866: How to Bounce Back, Find Your Flow, and Thrive in Adversity with Darleen Santore (“Coach Dar”)

Pete Mockaitis
Coach Dar, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to dig into your wisdom that you’ve captured some of that in your book The Art of Bouncing Back: Find Your Flow to Thrive at Work and in Life ― Any Time You’re Off Your Game. And you know a lot about bouncing back in your professional world and your personal world. Boy, can you tell us the story of three strokes and how you bounced back there?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I wish I could tell you it’s just one or none, but it was three. And I think that’s part of the reason is you get what you’re going through in life so that you could teach from it. And this was something, ironically, I am an occupational therapist, I was a therapist on the stroke and brain injury floor, and I was 25 years old, and I had just gone to go see a chiropractor because I had sciatica, and they worked on my neck, manipulated my neck.

And a few days later, I was at work, and, all of a sudden, I’m walking and the floor flips upside down, and the floor is the ceiling, and the ceiling is the floor, and I cannot see. And I thought, “What is going on?” And the irony is I didn’t even know it was a stroke but it was. What had happened was when they manipulated the neck, they ripped the vertebral artery and so it bled to the brain, and it was a slow bleed until it occluded blood to the back side of my brain, and that’s when I started to have all these symptoms.

But they would come and go because the blood flow would put pressure and then it would take it off a little bit till finally it had occluded all blood supply to the brain, and that’s when I had all the symptoms of a stroke. And the good news and the bad news of that was that scar tissue, eventually, enveloped the blood clot but it could dislodge any day as it was on its way to developing scar tissue, and I could die in any day is what they told me.

And I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m the therapist that takes care of patients like this. I’m not supposed to be receiving this information, especially at 25 years old.” But I did, and it was part of the journey, and I worked through it, and I thought I was on my way, making my way through life in this scenario, and then about six years ago, I had my second, and about three or four years ago, I had my third, which was my worst one.

Pete Mockaitis
My goodness. And so, tell us how did you go about bouncing back?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I will tell you, when this first happened, I was not as prepared. You’re 25 years old, you don’t have all the tools. Whereas, by the one I just had three, four years ago, I’m now 47, I have been helping over 100,000 people with their mindset, mental state, how they bounce back, so I was able to use all the tools, and it truly did help.

And that’s why during this time of writing this book, I could truly say that these principles are the principles that I used to not only help professional athletes, CEOs, but myself. And it works because when you work on your mental fitness, you truly do get stronger. But like anything, if you don’t put time into it, it’s not going to be there, it’s not going to be as strong. So, I am very much encouraging people, you don’t have to wait for adversity to come to start working on your mental foundation. You could start working on it now.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’d love to get into the how-to of working on one’s mental fitness, mental foundation. Can you first share with us just what kind of impact that makes if these sorts of practices are faithfully engaged in versus neglected?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, you know where to pull from, so if you don’t have these tools, and it happens, it’s just a harder learning curve because you’re trying to learn in the middle of the valley, which you can. You absolutely can. It’s just going to take longer. So, I’ll say to people, when you’re working on your mental fitness, and you could do this right now without having anything like I just shared catastrophic or lifechanging, you could work on it.

So, the day doesn’t go so well, you’re trying to do something, it doesn’t work. You have tech glitches. You are stuck in traffic. Your child is going through something. It could be something even like you’re getting laid off from a job right now. If you have the tools, and you’ve been taught this, it doesn’t mean it’s going to take away the pain. You know how to embrace it. You know how to go back to what your hardwiring is. You know how to reframe the setback, so you have the tools right there to set you up so you come back faster.

It’s equivalent to someone who’s physically in shape, gets injured, goes into the hospital, their muscle fibers and strength are there to help them to get back faster because they have more muscle mass, they have more strength. So, when they’re trying to get back, they’re not atrophying from something that’s already atrophied. It’s the same with our mental muscles. If you’re building them and they’re strong, they’re going to be there to support you when something happens. And right when it happens, you’re able to stay agile, which is the key to success.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it sounds like any number of setbacks, frustrations, disappointments, heartbreaks, traumas, this mental fitness stuff can help us bounce back from any and all of these better?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Yes, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, please, Coach Dar, lay it out for us, how do we get better at bouncing back and build that mental fitness?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, you start, for whoever is listening, whatever has been the hardest thing you’ve been through or whatever you’re challenged with right now that’s adversity, you have to embrace it. The first principle is, embrace the suck. And the reason I start with that is because you can’t go to positive Pollyanna, “Don’t worry about it. Try to shake it off.” You have to embrace, “What are we dealing with?”

So, say, someone just got laid off from their job, we have to embrace it what it is. We have to embrace the emotions of it because if we don’t deal with things, they will surface in another way. So, you embrace it, you figure it out. Just like the military would when they’re in the middle of battle, “What is the situation we’re dealing with so we could accept it and create a plan?”

That’s where we want to be at step one, we want to embrace it, for accepting it for what it is, good, bad, and different, fair, not fair, it doesn’t matter. What are we dealing with so then we could create a plan to move forward from it? Because if we don’t create clarity in the chaos, we cannot create a plan, necessarily.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, when you embrace it, that’s sort of not saying, “Why me? This is bull crap.” Or, what does embracing mean and not mean?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
It just means we’re accepting the reality of what is. So, I’m going to give something even a little bit more challenging of that, which is I’ve lost both my parents recently. When I lost my father, of course I’m grieving, of course I’m hurting, but I had to, at some point, accept I can’t bring my father back. I have to embrace it. I have to. It’s not “I can’t change it, so what do I need to do about it?” I could grieve it. I could work through it. I could start to shift from grieving at some point to celebrating his life.

When I had my stroke, I can’t change the fact that I had it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fair or unfair. At some point, I have to say, “This is what happened. I could call someone and I could say, ‘I am sad about this.’” “Great. Let’s talk about it.” But I’m still embracing talking about it. I’m not waking up in a delusional state, saying, “I don’t want to deal with this.” Whether I do or I don’t, it’s what happened. So, we face reality head on, and we work through our emotions on it, and then we create a plan from it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s talk about the next steps then.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, the next step would be understanding our hardwiring. When you understand how you are hardwired, which is your strength, your talents, this creates what I call a confidence card. So, when I had my stroke, while certain things were taken away from me, my knowledge of how to bounce back, my knowledge as a therapist did not go away. My abilities to still communicate with people, it was different but it didn’t go away altogether.

I had trouble saying words but I still was able to speak where some lose all of their speech. I might not have been able to move as well but I was not completely paralyzed. But my point was/is I still had who I am, fundamentally, within me. If you get laid off from a job, your job was taken away, but your gifts are not taken away, so you just have to reestablish, “Where can you use your gifts and talents somewhere else? How else do you need to get up and get back up?”

So, oftentimes, we feel like we have no control, and I try to bring you back to this principle. You have full control of your hardwiring, and your hardwiring is your confidence code. I work on professional sports, our athletes all have scouting cards, it’s kind of their stats. I help them create their scouting card, their confidence card, so when things go bad, a bad game, I could go back and say, “Don’t forget you still are talented in this, this, this, and this area. It was a bad game. It doesn’t mean your gifts went away.”

Because they’ll often say, like, “What happened?” I’ll say, “No one took away your talent. Your talent is still there. The game just didn’t flow. Let’s get you back into flow but just remember you still have your gifts and talents.” And when you do that, that’s where confidence comes back even in the middle of lull.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And in the remembering, is there a particular practice or key steps to bring back that from?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
That’s why we’re writing it down. Yup, you write it down. So, right now, it would be good if, people are listening, to do step two. Every principle in this book, you, literally, could journal it through like it’s your own playbook. If you can’t even remember what you’re good at, for some reason you’re in a lull, ask people, “Hey, what are the things that you would say I’m really good at?”

If you could do self-inventory, write it down, and then you put it somewhere, put it in your phone, put it on your desk, put it somewhere that you get to go back and read this. Because what happens is when we get in the middle of struggle, we start to doubt, we start to lose faith, we start to forget, and this is your visual to bring you back neurologically, to say, “No, this is what is true. What you’re telling yourself right now is false. But this is truth.” And so, this is your reset for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then what’s next?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
You then take these and you start to understand that you have to find why power. I take you through a couple chapters of seeking, applying feedback, to then moving into why power.

You want to seek feedback, and then you want to apply your why power. Why power over willpower. Because when you understand why you’re getting up, literally, “Why should you get up when it’s so hard?” Well, because, one, you still have a reason to be here. Two, when you write your why statement, you find your anthem for the year. You know where to get back to.

And example of this is I had a player who got injured, and I said, “Okay, you might not be able to inspire greatness…” which is what his mission statement is, what his why is, “…on the court, but you could still do it to your teammates. You could still do it in your community.” So, when we were able to get back to, “Why should you still get up every day when you’re not playing in the middle of an injury?” Well, because you still can go and help others around you until you get back into play. And by doing your rehab and getting up, you will, eventually, get to inspire greatness on the court.

I have a CEO. His why is, “Dar, I just want to be able to add value every day.” Well, he can’t add value if he sits in his house and never leaves. So, when he went through a hard time, I said, “Okay, what are other ways you could add value? Maybe you can’t get into the office right now with this challenge that you’re doing but you can make phone calls, you could, literally, to your family, could still add value.”

And he said, “Every day, I want to be able to wake up and know that I matter, whether I’m a CEO or not. So, through my conversations with my wife, am I adding value with her, with my kids, with my community?” He has purpose beyond just his position, and that’s important for people, to have purpose beyond their position, and your why gives you that. It’s not tied to a role. It’s tied to a bigger purpose. And in the book, I have people, literally, break it down on how to come up with the why.

Pete Mockaitis
Do tell. How do we come to the why?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
You get to go and you get to look at, “What were all core values?” Look at core value words. You have words, core value words that something is going to pull at your heart, and you’re going to say, “Okay, if my life is being played out right now, and this was the anthem for my life, truly this was what was being played back, this was what people knew me for, would I be proud of that?”

And you are, literally, the person who’s writing the masterpiece, writing the script of your story, writing the theme of your life theme. And if you could choose one word of what that would be, what would be that anthem? What’s one core value you’d like to stand on? So, the player was greatness, the other person was value, mine is greatness, another person is integrity. They want to lead a life of integrity. They want to help people lead a life of integrity.

So, you have to pick a word that works for you, and then that becomes your anthem. And it, literally, starts to drive you. This is something that we could talk an hour just on, I’m breaking it down, but that’s just to get you started in understanding there’s power in why. Because if you just will yourself consistently, “I’m going to will myself,” you’re going to lose willpower.

But why lights a power within you. Willpower just lights a fire underneath your feet for a little bit. Why power lights a fire within you. It’s a reason for getting up. It’s bigger than you.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say anthem, are you quite, literally, referring to music?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Oh, well, I do tie music to the anthem. So, mine is awaken in greatness. And so I took awaken in greatness as my life anthem, and then I actually made a yearly, I make a yearly anthem that goes with it. So, in order to awaken greatness, I then have, I put my word this year as next level. I want my conversations, my connections, my ability to touch people to be just at another level.

So, my music theme is Superman. When my alarm goes off, I actually set my alarm to the theme. So, when I wake up, I don’t wake up to an annoying alarm. I wake up to an anthem so it starts my day, so I’m already reminded of it. Neurologically, it’s a neuro hack.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m curious, if you start at the very beginning with the buildup swells from the planet Krypton song or is it right into the “Pa, para, rah”?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
It’s right into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, important clarification.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
But maybe I will go back and start it from the beginning just because it’ll slowly build as I slowly wake up.

Pete Mockaitis
As a youngster, I watched the Christopher Reeve “Superman” movie on VHS repeatedly. So, it’s very special.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, you can appreciate this. It’s one of my favorites.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the why and the anthem. What’s next?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, we’ll move to, then after that, it’s also increasing emotional intelligence. I want people to be able to increase their emotional intelligence, their awareness, how they show up to scenarios. So, again, this is mental fitness. If you’ve been in a situation, you want to have some emotional awareness of what got you into that situation, what are some of the things that you could change. If you do not have EQ of how or what, then it’s hard for you to make adjustments.

Also, emotional awareness and EQ allows you, so when you show up to a space, you could read the room. You know how to inflect, when to interject, how to speak. And so, often if we don’t have EQ, it’s hard for us to, which we’d move to next, would be reframing things, because we don’t even understand what the problem is.

Sometimes we have to bounce back from things that we created the problem. Maybe it was something we said, how we said it, what we did. So, if we don’t have EQ, emotional intelligence, how the situation came about, it’s going to be hard for us to reset, to reignite, to reframe it. And so, I really, really work with a lot of people, honestly, most of coaching is getting people to have emotional intelligence on themselves in a situation.

Because, while I can’t control someone else, I can certainly control myself. I can control how I deliver a message, I can control how I say things, and I can control my level of acknowledgement so that I could have some compassion for the scenario. But if we don’t have awareness, it’s really hard for us to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, can you share with us what might be an exercise or a reflection that brings about an upgraded emotional intelligence?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Having people often go and say to someone, “Hey, when I was in the meeting with you, how was it? How did you feel? What was the conversation like for you?” because you want to get some feedback. That’s why one of the principles is seeking and applying feedback. You want to get feedback from people to know how you can adjust.

Again, working in pro sports, we have to get feedback all the time. The players, literally, are getting feedback right there. They have to know how to seek and apply the feedback, and then have awareness of how their energy, their state, their emotions are contributing or hurting the team, and then make adjustments in real time. And they have people telling them right there that they have to make adjustments.

And I often laugh because, in the corporate world, working with some of my clients in the corporate world, they might get a 360 review once a year, or maybe quarterly, and they wait a whole quarter to seek and apply feedback or have awareness, EQ, to what’s going on. That’s why coaching is so effective because it keeps you accountable consistently and teaches you how to create self-accountability.

And so, I had an executive that I was working with, and I said, “This issue keeps coming up. I would love for you to do your own 360 at this point to seek feedback, to also ask, ‘What is it like when I’m in the room? What is it like when I’m leaving the meeting? How does everyone feel?’” By doing this, they will start to have awareness of how their tone, their behavior, their mannerisms were affecting everyone.

I had an executive, smart, talented, but every time they were in a meeting, they kept tapping their pen, tapping their pen, and tapping their pen on the table, shaking their foot, looking everywhere else. So, what did everyone start to feel? Like, they needed to get what they needed to be said quick because they only had a few minutes, which doesn’t allow people to have a stroke of genius, or want to share openly. They feel rushed and they feel like they don’t matter.

And that’s not how the executive is. It’s just her presence what’s creating this state for people, that they were never able to fully be them in the rooms. She was not getting the best of her team, and not because the team wasn’t good but because of how she was showing up. So, once we shifted that, which, really, I just gave her a paperclip to rub on, she had energy she had to get out. So, she didn’t even know she was conveying it that way, but that was her seeking and applying feedback, and then having some emotional intelligence and awareness of knowing how to change that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what’s next?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, once you go from this, you can then start cultivating grit. Cultivating grit is I want people to understand that adversity is something that could absolutely advance you. And this is where we start talking about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. And we hear this a lot but we tune it out. But I challenge people at a time of day-to-day, are you just allowing your day to be average? Are you allowing your day to just go by?

Are you putting yourself in situations that are going to help challenge you, grow you? How about having the conversation that you need to have with someone? How about doing something that you always want to do but you were afraid to, pushing yourself a little bit? It could be something that I have go people go into the cold plunge, one, because there’s physical benefits to it, but, also, when you put yourself in a situation you do not want to be in but you know it’s going to help make you better, you started to cultivate some grit.

And then when people are going through challenges, I’ll say, “Don’t run from the adversity. Learn from it because the more you learn from it, the more you’re going to be able to use it.” Listen, after three strokes, I could tell you by the third one, while I was definitely upset and it was my worst one, I had built so much grit, so much resiliency that I knew how to lean into it versus run from it. I knew what I needed to do for my therapy. This was not my first rodeo.

So, imagine now you’re in a relationship, and every time you keep running from conversations, it doesn’t help. But now you’re going to lean in, and say, “Let’s have this difficult conversation. Let’s talk this through.” You just developed depth. Grit is almost like depth. You created some depth within the relationship, so now it’s not as hard the next time.

And what I want to say is grit actually creates flow, which creates freedom because you know how to handle hard. And, oftentimes, people don’t know how to handle hard and they just run from it, so you can’t develop resiliency, and all of this is building muscle. You can’t develop muscle unless you’ve been put in the pressure of a situation, that’s why when lifting weights, you have to lift heavier in order to keep building. Well, you can’t develop mental strength unless you’re willing to put yourself in some tough situations. So, running from adversity will never build up, but leaning into it will.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I dig that reframe there, and I’m curious if there are any others that you and clients have found super powerful and useful?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
So, reframing setbacks is a whole separate chapter, too, and I want to just say I remember a player that came off of playing, and he said to me, “Dar, I suck. I’m horrible. I can’t. I don’t even know why I’m playing,” and all of this negative talk. And I said to him, “Hold on one second. You are in the one percent. You are a professional athlete. So, you get to say this for about 30 more seconds and then we’re moving on.”

The reframe from this is “The game was not bad. You’re not bad, okay? The game may not have been great but you still are great. Going back to principle two, let’s go back to your hardwiring. Are you still good at this, this, this, and this?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “So, if you are, the reframe is that game might not have been bad, but I’m not bad.”

Now, take it to the business world. A project doesn’t go well. You lose a proposal. Something shifts in it that you don’t have control of, and you don’t just stop and say, “Well, we should shut down the whole business.” You reframe it to say, “That didn’t go well but we still have the ability to make this great. We are still a talented group, we just have to reframe this and reset this to see it for what it is, what is truth, what is false, what are we dealing with.”

But when you get people to continue to reframe, then they show up better because they don’t look at every obstacle as catastrophe. They look at it as, “This is an obstacle that could fuel us if we’re willing to learn from it, but it’s hard.” And I keep going back to people want to just coast. They just want to idle. They don’t want to push themselves. You can’t row to be great if you’re just going to idle. So, you want to lean into this, and the reframing is, “This is a bad day, not a bad life.”

“This was a bad project, it didn’t go well, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad.” Does that mean everyone in the company is horrible? Absolutely not. So, when you could reframe situations, you could then move forward from them again. You could see them from what is truth and what is false. And when I had my third stroke, I reframed it to say, “Well, I’m still able to walk. I may not walk well but I could walk. At least I’m not in a wheelchair at this moment.”

That’s a reframe because what that does is it gives me hope and it gives me reality of where I really am because I could look at it as the victim role, and I could look at it as, “This is awful,” which it’s hard, but there could be worse things. So, when you reframe it, you could see it for what it is to go forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, Coach Dar, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I think the last thing I would say is, in this, once you go through this, you learn how to the last principle, how to turn the page. And when you learn how to turn the page, which is, like I said, you don’t brush it off but you accept it, you acknowledge it, you learn from it, you deal with it, you build the grit you need, the muscle, you could turn the page on the pain that’s been holding you back so you could write a new chapter, so you could start to lean into purpose.

So, turn the page on what’s been holding you back. Let it go. Learn from it. Let it go. Release it. And then let’s move forward so you could write your new chapter so you could step into what’s ahead of you. It really will help you so that adversity will advance you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, I have a couple but one is Coach Monty Williams of Phoenix Suns says, “Everything is on the other side of hard, because once you get through what’s challenging, you’ve grown from it.” And we can’t get better if we don’t go through the hard things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
A favorite study. I’m not sure what comes to mind but I will say that I love about the ability, and we know the research of Atomic Habits, stacking habits, and how when you stack habits, you’re much likely to succeed in the journey that you’re on. So, if there’s habits, the research they’ve shown, if you stack them, put them next to another thing you do every day, you’re more likely to win in a goal that you have set. So, Atomic Habits and stacking habits, it’s great research.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Atomic Habits other than what I just wrote.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Well, a favorite tool that I have is this thing called BrainTap, and it’s a way to do almost passive mental fitness and meditation, so it’s not as hard, and it really does show great results for people to be able to decrease anxiety, increase creativity and innovation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And that’s an app, BrainTap?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
BrainTap, it’s a headset and an app that you can get.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
They always quote me and say, “Dar is always reminding me to raise the bar, which is not to do more but just to do what I do really well, and life gets better.” So, level up the standard of your life, your mindset, and stay on it, don’t give up because every day, it’s worth the fight. And that greatness is open to all but earned by few.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
CoachDar.com is a great place for people to go, and also on social media, you could find me on LinkedIn, Darleen Santore, or on Instagram, it’s thecoachdar. And I put a lot of inspirational things, mental fuel, tips, biohacks to help you with your brain health, so follow along. And you can get the book on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble stores, or you can go to CoachDar.com, all the information is there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
I would encourage you to lean into raising the bar of excellence. Be intentional when you do something. You do it to the highest level. Working in pro sports, everyone is expected to bring their best game, and then I was at Apple, working with them at their headquarters. And when you walk in there, they’re told, “This is where you’ll do the best work of your life.” You don’t have to work at Apple to have that standard. Make that your standard for your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Coach Dar, this has been a treat. I wish you and the book lots of luck.

Darleen “Coach Dar” Santore
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.