What Tested Our Resilience

This is episode 269 of the Empowered Team Podcast.

Guess what?

You can start your year strong by deciding what you want and creating a plan. We've bundled our values creation and Empowered blueprint courses and provided a holiday discount to help you do just that. Check the show notes for the link and coupon code. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. It's Kari Schneider here and guess who I have with me today? My one and only, my husband, Paul Darden. He's with us today. Hi, Paul.

That's me. I'm back. Thanks for having me.

Yay. Thanks for being on WE I'll give you a little context for those of you who are keeping up with the story of our lives. We often, if you've been on this podcast for a long time, we often do a reflection at the end of the year, going into the new year. And this is that. This is that reflection. We have a key topic to help guide us because we could go off on all kinds of things. I could anyway, and it's about resilience, specifically what tested our resilience. And we're going to answer three questions of where were we resilient? Where weren't we resilient? Where we thought we were, but we really weren't and we needed more. And that's what we're going to do. And before we start in, though, I want to give a little picture of what this is like. We're at the end of 2023. We have had an early Christmas, but it's before Christmas right now, during this recording. This will air on the beginning of January, and it's got a. There's a little snow on the ground. And we've had all those warm, fuzzy feelings and connections of Christmas, even though Christmas is in a couple days. And now we're going to do it again because we had our children home, all of them home. We adapted. We had them early. We did all the things. And now we're about to see what it's like to have a Christmas without all of our kids and only with one of our children and adapt to that scenario. And that's a form of resilience. So I'm going to bring us into this topic with a definition of resilience. Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional and behavioral flexibility and Adjustment to external and internal demands. So I had already prepped for this. Isn't it? I already prepped for this before looking up the definition of resilience. And it. It subtly shifted a couple things for me. So what do you think about that?

I was going to say what you have defined it as before, knowing that because I would have said resilience maybe simply would be getting back up once you've been knocked down. Just. Yeah, simply. I would have said to the obstacle, the barrier or the. The pushback and trying to find another way.

Yeah, I would have said persevering through challenge. Yeah, so you would have said getting up when knocked down or finding another way. I would have said persevering through challenge. And it's interesting because the definition is truly what I experienced which. Which is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging experiences, especially through mental emotional behavior. Flexibility and adjustment. Neither of us were thinking flexibility and adjustment for overcoming the challenge or getting back up. Typically. I think we're just thinking. I was anyway. Just thinking more persevering through something difficult.

Yeah, I think we can spin it back a minute, Matthias, into finding another way, which is being flexible somewhat. But yeah, it's. Yeah, I think it's a good distinction that isn't just putting your head down and just.

Yeah.

Grinding. Yes, the same thing.

Yeah. And I think that's what comes to mind. That's the type of thing that comes to mind first for me anyway. And. And you too, and how you described getting back up a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah. We're not as flexible.

I think we're both willing and ready to grind if needed. But yeah, we could be more quicker. More quicker in our resilience. I took English once.

Yeah. More.

We could have could access our resilient talents more quickly if we were probably more willing to pivot or explore another option sooner. As opposed to defaulting to grinding.

Yes. That you just articulated very well with your English. What I. What I think the definition is pointing us to. Okay, now French. Okay, so why is this important? So I wanted to point to why we wanted to go into this topic. The new year typically brings the Fresh Start effect. We've done podcasts on this, We've done powerups on the Fresh Start effect, and that Fresh Start effect in turn typically has us focused on the future. However, if we don't have a true understanding of what's happened or of where we are now, how we got to where we are now, then we have a tendency to repeat patterns. So that's One of the reasons why last night we had a beautiful coaching call with our empowered team that was all about the reflection of the year. And there were tears and there was gratitude and there was sharing. It was. It was really, really beautiful. And most of us don't take the time to do that kind of reflection in order to really see what happened and really take a deeper look at what happened versus these little snapshots that, that are stuck in our brain. And then we go forward with an inaccurate picture of what went on and we don't really know how we got where we are. So this is why this, I think, topic is very important, so that we can see what really happened, have a clearer picture and that gives us more information for how we want to move forward and perhaps repeat things that worked or not repeat patterns that maybe didn't work. So that's why I think this topic is not only personally important, but important for anyone in any area, Professional, personal relationships, all the main areas of life. So do you want to kick us off on the first one where, where you were resilient?

Sure, I can do that. I would reflected on this before the call today and thought for sure, number one, the area is most resilient was at work. Kind of what we're talking about in trying to define resilience is sums up work. It's, you know, a series of problems and challenges. And in the software space, there's a lot changing right now and things are moving quickly and we're trying to deliver on new product and goals and things get in the way. And it was a very challenging year for us, I think from the sense of pretty early in the year realizing we weren't going to be able to accomplish everything we'd set out to do. So at that point, resilience was already being tested with needing to assess why that was happening. Really take an honest look at where we weren't doing a good enough job in certain areas and where we needed to make improvements or optimize things and then constantly kind of taking stock of where we're at, reworking the plan, reworking the estimates on when we could deliver things, and then revisiting that and measuring the progress in between each point. And I think the team was incredibly resilient here because what the solution entailed was having people shift off of things they might have been wanting to work on and basically a simplification or narrowing of focus to a couple of the most key things. We had a more broad scope of things we wanted to accomplish at the start of 2023 and as the year wore on it was clear that we had to just prioritize some things over others and make trade offs which was also hard. You know, I want to achieve and succeed on everything we set out to do. So had to swallow that pill and just refocus on what could be done and getting it done in a way that wasn't going to over tax the team and, but I think just, I think I was in the right mindset to do it and the team was as well. We had some people who really stepped up and just were willing to be reassigned and help get priorities done. So it was definitely, I think the area in my life that was most resilient and probably most consistently tested at least in the first two quarters of the year.

Wow. I, I, I want to give context for people in that because there's people listening who are in business, who are starting businesses, who run their own things and, or they're leading people even if it's not in a business. And you are leading a software company, you're the CEO of a software company. So what I'm curious about is in those moments where you realized that your team, you're gonna have to ask people to start working on things that they may not want to work on and it's different from what you thought the direction was going to be. Who did you have to become to lead that group and have them go forward on something that was different than was planned. Who did you have to be in that, in that?

I think the most important not thing I had to be but maybe way of being was just being at times just very analytical like I alluded to, just you know, talking to the, the teams measuring what was happening and then applying you know, in software we talk about velocity of a development team and kind of the, the rate that they're producing code or getting through sprints and so assessing our speed or our velocity and then applying that against the estimates of the work needing to be done and just being very black and white with that side of it. But at the same time on the, the soft skills side I needed to be and you know, working with our leadership team and our managers, just keeping a very close pulse on the team because there's disappointment with shelving certain things and for myself as well. And so it was just, I think had to be someone who acknowledged that at the same time was able to get everyone on the same page of why we have to shelve something, why something else is more of a priority today. Not that it's not important, but it's. It can't be the most important thing today. And understanding that that may be a negative for that person in terms of what they want to accomplish this year. So being just sensitive to that, that. Not oblivious. Hey, you're going from this project that you're engaged in to this one that you might not be, and just make that switch, but trying to make sure that the team really had the buy in as to why we wanted to make these switches. And just kind of a side note, it was a really cool period because it allows you to truly see which team members have that ability to step up, which ones will just raise their hand, which ones are proactively seeing issues that are, you know, compounding a current problem and bringing it to the forefront, as opposed to kind of sitting back and just waiting to be told. And so it was just a unique time as well to get a feel of what people are really capable of in those hard times.

Wow. Yeah, there's. There's so much there in terms of the, the leaning on the, on the analytics, leaning on the numbers, the black and whites, the. And then. And then having to go into the soft skills as you described, which can be really challenging for many leaders to embrace that part of things when they've had to be so analytical. So the soft skills become the things that are. Are almost more difficult to implement and then really have all that awareness of what people are dealing with in all the change that's being implemented. So that sounds like a lot, and it sounds like the definition of what we talked about originally, which is the resilience and the adapting to what you didn't see that coming. You had to adapt and find a way. And in looking back, it's. It's apparent that you now have some. Some evidence of what worked. You have some evidence of what you might see again or how you can handle it, because you've got more experience in that.

Definitely. Yeah.

Cool. So how about you?

What was.

How about me? Where. Where was I.

Where were you? Resilient?

Yeah. So I'll probably do a podcast on this in more depth. I've. I've just mentioned a lot of things along the way about this, that in the beginning of the year, being diagnosed with Graves disease, and I think that where I became resilient was making choices that were against the grain and, and that. And bumping up against. I'm used to making decisions either in my family or in my business. And because I'm with you, a leader of our family and in my business, I am the leader in my business, then I don't bump up against a lot of resistance until something doesn't work and I have to decide to change it. With this diagnosis, though, I had. I was going against the, the, the advice of a specialist, and then I would have, you know, therapists suggesting to stop work completely, the specialist telling me and the doctor telling me to stop work completely, to tell me to go on certain meds or explore surgeries or ablations or, you know, there, there were things that I was being told that I was completely rejecting. And I think that was so hard for me to do, not because it was. Not because I didn't believe in myself, but because I was so sick. I didn't have the normal feelings of strength or certainty or like I was so vulnerable that, that I didn't feel like myself. Like I, I felt like I was dying and I didn't. So it, it just was like, where, where am I going to draw the strength from to do what I felt I had to do that was aligned with me and not have the professional support?

So.

Getting a little uncomfortable in sharing this. So that's where I was resilient in that. I just, I chose to, I chose to keep working. I chose to find rest and relaxation in different ways and locations. I chose to not take the meds and explore natural routes. I chose to. I would have kept seeing the specialist. I wanted to work together with a specialist, but she wouldn't work with me unless I did the meds and the, the steps that she was recommending. And I said no. And so I didn't get to work with a specialist. I had to create my own team of naturopaths and therapists and, and my MD and really work with that. So that's where I feel like I was really resilient in that decision because I, I had no, I, I had one person who was an example of putting it into remission naturally. And I knew I was very different than that person in terms of lifestyle, in terms of a number of things. But, but there were a lot of similarities too. And other than that one person, I didn't have any evidence or strength to know that I could do what I was setting out to do. So that's where that was.

But when was, when was the moment in the year where you felt like that resilience paid off and you had made the right decision? You know, what, when did you begin to get feedback from your body or your state of mind or from other. Another source that. Okay, because I think That's a part of resilience, somewhat, is if, you know, you're continually scrapping and trying to climb a wall and never making progress.

There.

Comes a point where, you know, you can't. There's not a lot of motivation to draw from anymore.

And, yeah, so I. I don't think of it as a right decision. I think of it as, is it working? Am I making progress? Because. Because I'm pretty sure that with the medical medications and. And techniques that are available today, that it probably would have worked much faster. So the right decision could have been doing what the specialists want, wanted. Because. Because that. That might have worked faster, and it would not. Doesn't mean that I would have been healthier, and it doesn't mean that I would have healed, and it doesn't mean that it would have been the right decision for me. So what I was looking at was the right decision for me. And so what that meant was, is it working? Is what I'm doing working? Am I making progress? Am I going to. Because the ultimate goal is putting it into remission permanently. And so I knew what my goal was. I knew I needed to make progress. I didn't know how to do that without the. What they were advising. So as soon as I started to see some levels of progress, then, and more than just, you know, one data point, because I was collecting so many data points, then I was like, okay, I'm on the right track, and that's all that mattered. And. And that that kind of thinking is that I'm making progress or it's working. And when I first started to see something, okay, I. I can. There's comparables, right? So when we traveled back from Mexico that I was able to do that travel day, even though I got so sick that night when we traveled to Miami, I got so sick that night. I was so sick the next day from the travel and just the food and not enough rest or whatever. But that travel was an easier. Even though it ended up being hard, it was an easier travel than when I went to Mexico. I couldn't sit up in the plane. I couldn't sit up in the car. I couldn't sit up in the car from the airport. Like, I couldn't. I couldn't sit up. I was so weak and so tired. I needed help just to get to the airport, to get from the airport. I was advised not to travel for my heart and my liver. And I did anyway. I did. I went completely against so. And I wouldn't even verbalize to other people what I was being told to do or not to do because I. I couldn't fight other people's opinions because I didn't have the strength to. So, yeah, see, even, like, it's. I haven't talked about it because. Yeah, so Kleenex. All right. Carrying on. Didn't think I'd be this emotional about it. Okay, your turn. Your turn, honey. Where were you? Not resilient.

Read. Number one. Not resilient. I think, in our relationship, and it was. We've had definitely, you know, challenges for as long as we've been together with various things. And I think you getting graves at the start of the year. Was that next obstacle or challenge that I needed to be resilient around and just didn't feel like I met the challenge. It was, as you just alluded to there and acknowledged you had. You have such precious little energy, especially when you were first sick, that you could not waste any effort explaining something to someone. You just needed to do what you knew was the right choice in that moment. And if they get it, great. If they don't, they're not going to find out why, because you don't have that ounce of energy to give them beyond what you have to make sure you're getting yourself the right thing to eat or whatever it is. And, and, and a result of that was that you didn't have an ounce of energy to deal with my crap. And so if something wasn't right, you were just calling it out immediately in a loving way, just simply putting it, this isn't working. Deal with it. I don't have any energy to deal with you or it. And I think just more often than not, especially in the first half of the year, I wasn't resilient in a way to. To change my ways, to change my thoughts, to not make it about me. That was kind of the. The biggest problem, I think, was that everything you were bringing up that wasn't working. I would be defaulting to defensiveness or why I did something or why I wasn't doing something and was making it about me and not flipping it on its head and connecting to you and empathizing with you and your experience of whatever it was. And so that broken cycle, I think, just led to so much stress and so many challenges for us, and I wasn't resilient in adapting or stepping up. So that feels like the area when I reflect on the year, for sure, that's number one. And it was a lack of consistency on my part. I think of doing some of the basics that. And Misaligned focus. That took a while to wrap my head around that. I want to default to doing the easy task things for you of trying to make your life easier when you know what you needed the most was just empathy and curiosity and connection. That would be the most empowering thing I could give you. And, Yeah, I wish I could do it all over again.

Oh, for sure. But here's the thing. Yeah. What were you gonna say?

But I can't. And I'm just trying to. To learn from it. I think the. The lows that we hit have sparked some positive change and trying to focus on that and use it as impetus to. To get better and just be better in every way for the relationship. It's just hard for me to accept that I didn't show up in a way that I would have wanted to or imagine that I would have when you were hurting so badly. So. Yeah, that's why I didn't feel resilient. Yeah.

Yeah. And. And it's interesting because, you know, when you're describing your timeline for where you were resilient, you. You were dealing with some of the hardest things you've ever dealt with in. In your career. But. But dealing with some of the harder things on a. On a front facing where you're leading a company in the same time, you know, the beginning of the year, the first quarter, that's where you're describing all the analytics, all the dealing with your teams, all the trying to help everybody adapt, doing all these things. And. And at the same time, you're on where it's the most personal. That's where it was the hardest to make those shifts or be who you wanted to be or who I needed you to be at the time where you were already spread so thin. You were already spread so thin. And. And I. I wouldn't have had the bandwidth to be who you needed me to be for you in what you were dealing with. So then you didn't have somebody to lean on, which was me. And I didn't know. I wanted to know what was going on, but I didn't know what was going on. So if you look back at. At that human called you, you know, I have so much empathy for the. The whole context that's easier to see now that there's no way. Yeah, there's no way you could see at the time. There's no way I could see at a time. It's just, you know, but now looking back, it's like. I don't know how you. It's not natural for you, especially when it feels so personal for you to emote or show up emotionally. That was my job in our relationship. That was my, our family. I did all the emotional caring for everyone. Emotional over caring for everyone. And so all of a sudden you're supposed to take on that job and the therapist is telling you that, and I'm telling you I need you. And meanwhile, you have a whole company who you're trying to. And that's, that's your area that you don't have the most bandwidth. And looking back on it, it's just like, oh, that poor human, you know, wow, he did the best he could. Right. And, and same for me. Wow. I did the best I could trying to ask for what I needed, but it just wasn't available. We only have so much in us and, and, and, you know, and this, this experience is what makes us capable to have more. And, and we can't see it when we're in it. Right. Okay. Where was I not resilient? This one's easier for me to describe. And, and I, I looked at this before I looked at the definition of resilience because as I described earlier, you know, person persevering through challenging things was my definition of resilience.

Right.

So where I was not resilient was my business. It's almost the opposite of yours in a way, where I felt I wasn't resilient. I had, I had a client who, who I hadn't seen for a little bit because they were on a holiday. And when they came back, I was catching up with them, asked about certain things, and they got so angry at me for asking about something that had been challenging for them before. And all I thought I was doing was being an amazing coach and trying to catch up. And, and then the next appointment, they didn't show up. And meanwhile I was so sick. And it was just this easy decision of, I'm not working with you anymore. And so I stopped working with that client. I had another, another contract end, and I didn't even offer the person the option to renew. I had things like that going on. And to me, I felt like I wasn't being resilient because I, I would normally have gone above and beyond to, to find a way to make that thing work or whatever.

And your mission is to serve. That's what you.

Yeah, I.

To do every day. And for you to just not renew someone is not serving them. That goes against, you know, so I just pulled.

Pulled right back. And, you know, my business revenue dipped because I had Been letting go of clients, not renewing contracts, not. Not even basically not taking on anything new and only. Only kept. Only kept anything that I felt would light me up and me serving them would help my healing because I could help them in that. When I can help other people. That feels amazing to me. So I felt I wasn't resilient. And now just in this call, as we look at the definition, I'm like, oh, wait a second. I was adapting. I was being flexible. I was. Maybe that was resilience. So, so this is a learning in this moment. But that's where I thought I wasn't resilient is, you know, not persevering through every possible thing with, With a client or with getting more clients or expanding my business, because I love to. So anyway, that's.

Yeah, I think it really matters what you're measuring the resiliency against, because if you're measuring going towards serving clients or you're going towards being the best coach that you can be, you almost can't do both, especially when you were so sick. Right. So is resilience shifting towards that goal of just being the best coach you can be, of taking care of yourself first so that you can show up when you're ready? Or is it kind of a blind resilience of the grind side of must serve. Must serve these clients and must find a way to do that at what cost?

Yeah.

And I think when you were so sick, it's so crystal clear that absolutely not. I will not sacrifice myself in the short term here to be resilient of. To the goal of serving. I'm going to be resilient to the terms of being the best I can be, which is, I think, more core, more important.

Yeah. And. And it's be what you're saying there and sacrificing myself. It, It. It's become very apparent over time that that's one of the things, one of the many factors that brought graves disease on.

Right.

And. And so it's. But in that moment, it was like I was willing to serve somebody in a coaching call and schedule time to be lying down. I'd do an hour or maybe two hours of a coaching call and then be lying down in between, and I could recover. And it felt good. And then there were the scenarios of just realizing that, oh, wait a second, I'm willing to do something at any cost and not even see the cost and not understand the cost. So, yeah, that's a great. That's a great point. So now we are.

It's also A great. It's a great segue into where I thought I was being resilient but needed to be more resilient because the factors that led to me not being as resilient as I thought I was being. Try to follow this sentence. Was in the areas, especially for me when I was reflecting on this, of just my health and eating and, and training those. Those two realms. But the heavy focus on work, the dissatisfaction and anxiety and stress that we had in our relationship rippled into that realm and demotivated me. There was mornings where I didn't want to get out of bed and we'd get into the gym and just lay on the floor or just, you know, not do the workout and, and that is okay sometimes, but not when it becomes frequent or just eating mindlessly when I wasn't hungry, just, you know, needing something salty for that quick bit of pleasure just to feel good for a second. And, you know, I just noticed chips kept sneaking into. Into. Oh, yeah, it's the middle of the week. Maybe I'll have just a little bowl of chips. So I unwind this evening. And they used to be a. Just a weekend, a treat like. Yeah. And just became another buffering tool. Right? To.

Yeah.

To just feel good for a second. And ignored how stressed I was feeling about work or how bad I'm feeling about what I wasn't doing for you. And so I would have thought that I was being resilient and consistently training. And I was to, you know, somebody who doesn't know me would look at what I was doing go, oh, gosh, you're killing it. But yeah, yeah, for my standards and how I feel and how I want to feel. Not even close. And it was just that subtle. You know, it's the slight edge, it's. It's that effect, atomic habits of just the subtle decline that you don't notice. And you make that decision on the Wednesday and then you make it again the next Friday and you miss the workout on the next Monday. And that compounding effect of what are on the surface little actions just swung the needle in the. In the negative direction for. For my health, which then just circles back to impact, you know, my overall energy and how I'm going to show up at work and the energy I have to show up for you. And so it was really an insidious decline that was just another thing contributing to the overall experience of life when. When it was the most challenging parts of the year. And so I definitely needed to be more resilient in terms of having that discipline to, to set the alarm with enough buffer time to, to make changes. And we talked about the definition of resilience being that adaptability. That was the part that I wasn't acknowledging that I was trying to deal with everything that was extra in the same way so that not giving myself the allowance of, hey, maybe you need an extra 10 minutes in the morning in the gym on the floor to just slowly roll and not just walk in the gym and bang it out like you used to. Maybe, maybe you need to, you know, give yourself a little space here. And so it took three quarters of the year to figure that out. And, and so. But I can, yeah, I can laugh about it now because now I feel like I'm trending in the right way. The consistency is back.

But there's, there's something here that's. Sorry, I'm, I'm totally interrupting here because I'm going to point to something that I'm sure other people in relationships have experienced on that, that topic is that there's something here that happens between you and I that's codependence in that you had finally, unbeknownst to me, figured that out a little bit that you might need a little more of a sleep in or change the time that you would do your workout. And then I came home from being away on the construction site at camp and, and then you, you got mad at me, unbeknownst to me. But I could see the, you know, the behaviors and stuff. But you're kind of mad at me because. Because you got up in the morning to work out with me and, but it was the, the only reason you did that is because we have levels of codependence with each other looking to please the other person in order to feel good. And then, but the reality was is you had figured out what you needed a little more of. Sometimes it was a little more of a sleep in. Sometimes it was a hot tub or a stretch in the evening or were figuring that out. But then when I came home, then my presence messed that up.

And then our old routine.

Yeah, yeah, this little bit of a resentment there, but it messed it up because there's this, you know, underlying want or desire for the other to please the other person to feel good and, and when that's not happening or there's that, that rift. So yeah, I, I'm. There's so many changes. There's so many changes that have. So did you. Sorry I interrupted there because I thought that point would be very beneficial for other people listening because it threw A wrench into something you discovered. And I think that when people make that discovery for themselves, and you said it took three quarters of the year to figure out, but then. Then something came in, like somebody coming home or a change in pattern, and it threw it for a loop again.

Yeah, yeah. It's definitely worth pausing on because they had, you know, kind of these rules of we work out in the morning.

And, you know, well, I work out in the morning.

Yeah. And. But I felt we work out together. That's the rule, what we do, you know, and that didn't allow for a bad sleep because I'm up in the night thinking, my mind racing about something that we need to address at work that just wasn't something that happened in the past. And that change. I was still trying to maintain the norms that don't allow for that change that's happening with my sleep. And so, like you'd said, giving myself the permission to sleep in and get that workout done right after dinner or something or in the evening was working and just. Yeah. Putting less rules around it, but still being cognizant or ensuring that I was being consistent.

Yeah.

Being consistent in a more flexible way, I guess, maybe, to describe it. And then, like you said, though, then when you came back, you were gone for almost four months up north. There was that friction there, and I'm not even aware of it. Of. Yeah, I'm feeling that rub of, okay, now I have to get up again. Even if I don't feel like it in the morning, I don't have that evening option, because then if I work out in the evening, I'm signaling. I don't want to be spending time with you or have that moment in the gym together in the morning. And. And our relationship is important, and I can't signal that, because if I signal our relationship isn't. Isn't important, we're gonna have more problems there. And it's this.

Yeah. And.

And then I thoughts that.

And, you know, and none of that is being spoken. But then I'm getting the. I'm getting the signals of vibes, annoyance, or whatever. And then ultimately, fundamentally, it still goes back to. You can see the cascade of effects from. From an original problem, which is an emotional state about something from work. The original problem, if we. If we take a look at the workout, we take a look at the changes, the original problem is an emotional state from something that happened at work that wasn't processed or wasn't dealt with. So it was keeping you up at night. And then that stress is Bringing it overnight into the morning. And that's affecting the workout and then that's affecting and cascade of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it all comes back to being able. And this is the concept of this entire podcast. It's self mastery. It's self mastery for leaders and being. And that's, that's the foundational level of leadership, is being able to lead ourselves. And, and it comes back to that in. And we, until we can reflect on something, we're not seeing how much our own stuff and not being able to manage our own stuff affects so many things. And the other thing I'm going to add to that is that, you know, like you said for listeners, you and I have standards when it comes to training or health or eating that most people would think are, are, you know, they're Olympic level, let's put it that way. They're, they're beyond most people who are Olympians, because we know a lot of Olympians, we know a lot of national level people. That's how consistent you and I are. Except that that practice of rigidity, that practice of, of high standards, it's like you've said, it's the concept of consistency with flexibility. It's the concept of knowing what you believe in with openness. It's the paradoxical, the ability to paradoxically look at things in ways that are, are more likely for success and happiness and fulfillment instead of only one way. The more rigidity that we have, the more, the more opinion we have, the less likely, the more certainty we have, the less likely we are for the.

Fulfillment and the happiness or to be resilient, I think. I mean, we don't have the tree, right? The tree doesn't break the wind because it's flexible. If we're rigid, the trees rigid and nice storm snap.

Exactly. And that. Oh my gosh, we have a podcast coming up. I'm just dropping this right now. It's the five archetypes. It's the book by Harry Davidson. So good. And it's helped you and I so much. I will talk about that more. So where I thought I was resilient but needed more. It's, it's our marriage. I, I, when, when Graves was diagnosed in the beginning of this year, I thought I was, I thought this would bring us closer because of. I know how much you love me. And I know I knew at the time just that you knew. I knew everybody knew like that I needed help. Except what I didn't factor in is that I was so independent and so strong and that's why people, that's why I have the people around me that I have because they, they love that about me. They love the independence, they love the strength, they love the diversity, dynamic nature that I have. Except when all that was removed and all of a sudden I look to my loved ones and you specifically to lean on and you didn't know how to bring that. And you were in a position that, unbeknownst to me, that you were already pretty stressed in other areas of your life. And so, and, and I did know some of it, but, but I think.

Too, to be fair, yes, I was stressed, but there is areas that just weren't working for us that you were continually letting slide because you had the energy to.

Yeah, yeah. So before getting sick. Yeah.

So I, that has to be said that this, that I think you were super resilient. See, I would disagree with you on this one because I felt like you were continually resilient in our marriage. And what it called for at that time because you had no energy was to call any BS the second it was happening. And yeah, and yeah, maybe that's not what I needed from you, but you were in no position to give it. You had no energy to give it. And as you've gotten your energy back, I felt it more and more. I felt more support from you in dealing with some of these things. And yeah, I feel like that's what's really been fueling the great times lately is that shift that you've been wanting to give, to make, to be doing, but literally didn't have an ounce of energy for. You were surviving and in survival mode.

But to be, you know, where you're calling me resilient before I got sick and resilient and, and ignoring or, or not. Not. Not talking about some of the things that might have been problems for us. I think it was not that I was being resilient, but rather that I was. I had grown up in so much dysfunction that I didn't understand that some of the dysfunction that was within our relationship was. I didn't understand that it wasn't good for me, it wasn't good for us because that just seemed normal to me from, from what I'd experienced in childhood. But then when I got sick, it's like my body couldn't, wouldn't and couldn't tolerate anything that wasn't. That was either, I don't know, it was either toxic or diminishing or, you know, I hesitate to use words like that, but.

But I don't know, it wouldn't tolerate anything that wasn't loving or safe, that you needed to be surrounded by just pure love and care. That if there was any friction brought to you or attention or that that energy.

Yeah.

Or if I would spike, you know, your sleep would get worse. You were, you were a tuning fork to that. Yes. And still are.

Someone that, you know, still am. And that's the interesting thing, is that now that I'm getting stronger, stronger, stronger, I still, I'm now still that tuning fork. I'm still, now still picking up on all these things. And it's. It's a little bit unnerving because the ways I would have handled that in the past are no longer how I would handle it. And so I'm in this highly adaptive state of figuring out what that looks like. But the point I'm trying to make, though, is that where I felt I needed more resilience, and I learned it over and over, especially in the summer, the whole summer was me trying to figure out how to change because I was learning over and over, okay, I'm trying to be resilient in. I'm seeing what doesn't work. I'm pointing out what doesn't work. But where I had to find some more adaptability, some more resilience was my approach in communicating it to you because you couldn't hear what I would say. It would cause anger, it would cause defensiveness. It was cause us to fight because then I'd be upset and frustrated and then. And so. And I. I wouldn't have the energy to fight. In the past, you and I could fight and I'd fight you. We'd argue or whatever, or if you got defense, or if one of us was passive aggressive, the other one could be passive aggressive. Awesome. We're both passive aggressive. Very dysfunctional ways of dealing with things. But in. By this point, I had no energy to. I. I had no energy for your anger or your defensiveness. I couldn't deal with it, and I couldn't. And so I was. Where I had to find more resilience was where I was like, okay, how. How do I approach this? Because it's not working. And that's all I was measuring anything on was, is this, am I making progress? And if I wasn't making progress with you and I, I would see the physical symptoms slow down or go backwards. And. And I. If something happened with you and I, I was like, this is bizarre. My digestive, my sleep, my headaches, my, like, all kinds of tremors, you name it, all kinds of heart Rate symptoms, you name it. So. So it was very interesting. So where I had to find more resilience was figuring out how I could deal with what I was, the feedback I was getting, the emotions I was getting. But then how do I deliver to you that's different from any old patterns that I had? Even if I thought I. I still had to find a different way to deliver to you that you could receive. Because if we can't make something work together, then it's not progressing. And I was noticing that, that if we were dysfunctional or disconnected, then my body was responding poorly, and it was really bizarre for me to experience. And. And I could find that I got. I eventually got stronger and even maintained it, even if you and I weren't on the same, weren't doing well. If we had something, a rift or something, however, it would slow or certain things would go backwards. So the resilience I found more of, whether it was adaptability or figuring things out or trying a different thing, because trying harder. You and I are experts at trying harder. We have work ethics like none other. Trying harder, I learned, was not the answer. That was not the answer. And that was never going to be the answer again. It was being smarter and trying something different and. And bringing more love and more love to myself. More love to you. Sounds very soft. Skills is. But I can tell you it's one of the hardest. I'm. I'm a hard, gritty, tough, resilient human. And I can tell you figuring out how to love myself, figuring out how to bring more love to uncertain scenarios was. Is one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. And I've had some hard in my life.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, so that's awesome.

Thank you. Okay, so let's wrap this up here. We're. We're plenty. Plenty time in. Last thing, I wanted to bring some strategies for people in terms of resilience. And I think that we brought it with a definition. I think we brought it with a ton of examples that are very, very personal for us. And. And so thank you for that. Thank you for your openness, your vulnerability. And so these strategies, I would say number one is, is being adaptable. And I wrote this down before I got the definition, but that's really what it comes down to is this resilience is adaptability. That emotional, that behavioral adaptability, that mental, that mindset adaptability. Another one that I put as a strategy is processing the emotion. That's a skill. It's a skill we're not taught. And It's a skill that I know that every top performer in the world, that's something that they have learned how to do, is process emotion. Number three, I said, which is try new things. And that really falls under adaptability, I think. But lastly, it is giving. And this is something you pointed to for yourself without me saying this or prompting it. It's giving myself what I need instead of trying to get my needs met by the outside world, say accomplishments or by other humans. So giving myself what I need instead of trying to have that need met by the outside world or my marriage, you, or my kids or anyone else, just giving myself what I need. And that really, I think has been the magical, the magical ingredient of the recipe called resilience.

Yeah, I would just add to that list as an accelerant or a catalyst to ask better questions. You know, it's a Tony Robbins thing that he always harps on and comes back to. But ask better questions and get better answers. And you know, around my working out and training, I need to ask the question of how can I make this work? You know, open myself up to new options or get out of that auto rules based. And this is the way it needs to be. It's just, you know, ask a question, how could this be different?

Yeah.

Allow yourself just that little space to let your free thinking, creative mind go to work and maybe come up with something that, oh, I like that. I'm going to try it. And then you have a little bit more motivation to be adaptable and resilient again.

So I love that, I love that. It's the. As soon as a client says I have to or I need to, I, I immediately interrupt because that's the thing that holds us. Stuck in believing something that's really not true. Because you don't have to, you don't need to. We get to. What does it look like? What do you get to do? What would you like to do? What do you choose to do? And that really opens up, I think what we've been talking about this whole time is, is the resilience and those. And thank you for bringing that. Those questions, better questions. So powerful. Well, thank you. Thank you, my love.

Thank you. Thank you everyone for listening in our couples therapy here.

Oh, this isn't couples therapy. It's way worse than couples therapy. This is a walk in the park. Okay, thank you so much. I love you, hon. And let's hopefully this serves somebody else out there.

Yeah. Happy holidays.

Happy New Year. Happy holidays everyone. And really step into your new year with hopefully some examples or new definitions of the adaptability in resilience. Have a wonderful, wonderful January step into the New Year. Bye everyone.

If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team is our group coaching and accountability program where we provide the tools, skills and community for you to grow your self mastery as a leader and optimize your results alongside other leaders. The Empowered Team runs year round to learn more about our leadership consulting for business and our Empowered Team Group Coaching. Head to www. Theempowered.ca empowered learn-more that's www.theempowered.ca empowered-learn-more we we can't wait for you to join us.

Let's go.