I was writing about this for my book, I have a section on perseverance, I got caught up in another paradox. One is— and finish this sentence for me— we tell little children, if at first you don't succeed—

Try, try again.

Right. And we tell adults that if you're doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, that's the definition of An idiot. An idiot. So how do you reconcile that? Try, try again, doing the same thing over and over again expecting something different is insanity or idiocy, right? The difference is perseverance is try, try again but change something.

Absolutely.

What— it can be something small. Change what color it is or the highlighter you use or the day you do it on or the person, whatever. But you have to Change something. And I wasn't. I was just doing the same thing over and over and over again. And I had to say— not only did I have to say, hey, I've been wrong, I had to say, I don't even know what I'm wrong about.

Love that story.

And as a doctor, that takes a lot of courage. We're not ever— I can say I'm wrong as a doctor, but I'm not ever supposed to say I don't even know where to go from here.

Yeah, that's a fantastic story. All right, the flip side. Tell me.

The flip side is I work, as I mentioned, at this federally qualified health center, and I was working part-time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, about 40% time. And there had been this friction for years and years between my employer and me. They wanted me to put more out. Once they saw that my kids were in school and I was able to put hours into working, They knew that I had this job, this, this work that I had begun, this passion work that I had begun online and speaking and doing television. They really wanted me to put those hours into the health center. And I had tried, to be honest, to be entrepreneurial in the health center. I want to start this idea, that idea.

Yes.

And I kept getting the message that I really need to stay in my lane and see more patients. So I started this so that all of that energy had somewhere to go and I could keep keep seeing patients. And then we had a little bit of a conflict over a discrepancy in my paycheck, and I went in to talk to the administration, and they got really fed up with— it was like $30, but they got really fed up with me and said, listen, if you want more money, just work more hours. And it was, it was the culmination of years of getting subtle and not so subtle messages about how I should really give up this work that I was doing on my own and just put all my effort into the health center. And so I bit my tongue because I know I do not handle authority well in general. And I said, I'm going to think about that.

Must be the Bronx in us.

And I went home and I did some math. And I came back and I said to my boss, hey, so the math says if I want more money, I need to work fewer hours for you and more hours for myself because I'm doing better on my own.

Hot dog.

So, I went to 25% time at my health center Sunday mornings and Mondays. And I devote the rest of my work week to my own business.

I love it. What a great example of courage.

Yes, my work partner at the time was like, they're gonna fire your ass.

Ass. So what?

And I said, maybe.

What a great, great story. Okay, talk about a time when you had to have the courage to admit it was time to start over using the lessons that you've learned from the past.

I was married for 19 years, and I was not just married to my husband, I was married to the view of the future that I had. And I mean married in that like deep knitted into my soul, not open to any other possible path being the right path, being not open to any other path being a possibly good path, right? It's one thing to be in a relationship and say, of all my options, this is the best one, right? But I was really in a place where I was like, there are no other options, is the only option. And not because I was abused in any way, and not because I was threatened if I left anyway. That's not what I mean. What I mean is, I didn't allow myself to picture picture any other way towards being the kind of person I most want to be.

Mm-hmm.

And my marriage fell apart anyway. And when that happened. I spent two more years doing what's called nesting. Do you know that term in terms of divorce?

No.

It means when you decide to separate, but you decide to live in the same house with your kids, both of you.

Okay.

So that word has lots of meanings, but that's one that that doing that is called nesting.

Why is that bad?

It's not necessarily. It sounds amazing, right? So tried that for 3 years. And I spent 2 of those 3 years saying, this is the only way. It's the only way to keep my kids safe. It's the only way to protect the future being as close to what I had always pictured as possible. Nothing else could possibly be okay.

I see where you're going.

Even while it was getting more and more and more painful, confusing, difficult, and looked less and less like the home I wanted to live in or raise my kids in or be a part of creating.

Mm-hmm.

And it took me years and a lot of therapy and a lot of truth-telling from people who were important to me and telling them they were wrong and being in denial and eventually listening to To see that there was any other possible story to write that helped me navigate this change and be the kind of person I wanted to be. Wow.

And so you moved.

I'm on that. I'm on a different path, and now it feels much better, and it is. qualitatively better, but there's also loss and distrust and discomfort. Unfortunately, those feelings don't go away even when we find the way to act resiliently.

So how have you changed? Have you moved? What's, what's going on?

Yeah, so, um, 3 years this summer it'll be. I moved into a home a mile away and, um, My kids and I are thriving and struggling and talking and navigating like you do. And I am still grapple with shame about them coming from a home with divorce. And I still grapple with doubt about making the right choices. Although I will note, every person in a family in a caretaking role, whether you're an adult child of a parent or the parent of children, whatever it is, Everybody grapples with doubt. I totally get that. And I think a lot of people grapple with different kinds of shame too.

Absolutely.

Moving forward and just like I did when my mom was so sick, navigating that change instead of navigating the whole big change and knowing exactly where I'm supposed to go and turn to, you know, with GPS, so I know my final destination. I instead focus on at every intersection, making the turn or going forward in a way that helps me be most the kind of person I believe I want to be.

What an incredible story, and I'm so appreciative to your sharing it with me and the audience. And I know, I know that you're gonna get there because you're another kick-ass woman.

From the Bronx.

From the Bronx. Drop that mic. And how are your children doing?

Um, you know what, I think they're pretty awesome actually. I like each of them. They're currently— next week my eldest will turn 20, and my other boys are 17, 15, and 13.

All boys?

All boys. I currently still have 4 teenage boys. My oldest is out of the house and doing really, I think, navigating his changes to be the kind of person he wants to be. And, um, I really feel very lucky because they're people I really like and admire. And so, boy, I, you know, I have— that's one of my big goals as a parent.

You know, you are lucky because you've got 4 boys. You've got 4 men to protect the queen bee. That's, that's the way to look at it. You go, girl. I don't know who's luckier, you or them, but I think it's equal.

Thank you.

Well, with that, audience, we need to say goodbye to the Queen Bee. Not that we want to.

I'm changing my brand. I'm going to Queen G.

You got it. You got it. Because she's so fascinating and she's humble and she shares with us. Her true self, and aren't we lucky to be able to be a fly on the wall? Dr. G, come back anytime you want to come back and talk to us and tell us what's going on in your life. Because you know what I hear? Whatever is going on for you is going on for us, and vice versa.

I think that. One of the real advantages of the last 2 and a half years of the pandemic and social justice has been to help people really look for authentic connection and see the humanity in each other in ways that we were maybe moving too quickly before to see.

Yes. Yeah.

And I am really encouraged by that desire that I see in people to have authentic connection. And I really appreciate the work that you do with your platform to create that authentic connection and hold people accountable with grace.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I'm going to talk to you more about my book because I might have to tweak some things in it.

Nice. Let's do it.

Okay. Hey, everybody. Next week we're on again and we will have another fascinating guest. I'm So appreciative to the people who come on this show and share themselves. So with that, I say goodbye, but not permanently. See you next Tuesday. It's CB Live with Dr. G.