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KF #26. Being Resilient Archives - Page 2 of 19 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Jan 06
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1021: How to Push Past Fear and Build Audacity with Anne Marie Anderson

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Anne Marie Anderson shares expert tips for overcoming fear to achieve your most audacious goals.

You’ll Learn

  1. The four reasons people get stuck
  2. Two ways to tame your inner critic
  3. How to break free from urgency

About Anne Marie 

Anne Marie Anderson is a three-time Emmy Award-winning broadcaster for ESPN, keynote speaker and author. Anne Marie Anderson’s book, Cultivating Audacity – Dismantle Doubt and Let Yourself Win, releases in January 2025. She is also a mother of three, and enjoys playing beach volleyball, golf, hiking, swimming… and any game where you keep score!

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Anne Marie Anderson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Anne Marie, welcome!

Anne Marie Anderson
Thank you, Pete. Excited to be talking with you.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to be cultivating some audacity.

Anne Marie Anderson
Darn right. It’s time, isn’t it?

Pete Mockaitis
Let us, yeah. Well, so you have won three Emmys for broadcasting. That’s pretty impressive. Kudos.

Anne Marie Anderson
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
I imagine you had to pick up some audacity along the way. So, why don’t we kick it off by you sharing your own story of how you cultivated that?

Anne Marie Anderson
Well, so audacity is the willingness to take bold risks. That’s the actual definition of it. And I don’t think I was a particularly audacious child. I was pretty skittish, introverted, and such. But certainly, when you decide to work in television, you know there’s going to be a lot of rejection. When you decide to work in sports television, you know there’s going to be a lot of questions about whether or not you really should be there.

So, I kind of started to take a note of when somebody thought I couldn’t do something and started to cultivate it. And I think it’s really important, Pete. Like, it came out of watching. I’ll be really honest, my trip for audacity began when one of my good friends, who was very young and just starting his dream job and newly married and very fit, passed away suddenly.

And I thought, “Okay, if you can be 37 and newly married and starting your dream job to have it ripped away, I’m never going to wait for anything again.” And, honestly, that’s the introduction, by the way, to the book is about that. So, people know like, I wasn’t born this way. It is something that people can absolutely cultivate and grow.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. So, then tell us, any key surprising discoveries you’ve made as you’re researching this and putting together your book? We know that it can be built. Don’t have to be born that way. That’s great. Tell us, any other surprises along the way?

Anne Marie Anderson
I think most people want to be able to do the thing, right? We’ve all got the thing that we wanted to do, whether it is professionally, personally in your relationship, moving in one direction or the other. If you’re in a poor relationship, you can leave, if you want to cultivate your job. But I think we get stuck because wanting to do it and knowing how to do it is really different.

And so, I learned that there’s three components. There’s that mindset. That’s really, Pete, just based on optimism. Like, the belief that it’s going to work out, maybe not the way you wanted, but it’ll work out. Like, you’re down by 12 at the half in a basketball game and you come out the second half because maybe, if you get your offense together, you’ll win. So, there’s that mindset component.

And I think a lot of people have that, the optimism that, “Hey, this could be good. This could really work out,” but they get stuck in the second component, which is the behavior to take action, because you can sit on your mom’s couch and be optimistic all day long and nothing is going to happen until you take an action. Or, maybe, I learned in talking to people, they’ll take one action, they’ll take an action, and then say, “Oh, it didn’t work,” because they didn’t get their desired outcome.

So, what I learned with cultivating audacity, it is the consistency of the mindset and the behavior that leads to the identity. And so, you have to keep doing it over and over. And I think people can be a little bit impatient and they say, “Well, it didn’t work out.” Well, it didn’t work out the way that you wanted, but you got information from that to go again. And that’s the thing I’ve learned. That’s where people get stuck.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s really handy in terms of working out can be very broad in terms of somehow it was a positive endeavor as opposed to you got the precise, narrow, exact outcome that you had hoped for and imagined. And I think that’s a really cool thing to bear in mind right there in terms of, I think about entrepreneurship in terms of things have rarely worked out, maybe never, exactly the way I hoped, planned, predicted.

And yet, that was one of reasons I love this podcast as a concept in terms of there are so many ways this can work out well. And, sure enough, things evolved differently than I expected, but it was differently and well. And when you were talking about the learning, being one of those pieces, is super handy or, you know, not to be cliche, but it’s like the real treasure that we hunted for were the friendships that we made along the way. I mean, that’s kind of corny and cheesy, but something that’s really true, it’s like, “No, you did a thing. You met some people and that was amazing. Those are transformational relationships forever.”

Anne Marie Anderson
Exactly. I think people need to recalibrate their relationship with rejection because they think rejection, fear, like it’s over as if it’s some kind of endpoint when, you know, and it took some work for me, but I really now see it all as just data. The data that drives me forward. And to your point, okay, it didn’t end the way that I hoped it would, but I did make this relationship with this person that I learned something from that I can then go in a different direction or a new tact. So, it all just became data and none of it’s the end of a sentence.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like a pretty transformational place to get to in terms of, “Ah, rejection is no longer this horrifying sensation that is profoundly emotionally difficult,” but rather just, “Huh, how about that? Some data, some information.” How do we get there?

Anne Marie Anderson
When I’ve interviewed people, there’s four things that stand between them and the thing that they want to do. So, it’s fear, fear of embarrassment, rejection, failure, judgment, whatever it is. Time, money, and your inner critic. And I believe you have to deal with that first part, the fear, originally.

So, here’s what I tell people. Go fail. Like, legit, go fail. Because if you’re so afraid to fail, go do something and fail at it, and then see how you survived, and then go again and again. I tell people to seek out, if you have a real sensitivity to rejection, seek it out. I got to a point in my career where I would apply for jobs that there was no chance that I was going to get because I wanted to desensitize myself to rejection.

And every time that I was rejected for it, I would then say, “Yeah, that doesn’t hurt me personally anymore.” I’d ask some information and maybe I’d get a few nuggets out of it. It takes practice. It’s the consistency of getting yourself to realize that rejection, and people say, you want to talk about cliches, rejection is just redirection. It is. It really is. When you get rejected by something, you look for the next step as a branch off of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Seeking out rejections. Yes, I remember I’ve had the experience when I wrote my first book. This is old school and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I heard you should send a one-page query letter to these publishing houses. So, I did just that. I sent over 100 of these. And it was a very steady situation, going to the mailbox, old school, getting pieces of paper day after day after day after day that said, “No, no, no, no, no.”

I found it actually very helpful for this very notion because, one, it wasn’t super high stakes because I thought, “Okay, I’ll just self-publish, so I’ve got options, you know, whatever. But it’d be kind of cool if I had a legit publisher behind me.” And, two, just to have it kind of appearing in my mailbox such that I could open them when I was ready on any given day.

It’s like, “You know what? Not today. I’m going to read these rejection letters tomorrow.” And then it’s like, “Okay. And I have a nice little pile. How much dosage do I want? You know what? I can handle all seven of these. Let’s open all seven.”

Anne Marie Anderson
That’s awesome, I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, it’s pretty handy. So, now, if we’re not sending letters to a bunch of people, what are your top tips for us to do some seeking out of the rejections?

Anne Marie Anderson
Well, I love that you said not particularly high stakes. I’m not asking anybody, I’m not encouraging anybody, by any means, to go quit your job and see how it goes. I’m asking for risks that are worth it versus reckless. So, as you’re starting to figure out rejections, you need to get comfortable with saying no, seeing how things turn out from there, because no is a complete sentence, right?

Like, “Can you come help with the yearbook for your kid’s school?” “No,” and then you don’t have to finish that sentence. So, I think there’s this sitting in uncomfortable no first, because we tend to over explain. And then realizing that that goes both ways. And that if you’re asking a question for somebody, asking a favor, asking if they will publish your book, asking anything, and they say no, you need to then start to get curious about it and not insulted by it.

I started to poke around in how I felt, like physically in my body, what I was thinking, what my inner critic was saying to me when I would get a rejection. Curiosity helps you so much take the emotion out of things. Some things, like if you’re sending letters to a hundred publishers, as you’re talking about, you don’t need to explore the no any further. I then congratulate you for asking and asking and asking because that’s a perfect way to desensitize yourself.

But it starts with a little action at first, maybe it’s you saying no to somebody else, seeing how that feels, and then when you get rejected, get curious. Okay, do you feel that in your heart? Do you feel that in your head? Does it mean that you’re less than? What’s your inner critic telling you about that rejection? There’s lots of ways that you can kind of dive in instead of pushing it away.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that curious piece. And we had Dr. Judson Brewer on the show, and his book Unwinding Anxiety, he had a great tip to get curious. Actually, say out loud, “Hmm.” And that kind of in your body, just kind of make some things happen with regard to shifting into a curious zone. And then I like what you’re saying there with regard to specific bodily sensations and specific inputs. So, let’s just go super deep on this.

Anne Marie Anderson
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
If, let’s say you’re noticing something, I am noticing, maybe, in my body, I’m feeling, “Oh, boy, my heart starts thumping. It’s kind of faster and heavier. I feel a heat rising and it’s particularly on my neck.” And I’m thinking things like, “Ugh, I’m such an idiot. That was so stupid. This is never going to work.” So, let’s just say, okay, we got curious, we identified some things, now what?

Anne Marie Anderson
First of all, the question I would always ask, and it’s so basic, but, like, would you tell somebody else, “That’s so stupid. It’s not going to work”? Of course, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t just say to your friend, “I’m so stupid. It was never going to work.” So, I recommend separating that voice from yourself. Because if that’s not the way you talk, then that’s not you talking to yourself that way.

The way you separate it from yourself is you give it a name. And it’s so basic, I realized, Pete, but I even learned this with my 12-year-old daughter, because I picked her up from school and I said, “How’s it going?” And she said, “I’m stupid. I can’t do math. And, oh, by the way, I’m fat.” And I was like, “Yo, that’s a lot to take in from a 12-year-old all at once.”

And so, when we unpacked that a little bit, and said, “You wouldn’t say that to somebody else. Give it a name.” I said, “What name do you want to pick?” And she said, “Jerry.” And so, I said, “Okay.” So, every time I hear her go, “Ugh, I can’t do this,” you know, I said to her, “What do you want? What would you say to Jerry if Jerry was an outside person saying it?” She goes, “I’d say, ‘Shut up, Jerry.’

And so, when I hear her get so frustrated, I’ll yell from my office or wherever, “Shut up, Jerry,” and she’ll be like, “Ugh, frustrating,” but it takes the awareness out of it that you’re being super unkind to yourself. So, that’s part one in terms of the actual inner voice. That’s not the truth. That’s not facts. That’s just a thought. And you have control of your thoughts. So, you can tell your Jerry to back off and shut up.

And then you sit with the feelings and you explore those with, “Okay, is it like when I get red or something, when I feel that flush here?” that might be embarrassment or fear of being exposed for not being really good at whatever it is I’m trying to do. Or, it might be fear of judgment because I’m worried what somebody else is going to think.

And that’s a great one to dive into because somebody else thinking it, “Are they doing what you want to do? Or are they just judging you? Or are you perceiving that they’re going to judge you?” So, kind of separating the thought first and then trying to pinpoint the emotion and where it fits specifically into what your heart rate is telling you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s walk it all the way through then, and say, “Yes, that is the thing. I am concerned that someone else is going to think I’m dumb. I’m not good. I’m bad at this. I’m an imposter.” What’d I do with that?

Anne Marie Anderson
So, if someone thinks that of you, then what happens? Like, okay, so they think that of you, what’s the next thing? I walk through this sometimes with my coaching clients where I had one that was going on television, and she was absolutely terrified. And I kept saying to her, “Okay, and then what? And then what?” as she’s about to go on the air, we’re talking. She said, “Oh, I think I might pass out.”

And I said, “Okay, so you’re laying on the ground, a microphone in your hand, you’ve passed out, and then what happens?” And she’s like, “Well, obviously, that’s not going to happen.” I’m like, “Okay, so we’ve reached the point of where we’ve gotten to massive catastrophization where it’s not reasonable that that’s going to happen.” So, in your case, okay, they think I’m bad. I’m exposed as not being good at my job in their eyes. Okay, and then what?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you know what’s so funny is I’ve done this with myself with regard to, I think I was entering into a negotiation and I had to be more assertive than normal. Because, usually, I’m super friendly, collaborative. But at this time, I was like, “You know, if push really came to shove, I’m okay completely torching this relationship to get what I want.”

And that’s almost never true of me. And I’m not going to be like evil, right? But if I have to choose between the two, it’s like, “I 100 % want the outcome over the relationship here,” which is so out of character for me. I was challenging myself, it’s like, “So, what if this guy thinks that I’m a total jerk, that he hates doing business with me, and doesn’t want to do business?”

And I thought, “I guess the worst-case scenario would be anytime he hears my name in any context, he screams at the top of his lungs, ‘I hate that F-er.’” And I was like, “You know what? I’m still okay with that.”

Anne Marie Anderson
“I can live with that.”

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m still okay with the trade here, given the stakes versus the relationship.” But because it was so new, and I am a bit of a people pleaser, it was challenging for me, and it worked out fine. We have a fine relationship and the negotiated outcome is okay.

Anne Marie Anderson
But that leads right to what we talked about, Pete, right, is that it wasn’t the outcome you wanted and you survived, originally. So, the more people get used to doing that, to saying, “Okay, this person may think I’m exposed,” and you keep going anyway, the less sensitive you become and the less vulnerable to peeling back yourself in order to please other people.

My friend, Laura Gassner-Otting, always says, “Why give a vote to anybody who shouldn’t even have a voice?” If they’re not going where you’re going, or if they haven’t been there, right, they may not get a vote. If you’re asking them for a job, sure, they can get a vote, but they’re not necessarily going to be able to have that voice in your head afterwards. They can say no, but you don’t have to believe if they say you’re horrible and you’re never going to work in this business again. That’s choice.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, and I think the “and then what” is so handy because it unmasks the, I guess, like The Wizard of Oz or The Emperor Has No Clothes. It’s like, “Okay, so you’ve imagined this horrifying scenario, it feels really bad, but the objective reality is not so heinous.” It’s like, okay, some of your opportunities might be limited because of that person’s sphere of influence. Okay, that’s kind of inconvenient, but like you’re not dead, hospitalized, bankrupt. You’re still in pretty great shape.

Anne Marie Anderson
No, catastrophization is an incredible tool. I’ll tell you this, I’m a sports broadcaster, as you mentioned, I’ve worked for ESPN and other networks for 35 years. So, my first time on live television, because I was a producer first, was in 78 million homes. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. My very first time, I was supposed to be on a little network, things got shuffled around, I was a pretty accomplished producer. So, I was petrified outside the stadium, college football opening weekend, on ESPN too.

And my then husband said, “What’s the worst that can happen?” And I was like, “Buddy, if you want to know what the worst that can happen is, let me tell you.” I was like, “I could be so bad at this job that not only will I never get asked to be on air again, but I’ll never be asked to produce again because the people I produce for will know I can’t do their job. And I could lose my entire career over this for being so bad on air.”

“And if I lose my entire television career, I will be so miserable and you will have no choice but to leave me because I won’t be able to be a good mother to our children who aren’t even born yet and I could die destitute and alone.” And he was like, “Wow.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Anne Marie, you’re a champion at this.

Anne Marie Anderson
Yeah. I say take it all the way to destitute and alone because obviously that’s not going to happen. And anything short of that becomes a success. So, catastrophize, it’s a great tool because you’ll see how just ridiculous your mind, ridiculous places your mind can take you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. So, thank you. All right. So, we went through the whole arc there associated with we got some fear, we sought out some rejection, we felt some rejection, we explored it and then we got to the other side. Cool. Any other pro tips, do’s or don’ts in that department?

Anne Marie Anderson
Do the thing that scares you the most first. So, go for the biggest job first, the biggest change. Now understand, Pete, I do want to be clear about this because sometimes the change you’re looking for, let’s say you’re in an unhealthy relationship and you need to change that, and you’ve got some fear around leaving that person. I’m not asking you to, Devil’s care, just throw it out.

There are some systems where you can build… an important part of this as your front row, the people who are going to cheer you on and challenge you and lift you up. I think it’s really important when you’re going through this facing fear that you have carefully curated what I call the front row. And that front row may not be your best friend. It may not be your mom because they want you to keep you safe.

The front row will be people that will challenge you, help you. If it’s leaving a relationship, it may be somebody who’s helping you in terms of an attorney or somebody more skilled or somebody who’s been through it. So, your front row isn’t just your buddies. It’s people who know where you’re going or have already been where you’re going.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. So, having support makes all the difference, and to be thoughtful about not just friends and family, but those who have expertise, they know the way and care about your flourishing as opposed to just your safety. But you’ve great point about parents. Sometimes that’s how that goes.

Anne Marie Anderson
Right. And tell them, tell them they’re in your front row. We use that phrase. And it’s basically where you’ll be, “Here’s a thing I want to do. And I’m a little bit scared of it. And I’m worried that I don’t have whatever, the qualifications, the funds, the time, whatever it is. And I’m wondering if you would take a seat in my front row to help me get from here to there.”

And sometimes that’s a shoulder to cry on. It can be anything, but when you make people aware that you have selected them to be in your front row, they then play a more active role in your search for the next big thing.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like the visual as well because it’s fun and it’s not a super high level of commitment in terms of forever or, it’s like, “Will you be my mentors?” Like, “Okay, what are we talking about here? This sounds maybe big.” But front row is like, “Okay, you’re a person who’s providing some level of support over the course of this particular mission, quest, journey, transition. And then that’s fun.

I mean, in terms of you get to bask in the glory as a front row attendee, even if all you did was make an introduction. And then it’s like, “Hey, I got to be part of that. And by being invited into the front row, I feel like I had even more of a role. It’s like it’s elevated what I did beyond the 20 minutes of effort that I did it, you know?”

Anne Marie Anderson
Yep, yep. And it’s a witness too. It’s a witness. If things don’t work out the way that you want, here’s your friend in your front row, your colleague, somebody who’s, maybe you don’t even know them personally, maybe it’s an author and you’re trying to write a book and this person is helping you out, but you’ve got somebody to help you with perspective. And I think that’s a critical component of the front row. And it’s an honorary place.

And by the way, don’t be afraid to pull somebody out of your front row if you discover that they have a jealousy, competition, those kinds of things. I love that you said, like, it’s not a lifetime appointment, the front row. It can be ever changing and you can use it. I have a fitness front row and if I don’t show up at the gym, my phone starts blowing up, “Hey, where are you?” I’ve got a television front row, a personal relationship front row. There’s some overlap, but there’s some people that are just in one category.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s super. And you recommend just actually using that language and telling them what you mean by it?

Anne Marie Anderson
I do. I do because it creates an awareness and an intention, and kind of what you were alluding to. It’s a place of pride for them that they might take it a little more seriously their role in supporting you because they’ve been offered a job. How are they supposed to know otherwise? So, when you tell them, “Hey, I’m going to do this. I’m worried about it. So, I need your support and that would mean a lot to me.” Great things happen in those kinds of groups.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we talked about four things getting in the way: fear, time, money, inner critic. And it sounds like fear and inner critic have a lot of overlap. Is there any distinction you would suggest or anything special we should do about the inner critic that’s different than what we’re doing for fear?

Anne Marie Anderson
Well, naming it really is the big thing, as we talked about, and that connects with your fear. And then some people will talk to your inner critic and they’ll say, like, “I get it. You’re always going to be there.” You know, I think it was Glennon Doyle who wrote in her book, like it’s “A passenger in the car, but you’re absolutely not allowed to drive. You’re not allowed to play with the radio, but it’s fine. I acknowledge that you’re going to come along.”

I think so much of what we do is try to push it away, and I say, “Well, what if you let that in? What if you let your inner critic really talk to you so that you can become aware of it, and be like, ‘Yeah, no, that’s not helpful’?” Some people have a mantra. One of my friends, who is a keynote speaker, is still very nervous.

And so, she created, she always looks at the joint between the ceiling and the wall, the back wall of the room, and she will repeat to herself a mantra to push her inner critic out by saying “Where the floor hits the ceiling is a wonderful feeling.” That’s my friend, Missy West, uses that. Creating something to shake you out of spiraling with your inner critic, whether it’s a name, a mantra, because you can only have one thought in your mind at a time. So, that’s helpful to push your inner critic out of your head at that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And does the inner critic have some value? Like, I think of the inner critic sometimes as like the part of you that wants to keep you stuck but in a of a safe sort of a way. Is it just the utter destructiveness that needs to be abolished? Or is there a means of engaging in conversation with the inner critic to surface the goodness while leaving out the badness?

Anne Marie Anderson
Perfection, Pete. Like, you totally get it. Think of it like this. Your ego or your id comes up with this crazy idea, like, “We should do this. That would be amazing.” And your super ego, in this case, I’d call that the inner critic, saying, “That’s too dangerous. That’s too scary. That’s too risky,” whatever it is, and your ego is trying to find a way to get you there safely. So, that’s why I say the curiosity about what the inner critic is saying because maybe there’s a nugget of truth in there.

Maybe it’s raising some questions about safety, not about “You suck,” but about safety and things where you can go back and examine it. Okay, your inner critic is saying, “You don’t have the money to be able to do this crazy thing.” Okay, that’s when you have that conversation with your inner critic, “Tell me more about that. I don’t have the money there. Okay, well, how can I get to a place where I have the money? Well, do I really need that much money to take step one?”

Maybe you do, but that’s where I think your inner critic can help you, but your inner critic is never the one that makes the decision. Never. They can raise questions for you, but they are never the one who’s going to say, or you should allow to say, “You suck. This is not for you. Don’t do it.” They’re just somebody to raise questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. They provide input. They’re advisor, not the decider. Lovely. Thank you. Well, can you tell us a cool story about someone who internalized some of these principles, concepts, and then cultivated tremendous audacity, where before they had little, and great things happened?

Anne Marie Anderson
What comes to my mind first was a friend of mine who wanted to get his real estate license. He was working in a store and not doing very well and not happy and he has two kids. So, he wanted to create more income, wanted his real estate license, but wasn’t taking the test. And I finally said, like, “What’s the issue?” And he said, “I can’t find enough time to study for the test, and so I’m afraid I’m going to fail it.”

And I said, “Okay, a test is $60. There’s no limit on how many times you can take it.” So, I told him to go take the test and fail it. And he’s like, “On purpose?” And I said, “Well, not on purpose, but you’ve told me you’re not going to pass. So, let’s get the fear of failing the test out of the way.” Spent $60, he went, he failed the test.

“Okay, next thing, let’s talk about time.” We have a tendency to prioritize things that are urgent over what’s important, because your whole day is urgent, constantly, every email, every text, every phone call, you got to take care of the kids and make food and do all the other things, and carving out time that’s important. So, with my help, he and his wife sat down and said, “Where can I get an hour a day without leaving you hanging with the young kids?” He has two young kids.

And so, they decided a half hour in the morning, she was going to handle breakfast and all that. And then a half hour in the evening, he would help get the kids to the bath, and then he would lock himself away for a half hour. She’d take on the bath and he would be out for book and bed. And once they had that rhythm where they worked to the problem, there’s the two problems, right, fear that you’re going to fail, so he did that. Okay, survived.

Then no time to study, did that, took the test again, failed again, but that time it didn’t crush him because he had a system and was like, “Okay, I just need to keep going with our plan and studying.” He ended up absolutely passing that, quit the other job and is doing extremely well financially now because he took the leap, he had his front row set, his wife was in his front row saying, “I got you during this. I can create some space for you.” And he faced his fear and addressed his time concerns.

Pete Mockaitis
But my favorite part of this story is that, as you’re crafting this plan, it’s like, “Okay, so step one, step two, step three. Step one, go fail.”

Anne Marie Anderson
Yeah. Right? But do!

Pete Mockaitis
Like, that’s in the design of the blueprint that you’re using. And I think that is a liberating idea that could be great for many plans we might make for ourselves, “All right, step one, go fail at it. All right, now that’s over, what’s step two?”

Anne Marie Anderson
Yeah, you’ve survived it. Because I think a lot of people see failure as like the end, like a period at the end of the sentence. It’s a comma, I promise you. Rejection, it’s a comma and it moves you on. So, if that’s what’s paralyzing you, go fail first, survive it and then get to work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, Anne Marie, anything else you want to make sure to really mention or cover any top do’s or don’ts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Anne Marie Anderson
I would encourage people to look at the urgency fallacy. That’s one other component that I think a lot of people get stuck we hide between, and I’m guilty of this too. If I have something big to do that I don’t want to do or even like expense reports that I don’t want to do, I’ll have the cleanest house in the world because I don’t want to do that thing, and so I will do anything else to avoid it.

And so, the urgency fallacy is when you take a break on what’s urgent, because anything urgent can wait 15 minutes, I promise you. Not an emergency, your kid’s not bleeding on the floor, but something that people think are urgent, returning an email, and work towards what’s important. And if that’s you starting a business, that’s you sending some notes right at that moment. If that is you looking at your finances and deciding where you can make some trims, that’s that moment.

I encourage people four times a day, carve out 15-minute blocks, unless you’ve got an hour a day, but most people don’t have one straight hour a day where everything goes off. And, you know, I tell you what, my kids, Pete, when they said like, “I’m hungry,” I would go, “Same.” I got teenagers, they can make their own food. They get really frustrated when they hear me say, “Yeah, same buddy, I’m hungry. Anyway, I’m going in to do what’s important now for 15 minutes.”

So, I think that’s a really important component. Stop putting everything and everyone else first if going to do the thing, whatever audacious, is going to make your life better, your family’s life better, prioritize important.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Anne Marie, I love that so much. Because we’ve heard Eisenhower matrix, Stephen Covey, you know, urgent-importance, two-by-two matrix, yada, yada. But what you’re bringing to this, which I find very intriguing is, one, urgency kind of has a grip on us. And what you’re suggesting is to proactively break its command by doing these 15-minute bits, which is great because, one, we may have some resistance, especially with important things, because important things can feel hard. They often are.

Anne Marie Anderson
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s why they’re not already done is because they’re hard, but have high value. And so, it could feel like you don’t have the mental space. It’s like, “I want to really make sure I tackle that when I have a whole afternoon available.” And you say, “No, no, no, that may never happen. And you’re going to remain in the grips of urgency if you play that game.” So, to make it a habit of “I’m taking these 15 minutes.”

And, in a way, it’s so defiant in terms of, like, the inner personal power that that’s generating for you with regard to, “Yes, I see that urgency. I’m feeling the tug of it. And I’m now conscientiously turning away from it to do this other thing. And my children will whine about being hungry for 15 minutes, and they’re okay. And I am better off, well, actually we’re all better off for having put that 15 minutes in there.”

Anne Marie Anderson
Yeah, the big difference is in people identifying what’s really urgent and what’s important. Things that are urgent have an impending deadline. They can usually be accomplished pretty quickly and without a lot of deep thought. If you’re answering an email really quickly or a text or making dinner, whatever it is, that qualifies as urgent in my book. Things that are important don’t necessarily have an impending deadline, exactly as you said, like, “When I have a whole afternoon, then I’ll do it.”

But there are consequences if you don’t get it done, meaning you won’t move closer to your values and vision and who you want to be. So, they do take more effort, more thought, but they move you closer to where you want to be. And the 15 minutes, people can do it however they want.

I’ve had some people who like to do 20-minute blocks. The real estate agent I told you about, he did two half-hour blocks, but they’re intentional blocks. And I think intentional is exactly the right word that separates just living your life and living it with this prioritization.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you found inspiring?

Anne Marie Anderson
My mother has always said, “This, too, shall pass,” and it made me nuts in my entire life. But what I realized is not just the discomfort will pass or the failure or the bad situation, but the good times too. They’ll pass, the great calm. And then there’ll be another storm that comes up.

And so, when I’m in a really good space, I remind myself, “Just enjoy this. Don’t be thinking so far ahead. We don’t know what that looks like.” And eventually there’ll be more problems that come up. So, enjoy the space you’re in. If you’re in an uncomfortable space, know that it will pass again. I live near the ocean. I just think of the waves coming.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Anne Marie Anderson
I like the studies about men traditionally applying for jobs when they have less credentials than a woman will apply. Women liking to wait until they’ve got all the credentials. And people think, “Oh, it’s women breaking the glass ceiling.” It’s really about a sticky floor. And as women, we need to jump earlier and risk earlier.

If a man applies for a job at 50 % and doesn’t get it, he’s got some information and some data. If he goes back at 65 and doesn’t get it again, now he’s been in front of that person hiring twice. And if he goes back at 85% and the female goes at 85%, well, he’s got a leg up because they’ve watched him add to his skillset and grow. And so, I like those studies because I think we can reverse those numbers with a little bit of audacity.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Anne Marie Anderson
Right now, I’m going to say Good Awkward by Henna Pryor.

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

Anne Marie Anderson
I have a large, it’s not on my desk right now, a large one-hour time. What do we call that thing? It’s escaping me.

Pete Mockaitis
Hourglass?

Anne Marie Anderson
Yes, an hourglass. Thank you. Not a hard word, but, anyway. And I put, sorry, it’s 30 minutes. And I turn that over on my desk to remind myself. I like to work, just in general, in 30-minute blocks and then I’ll get up for five minutes, move around, do something in the kitchen and then sit down and turn it back over again. It helps me feel like it’s not going to be endless, an endless day for me if I know that every 30 minutes I get to get up for five.

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

Anne Marie Anderson
Yeah, the front row. People really attach to that front row concept and it works. It works. And I had somebody who heard me at a talk and she approached me afterwards, and said, “You know, I want to be…” it was an educational keynote. And she said, “I really want to be an assistant principal. I have been a teacher for 28 years.” And then she casually mentioned her principal was there. And I said, “Well, did you tell him what you want?” She said, “No, but I will.” And I was like, “Yeah, today’s the day. Unfortunately, you have me right here. So, today’s the day.”

And after much cajoling, she went up to him and said, “Here’s something I’d like to do. Will you be in my front row?” And he had heard my talk, so he knew the verbiage. And six weeks later, I got a note from her, I swear to you, and she said, “I start my new job tomorrow as assistant principal at this school. Thanks so much.” And so, the front row works.

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

Anne Marie Anderson
To my website, AnneMarieAnderson.com. And, of course, I’m on social as well. You can find me at CultivatingAudacity.com, or Anne Marie Anderson TV.

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

Anne Marie Anderson
If you want to be awesome at your job, ask yourself what you can do that nobody is asking you to do. How can you be a better teammate to your co-workers and not shining the light on yourself? Teams make the world go around. So, you want to be awesome at your job? Elevate your co-workers, help them shine, take something off their plate.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Anne Marie, this is fun. Thank you. I wish you much audacity.

Anne Marie Anderson
Thank you very much. I wish you a lot of audacity too, Pete. Thanks for having me on.

Dec 05
0

1016: Untangling Identity from Your Work to Rediscover Yourself with Dr. Janna Koretz

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Dr. Janna Koretz reveals the pitfalls of letting your job become your identity and what to do about it.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why career enmeshment harms mental health
  2. The power of protected thinking time
  3. The root cause of workaholism–and how to cure it

About Janna 

Dr. Janna Koretz is the founder of Azimuth, a therapy practice specializing in the mental health challenges of individuals in high-pressure careers. She has spent over a decade helping her clients face and overcome their mental health issues by developing a unique understanding of industry-specific nuances in fields like law, consulting, finance, and technology. 

Dr. Koretz has been featured in many publications, including Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal, focusing on the importance of recognizing career/identity enmeshment. She also writes and speaks on the challenges of discovering and living your personal values. 

In addition to therapy, Azimuth provides a set of free online tools that have helped tens of thousands of people, including the Burnout Calculator, Career Enmeshment Test, and Values Navigator. The practice is also developing a values-based journaling iOS app, set to launch later this year, based on the popularity of its Values Navigator tool.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Dr. Janna Koretz Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dr. Koretz, welcome.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Thank you. So happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be discussing these very important matters. And I’d love it if you could kick us off with a particularly surprising or novel discovery you’ve made about us folks and high-pressure careers and mental health things. What’s something you know that many of us don’t?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Wow, there’s so many to choose from. Well, I think a lot of people on a smaller level don’t realize how capable they are, and how resilient they are, and how much they’re doing despite all of the struggles that they have. I think people really feel the loss. They feel the pain of their emotional burdens. They feel the stress of work. They feel the burnout, but they don’t see it in the background, like, the rest of it, and all the things that they’re doing despite that. They’re only feeling sort of the loss. I think that’s also really important to keep in mind for everybody, is there’s so much and so many strengths and so much to be to be offered.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, how capable are we?

Dr. Janna Koretz
You guys are so capable. I mean, it’s unbelievable, really, and I mean, I think a lot of people who are in high-pressure careers are high achievers and they sort of assume that everyone can do what they’re doing and everyone is doing it better, and they need to strive to be better and the best, and give more but they don’t see how much they’ve already done.

Most people can’t do, with the clients that we see, most people can’t do a lot of that. It takes a lot, a lot of mental effort, a lot of smarts, a lot of emotional energy. So, you’re very capable, from what we see. Most capable.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny, what you’re saying sounds very true, and it also sounds very easy to dismiss and to shoo away, and instead of allowing to truly sink in and allow the good mental health vibes that it can deliver to us be delivered. Is that fair to say? How do people respond when you share this truth with them?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Oh, absolutely, that’s true. It’s so dismissed. It can be so easily dismissed, partly because people, A, are not used to receiving compliments, because the way in which our culture works now is we’re always looking for what’s wrong, and no one’s saying, “Great job,” or things like that, especially in the workplace, especially in a fast-paced workplace, so I think that’s part of it.

And I think that people often feel awkward about that because it’s so dissonant to what they believe that they kind of brush it off because it just doesn’t really serve them in the moment, when, really, it serves them in the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if we do want to sort of brush that aside, like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, sure. You know, yeah, I guess I got some good grades, and I got some lucky breaks, and, yeah, I guess it worked out, so, okay. I’m here. And, yeah, okay, fair enough. I guess maybe, statistically, you know, the majority of people couldn’t. exactly pull off what I’ve pulled off, so fair enough. But, I mean, you know what, there’s millions of people just like me, so like, is it really that special?”

Dr. Janna Koretz
Are you really that special? Interesting question. Well, think about it this way, so it’s not really about being special. It’s about having a great capability and applying that in a way that’s useful to you. And so, a lot of people have kind of gone through life and checked all the boxes, that whatever they’re supposed to do, the expectations they were supposed to meet, they’re kind of on this treadmill and they’re not necessarily thinking about it, but that’s a lot of effort and a lot of work.

And so, if you find yourself in a place where you’re burnt out, yes, you need to get away from the burnout to have access to those resources, but these people are very capable. You’re a very capable person. If you use that energy and direct it towards what’s helpful to you and figure out what that is, then that’s the dream, right?

And I had a client once who was like, “You know, my boyfriend says it’s kind of, like, people who do, like, these complicated scams, right? It’s like these really complicated scams, and if only they could apply that to curing cancer, wouldn’t that be cool?” You know, like that’s so much effort and it’s smart in some ways, right?” They’re getting around all these things, they’re using AI, I mean, just not for good, but if you could harness that and apply it somewhere else, that would be pretty great.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, when you say the power, you mean our own capability to dream, to imagine, to figure out, to come to believe things, is that what you mean by the capabilities and the scams?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I mean, partly. I mean, certainly the internal piece, but also just the work, the actual energy, and the mental effort, and the multitasking that people do on a daily basis, I mean, just the inside and the output too, is a lot, and it could be directed in a lot of different ways.

Pete Mockaitis
I suppose what I’m really driving at is, if it is a master key to understand and believe that we have vast capabilities, and it feels like it is, is that your assertion as well?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think it’s an important thing to acknowledge for a lot of reasons, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if that’s one key factor, but we’re quick to brush it off and to not allow it to sink in and enrich us, do you have any pro tips on how we can get there? Because what I’m thinking about is, if I truly believe, in deep down in my heart of hearts, that I have vast stores of capability, not that I’m sort of omniscient or the most brilliant person who ever lived, but vast stores of capability, then it would seem like it would naturally follow that a sense of peace could emerge, and think, “Hey, you know what, wow, yeah, there’s a lot of challenges out there, but they are ultimately figure-out-able because I’m pretty good at figuring things out and handling the things that life throws my way.”

So, that seems to me very, very powerful to have that as an interior, internal mental health asset. But if we shoo it away, we don’t have it, and that’s sad. How can we get it?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, the first question I always ask is, “Why? Why can’t you access that? Why don’t you believe that? What is hard about that?” And that’s the whole, you know, we do spend a lot of time in therapy doing that, so that’s not a simple question.

But also, I mean, a lot of people’s inability to  appreciate, and believe in themselves and their capabilities is because they don’t have a grounded sense of who they are, and they don’t have a grounded sense of their identity anymore, or their identity is like wrapped up in one thing, work, motherhood, something like that, and people lose themselves so that they don’t feel steady in saying, “Yeah, I do have these abilities and capabilities because I just don’t feel like I do those things anymore. Or I just do them ad nauseam so it just feels like everybody has them.” So, I think a lot of it has to do with really finding your identity again and really knowing who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
Working with a lot of folks in high-pressure careers, what are some of the themes or patterns you see over and over and over again with regard to their mental health that we should be clued into and aware of?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, I think career enmeshment for our people is huge, which is just their whole identity is wrapped up in their career. And so, inevitably, when something happens at work, like they don’t miss a promotion, their company gets acquired, they get laid off and things like that, they don’t have any part of themselves to fall back on, and you’re made very uncomfortable by that because it brings up a lot of existential questions, like, “Who am I? What was the point of that? What am I even doing here?” And people can get really upset about that and kind of fall into more of an anxiety, have a lot of anxiety, depression, start using substances and things like that. That’s a really big one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, our identity is wrapped up in our career. I’m reminded of a couple of things here. One is, personally, I remember once, I, in fact, got a mediocre review, mediocre-to-bad, at work, and I was so surprised and stunned and puzzled. And I remember, I actually said out loud “This doesn’t feel like who I am.” And I later reflected, I was like, “What an interesting reaction because, of course, it’s not who I am! It was one review.”

Dr. Janna Koretz
That’s what I mean, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
One review. But there it is, and then I’m also thinking about, I think it was Ronda Rousey, the fighter, was interviewed, and she was very emotional and powerful. She was crying because she lost a huge match or championship, and she said something like, “If I’m not a champion then who am I?” And I was like, “Oh, man, Ronda, I think I’m picking up what you’re putting down there from that experience I had previously.” So, that’s kind of what it sounds like what career enmeshment might look, sound, feel like, these kinds of reactions to normal career hiccups and setbacks that happen to us all.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yeah, I mean, she said it perfectly. And I think it can apply to other things, too. Like, one metaphor we use a lot, is, for parents, in general, but there’s a lot of talk about motherhood and loss of identity because you’re all consumed into this one thing. And that can be applied, being enmeshed in anything or with anyone is totally possible.

So, it happens a lot in the workplace, and we see it a lot too with our clients who used to be athletes and they spent a really long time, like all of their time really perfecting their craft, getting really good, maybe they’ve made it, you know, they’re doing Olympic trials, they’re doing all sorts of stuff, and then they get injured. And then what, right? Sounds of like Ronda was saying, “Then what? What do I have? Who am I?”

And what we see a lot, too, is because people have spent coming up so much time with that from an early age, sports is a great example, but it could be anything. You spend a lot of time through your childhood playing, I always use soccer as an example, but it could be anything, that you’re missing out on critical developmental periods where you’re supposed to be doing other things, like learning social skills with friends, like the nuances of social skills, or taking small risks to learn about your independence and confidence, learning how to make choices, things like that.

And so, because you’re siloed into this one thing in a very sort of constructed environment with rules, and so within that context, people can get creative and learn those things but the world is a much bigger place. So, then you find yourself in a place where you don’t have that anymore, and you don’t feel prepared or equipped to navigate what’s in front of you because you haven’t had the practice that a lot of people have had to figure that out. And that sort of adds on to the burden of, like, “Who am I? What am I doing?” because it makes people flounder a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, if some folks are nodding their heads, like, “Oh, my gosh, yes, that’s me,” what do we do about it?

Dr. Janna Koretz
What a big question. I love coming on podcasts because people ask these big questions and they’re so complicated, but we start out a lot of times working with doing values-based work, like what is actually important to you, because, oftentimes, we don’t live in a culture that promotes that. I mean, certainly, when I grew up nobody asked me what was important to me. I was just expected by my family and the culture that I was in to do certain things and be certain ways and achieve certain stuff. And I did it because I didn’t think much about it.

And then as I got older and life happens to you and stuff, whatever, you just get wiser with age, I started to realize that what I was doing wasn’t actually what would make me happy. And what does make me happy? And it took me a long time to figure that out, and that’s what we do a lot with our clients, “What is it that makes you happy? How far are you from that? And how do you start to incrementally get to that place or add that into your life?”

Because, I mean, most people, right, can’t just quit their job, or they can’t just move to wherever. I think there’s this idea of, you know, one of the exercises we do is, without any constraints, what would your life look like? And people have, like, things that are very far often from what they are, where they are, and they think they just have to go to that place, but, really, that’s not reality. Reality is still important, too.

But we can slowly start to figure out how to turn in that direction, how to enter into that lane, and if we can get there, great, but what if we could get 70% there? That’s still much better than 0%. So, it’s kind of, like, working in that gray area. But I think values-based work is the crux of so many things.

Pete Mockaitis
That makes sense. When you say values work, I’m thinking we had Dr. Steven Hayes on the show.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yes. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And, in his book, the phrase “values work” comes up many a time. So, when you say values-based work or values work, what does that mean and how does one do it?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, I have to give a plug for him because he is the nicest person of all time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my gosh, yes.

Dr. Janna Koretz
And his work is incredible, and what he spent his life doing is incredible for all of the ACT workbooks and the books that come with that. I mean, it’s really changed the face of therapy, and he is just a delightful person. So, we talk about him a lot and I do send people to some of his literature and his workbooks because they’re so accessible and they’re so true, of sitting down and doing those exercises. I mean, that would be a more formal way of how we would start that.

You can just put some of the sort of self-reflecting questions we can talk about, like the ones I just talked about, “What would your life look like without this? Who do I admire? Why do I admire them? What about that makes me want to be that way?” There are a lot of like sorts of questions you can ask yourself that start to help people think about things in that way, or you can do more formalized values-based work through ACT, which I recommend to people all the time. I love it. I think it’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those are great questions. And can you lay a few more of those on us?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Okay, let’s see. What do you admire? What would you do if someone gave you $40 million? How would you spend it?

Pete Mockaitis
I love the specific figure there.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, it has to be so big that, whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not billions. It’s not one million. It’s ample. It’s not yacht money, but, well, it could be, I guess. But it’s like retirement plus, plus, money.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Right. Right. Because, like, billions, it’s like then you’re going to space and that’s not the sphere that we’re talking about. We’re going to bring it down a little bit, but there can’t be any restraint. So, that’s one we do a lot. I also like to talk about, like, “Who are your favorite people to spend time with?” And another one we talk a lot about is “If you could spend more time with your family, why or why would you not do that?” And so, those are some other questions to kind of start thinking about “What is important? And what do I value? And how do I want to go about that, like incorporating that into my life?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And we’ve had some guests who talk a little bit about values as sort of a thing almost to be discovered and codified, like joy and discovery. And so, that’s one way we could think about values. Or do you have a recommendation on a codification or documentation or ratification or a writing it down official thing associated with the outcome of this values exploration?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I love that you asked that because it’s so relevant to a project that I’ve been working on. So, on our website, we sort of changed Shalom Schwartz’s values navigator a little bit to fit our clientele a little bit more, but his work is really great, and that kind of goes through, it’s just a little quiz. It’s actually one of the most popular pages on our website. People, thousands of people do it a day, so I think, I think there is something in there that people really feel connected to, and that kind of puts you into some categories.

And what we are doing actually is we are coming, it’s all beta, public beta should be out in a couple of weeks, but private beta is being sorted now. It’s a values-based journaling app called Clearly, and that is a way in which we have people, like, journal and see how in line they are with their values. And we also are incorporating prompts from various people, like myself or other experts in various industries, to kind of help people prompt them to write more about how that works and what it’s going to look like, and, “Are they living in alignment? Why are we not?” So, it’s going to be pretty neat.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. So, there are some assessments to be taken, and that’s handy. Thank you. And some journaling, and all of these is sort of, let’s see, how do I say this? Is there an end point, or is it continuous? And how do we know we’re starting to reap the benefits or rewards of the values work?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think you know when you know because you feel grounded and you feel happy. And I think that’s another thing to think about, too, and part of this conversation is “What is happiness? What does that look like? What is the expectation of happiness look like?” Because it’s not eradicating negativity or negative feelings or anything like that, or negative events. I mean, that’s impossible.

But it’s how to manage that in a way that brings the most joy to your life and living well with all these other things that are happening to you, or with you, or things like that. So, that’s what I would say about that, I guess. Does that answer the question?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a great perspective. Happiness is not eradicating all unpleasant experience. And, boy, if you make that your goal, it’s going to be a bummer.

Dr. Janna Koretz
It’s way more attainable. It’s way more attainable to know that you can’t figure out how to live, like, most of the time, pretty well with all this heavy stuff around you because that’s just what being an adult is. I’ve come to learn myself, you know, that’s just what it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, maybe, could you share with us, perhaps, a story or two of transformation, so we can get a picture of, “Okay, I’m experiencing a career enmeshment, I have not yet done the values work, and then I do the values work, and this is what it looked like, and this is what I discovered and how I live differently”? And then what’s the sort of the happy, the before-after profiles?

Dr. Janna Koretz
So, I mean, I think running a business and being a psychologist lays the groundwork for being enmeshed in your career and kind of being on a treadmill that you know why you’re there, but it’s so easy to get caught in the weeds, like anything else that you’re intensely into. And doing what is needed to complete tasks and to achieve whatever the goal is, you have to check off some boxes, you have to jump through hoops, you have to do all these things, right, and you do become secondary.

What you want becomes secondary because you’re working on these projects that are bigger than you are. Or for a business, right, it’s like now other people rely on you to pay for stuff and support their family, right? It’s, like, that’s a really big responsibility. And, over time, even though I knew that’s what I loved, I love all of that, I love to help people, I love to run the business, I love all of that, I felt so negative to me.

I think probably, like, eight years in, I was just feeling maybe a little burnt out, but just like the joy of it had sort of passed by, and I just really wasn’t sure. It was a little confusing, to be honest. And it’s funny because we do all this work with other people, but all therapists have their own therapist because you cannot do the work by yourself. It’s impossible.

And so, through my own therapy, kind of figuring out that the things that it wasn’t that I didn’t like what I was doing anymore, it’s just that I didn’t have the other things that I was missing from previous parts of my life. So, it’s not that I didn’t want to be a psychologist anymore, I didn’t like running the business because I did. It’s just I couldn’t only do that and be a happy person. That’s just for me, that was not something that went together.

So, then, figuring out what it is that you can realistically add back in is tricky because, at the, time I had a full caseload of clients and I was running a business. Like, when exactly was I supposed to strap on my shoes and go for a run, things like that? But time can be made, and this is a strategy I tell people to do all the time, is I kind of went back to people that I had known for a long time ago and just reconnected with them.

I didn’t necessarily tell them about what was going on with me or anything, but I remember, at the time, telling my husband, “I used to be funny. I used to be a really funny person. Who remembers me when I was funny?” And kind of going back in time, and those people you’ve known from before remember those parts of you vividly, and they kind of bring that out for you, and so then you can start to remember, “Oh yeah, this does feel like me. This is kind of where I’m at.”

And it took a long time in doing that and feeling uncomfortable because I was leaving unanswered emails on my computer at 6:45 at night so I could go to the gym or something occasionally or something like that. I feel like I built out, by doing more, like, a more diverse activities and having more things in my life, I actually enjoyed all of my life more, and I really got back into the flow of the business and feeling really good about it, and things like that.

So, that’s not like a dramatic transformation in that I didn’t go from being like a sailor to running McKinsey or something like that. But I think this is the kind of transformation our clients experiences. They’re not necessarily going to quit their job and go to the Bahamas and start an ice cream shop. That’s not really even the point.

But it’s to realize what you’re missing and become whole again as a person and with your identity, and that’s what brings people joy, is like feeling good about incorporating those different pieces in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, could you share a little bit of some of the questions or exercises or things you did that unearthed some of these insights, like, “Hey, I used to be funny. What happened to that?” or, “Oh, shucks, I’m not exercising nearly enough as to feel great”?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think part of what I learned, too, about myself, and I think this is true for our clients also, is there’s not really a time to sit and think, period. Like, just end stop, right? It’s like, we’re kind of always driving, we’re doing laundry, we’re just doing too many things at once. And I always found that when I just did “nothing,” and was thinking, that’s actually when my best ideas would come about work or other things in my life.

But it just feels really silly to do it because you’re basically just staring into space. It doesn’t feel like it’s something that you’re allowed to do. So, yeah, I mean, honestly, right? So, I was prescribed by my own therapist to sit around and just stare into space and think about stuff, and that’s what I did. And it was so uncomfortable in the moment. Like, I hated it so much because, first, all I could do, it’s like when people start to learn to meditate, right? So, all they can think about is their laundry list of things that they’re not doing.

But over time, I got pretty good at thinking, just thinking, and using that time to figure out those bigger questions and asking myself, “Oh, I thought about that. I wonder why that happened.” I kind of had my own stream of consciousness that kind of led me there. So, I think protected thinking time is super important. It’s not like a shiny piece of advice but it’s a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think it’s actually fairly shiny, if I may be so bold. I’ve heard a thousand-ish guests share many nuggets. And what I love about that is it’s the distinction you drew between the thinking we’re doing, it’s even better than thinking while driving and thinking while doing the laundry. It’s completely uninterrupted.

And that’s rather, well, it sounds delightful to me, because a lot of times I think, I read these studies on, “Oh, meditation is so beneficial. I should do the meditation.” It’s like, “Okay, I guess I’ll do that because I’m supposed to because of all the rewards and the optimal benefits versus costs dah, dah, dah, dah.” And sometimes it just really hits the spot and it’s great.

But other times, it’s like, “Well, no. What I really want to do is think about anything and everything and wherever,” and, in a way, it’s like there’s a little bit of a stressor in that there’s always something happening, even if it’s low level, like taking a shower or driving. There’s always sort of something occurring.

And so, having protected thinking time is a fundamentally different practice than a mindfulness meditation, return to the breath, but it is restored. I guess there’s like a Venn diagram overlap. It has some restorative goodness the way that does, and yet it’s a distinct activity.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yes, I would agree with that. And even now I try to do that. I go into Boston, into the office, at least once a week, which is a little bit far from where I live. And I do take the train now because the walk from the train station to my office is about a half hour, and I feel bad. My dog is the therapy dog for our office and I often bring her to the office, but there are days where I don’t, and my husband’s always like, “What? Just bring the dog. Like, she’s just there. She’s a great companion.”

I’m like, “I can’t have to think about anything else during that time, or anybody else. Like, she’s going to stop, and people are going to pet her, she’s going to go to the bathroom, all this. I don’t want to listen to a podcast. I just want to be sort of, like, by myself and not have to answer to anybody, sort of.” And I love the dog and I bring her all the time but there are just some days where I feel like I know that I need that protected time, and so I don’t bring her, which makes her a little sad, which then makes me a little sad, so then we don’t do it that often but that’s how I kind of do that because anything feels like a huge interruption to me during that time now.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, for you, personally, how long are these sessions here?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, that walk is a half hour, there and back, so that’s an hour in one day, but then I won’t do it for a couple of weeks. So, Thursday or Friday is a crazy day, and then I can find some time on Saturday. So, I kind of fit it in where I can, and there are just some days where I know that it’s going to be stressful to try to find that time so I don’t do it on those days necessarily. But probably every other day, every three days, for at least like cumulatively, maybe an hour.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I’m also thinking about, is it Bill Gates, famously, just had his think weeks, where, I don’t know if it’s annually or so, he just disappears with a bunch of books and Diet Cokes into a cabin somewhere.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yeah, he’s got like a house on an island, doesn’t he?

Pete Mockaitis
And then he’s just thinking. And so, that seemed to work out pretty well for him, and it’s working out pretty well for you. So, tell us, what sorts of, it sounds like you don’t even have an agenda by design?

Dr. Janna Koretz
No, no agenda. Can’t have an agenda.

Pete Mockaitis
No questions to be thought of. Just rolling.

Dr. Janna Koretz
I mean, every so often, like, I will think about one thing and use that time to do that, but mostly it’s just wherever the wind blows, that’s where we go. And it’s always very helpful, like I always get something out of it at the end.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have like a notebook with you?

Dr. Janna Koretz
No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Sometimes I’ll write down the idea. Well, that’s the thing, too. I mean, not everyone operates the same. Some people might have like a recorder or like record stuff on their phone or they might take notes after or have a journal while they’re doing it. Occasionally, I’ll write something down if it’s really important, and, I don’t know, I feel like I have to write it down, but most of the time I remember those things because they kind of come to me in this aha moment, and I just don’t forget them.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I also love about that is, sometimes, I think and then I’m so excited by the thing I thought about I want to go immediately explore it, it’s like, “Ooh, let’s go see if that already exists, if that’s available, and if I could go buy it or whatever.” It’s like, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll just write that down and continue the thinking.”

Dr. Janna Koretz
Or, if you’re excited by it, then I usually write it down because, inevitably, my time is up or I’ve gotten to the office and I have other things to do. But, yeah, I mean, it’s good to come back to that stuff too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so this is fun. Thank you for indulging me with that deep dive. Let’s hear a little bit about stress in the midst of high-pressure careers. What are your top pro tips, do’s and don’ts to deal with that?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, my advice is never, I guess shiny is a good word, but I think people always want like this really great advice they never heard of before. And I have a little bit of that because I think we all know what we’re supposed to be doing. And this is kind of what happens to a lot of our clients when they come to our office. A lot of them have been to therapy before, and they go there and the therapist says, “Well, you need to work less. You need to eat more vegetables. You got to sleep more,” all the things.

They already know that, but they can’t do it because of all the reasons. And so, it feels a little invalidating, “If that’s the way you’re supposed to manage stress then, and I can’t do that logistically then, therefore I cannot manage stress, then my situation is hopeless.” And not to say that other therapists are bad or anything. These are all things that we’re telling people are important, but if you’re in a high-pressure career, there’s a lot of nuances that just don’t allow for the same kinds of flexibility that some other people might have.

There are deadlines, there are clients, there are acquisitions, there’s all these things. People are raising money, they have investors that they’re answering to and all of that. So, do I think sleeping more is important? Yes. Do I wish I could sleep more? Yes. Do I think everyone should sleep more? Absolutely. But I know that getting an extra hour of sleep for people is like a really big ask.

So, I think if you can think about those, like, common things that we all know about, you know, sleep, eating, stuff like that, exercise, I think being creative is actually the way to go about it, and think about creative ways to implement those things, and not sort of the prescribed way in which everybody seems to be doing it. The example I always give is like a lot of our clients when they start exercising again, they sign up for like a triathlon or a marathon or something like that because that feels like the right thing to do for them.

But that’s not a sustainable choice most of the time. Occasionally, it is, but most of the time it’s not. And if you can get creative and be okay with something that doesn’t fit into sort of the box or what you expected exercise should be looking like, then that’s actually where the success comes from. And there are these small sorts of incremental changes of adding those things in, are all fine and all really important.

And they help with, like, a mindset shift, because a lot of times, like the initiation is the hard part, and like showing yourself that you can do things differently is the hard part because, especially if people have been in like the same kind of routine for a while, like starting to cook, like that’s really awkward. It’s really hard to start to do that.

And so, being sort of expecting that and knowing that’s part of the process of being okay with that is important. And I think it’s kind of interesting, too, because people, like all of us, we’re always looking to sort of optimize, and so we’re trying to look like, “What is the eating plan? What is a good exercise thing so I can lift and gain muscle and be strong and all these things?” But, oftentimes, we make them really complicated. And it doesn’t have to be that complicated and it doesn’t have to be that prescribed.

If your goal is to eat more home-cooked meals and you cook once a week on a Saturday, like that’s great. You’ve done it now. It doesn’t have to be that now you’re scratch cooking and meal prepping all week on a Sunday, and spending your whole Sunday doing that. So, that’s kind of like the first section of advice I give people, is kind of reorienting them to what’s possible in those kinds of common domains that we know about, and also to get creative about it.

There are all sorts of interesting ways to incorporate those things. I mean, maybe not sleep because then you’re just asleep. I mean, you can put in naps and stuff like that but, I mean, there’s like a thousand different ways to exercise, and a lot of them can be done in your house without any equipment. And so, just kind of figuring out what that looks like, I think, is important. So, that’s where we start usually. I don’t know if that answers the question, but that’s a strong place to start.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah. Well, I think it’s handy in terms of, I think, that’s like a top don’t with regard to stress management, is don’t just look at the moon and stars, like the utmost perfect exercise plan, the perfect amount of sleep, “Oh, yes, I should be sleeping seven to nine hours every night in complete darkness and silence, dah, dah, dah, with a bed that’s dynamically adjusting its temperature for me.” They haven’t sponsored the show yet. I mean, we’ll see.

But, okay, “Well, that’s beyond my reach, so just forget it all, you know.” Rather, it’s like, “Okay, well, what is creative? What is realistic? And what’s fine?” in terms of exercise or give you some more sleep, whatever, that’s really nifty. So, then it sounds like, with regard to the shiny advice, you don’t have a one weird trick to instantly calm down, but rather, “Hey, just do the little stress-relieving things we all know about in reasonable approachable proportions.”

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yes, I think a lot of that ties back into sort of black-and-white thinking. You’re right, it’s like, “It has to be all of it or none of it,” and like, we’re all kind of predisposed to that for various reasons. But the gray is fine, like good enough is excellent. And if you’re just looking to change your behavior, to make new habits, and also gain those advantages from doing all that stuff, it doesn’t have to be wild times. So, yeah, don’t do the big things. And also, if you’re looking to calm down, don’t tell people to calm down. That’s another don’t, right? Don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. And if we find ourselves in the workaholic mode, what are your tips there?

If we are in a zone where it’s like, “I have to do this,” or, “I just am having so much fun, you know, work, work, working away for 13-plus hours a day.” I imagine this comes up frequently with your folks in high-pressure careers. How do you advise them?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think you have to think about what motivates you in life and what makes you happy, right? It comes back to the value stuff again a little bit, where there are people who work all the time and they’re happy, and that’s fine. You know what I mean? Like, think about like a lot of physicians spend a lot of time at the hospital, and, I mean, they don’t love their 36 hours on call, but they enjoy their job and they’re not going to necessarily quit their job because they really like what they do.

I know a lot of people do like coding. They get into the zone, they’re coding with their headphones on and then, somehow, like eight hours passes. But that’s what makes them happy, they like to build stuff, they like to be creative. So, keep in mind too, like it’s not always bad to have a couple days or kind of like a job where you’re working all the time. It’s when it gets in your way and when it causes you distress and then you have to sit and figure out what it is, why that is, like, “What makes you happy? What doesn’t make you happy? How do you want to spend your time? What is motivating to you?”

Because a lot of times when you ask those questions, it starts out being really obvious, “Well, I’m motivated because I want to do a good job.” “Why do you want to do a good job?” “Because I want to make money.” “Okay, why do you want to make money?” “Because I want to be able to buy all this stuff.” “Okay, why do you want to buy all this stuff?” And you keep going through all those lines of questioning.

It usually comes down to something like, because anxiety or fear-based, “Because I didn’t have money growing up, because I’m afraid I won’t have it. I’m afraid if I don’t make it now, I won’t have it later. I have a family to support. I want to support my parents as they age,” and things like that. Or, people don’t really have a good answer for that, and that’s important, too, to know if you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, then that’s a whole other conversation.

So, the line of inquiry is also incredibly important to kind of figure out what it is you’re doing and why you’re doing it and why you’re working so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I have to tell you, in general, I’m not a quotes person.

But I will share a piece of advice that’s kind of a quote that I do like and I follow, which is, one of my supervisors a long time ago, I was working in a long-term adolescent in-patient unit, it was a state hospital, and there’s like just a lot of chaos that comes with that in terms of even just the systems issues.

And I was complaining one day about, like, “Well, if it’s that, the answer’s so obvious. Why are they doing it this way, the administration, this, that, and the other?” And she was like, “Janna, you got to play by the rules to change the rules.” And I was like, “Ah, yeah.” Like, I’m not in a position right now to change the rules, but I could be one day if I play by the rules and check the boxes and get to the place where I need to be to make the change. I thought that was kind of like an interesting way of thinking about things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Dr. Janna Koretz
It’s a controversial thing now, but I did like the Stanford Prison Experiment a lot, not because I think it was a great idea, but I think it really showed dynamics around people and pressure and power that I think are really important that we should be talking about and thinking more about.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Maybe controversial to say, but I’m going to say it anyway, I love The Coddling of the American Mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, Jonathan Haidt. All right. And a favorite tool?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Boundary-setting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Waking up before everybody does.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think what maybe I might be known for is asking why maybe a little too much, but for the purpose of really getting people to think about things and wonder why things are the way they are. Like, “Why do we need to do this this way?” And this is true, I feel this way about therapy, in general, and psychology, in general, and just the way the industry is.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
Our website is where we keep all the things, so AzimuthPsych.com, A-Z-I-M-U-T-H, psych. That’s where the burnout calculator, career enmeshment test, the values navigator are, all of the things we do, the people we see, other things that we like, that we share, other resources, where we’ve been in the media, things we’ve written about, stuff like that. It’s all in one place.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
You can’t think about it too much. Sometimes you just have to do it and see what happens.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Dr. Koretz, thank you. This is fun and I wish you much joy.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Thank you. You as well.

Jul 22
0

980: Building the Habits of Mentally Strong Leaders with Scott Mautz

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 Scott Mautz shares powerful strategies to stay confident and in control when negativity strikes.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to wisely managed doubt–and confidence 
  2. The early warning signs of self-acceptance being degraded 
  3. The three-step solution to reset negative chatter 

About Scott

Scott Mautz is a high-octane speaker expert at igniting peak performance and deep employee engagement, motivation, and inspiration. He’s a Procter & Gamble veteran who successfully ran several of the company’s largest multi-billion dollar businesses, an award-winning/best-selling author, faculty at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business for Executive Education, a popular instructor on LinkedIn Learning where his courses have been taken over 1.5 million times, and a frequent national publication and podcast guest.

Resources Mentioned

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Scott Mautz Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Scott, welcome back.

Scott Mautz
It is so nice to be back. It’s so nice to try to be awesome on an awesome podcast that has awesome in the title. I’m grateful for it all.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think you’re awesome at it, which is why you’re back for a third time. You got it going on.

Scott Mautz
Right on. Yeah, you take what you can get.

Pete Mockaitis
Your latest piece here is called The Mentally Strong Leader: Build the Habits to Productively Regulate Your Emotions, Thoughts, and Behaviors. That sounds handy. Although, Scott, some might ask, “Isn’t this for kids? Don’t kids learn this stuff? Aren’t we done with that when we’re like nine?”

Scott Mautz
Maybe they don’t. It all depends on your kid. Well, if you start with a definition of it, Pete, and then let’s get into your question here, the title obviously is The Mentally Strong Leader, which presumes that it’s about mental strength. Mental strength is the ability to regulate your emotions, your thoughts, and your behaviors productively, no matter what. For us adults, it’s how we manage internally so we can lead better externally.

And to your question now, I think as adults, we intuitively understand that if you want to succeed and be a good parent, and a good leader, and good in life, you have to be able to regulate your emotions, and your thoughts, and your behaviors. But here’s where the rub comes in for kids, guess what? It’s really, really hard to do that as a parent, and even as children.

You layer on how hard it is to grow up in this world, it becomes even harder. So, yeah, mental strength is something we all know we need to succeed. But, man, Pete, it is really, really hard to do. It’s why I wrote the book “The Mentally Strong Leader” to provide that help.

Scott Mautz
I was kind of teasing a little bit about the kids because we had Mawi Asgedom on, who wrote a cool series of books called the “Inner Heroes Universe,” which has like action-hero comic book folks doing stuff and teaching lessons about this for kids, but we had them on because it absolutely is applicable for grown-ups, as we’re called.

And it’s funny, I’ve noticed in my own inner life, sometimes it’s quite easy to manage emotions and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the frustration rolls off the back and sometimes the frustration eats at me, and it’s not even, I think, necessarily, about the strength of the frustration itself.

Scott Mautz
That’s a really important point you’re bringing up, which is it doesn’t even have to do with the strength of the frustration itself. It’s just really, really hard to manage our emotions, our thoughts, and our behaviors.

And I have found that the key to doing this is you really have to build the proper habits to help you become mentally stronger, so you could train your brain for achievement, which I’ll get into later, but train your brain in general to have the kind of outcome that you want. And habit-building science teaches us that if you want to build a habit, a habit is essentially, Pete, repetitions, right? It’s systems and frameworks that you put in place.

And in The Mentally Strong Leader, I’ve built in over 50 plus systems and frameworks to help you with that difficulty you’re talking about. It helps you build, take that first small step to building a new habit to becoming mentally stronger. It helps you figure out what to do in moments of weakness when you can feel your frustration leaking out, even if it’s not a huge frustration.

Because of that, it’s why, you know, the subtitle of “The Mentally Strong Leader” is “Build the Habits to Productively Regulate Your Emotions, Your Thoughts, and Behaviors” because of the very nature of what you’re talking about, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love it if you could maybe kick us off with an inspiring story of someone who was able to really see some powerful upgrades that made an impact for them by pursuing some of this stuff.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, it’s interesting, Pete. I bet if I had, you know, I don’t even know, if I had 500 people to ask to share a mental strength story, they would all share stories, they would all boil around six core mental muscles, and I’m going to pick a story within the context of that for you. But the six core mental muscles that make up mental strength are fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision-making, the ability to make a decision, to be decisive and make a high-quality decision, goal focus, the ability to stay focused on your goals, and even what I call messaging, the ability to stay positive-minded with your messaging even in the face of supreme negativity.

It’s those six mental muscles that make up mental strength. So, I have collected so many stories from so many people, but I’ll share one quick story that focuses on the fortitude muscle, because most often, Pete, when people think of mental strength, one of the things they might think of first is, “Oh, that’s got to be fortitude. That’s got to be resilience.”

And one woman that I interviewed for The Mentally Strong Leader was a business leader at a packaged goods company, and she would not give in to the demands of a particularly big retail customer. They wanted better service, they wanted lower prices, they wanted differentiated packaging. If she gave up all that to the big customer, it would mean a short-term sales gain and that would be great, but a substantial decrease in profitability over the long term.

And so, through a series of kind of really intense meetings, the retailer called her bluff, and said, “Okay, you’re not going to meet my demands and, fine, you’re out of distribution, and I won’t share the company, I won’t share the retailer for many reasons.” But they said, “You’re done.” And Sharon stuck to her guns, and she said, “All right.”

She got tremendous pressure to get that customer back to grow business aggressively, to get them back and to say, “Hey, make amends. Say you made a mistake.” And she just wouldn’t do it. It meant a 15% catastrophic drop in sales. And I remember she told me this story, Pete. You could see the tears forming in her eyes that it wasn’t an easy choice, and the pressure she was receiving from her chain of command to reverse the decision was brutal, but she refused to play the victim.

She held tight, and she really started to exercise her fortitude muscle. She reframed the loss as a huge sales opportunity to grow with other smaller customers that were more strategic for them, “Hey, forget this big customer,” Sharon told everybody, “Forget them. We are going to get that back and more by operating with people that are more strategically aligned with us.” And so, she kept reframing the opportunity over and over again. She would have tough conversation after tough conversation. She would really attack things with a problem-solving spirit, and despite everybody pounding on her, “Get this big customer back.” She used her fortitude muscle.

And some of the tools that I teach in the book The Mentally Strong Leader to do that, to really, at the end of the day, grow her business even faster than she did without that big retail customer, and she never went back to them. Now I just happen to talk to her a few months ago, and the business is stronger than it’s ever been and more profitable, and had a lot to do with her and her fortitude muscle.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful, and I like that story on so many dimensions because it’s not life or death. You said a 15% drop in sales. And it’s funny, depending on your point of view, you might gasp, “Oh, dear.” Well, the other hand is like, “All right. Well, no one’s bankrupt.” It sounds like there aren’t brutal layoffs harming everybody. But, as a business owner, if I were to get a 15% drop in sales, I would be quite troubled by it, and she persisted.

So, it’s not catastrophic, and yet it does feel very uncomfortable, particularly when you’ve got folks piling on you from all sides, and you can sort of see it in the numbers right there. And it takes some real faith, in terms of it’s like, “Yes, right now, we are making far less revenue. That’s just very clear. However, I believe there’s something that we can do that will be even better.” And so, it’s like, “Well, hope you’re right.” That’s an unpleasant spot to be in.

Okay. Well, so then tell us, you said there’s six big mental muscles here. Can you maybe give us a quick definition of each of the six?

Scott Mautz
Yeah, sure. Okay. So, of course, we have the fortitude muscle. And I think, Pete, fortitude is probably the one that most people could most easily define for themselves. It’s our ability to push through challenges onward to achievement. In the face of adversity, you don’t let it get you down. You keep pressing forward. Fortitude, that’s the most obvious, biggest mental muscle that people first mention.

The second is confidence, which is probably exactly what you think it is, with one exception. Confidence is, the definition of it, is not the absence of doubt. It’s your ability to monitor your relationship with doubt, because we all have a relationship with doubt.

The boldness muscle is probably exactly what you think it is. Boldness paves a direct pathway to growth and it forces us to push our thinking, to get out of grooves, to press past discomfort. And boldness is a huge part of mental strength, as is messaging. Now as a leader, as I often like to say, people are always taking cues from you, Pete. You live in a fish bowl. People always wrap it on the glass to see what you’re going to do next, especially in times of adversity and negativity.

The messaging muscle is all about, as a leader, staying positive, even in the face of negativity. Staying engaged, even when your brain is elsewhere, so that you send the right positive message to the troops, and that they take energy from that message rather than the alternative. There are two more mental muscles.

Decision-making, and I think the best way to explain this is to say that emotion and bias and undisciplined thinking are all enemies of good decision-making. And self-regulation skills, like mental strength, are really required to be decisive and to make high-quality decisions. So decision-making is a huge part of mental strength.

Another mental muscle is goal focus, meaning the ability to really set aside wayward thoughts, emotions, and anything distracting you from the goal at hand, and getting back to focusing on what’s going to make the biggest difference in moving things forward towards your goal. So, there you have it: fortitude, confidence, boldness, messaging, goal focus, and decision-making; the six mental muscles of mental strength that also equate to the highest level of achievement.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s talk about our relationship with doubt, shall we?

Scott Mautz
We shall. I have a tool in the book called the doubt continuum, Pete. And I’m getting tremendous feedback on this tool already, and then I’m going to talk another tool afterwards on confidence, but it’s helpful. I want your listeners and your viewers to think about this thing that I call the doubt continuum. It’s a tool in the confidence chapter of The Mentally Strong Leader.

Think about the continuum with two ends, and on either end are danger zones. On one end of the doubt continuum is overconfidence. You’re blowing through red light signals. You operate in a vacuum. You don’t think you need help from anybody. You just keep doing your own thing. You’re operating in an echo chamber. That’s not good. That’s the opposite of self-doubt. You’re way too confident.

The other side of the scale is also a danger zone, which is where you’re paralyzed by fear. Doubt has overcome you to the point where inaction sets in, and fear takes over, and you have a hard time making a move of any kind. In the middle on this continuum are two areas where you want to be. Either perfectly confident, where you have the right balance between gut and data to inform your decision-making, between experience and just taking a risk and going for it.

Or, also in the middle is where you learn to embrace healthy doubt. This is where you learn to park those doubts that you have in the backdrop. You don’t let them overcome, and maybe this is the most important thing here about this, Pete, is that embracing healthy doubt means knowing that you don’t have the answers to everything. That you’re going to learn along the way, you’re going to find out more as you go, and you believe in your ability to do that, to figure things out as you go.

So, the doubt continuum is really about self-awareness, getting you to understand, “Am I either letting fear take over or am I too confident? How do I sit in the middle, and either be perfectly confident or embrace and work with doubt in a way that’s productive and healthy?” Does that continuum make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is very good, really good. And I think about that overconfidence reminds me of one of my favorite quotes that I really resonate with, which is from former U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Robert Rubin, who said, “Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.” And I think that those people are in that overconfidence zone and it’s dangerous because, this is one of my, I don’t know if you call it pet peeve, or one of my things lately, I’m sort of astounded by the confidence at which people say certain things.

It’s like, “Do you have a crystal ball that predicts the future? Have you ever been wrong or experienced the emotion of surprise before? Because I am amazed that you are so sure that it’s going to work out just the way you predict.”

Scott Mautz
Pete, isn’t it why we have a hard time even agreeing on the facts in today’s society, right? It’s because of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Because we’re very confident about our own facts.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
Or our theories, we think they’re facts, but they’re really hypotheses, perhaps we should say. And so, I think that’s really great, a really great tool right there to know that a lot of us are operating in a danger zone.

So, the doubt continuum is really handy in terms of, if you are super confident all the time, you are, in fact, in a danger zone. And if you’re avoiding something, that is a variety of fear paralysis that has you. So, help us out, Scott, if we find ourselves in one of the extremes of the continuum, what should we do about it?

Scott Mautz
Yeah, there’s another tool that kind of goes along with this. It’s a kind of partner to help you on the confidence front. So, if you’re on either side of the scale, you’re obviously trying to get to a place where you can embrace healthy doubt. You can’t do that until you have greater self-acceptance, Pete. So, there’s a really powerful tool that’s a partner to this in The Mentally Strong Leader to help you build your confidence, that I call the self-acceptance scale.

Now, I want you to think about a different scale, Pete. On one side of this scale, visually, picture this, you have this term called self-acceptance. It’s nirvana, right? This is the highest form of self-regulation where you’re not allowing unpleasant thoughts and emotions and behaviors to be unproductive in your life. You’re regulating yourself in a place where you accept all that is true about you. You’re in a place of self-acceptance. That’s where you want to be on the spectrum, on the self-acceptance scale.

Now, on the far right of this scale, and we’re going to talk the in-between in a second. On the far right is the opposite of that, which is what I call imposter syndrome. This is where you’re not accepting your skills and your accomplishments. You downplay them. You question how you got to where you are. It’s the lowest level of self-regulation because you’re allowing unproductive emotions and thoughts and behaviors make you question. You’re allowing them to question who you are.

Now, in between, there are degradations of self-acceptance that happen along the way. And the point of this scale, Pete, is to help people increase their self-awareness of, “What happens when I’m in a space of self-acceptance? How do I start to erode myself over time all the way to the point where I can be as bad as imposter syndrome?” And it starts with self-awareness, knowing the points on the scale.

The first point to the right on the scale of self-acceptance, that first degradation in confidence, is approval seeking. When you start to chase the approval of others, when you start to chase approval instead of authenticity, being the authentic you. That’s the first sign that you’re not really accepting yourself. You need others to tell you that what you’re doing is okay.

The next degradation is when you start to compare to others. Sometimes hear that, the only comparison that matters is to who you were yesterday, and whether or not you’re getting better each and every day. And, yes, of course, Pete, some comparison is good. I’m sure you compare yourself to other podcast hosts and say, “Oh, he or she is doing this, and I could do that to be even better.” And that’s good.

The comparison I’m talking about that’s painful is irrelevant comparisons. Like on social media, when we compare ourselves to some model version of some other person, when we compare our blooper reel to everyone else’s highlight reel, and it starts to really gnaw at our confidence, when we assume that that person in social media got to where they are because of circumstances that were perfect for them, or because of how skilled they are, and I’m not there because of all the bad things about me.

Then the next degradation is negative inner chatter that kicks in. We start to beat ourselves up, forgetting that sometimes the enemy is the internal me. One last degradation, and then I want to get your reaction to all this. One farther point over on the scale is when we actually stop and say and believe, Pete, “I’m not enough.”

And I want your listeners to hear this, and if you’re viewing this for any clip, I want you to look in the camera when I say this. You are enough and you don’t have to take on everything by yourself. And so, the self-acceptance scale helps you to understand and raises your awareness of all the ways our self-acceptance degrades over time. The more aware you are of these, the more equipped you are to resist each and every one of them. And you’re better suited to be self-accepting, you’re better suited to overcome doubt, you’ll be more confident. That’s a lot. Does it make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, Scott, I love this in that we’re talking about self-acceptance, and we talked about a scale. When you said degradations, I think, “Oh, I think he meant gradations.” But, you know, it is a degradation. It is the degree to which it has been degraded. And it is also a gradation in terms of, “Where along the scale are you on that journey?”

So, first of all, and it’s funny, and, for me, personally, it’s kind of volatile, you know? Like, there are some days where, boom, total self-acceptance, awesome. And then other days where, yeah, I do. I do want approval or winning or beating in competing and comparisons. And so, it’s intriguing how, and I don’t know what’s behind it. It’s just like not enough sleep or what is behind the volatility. So, I’ll ask you that first. What are some of the drivers that make it such that, on some of these things, we have good days versus bad days? Like, what are the variables, the X factors behind the scenes?

Scott Mautz
A lot of what my research has shown me on this front, Pete, is, first of all, a lot of it has to do with the human story. First of all, the fact that every day won’t be consistent. Always playing in the background, is this some level of self-doubt. And people are always surprised when I say confidence is not the absence of doubt. It isn’t. I could tell you. I’ve interviewed, I can’t even count the amount of people I’ve interviewed for The Mentally Strong Leader.

And I could tell you, even the most confident executives that I talked to will not tell you that they never experienced doubt. It’s there. It’s how you manage it. So, this human experience means doubt is always parked in the backdrop. So, it’s natural for it to surface in multiple ways over time, and we forget that. We think the human experience needs to be the absence of doubt, that Pete Mockaitis never has a bad day, that he’s always fully self-confident.

But if that was true in your mind, Pete, I would say you’re probably lying to yourself because the human experience is not that. It is to experience the peaks and the valleys. Now you layer on top of that the environment that we’re exposed to every day, the social pressures that we’re facing, the fact that we have a hard time even agreeing on what the facts are anymore, the fact that there’s more distractions in our universe than there have ever been, the fact that there’s more social tension around the planet, and a lot of more and more things to worry about.

It all adds to this quiet addition to doubt about other things that makes it only natural, Pete, that you’re going to have those kinds of days that are ups and downs. You just need the habits and the systems and their frameworks to help you better self-regulate them, not to eliminate them. Mental strength is not about making emotions disappear. It’s not about necessarily minimizing your emotions. It’s about better managing your emotions, your thoughts, and your behaviors.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that, not minimizing, but managing. And so, to that end of volatility, it’s funny, with that message of “You are enough,” sometimes if I hear that, I go “Yeah, right on. Thank you.” And other times, my response is “Enough for what?” So, lay it on us, Scott, what do you mean by “You are enough”?

Scott Mautz
When I say that, it’s more of a self-evaluative term. I’m not saying “You are enough to be an Olympic gold athlete, Pete,” “You are enough to be the best podcaster on the planet, Pete,” “You are enough to be the best partner to anyone in life, Pete.” I’m not saying any of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like this. Keep it coming.

Scott Mautz
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Am I approval seeking right now?

Scott Mautz
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you’re going to cut all the rest of that out and just play this part over and over and over again. What I’m really saying here, Pete, is “You are not a complete human being, but where you are in your journey is 100% okay.” And I don’t want to go so far as to say it’s exactly where you should be right now, because only you know that.

But what I’m saying, you know, when I say you are enough is to understand that you’re an imperfect being, and that’s okay, and that you don’t have to be everything to everyone all the time. It’s okay to focus on the you-universe, Y-O-U-universe, and not the universe all the time. That’s okay. Where you are in your development is right where you should be as a human being, perhaps. At least we can allow that, you know, of ourselves, and not to think about you are enough compared to any other external standard.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. So, then help us out, if we are having one of those days where self-acceptance, we are not too high on the scale, what do we do about it?

Scott Mautz
Yeah, a good tool, I think, is the way that manifests itself a lot, Pete, is really the middle of the scale where we beat ourselves up with negative inner chatter. And whether it’s you’re seeking approval, you’re comparing yourself, you’re saying you’re not enough, or you’re just outright beating yourself up over and over again, which, by the way, I teach this stuff, Pete, and I still do the opposite of that sometimes.

There’s another tool in the book, that I call taking a self-compassion break, and it’s really, really important and it’s also really, really simple to do. Here’s how you work. When you catch yourself in that moment where you’re beating yourself up, first, you got to get better at catching yourself. And I don’t know how good you are at this, Pete. I’m still working on it. There are days where I’ll be like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve been beating myself up for like the last five minutes, and I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”

So, you have to get better at that, and I don’t know what letter grade you would give yourself on that. I’d give myself only a B. I’m working on it. I’m getting better at it. In the moment though that you realize that, there’s kind of three steps you take. First of all, stop beating yourself up for beating yourself up. If you catch yourself doing it, accept it, acknowledge it, quickly move to step two, which is, in that moment, to talk to yourself like a friend in need.

And I’m sure this isn’t the first time your listeners have heard this advice, but it’s really powerful to consider. I’ll give you an example before we go to the third step, Pete. Let’s say you and I are chatting, right? We’re old friends, you know, this is my third time on the show, and I start telling you about a podcast I was on that I didn’t feel like I was good on, right? And I’m clearly looking for compassion with you. We’re old friends, right?

So, I start telling you, “Pete, man, I got off this podcast. There were some points I really wanted to make. I didn’t feel like I articulated them well. I forgot to say this other thing. I feel like I came across like an idiot when I was trying to bring value,” on and on and on. After five minutes, you know I’m looking for compassion.

After five minutes, Pete, would you do this? Would you interrupt me and say, “You know, Scott, I’ve heard enough and I’ve come to a conclusion, that you’re a complete loser”? Would you talk to me like that when I’m clearly in need? I don’t think you would. So, it begs the question, “Why would you talk to yourself that way ever?” It’s not productive.

Pete Mockaitis
What you’re surfacing here for me now is sometimes I can be too quick to jump to solutions in terms of like, “Well, you know, Scott, what happened one time is I actually had a guest who thought they did a bad job and they said, ‘Hey, Pete, I don’t think I did a good job. Can we do a do-over?’ And I said, ‘Hey, thanks for asking. Sure, we can.'” So, anyway, there I am, I’m sort of, you’re looking for compassion, and instead I’m offering you problem-solving. But I think the funny thing is I can do that to my own self as well.

Scott Mautz
Absolutely. And oftentimes, that problem-solving thing is something that I do, Pete, and I have others that will tell me, “Hey, dude, I’m not looking for you to solve this. I’m just looking for you to listen.” And sometimes we’ll interrupt with that because it’s easier for us because we feel uncomfortable in what they’re sharing with us, and we want to make it easier for us, when all they really want is just to feel heard, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Mautz
And so, in that moment, it takes you to the third step in this, which is to remember the 90/10 rule, and it’s based on an article I wrote that went crazy viral a few years back. And the 90/10 rule is simply this, Pete, this is the third step in the self-compassion break. It’s to remember the ratio for how you should value yourself on any given day, which is to say it should be based 90% on self-worth, 10% on assigned worth.

How you value yourself should be based 90% on self-worth, self-appreciation, self-love, self-respect, self-acceptance, 10% on assigned worth, what others think of you, that occasional slice of external validation that we all need. The problem arises, Pete, when, in our minds, in our formula, that 10% external validation rises to 90%, 100% of who we are, and people say, “Well, Scott, shouldn’t you be teaching the 100-0 rule, though, that 100% of how you value yourself is based on what you think?”

And I think that’s a nice theory, Pete. I don’t think that’s the way it works in life. We all need that 10% occasional slice of external validation. But the problem is when that 10% goes to 100% of how you value yourself. The problem arises when you start chasing approval instead of authenticity. The problem arises when you begin focusing on winning love rather than giving love.

And when you remember that 90/10 rule, it really helps to round out and think like, “You know what? I’m going to stop that negative inner chatter because it’s not servicing me in the way that I need to. I need to get back to a place of 90% self-worth, self-appreciation, self-acceptance, and self-love.” And I have been told many times, Pete, that it’s a very powerful tool, a very powerful process for helping folks that need to get past that negative inner chatter.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s interesting is, as I think about my own negative inner chatter, it’s almost never super intense, super dark stuff, although I’ve come to learn that it’s actually quite common in the human condition. It’s just like, “You’re such a worthless, stupid loser.” It’s very sad that there’s a lot of inner chatter like that that happens. And if that’s any listener, I recommend you take a look at that and work on it, because it can be really transformational.

I’m thinking about Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, a very powerful section about emotional health, in which he shared some of his practices there that I found touching. But my negative self-talk is more like, “Ugh, I’m just not up for all of the stuff I got to handle today. It’s too much for me today.” And I don’t quite know what’s the optimal self-response to that.

Because sometimes, it’s like, “Oh, come on, Pete! We can do this! Come on! Let’s do some Rocky music! Let’s do some, I don’t know, Tony Robbins power moves! Come on! Let’s get after it!” Sometimes that works, the psych up, and then sometimes like, “Oh, well, maybe let’s just take a nap.” And sometimes that works, and sometimes neither of those work, but I want to hear the Scott Mautz approach.

Scott Mautz
What if I told you, if you change one word, one word in your thinking process, it could make a world of difference?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. Lay it on me.

Scott Mautz
And I’ve proven this to work, and it’s very specifically for exactly what you’re talking about, Pete. One of the most common forms of negative inner chatter is like, “Oh, my God, my duties, they’re getting me down. There’s so much to do. I am not in the mood to do all this stuff today. I understand my job is this, and I get it.” Ready for this, Pete? Try this trick. I promise you it really works. I do it. I do this all the time.

I think, “Okay, Scott, I don’t have to do this. I get to do this.” And the one-word reframe is incredible, and I’ll give you an example. Part of my life is to travel around the world as a speaker, an author, a trainer, a work-shopper. And I was in the airport not so long ago, on a layover, and travel is the one part about what I do that I just cannot stand, and I was feeling really down, Pete. I was in Denver Airport, and the flight was delayed. It was going to be a five-hour flight. I was already in a grumpy mood, people were being people the way they can be in airports when flights are delayed, and I didn’t feel like getting on the plane. I just wasn’t in the mood for this.

And I remember thinking, “Wait a minute, Scott. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to go get on a plane. You get to do this.” By me getting on a plane, that would mean very shortly, within two hours of landing, I would be able to be on a stage in front of, in this case, you know, thousands of people, sharing insight, sharing something that I had learned, and it happened to be a talk about mental strength from the book The Mentally Strong Leader.

And it can really help, Pete, if you just stop to say, “It’s about understanding the privilege and what you still get to do.” And it puts the thinking, “I get to do this” versus “I have to do this,” flips it very quickly to the things that you can appreciate about what you’re doing, and bring you back to the purpose of why you’re doing it to begin with.

Pete Mockaitis
Scott, that’s good stuff. Well, there’s a whole lot of goodies in your book, and I like how you’re just surfacing the tools everyone tells you they love the most. So, Scott, can you give us one more dealer’s choice, whatever you’re feeling?

Scott Mautz
There’s one other tool that I want to share that, I don’t know, may or may not surprise you. It’s not about any one of the six mental muscles per se, but it’s an overall tool, which is the Mental Strength Self-Assessment that is a part of the book The Mentally Strong Leader, and it is a 50-question questionnaire that you take. It takes you about 15 minutes of quiet self-reflection and introspection. And when you’re done with that test, and I have worked with data scientists to build the test to make sure it correlates as tightly as it can with mental strength.

When you’re done with the test, it gives you an overall mental strength score, and then you’ll find out which tier do you score in for mental strength. There are four different tiers, all the way from novice, you’re just learning about the idea of mental strength and building, all the way up to you’re a beacon of mental strength, other people draw from you because of your mental strength, and then there’s the in-betweens.

Besides the mental strength score, it also gives you a score for each mental muscle, so you’ll know, “Oh, wow, my fortitude isn’t quite what I thought. My boldness isn’t where I want it to be. My decision-making needs to be stronger.” And then you can build accordingly your own customized mental strengths training program, which is important because when you go to the gym, Pete, you don’t go to the gym to work every muscle all the time. It would be a 19-hour workout every day. Wednesday is leg day. Thursday is, I don’t know, arm day. Friday is back day, whatever it is.

With understanding what muscles you need to work on, you can choose over time where to pull the levers and where you want to level up in your mental strength. And the mental strength self-assessment can help you to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, to take that, how do we proceed?

Scott Mautz
A couple of things, of course. Obviously, you can get the book The Mentally Strong Leader which you can find at ScottMautz.com, but I also put together for your listeners a gift. If they go to ScottMautz.com/mentallystronggift, you can download the Mental Strength Self-Assessment for free. It’s actually a 60-page PDF that not only includes the assessment with all 50 questions, it also has prompts in there to help you get the most out of the book The Mentally Strong Leader. So, if they go to ScottMautz.com/mentallystronggift, you can get your hands on the Mental Strength Self-Questionnaire to help get you primed up to get the most out of the book The Mentally Strong Leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Free stuff. We love it.

Scott Mautz
Free stuff is a good thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Scott Mautz
Yeah, I really believe in this thought of chase authenticity, not approval. I find that to be very, very important to me. And I also like the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, who said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

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

Scott Mautz
Well, very quickly, I did a study for The Mentally Strong Leader. It took me quite a while to complete, but I asked over 3,000 executives a single question, “Thinking of the highest-achieving organizations you’ve ever been a part of, that achieved the most, that overcame the most obstacles, how would you describe that leader?”

When I asked that question, time after time, between 90% to 91% of people described the same leader, a mentally strong leader that has fortitude, confidence, boldness.

And while they might not use the term mentally strong, Pete, when I say, “Oh, wow, so you’re describing these same six mental muscles that they’re flexing. Would this word describe them?” When I put mentally strong in front of them, you could see the eyes lighting up. Even when I hide the term and I say, “Okay, pick a word out of this list that describes the person you just described to me,” they find the words mentally strong, and they circle it, and it tells me that that research really helped me to see, like, I’m really onto something that mental strength may be the leadership superpower of our time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Scott Mautz
Oh, my favorite book is, I’m not going to give you a business book. I just finished reading Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. I’m a big fan of the fantasy genre. So, I just read that and I love it. And it’s a close match with the all-time classic The Hobbit, which makes me officially a nerd, I think, Pete.

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

Scott Mautz
My favorite tool is called Unsplash. It’s a great website that you can find free images to use, whether it’s on your website, whether it’s in your presentations or whatever. They just ask that you assign credit to the photographer. So, it’s a very win-win thing. Everybody wins by using the tool Unsplash.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Scott Mautz
My favorite habit is using the self-acceptance scale and really working hard on reminding myself to stop seeking approval of other people, and working on the habit over and over of revisiting that scale to remind myself “I fall into the trap of comparing to others and I need to stop doing that and stop seeking approval.”

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

Scott Mautz
ScottMautz.com. You can learn about my keynotes, my books, my workshops, and all the things I do there at that site, ScottMautz.com.

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

Scott Mautz
Yeah, just to remember that don’t be intimidated by the concept of becoming mentally stronger. The opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline that we work from. And if you can take the mental strength self-assessment, understand where you stand, figure out where you want to level up, and use the tools, use the habits in The Mentally Strong Leader, you too can be mentally strong starting immediately.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Scott, thank you. I wish you many strong days.

Scott Mautz
Stay strong, as I like to say, Pete.

Jul 15
0

978: Crafting Your Personal Resilience Plan for Beating Burnout with Marie-Hélène Pelletier

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Marie-Hélène Pelletier argues that resilience isn’t a trait and provides a customizable path to develop yours.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why no one should assume they’re resilient
  2. How to design your Resilience Plan
  3. The tiny actions that build big resilience

About Marie-Hélène

Throughout her career in business management and psychology, Dr. Pelletier has spearheaded the dialogue on the crucial issues of leadership resilience and work performance. Drawing on her extensive background in corporate, insurance, governance and public sectors, she brings an international perspective and unique expertise on leadership. She is a practicing leadership psychologist and executive coach with over 20 years of experience and holds a Ph.D. and an MBA from the University of British Columbia. 

Marie-Hélène is a Member of the Global Clinical Practice Network of the World Health Organization, and past Director on the boards of the Canadian Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology. She has presented and authored and co-authored a number of industry and academic publications and has won numerous academic and industry awards. In 2024, Dr. Pelletier published her award-winning book, The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health.

Resources Mentioned

Marie-Hélène Pelletier Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Marie-Hélène, welcome.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Pete, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to hear about your wisdom. And I’d love it if you could kick us off with any particularly striking, surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about us humans and our resilience and mental health while putting together your book The Resilience Plan here.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
You know, something I’ve loved in my studies, in general, and in my work was always interdisciplinary. I always found the creativity of bringing ideas together was great. So, I’m going to say the immense benefits of bringing psychology and strategy together, just amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you give us an example or elaborate on that?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
I can, absolutely. I came to this because I work a lot with professionals, leaders, business owners, high achievers of any kind, and they came to me, and they would say things like, “MH, I don’t know what my problem is. I’ve dealt with much harder things before. What’s wrong with me?” And if I had only spoken to them as a psychologist on the resilience side of things, they probably would have dismissed it. But because I brought analogies from the strategy side of things, because we took their context into account to better understand the actual reality that they’re in, that’s what changed everything. And when we do this, small shift, big change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you give us a story or example there?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Yes. When I was writing the book, one of the things that sometimes people do is they do a focus group. So, it’s my first and only book, so I’m learning as I go. I do a focus group. In the group, there’s this woman, senior leader, who proceeds and does her strategic plan with us and the book. And then, shortly after, she sends me an email and says, “Okay, I need this for my entire team of leaders. Can you travel, do this as a workshop?” Yes.

So, I travel. She comes and says, “Hello.” She says, “I’m going to sit at the back because, you know, I’ve done this before.” Great. So, I proceed with the workshop with her team, and at the end she comes back and says, “Okay, I started sitting here thinking I’ve done my plan already, there’s nothing for me to gain in addition. I’m doing this for my team.” And she said, “But I realized I had implemented successfully for the first time all the actions I wanted to implement as it relates to my resilience, and I’m now ready for the next iteration of the plan.”

And so, that’s an example of how, given these particular tools, you can actually get to a plan that you can implement, that makes a difference, and just like in business, can evolve after a period of time. So, we can dive into the details of how do you get there but that’s an example of how practical this can be.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe let’s return to that notion of people say, “I don’t know what my problem is. I’ve dealt with stuff that’s way harder than this before and yet I’m wiped out. I’m burnt out. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’m overwhelmed.” And so, they are puzzled, and then you say when you bring the strategic elements in there, it becomes demystified. Can you elaborate or give us an example of what that might look like?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Yes. Well, the analogy that sometimes I would give, and that’s in part what led to writing it in the book, was how, if we were in a business situation and we had a great idea for a new service or a new product, would we just have the great idea and launch? Or, would we have the great idea, and then look at who else is offering this? How much or something like this, how much are they charging for it? Who is willing to pay for it? Which forces might impact the launch? We would do all this, right? We would look at the context around this idea and then design a launch strategy that would be successful.

So, same thing here. Yes, we want to be more resilient, and initially we don’t understand it, but if we, actually, use the same tools we would use in business strategy to understand with more clarity the context, then we can actually create a plan that works. And that’s what changes everything. It’s as if initially we disregard many elements of the context. We are not realistic about the amount of demands we’re facing, the quantity, the importance of the demands we’re facing, that’s one example, and other aspects of the context, which makes any intention not that easy to implement and, frankly, not successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, in other words, we don’t want to simply do a one-size-fits-all resilience plan in terms of what you got to do is you got to do your deep breathing, you got to do your exercising, and you got to sleep well, and you’re done! But rather, you’re going to go into the depths of the particular context in order to customize it to be just right.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
That’s right. And it may include any of the things you just mentioned, or it may include other things. It depends on your current context, as well as other things, like your values, the type of demands you’re facing, the type of supply of energy that you have right now. And so, when we take all this into account, then we can design something that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then maybe, as we’re deconstructing myths or misconceptions about resilience, like it’s not one-size-fits-all, any other top things you want to clarify for us in that domain?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
It’s not a one-size-fits-all, absolutely, which means the plan you designed for yourself, Pete, in this moment in time will be different from mine, and even yours will be different from yours maybe six months from now. So, there’s that. I think even before this, one of the misconceptions we need to clarify is that often people will tend to think that they are resilient as an individual. That’s who they are as a person. They own it. That’s like a personality trait.

And people get to thinking this for logical reason. They’ve gone through very demanding things before successfully. Sometimes people around them have said, “Pete, you are the rock of the team. You’re the rock of the family. You’re so resilient.” And you get to a point where you believe that it’s who you are. And the challenge with this, number one, it is not a personality trait. It’s our ability to go through adversity and come out even stronger, which will fluctuate over time, therefore we can influence it.

So, it’s not a personality trait, and so it is something you want to invest in because there will be more demands coming forward. We can be proactive about this, and I will argue we really want to so that we can prepare for those demands moving forward. So, this notion that it’s who we are, “And, therefore, it will always be there for me. I don’t need to do anything about it, and I will respond in however way I do,” that sort of very, in a way, passive response is not helpful. So that’s one of the key things we need to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, if it’s not a personality trait, I mean what is it? What would we liken it to? Is it an asset?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
A state.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s a state, like an emotion?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Yeah, an experience. So, including, yeah, your emotions, the way you’re thinking, the way you’re responding to the situation. So, it’s all of these. And so, therefore, the more you’ve prepared, invested, planned, the more you can, in some ways, increase that baseline, if you will, such that when additional unexpected larger demands come, many of which we actually want because they’re interesting challenges, things we are happy to solve for, then you’ll be able to bring your best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you maybe give us an example of a professional who was encountering a state of low resilience repeatedly, and then figured out a plan, did some things, and saw a transformation?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
It’s something that I can say, you know, I’ve gone through similar situations, you may have as well, but one person I worked with came to me and really felt like their schedule was completely out of control. They were running after the most screaming demands at all times. It just felt like they were not leading this ship. It’s as if they were on a downhill bike and the bike was going faster than what they could control in some ways, and they happened to be working with me at that moment.

And so, what we did, and that’s what I’ve done in the book, I’ve extracted some of the tools we use in business strategy but using them for our resilience. So, first, we looked at this person’s values, what’s most important for them in this moment in life. And that includes both personal and professional. For this person, some of their values, just from memory, included things like health, family, relationship. They valued physical activity. That’s something that had been important for them before, and they had some others.

Then we did this exercise where I get the person to draft on one piece of paper, two columns, their sources of demands and their sources of supply. And for this individual, they realized how they had an immense amount of demand, both from work and personal life, which they initially did not really account for in some ways. So, yes, they knew they were busy at work, for example, but then they realized, as we were looking at their personal life, that they also had a friend who was leaving a key relationship.

One of their parents was dealing with health issues. Of course, people we want to support in our professional lives, and personal in this case, but the reality is that they do represent demands and we want to be realistic about that. Now, this person realized they had not invested much in anything that gives them energy, so the supply list was very short. And we did all the work looking at the equivalent of their SWOT analysis, looking at their context.

And so, for them, it led to creating their strategic plan, which usually I’ll go with three main pillars, and one of them for her was to invest in managing her time better. She realized that she was not good at estimating the amount of time it takes to do things. She tended to underestimate how long anything took, most things, and so for her one of the pillars was “Better managing my time.”

And under this strategic pillar one of her concrete actions, a tactic, if you will, was, and we always focus on tactics that are very simple, for her it was to challenge herself once a week to guess how long something’s going to take, and then actually measure how long it takes her to do that particular task, just to help shift how she was assessing her time. And there were other pillars on her on her strategy, but that’s an example.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fun. Let’s hear it. So, what are some other pillars there and tactics that go with them?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
It will depend, of course, on each individual. Sometimes I work with people who will realize that in their values, the value particular relationships that they have, whether it’s family, friendships, people they live with, people in their lives, one way or the other. And I’m thinking of one individual in particular who at times worked from home, and sometimes when he was working from home, if he was not in a meeting, he would open the door of his office, and he had a young child, who at times would come in the office, the door was open.

And he realized how, more often than not, of course he was doing something when the child would come in, so he would say “Oh, wait a second” or would just finish typing whatever he was doing. His next action in his plan, one pillar was relationships, and his action was, “Whenever someone from my family, who I love and value, because now I have even more clarity on that value, whenever an individual comes in, I will actually stand from my desk, stop what I’m doing entirely, mid-word, mid-email, not finishing the thing, turn around, step out of the office, and be with them.”

So, it was just connecting. And you see how one of the things that is so important in this type of work, and just the same way in a business type of strategic plan, you want actions that are implementable, that you can do. And here, in this particular strategic resilience plan, we very much need these actions to be so small that we are highly likely to do them. So, they cannot take an immense amount of time, which no one has, because then you’re building self-efficacy.

You’re building that sense that you can do this, and from there, you can grow it if you want, but we have to start really small. Otherwise, most people’s schedules are full, overflowing even, and therefore no change is going to happen.

Pete Mockaitis
MH, I really love that notion of it’s super small. And I’m reminded of a conversation we had with BJ Fogg about tiny habits and how those really can be quite transformational. And so, we talked about the demands and supplies, so an economist thinks of supply and demand in terms of price versus quantity and what is the price point at which I’m willing to supply so many units of yada, yada. And you’re suggesting the units here, it sounds like, is not so much price, but energy. Is that accurate?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
That’s right. Yes, I’m using the term because we are used to using these terms in a different context, and it just seems to resonate with people I’ve worked with. So, I’ve used them in different ways before, and it seems to resonate. So, yes, here I’m looking at, “Where is your energy going? That’s your sources of demands. And sources of supply, is what is bringing energy to you?”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, in a way, this can be tricky in terms of distinguishing the finer points here. Like, my precious children, of course, I love them, being with them is delightful. And other times, they’re driving me nuts. They are feeling like a demand. They’re sucking me dry. So how do you think about any acid tests or key indicators or guidelines you use when you’re categorizing stuff?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
No, go with the flow. Go with what’s easiest because, very much for any of the worksheets that I’ve developed and the ideas in the book, it very much is going with the done is better than perfect, Pete. And, yes, others have said golf also tends to fit on both the demand and the supply. So, yes, I would say keep going.

Put it in both columns if it fits there. For right now, the most important thing is we’re getting this done, and any of the exercises I’ve suggested there can usually be done in 5-10 minutes so that, I sometimes say if you’ve got a flight that makes you cross the continent, you can get out of your flight if you started at the beginning with your plan. So very doable, we’re not getting bogged down by details. I hear you. Some things will fit on both but most things will actually find their way in one, more clearly than the other.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think, with some careful reflection, discernment, you can, I think, distinguish some of the nuances. Like, working out or golf could be the same way as like, “Oh, golf is energizing when I’m connecting with really great people. And it’s not energizing when I’m stressing, trying to beat my best score ever,” for instance.

Or I can say that with weightlifting, “It’s energizing when I do a modest number of sets and I’m trying to beat my previous record. And it’s debilitating when I’m just doing tons of volume, and then it feels like more of a demand.” And I love that notion, specifically of the personalization with that example of the working from home, “I’m going to stop what I’m doing. I’m going to attend to the person.”

Because someone else may very well really love the flow states, and that’s more of a supply, like, “Man, when I get into an uninterrupted groove of 90 minutes of just creating something, that’s really a big supply,” and it would maybe, for that individual, be the opposite, “Oh, let me stop mid-word and address somebody.” That could be the opposite of a resilience-boosting approach for them.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
It could. But you see, I love where you’re going with this, because it does. It’s a great way to demonstrate how it will depend from one person to the other. Because, let’s say, I mean, it could actually, in fact, be in the same person, that you value your wonderful relationships, you want to honor them. If someone comes in, you want to really acknowledge them, and you also value when you’re in the flow of something and you want to maintain that creative path that you’re on.

So maybe what we’re saying is right now there’s a bit of a disconnect, because you do realize you want to keep going but someone interrupts you who you love and you want to honor. Maybe one of the pillars is called boundaries, and in those boundaries, when action will be to be a bit more deliberate about when you need to not be interrupted and make sure the door stays closed, not just for the Zoom meeting or the podcast recording, but also for the moments where you need that uninterrupted time.

So that way, you can still have the other action related to family members that you will interrupt yourself. If the door is open, that means you’re willing to interrupt whatever you’re doing, and you do. But if you’re in the flow, maybe you create the structures to protect that too.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, M.H., maybe, I know, in a way, this is an impossible request, but I’m going for it. Could we perhaps do a 10-minute rapid accelerated, like fast motion demo of, let’s say, you and I were creating a resilience plan, what would be step one? And I’ll give you just like a quick answer example.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
I love it. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And then we’ll charge through.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
So, you’re willing to, you’re the person, you’re doing this. We’re doing this on you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I am. And I know we won’t get all the way done, but if we could just get a sense for, “Oh, I see what step one is and some of the outputs that might emerge from step one. And I see what step two is and some of the outputs,” you know, we’ll just get a sense.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Let’s do it. First, Pete, tell us some of the most important things for you in life. That’s your values. Don’t get bogged down on, “Is this a value or not?” Just tell me what comes to mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. God, integrity, service, growth, optimization, family.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay. I’m making some notes so that I can help and remember. Okay, keep going. Next, tell us about, if we were to do a supply and demand table right now, we’re not doing a full table, but give us maybe top few, two or three demands you have on the work front these days.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. Well, producing podcasts regularly; working with the production company and getting that squared away nicely; integrating two of those companies to serve people well; and not having anybody abandon us, either employees or customers in the shakeup.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Retention?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay, give us some things on the personal side, things you’re willing to share with the entire planet?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. Well, I mean, just kids, and they’re young, and their associated needs, just kind whatever we’re working through, like learning, and just making sure they’re healthy and safe and loved, and responding to their needs as they emerge.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Fantastic. Okay, let’s jump. If we were doing this fully, we would go in more details, but let’s keep going. On the supply side, what kinds of things on the work front give you energy?

Pete Mockaitis
On the work front? Well, I mean, I’m discovering really cool stuff from guests who say something that blow my mind, like, “Whoa, I’ve never heard that. That’s really interesting.” Maybe discovering new tools or approaches for getting things done and making things happen. Entering new domains, we’re getting some YouTube and some video stuff happening. So, I guess discovery exploration as a general theme, yeah.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
And give us maybe one on the personal side, sources of supply.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d say exercise.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay. Let’s go with this one for right now. Now, we’re probably going to skip doing the full SWOT analysis because that would be a bit longer than the 10-minute that we’re trying to reach here, unless you’re willing to give a shot at one thing in each quadrant. How do you feel, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
In general, like a strength, a weakness, an opportunity, and a threat in the domain of resilience?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
I’ll guide you. Okay, let’s do it. You look like you’re going to do this. All right. On the individual side, so just looking at you as a person, what is one thing that makes building resilience naturally easy for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m reminded of BJ Fogg who told me, “Pete, you are a natural celebrator.” And it’s true.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay, perfect. Okay, love it. It’s perfect. Now tell us something about you, same thing, you personally, that actually makes resilience building a bit challenging?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, probably like self-criticism or like the need to perform, like, “Oh, I’m so bad,” you know, if I screw something up.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Perfect. Yeah, you’re good. Great example. Okay. External, so in your context, around you, personal or work, something that makes resilience a bit easier for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Just like a general contextual, environmental, external thing that makes it easier?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
I would say, well, when family’s happy, that’s easier. Like, if they’re in a playful, “Ah, da-da, let’s do this fun thing!” mood, that’s easier as opposed to like, “Wah!” you know, they’re like bickering and arguing amongst themselves, like, “Oh, come on, man.”

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay, okay, perfect. Great example. And last quadrant, you’re doing this, still on the external side, tell us an example of something that, in your overall context, makes resilience challenging?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, maybe sleep interruptions, someone crawl into bed, waking me up too early.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay, good. So now that we have this, we would design a strategic plan, and I often start with, say, three strategic pillars. Now, by strategic pillars, we’re talking about three directions that you would want to invest in. And within each of them, we’re going to find one action or a tactic that potentially you will consider.

So now that you’re looking at the values we’ve talked about, sources of supply and demand, and your overall context, I’m going to ask you first, otherwise I’ll provide ideas, but if something emerged for you, that’s usually a good place to start. Is there something that you’re already thinking, “Yeah, this looks like I could invest a bit more here,” and that may be a good idea?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess I’m thinking about on the work front, it’s like, at times, there are new cool fun interesting things I like to explore and try. And other times, I just sort of forget about that, sort of crank it out, like, “All right, next episode, let’s do that.” Like, “Oh, email process, go.” So, I mean, I have a giant list in OmniFocus of all these potential ideas or initiatives, and it would probably be really swell if I just had a short list I could refer to make sure that there’s usually something fun, cool, interesting, novel to explore and grow into there.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay. So, pillar number one could be exploration focus, let’s say, and potentially one of your tactics there could be, I mean, one option is what you just described, creating a short list. Sometimes a short list can take a longer amount of time. If we wanted to scale this down even more, you could say pick one, one a month, just pick one.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Pick. It’s a good list. You’ve liked all these ideas anyway at some point. If you spend the time to rank and create the shortlist, that may take you too long and you may not do it. So, yeah, it could be either a shortlist or pick one a month and explore, for example. Okay, so we’ve got one pillar. Another pillar, do you have another one that came to mind or you want me to throw in one?

Pete Mockaitis
What you got?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay. Another one could be to be proactive on the family front. Now this is, I have little information, so I’m not saying you are or are not right now, but family is a value. It’s something that occupies an important part of your life. Potentially, there’s a part, there’s an opportunity to do one more thing even more proactive. Either you’re talking about the sleeping, kids are coming in, or sometimes, you also said it’s a strength when the family is happy, when everyone is in good moods and that kind of thing.

Do we have an opportunity to, I don’t know, once a week do a family check-in? Again, you may already be doing this. Or is this an opportunity to look at, “Who of the kids is now transitioning to an older age where we could look at helping shape their sleep patterns, for example, so something works a bit better?” So, I don’t want to dive too far, it’s personal life and all this. But that could be an example of another pillar that would combine some of the things you’ve observed and how things are going, as well as your values.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And what’s funny, what’s coming to mind is I’m just thinking about food.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Okay, tell me about this one.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like young kids get cranky when they don’t eat. And yet they might not eat because they don’t want whatever foods. And so, if I could get laser-focused on, “Okay, what are healthy foods you like to make sure they’re always in supply, that we could cut down on some of the crankiness because they don’t want to eat whatever we got, even though it’s perfectly good, and maybe they need to learn, whatever, in the short term, make sure? Okay, blueberries are the thing,” for example. “Let’s just make sure we always got ample blueberries in the refrigerator.”

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
That’s right. So, you could literally have a pillar called food for kids with actions, like you said, it’s in supply. And maybe number two, you’re prompting the eating because sometimes it’s there, but no one’s touching it or whatever. And then they realize too far, or you realize far further on the road, that it’s impacting how they’re reacting. So, there you go. You can have your three pillars just like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, thank you. That’s fun. So, I know we just spent a lot of time talking about how it’s all custom, and context-specific, and everybody’s different. But now, M.H., I’m going to put you on the spot and tell us, what are some top pillars and tactics that you’ve just noticed seem to come up again and again and again, and be super helpful when people embark upon, knowing they may well not be applicable for all persons?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
That’s right. Well, I mean, there are areas that we know from research if we, all of us, it’s just the implementation needs to be very personalized. But the reality is that humans, in general, and we know this from body of research, decades of research, we will be more resilient if we are doing more on the exercise front three types of things: cardio, strength training, and meditative type activity. So, that’s one.

We will be more resilient if our nutrition is better, so it connects with the pillar, your food pillar here. And we have solid research, literally showing a difference if we’re having this meal healthier, it will have an impact. It’s not just long term, 20 years from now. It’s having an impact. Our sleep will have an impact on our resilience.

Spending time with people we enjoy spending time with, and then there are additional ones, like time in nature, doing pleasurable activities, things you enjoy doing, which is critical for recovery from work so that we can then bring our best to what we do. Other themes that fairly often will emerge for individuals I work with, there usually is some version of better boundaries, however it gets defined, that’s often there.

Fairly often, there is this element of managing my time differently, connects a bit with boundaries, but sometimes it’s also very time-specific, again with that tendency to underestimate how long something is going to take. Yeah, so some of these are examples.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. And then perhaps within a couple of these, could you share some top do’s and don’ts, like some things that people might get wrong? For example, with exercise, perhaps folks overdo it and it’s counterproductive. I’ve been there. Or they neglect one side of things, like maybe, “Strength is not my thing. I don’t want to get too big, bulky muscles.” That’s a whole another conversation. But tell us, are there any top do’s or don’ts that you find within these domains?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Yes. On the exercise front, more people, if they do anything in this area, they’ll be on the sort of active recovery, and will see meditation as something that is not for them, either because they’re like, “Ah, I’m not that person,” or they’ll say, “I’ve tried it, MH, and I can’t calm my brain down. It’s just not for me.” Well, hello, the reality is that research is crystal clear. It is critical for all of us. It makes a huge difference. So that’s probably one of the next frontiers. If you’re wondering what to do next, that probably would be the one.

Now, here’s the key thing. If you’ve tried it and you’re in that camp saying, “My brain just doesn’t slow down. It’s not for me,” all that, change your success criterion. It’s not about, “Did I calm my brain down and leave these feelings out?” No, success criterion, “Did you press play on the thing? And did you sit down trying to do it, and doing your best to bring your focus back on your breathing?” for example, whatever the guideline was. And that’s it.

If you’ve pressed play, you’ve done it, two minutes, four minutes, whatever the duration is, start small, full points for this, even if your brain was going the whole time. So that’s an example. Meditation would be one. Another area to really consider is the sleep. People will tend to bring their electronics in the bedroom, which then becomes tricky, because if we don’t sleep in the middle of the night, it’s very easy to reach for the electronic, which then is engaging the brain as opposed to giving the brain the message that, “No, no, no, it’s time to sleep.”

So, the “don’t” would be don’t bring the electronics in the bedroom. If your phone is your alarm, buy a small travel alarm, and that will be smaller than your phone probably and will ensure that you actually create the boundary there as well. So, these are some examples. Sometimes people are skipping meals on the nutrition front, so making sure there are easy things. You were talking about kids earlier, but it’s true for us too. Sometimes the day will go so fast, we’ll just reach for what’s easy, and that may not be what’s going to help the brain best sustain for all the next hours. So proactively planning for this, that is another example.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And with the research on meditation, you mentioned two minutes, four minutes, does the research suggest that such small doses are actually effective and useful for us?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Anything’s better than nothing, but in eventually, yes, longer will have more benefits. But again, here we are about starting small. Even smaller than this. You could start with just committing to doing five deep breaths while you’re washing your hands. We wash our hands many times a day. It does not require more time for you because you’re still doing this. Might as well use the moment to slow the breath down completely, all the air out, and slowly breathe in. It’s there and it’s a start. And what happens when we start in these smaller ways, we build that sense of self-efficacy, that we can influence this and that builds. Once we start building this, we will be able to extend over time.

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

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
I would say stay curious for the small actions. And I know how everybody, how so busy, so full everyone’s schedule is. If it feels like you can actually step away and create, invest in creating that plan for yourself, fantastic. If it feels like even that is too much for right now, then start with something very, very small.

But the reality is you will need to invest in yourself so you can bring your best to what you do in your personal and your professional life. It will serve as a protective factor from burnout. It will serve as a model for others, whether it’s your kids or people you work with. And so, staying curious about your next action and implementing is key.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
I’m going to go, and that’s very much the spirit of this book, with, “Done is better than perfect.”

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

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Recent research on priming, so the non-conscious ways in which we can support our brain in attaining our goals. And there’s been fascinating research there, I could give you an example, but the short point of this is, if we expose our brain in advance to an image or words that represent our goal, and we know images are actually even more powerful, we’re increasing our chances of reaching this goal. Still need all the conscious planning, the smart goals, the planning for it, the small initially, the whole thing, we need all this, and priming can help. Fascinating research there.

Pete Mockaitis
So, when you say priming, just like, if I want to be in shape, I could get a picture of an underwear model and post that somewhere that I’ll see you regularly, and that in and of itself will increase the odds of me achieving the goal?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
That’s right. And it could be that, it could be weights, it could be whatever for you represents that goal, yes. And it just needs to be at a place where your eyes see it so you don’t need to think about it, meditate, visualize. These are other processes that are also positive, but priming, it truly is just about your eyes seeing it.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular researcher or journal article we should link to there?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
There are. Two key researchers would be Latham and Locke. So, if you search Latham and Locke and you look for priming, you’re going to get to their research and then many others.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
I’m going to go with Mind Over Mood written by Greenberger and Padesky, over a million copies sold, 20 plus languages translated. It’s a very practical workbook, so it has theories that come from psychology, as well as exercises, always, to implement. And it’s a book that I think everyone should have in their homes, at work. It just provides great tools to deal with normal parts of life, some that are easier to manage, some that may be more challenging, but just research-based, very practical.

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

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Well, I want to say, I’m going to say, actually, doing a strategic resilience plan, because I’ve used it. I’ve used it in various phases of various demands I’ve gone through personally. I’ve seen others, obviously, but I’m using this tool.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Walk outside.

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

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
“Anything’s better than nothing.”

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

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
TheResiliencePlan.com will get you to everything I do. Always happy to connect on LinkedIn as well, and love to see what others are thinking and doing and all that. So that’s another great way.

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

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Step back and be strategic about your resilience the same way you’re strategic in what you do at work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. MH, this has been fun. I wish you much resilience and adventure.

Marie-Hélène Pelletier
Thank you. Love that, resilience and adventure. And same to you, Pete, and to your audience.

Jun 27
0

974: The Eight Inner Skills to Career Happiness with Stella Grizont

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Stella Grizont shares the simple things everyone can do to feel happier and more fulfilled every day.

You’ll Learn

  1. The master key for overcoming toxic situations
  2. The key response that builds quality relationships
  3. How to set healthy boundaries without feeling guilty 

About Stella

Time Magazine named Stella a leading happiness expert. As a speaker and executive coach, Stella works with leaders who are seeking deeper career fulfillment and with organizations that are dedicated to elevating the well-being and engagement of their employees. Her debut book based on her signature coaching program, The Work Happiness Method: Master the 8 Skills to Career Fulfillment, was an instant USA Today Bestseller.

In the last 17 years, Stella has coached over 1,800 individuals in over 30 countries. Stella was one of the first 150 people in the world to earn a master’s in Applied Positive Psychology (aka the science of happiness) from the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and son, who continue to teach her what life is all about.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Stella Grizont Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Stella, welcome.

Stella Grizont
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom associated with work happiness. Could you tell us any particularly extra surprising or fascinating discoveries you’ve made about work happiness with all of your coaching and putting together your book here?

Stella Grizont
Well, in the book, I did a lot of research, and one of the things that’s really just stuck with me was around how much social support matters. And when we’re in a state of fight or flight, and we’re feeling stressed, just having a friend or someone we know who cares about us by our side can literally change our perception of reality. It can change how we feel about the challenge ahead. It transforms how we estimate how hard something is.

There was a study done where researchers took two groups of participants at the base of a hill, and one group got to stand with a friend by their side and another group was standing on their own. And they were asked, “How steep is this hill? How steep is the slant of this hill?” And those with a friend by their side estimated the steepness to be less.

So, when you’re asking about how we perceive the challenge ahead, or what do we think about a really difficult situation, the presence of a friend can actually change how we perceive what’s up ahead. And so, that’s just really oriented me to, especially as an introvert, to make sure that I’m supplementing. We supplement with vitamins but we have to make sure we’re really supplementing with people that we care about and feel connected to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really intriguing, the notion of how difficult we estimate a thing to be is variable. And I’ve seen that in my own world in terms of if I’m feeling kind of stressed about a thing, it’s like, “Oh, this is probably going to take two hours.” It’s like, “Okay, no, it took half an hour, but I was just freaking out.”

Stella Grizont
Our emotions really determine the reality that we experience. They can influence the reality that we experience. They’re both like information about what’s happening, but then they also influence how we perceive what’s happening, so it’s a two-way street. And if we know that, we can actually, and one of the skills I teach in my book, is, “How do you manage your mind and mood so that you can see more, so that you can be more, so that you can be more in control?”

And if we know this about ourselves, we can make more conscious choices about what moods we’re cultivating and how we respond to our own emotions so that we can set ourselves up to flourish and have more ease and think more clearly.

Pete Mockaitis
I definitely want to talk about managing moods. And maybe, first of all, if there’s anyone who’s perhaps skeptical about that that’s even possible, like, “Moods just kind of fall upon us. Can one even manage them?” could you maybe give us an inspiring story of someone who managed their mood and used some of these other skills to really see a cool transformation?

Stella Grizont
Whenever I give a talk we go through some evidence-based techniques, and within 30 seconds, participants are like, “Oh, my shoulders are relaxing,” or “I feel lighter,” or “I feel more relaxed,” and it doesn’t take much for us to change our minds and moods. Our emotions are in motion, and that’s a good thing, that they’re never constant, because they’re datapoints about our surroundings. And sometimes we can’t control our initial response, even though we’d really love to, but we can control our response to our response once we notice that emotion.

So, I had a client who was dealing with a manager who was a bully. I mean, he would yell inappropriately, use inappropriate language. It was very inappropriate, and she found herself crying all the time, and she had never been in that position before. She was a people manager, very successful, but this guy was not only inappropriate, but really getting to her, and she felt like she couldn’t hold it together in his presence.

And so, we practiced, she went through “The Work Happiness Method,” which is now a book, but it’s also a coaching program, and we really worked on some techniques to help her attune to who she wanted to show up as, and just simple techniques, practicing breath work, getting clear on her vision of who she wanted to be, remembering her sense of control, preparing for that difficult conversation. So, there are so many things that we can do that are simple and instant. I mean, if you want, we can get through some, we can do some right now for folks.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess what I’m curious to hear is, so she did those things and then what happened on the other side?

Stella Grizont
So, we prepared for a difficult conversation, and the most difficult part of a difficult conversation is your preparation beforehand. That’s what I call your approach, that’s another skill that we cover in the book, because your energy is everything in a difficult conversation. Our moods are contagious. Our emotions are contagious for a number of reasons. We have mirror neurons, so when a baby’s smiling, we can’t help but smile. But when someone’s also really angry and frustrated, we find ourselves clenching up and feeling like something’s off.

And so, we’re just able to catch each other’s moods. So, if you’re going to go into a difficult conversation, the number one thing you can control is your energy beforehand. And so, we made sure that she was in a good place, that she felt confident going in, that she felt neutral, that she even had empathy for this really horrible leader, and she was able to actually express that she would no longer be able to work in these conditions.

If they were going to be able to work together and have a positive working relationship, they needed to re-examine how they communicated. And she ended up staying at that organization and actually getting a lot of the things that she needed, including additional support and headcount, including more travel that she wanted. So, it really was transformational for her.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really beautiful. I think a lot of times, if we are encountering someone who’s toxic and very problematic, we can conclude, “Well, that person is just a jerk and this is a hopeless situation. There’s nothing I can do. I just got to look for the exit.” And yet, here you are when you share, in some cases, very clearly, “These conditions are not working for me and they’ll need to change or I’ll need to exit,” then good things can happen. Folks can have a transformation.

I’m curious, on the receiving end there, how was the manager responding to that information? Like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” or was it like, “Yeah, I have some problems, I’ve been working on them. Thank you for being clear with me. This is a wake-up call.” How does one receive that without just flipping out and making it worse?

Stella Grizont
I don’t think there was an apology, but there was, the things that she had requested, he responded to. So, she had asked for, if he was feeling frustrated, for him to talk about it sooner rather than later, for him to be able to write things out, for him to give her additional support, for them to do more planning together so he wasn’t so surprised. So, he actually changed his behavior.

But in this case, what was more important for her was actually her demonstrating to herself that she could have this conversation. That was the growth for her. And so, there’s always growth opportunities in really challenging moments. And for her, it was witnessing herself be powerful in a very, very challenging moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Stella, this is inspiring stuff. So, we are not victims to our moods. We are not even victims to terrible bosses or toxic environments. There’s a lot of power that we could summon and make happen. So, I want to dig into some of these particular tools in a moment. But first could you give us, from all your research, what’s kind of the state of work happiness these days? 

Stella Grizont
So, generally, we know that about three-quarters of employees are not engaged.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, yeah, the Gallup stuff.

Stella Grizont
The Gallup stuff, right. So, we all know that we’re very disengaged, but just as a background, the U.S. has dropped in terms of happiness levels. According to the 2024 World Happiness Report, the U.S. fell eight places from 15th place to 23rd place.

Pete Mockaitis
In one year?

Stella Grizont
In one year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, bummer.

Stella Grizont
But you know what? To be honest, 15th isn’t that great either for being one of the most wealthy nations, a democracy. And it’s been pretty flat. And I think the reason why the U.S. has not been in a great place, and it’s gotten even worse, is because we’re lonely and we’re isolated. Not just because, you know, we started off our conversation about how much social support matters. Well, relationships are the number one predictor of our happiness, the number one predictor of our happiness, above and beyond how healthy we are, how much money we earn, how successful we are, how confident we are.

And so, in the United States, we tend to prioritize our work over our connections. We move cross-country for our jobs and so we end up dislodging our social connections, our familial connections, and then we’re also working from home now, and we’re not getting just interaction. And what researchers have found is that, just like we need a diverse diet of, like, veggies and proteins and grains, we also need a diverse social diet.

So, it’s not just about staying connected to people who we have strong social ties with, we also need a lot of weak social ties, like saying hello to the postal worker, saying hello to the security guard, having a nice chit-chat with the person who’s making you coffee, or the Uber driver. We need interactions because they signal to our nervous system that we’re safe.

And, again, that’s what also signals what we’re up against, and that can create a veil over how we perceive anything, whether it’s if someone says, “Hey, can we talk about X, Y, and Z?” and you perceive that as a threat, or as, “Oh, let’s just explore.” So, our nervous system is constantly on patrol for threat, and if we feel lonely, then our body is in a stressed-out state and we’re more likely to perceive everything as a threat and feel quite unhappy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so social stuff is big. That’s come up a couple times already. Within your work, The Work Happiness Method, any pro tips on dealing with that in the context of work careers?

Stella Grizont
Well, one, this actually wasn’t in the book, but this is one of my favorite tools to share, just a very practical tool. When someone comes to you with good news, it’s so important for us to respond with celebration. So, this is the easiest hack for building quality relationships. So, researchers found that there’s four main ways that we respond to good news. One response is active-destructive.

So, let’s say my husband tells me he got a promotion, I could say, “Oh, you got a promotion. This means you’re going to be working late. You’re never going to be home. I’m going to have to do more bedtime with the kids.” So, I’m actively destroying his high. That’s the worst way we can respond is when we just like pummel the goodness.

Then a little bit better but still horrible is passive-destructive, and that’s where someone says, my husband says he had a raise or a promotion, and I would say, “What do you want for dinner?” So, I just ignore his good news and I jump into something else. Slightly better is passive-constructive, and that’s where he says, “Oh, my God, I got a promotion, I got a raise,” and then I would say, “That’s nice. So, what should we eat?” So, I acknowledged it but not really.

And the most optimal way we want to respond to someone else’s good news is with our presence, our attention, our curiosity. We want to actively build up and savor the good news. And so, that would sound like, “Oh, my God, tell me all about it. That’s so exciting. I know you worked so hard. How are you feeling about it? Tell me all the details.” So, we’re having them reconstruct the event, re-savor the event. We’re adding to it.

And so, the reason why we want to do this is because it signals to the other person that we are a safe person for them to go to when they are ready to celebrate. We all have had good news in our life and have all made conscious decisions about, “Ooh, I don’t want to tell this person because they’re just going to make me feel like crap afterwards. They’re not a safe person for me to go to.”

And so, what researchers have found is that the relationships we go to when we have good news actually matter more than when we have bad news. So how we respond to people in good times actually matters more than how we respond in bad times when it comes to cultivating a strong relationship. So, just celebrate. Be a better celebrator.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. I love it. And I’m reminded we had a conversation with B.J. Fogg, and we were talking more about habits. But he said that celebration is absolutely such a top important thing associated with creation of habits, and now also for relationships. So, good stuff. And I think, is this the Gottman Research, these four response approaches? It sounds a little familiar.

Stella Grizont
This is actually from Shelly Gable, and she discovered these four responses to good news.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now I’m wondering, I don’t know if it was Shelly Gable or John Gottman or whom, but I think that the data was pretty striking that having a minimal acknowledgement was like almost as bad as being actively destructive, like it was pretty shocking how, “Hey, great job,” and a quick move on is nearly as devastating as just being totally mean.

Stella Grizont
Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, as humans, we crave a sense of meaning and purpose. And we don’t have to climb a mountaintop to feel on purpose. We don’t have to do grand gestures to be on purpose. We want to contribute to something bigger. And why do we want to contribute to something bigger? Because we want to matter somehow, and mattering can be experienced by just feeling someone else’s presence and care, and giving that presence and care.

And so, we’re just beautifully interlocked to matter to each other. It’s the bedrock of our wellbeing and of our success. So, if we just help someone else matter, and also feel that we matter to someone else, it can catapult our success. It can catapult our wellbeing and our happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Stella, we’ve got some good stuff on relationships. You have, in fact, eight essential skills in your Work Happiness Method. Could you give us maybe the quick four-minute bird’s-eye overview of what are these eight essential skills?

Stella Grizont
Sure. So, the first one is resilience, and that’s how to manage your mind and mood because we have to start there. The second is having a clear vision of what success means to you, so it’s clarity, and knowing who you want to be, who are you when you are most alive. Most of us define success backwards. We, first, pick really sexy goals, and we think of all the things we want to achieve.

The problem with that is that, and I’m sure many of your listeners have experienced this, you can achieve all the things and still be left feeling empty, burnt out, lonely, or completely confused about who you are. And so, what we want to do is reverse engineer and first identify, “How do I want to feel and be at work?” and then choose goals that support that. And so, the second chapter and the second skill is all about figuring out who you want to be.

After we figure that out and we develop your vision, then we build the skill around purpose, and that’s about making decisions that support your being, the person you defined in your vision. It’s about knowing how to make decisions with confidence so that you can feel on purpose every day. Now, once we know how to manage your mind and mood, we have your vision, we have your values, now it’s time for you to set your boundaries, and that’s what the next chapter is about, and that’s the next important inner skill.

And boundaries are less about saying no, but they’re actually more about saying yes to what matters, yes to your vision, yes to your values. So, I walk people through, very practically, “Where do you set boundaries? How do you set them? And also, how do you have compassion for yourself if it’s really freaking hard for you to do it?” Because I am a recovering people-pleaser, and I think folks who are people-pleasers are the ones who really have a hard time with boundaries.

And it’s important to understand that people, we talk about people-pleasing so casually, but actually for many folks, it’s actually a trauma response. And so, it’s very important to understand the psychology behind why we struggle with boundaries because it will help set you free. So, once we know what our boundaries are, and we create greater ease for us to be who we want to be, then we talk about, “Well, how do you be who you want to be in times of uncertainty?” And that’s through the inner skill of play.

Playfulness is an inherent capability that we have as humans, and it helps us navigate uncertainty and flourish through it so we don’t stay stuck. And then once we learn how to be more playful, especially in hard and uncertain times, the next inner skill is about discovery, and that’s about exploring. Now that we can have a play mindset in the face of uncertainty, how do we figure out what’s next?

So, whether you’re just, you know, doing okay and you just don’t know what’s next, whether or not there’s lots of uncertainty and change in your organization, maybe there’s some kind of health scare or change within your family, like, “How do you explore what’s next in a way that will set you up to flourish?”

And then it’s inevitable that we have to talk to people when it comes to just navigating the world, and so I have a chapter on approach, which is about, “How do you have those difficult conversations? And how do you set yourself up for transformation instead of confrontation?” And then the final inner skill that I cover is called refocus, and that’s about, “How do you return to yourself when things get off track? When things don’t go your way, how do you settle with the universe? And how do you make sense out of hard times?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. So, we’ve had some good chats about relationship bits. When it comes to managing mood, are there any top tactics that are really just transformational here?

Stella Grizont
One of my favorite tools to give my clients is called the complaint vacation. So, we often find ourselves complaining aloud or even in our heads, and complaining is not just noticing what’s wrong, it’s the additional suffering about what’s wrong. So, it’s not just saying, “It’s really hot outside today.” It’s, “Oh, it’s so hot. Oh, my God, I’m so tired of this weather.” So, it’s the grievance, it’s the suffering. That’s a choice.

And so, if there’s something that you find yourself complaining about pretty regularly, just give yourself permission for the next week to take a vacation from that because I think we all are tired of our own complaining. I like to couple a complaint vacation with gratitude. So, it’s not just noticing what’s wrong but it’s paying extra special attention to what is right. And it’s not just listing off what’s right, but it’s what’s uniquely right today.

So, it’s not just that I’m grateful for my family, but I’m so grateful for the snuggles I had with my three-year-old before he went to daycare. So it’s getting really, really specific. And then, finally, you know, I think one of the things when it comes to managing our mind and mood is people think that being happy is just about like noticing what’s good, but actually I think one of the keys and skills to being happy is knowing how to be unhappy, and how to actually be with your negative emotions.

And so, one of the simplest things you can do when you notice you’re feeling off and you’re not in the mood that you’d like to be is just to be curious about that mood, and first just label that emotion. Like, if you’re feeling off, take a moment and be like, “Okay, what’s this about?” Get curious, “What is this? Is this frustration? Is this disappointment? Is this anger? Is this loneliness?” Give it a name.

Because when we give it a name, we’re actually shifting the brain activity from our amygdala, the fight-or-flight center, to our prefrontal cortex, which is the big-picture thinking, that’s the planning, that’s the executive function, and so we’re able to actually help ourselves. Because once we label, then we’re like, “Oh, I’m just feeling really frustrated that that report didn’t go out on time. Maybe I should talk about processes with my team so that we can prevent that moving forward.”

So, we start to help ourselves. Metabolize the emotion faster. So just by labeling the emotion and being with it and being curious about it, not trying to push it away, you can actually help yourself be happier in the long run.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. I like that notion of what’s uniquely good about this today in terms of getting that brain kind of tuned into that stuff and noticing what’s really special about that. That’s really cool. When one does a complaint vacation, I can see how we can catch ourselves in not verbalizing complaints, yet still, quite possibly internally in our own mind’s ear, rattle off plenty of complaints. How do you think about approaching that?

Stella Grizont
Yeah, I love that question. And this is the thing with when we complain, this is just something I’ve noticed, is that we’ve usually skipped over the step of acknowledging our emotion. We’ve actually bypassed our own emotion, and now we’re in an instant place of suffering. So, there’s probably a space before that, before we get really like annoyed or flustered, or we’re suffering or we’re complaining, that we skipped over.

And so, just acknowledging your emotions can actually help you be with the event without having extra layers of suffering about it.

So, if you find yourself in a complaining loop, you want to pause and, again, be curious, and be like, “What’s really going on for me here?” Because it’s probably not the thing. There’s some emotion that wants attention. And if we just get quiet enough to notice it, that’s actually the first step of having some self-compassion, and then we might say to ourselves, “Wow, of course I’m feeling really upset. It’s hot and it’s uncomfortable and I can’t do my work. And that makes it really hard.”

And then the next step of self-compassion is just being gentle with yourself like you would a friend. Like, “Yeah, of course, Stella.” Like validating your emotions. And then you want to remind yourself that you’re human, just like everyone else, and, yeah, being really sweaty is going to make anyone grumpy, and just be kind and compassionate. And that can actually transform the complaining, and that can really slow down the volume of that complaining and then to notice what’s good if you can. And that’s what I hope for everyone who reads the book or whoever I work with, is to realize their power over their experience. And the power is first realizing, “I am complaining,” or, “I’m noticing myself complaining,” and then to notice that you have choices. That’s the power. So, if you are noticing you’re complaining, you’re already in a good place. You’re already winning because you’re at least observing it.

Pete Mockaitis
To note, the particular emotion, and not jump through it. I’m reminded of Dr. Trevor Kashey. We’ve got to get him on the show. He has a framework that is STFU, which is sort of a joke in and of itself, which is like stimulus, thought, feeling, urge. And these are four separate things. Like, what you want to run and go do, the urge is different than the thought that you’re having, or the feeling you’re having, or the thing itself that’s present.

And I find that’s kind of helpful to you stop and march through that, and say, “Oh, okay,” we’re going to have a moment where we could just go ahead and feel that thing and let that flow through for a moment, and that’s all right, and maybe even helpful in just letting it pass instead of just telling a big old story and perpetuating it.

Stella Grizont
Yes. If we could slow down just a little bit, like in general as humans, and touch base with ourselves, we realize our power, we metabolize our emotions better, and we make better choices. So, I think a lot, we could all benefit with slowing down.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’m curious now with regard to the boundaries. Any favorite words, phrases, scripts you might suggest, because we could feel maybe uncomfortable in establishing a boundary? It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to upset them,” or “I make them think I’m unmotivated or lazy or not a team player,” etc. Any magical turns of phrase you might suggest for folks?

Stella Grizont
Absolutely. So, as I shared before, I’m a recovering people-pleaser, and this is a lifelong practice. All of these tools, they’re all part of building a skillset, and you have to keep at it, or we just get stronger and better. And so, if you’re an auto-yes kind of person and someone’s like, “Hey, can you join this committee?” or “Hey, can you do this by 5:00?” or “Hey, we’d love your help,” if you find yourself automatically saying yes right away, one thing you can do is just delay.

So, you would say, “Hey, thanks so much for considering me for this. Can I get back to you in an hour, in a day, next week? Can I get back to you? Thanks so much. Can I get back to you?” This will buy you time to make a more conscious decision and decide, “Is this a yes for me? Is this a no?” Or, “Do I have questions? What’s driving the timing? Why me? Why are we doing this?”

So, oftentimes, again, it’s about slowing things down so that you can make more conscious decisions. So, I would just ask for some time, “Let me look at my schedule. I want to give you my best. I haven’t had a chance to assess what I have going on this week.” And people are happy to give you time.

When it comes to boundaries, it’s really about microdosing. I call it microdosing. So baby, baby, baby, baby steps. Because what you’re doing is you’re retraining your nervous system to feel safe even when maybe people aren’t totally pleased. So, we need to train ourselves to feel safe. And so, one microdose, one little baby step you can take is just to say, “Let me get back to you.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, Stella, anything you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Stella Grizont
Writing this book took me over nine years, and it was something I really wrestled with. And there were many times where it felt like I was pushing and I wasn’t going anywhere. And I talk about this inner skill of refocusing, which sometimes requires us to stay down when we’re down. It sometimes requires us to listen and learn from when things don’t go our way.

And I just want to offer some words of encouragement for folks who feel like they’re hitting a wall. And in the book, I talk about, well, maybe it’s not so much of a setback, but a setup for something better, and to really question, “How is this serving me? What growth is this setting me up for? What is this signaling?”

Really asking some bigger questions so that you can get to transform through that really hard time. Because I truly believe it’s all of service, just like that client who was dealing with the bully, like she got to step up and really regain her power, and that was a gift that her boss gave her even though he was an a-hole.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Yeah, well it’s done, a setup, instead of a setback. Cool. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Stella Grizont
So the founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, I hope I’m saying that right, he said, “It’s not that I don’t get off-center, it’s that I return to center so quickly no one ever notices.” And so that’s the thing with all these inner skills, we’re going to mess up. The work is not to be perfect. The work is in returning to ourselves a little faster, a little bit more gracefully each time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And favorite study or piece of research?

Stella Grizont
So, in 2006, there was this eye-tracking study done by Wadlinger and Isaacowitz, where they took two groups of participants, and they induced one group of participants into a positive mood by just showing them pictures, puppies, babies. And then another, they took another group and induced them into a negative mood, and then they put eye-tracking goggles on them, and they asked them to look at an image on a screen.

And the people who were in a negative mood, their eyes tended to stay on one particular area of the screen and just hover there, focus. And then those who were in a positive mood, their eyes tended to go around the periphery of the screen and then scatter within. So, they literally took in the big picture. They saw more. The people who are in a negative mood kind of had tunnel vision. So, again, it just shows the impact of our emotions on how we see the world, and how important it is for us to manage our minds and moods so that we can see more.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Stella Grizont
This is a book by Mark Nepo, and it’s Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred.

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

Stella Grizont
At the end of the day, and this is a tool I share in my book, I ask myself what I call accountability questions, which are questions to reflect on three values I’m looking to amplify in my life. So, they’re open-ended and they’re “How did I support my well-being today, because my vitality is important?” “How did I express love to the people I care about?” And the third one I move around a lot, but it’s actually now it’s going to be about play, but it’s, “How did I have fun today?”

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

Stella Grizont
Well, people really love this exercise that I have that’s called the Vision Generator, and that’s what you do in Chapter 2. People can, if they don’t want to buy the book, which I’d love them to, or do the course, you can get it for free at VisionGenerator.com. And what people often love is the ease and the hand-holding to really go deep and reflect on what one really, really, really wants, and so they really love that exercise because that really sets them free. And to realize that there’s infinite ways to feel more satisfied at work and in your life, even if the circumstances are what they are and they’re not perfect.

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

Stella Grizont
They can go to my website, StellaGrizont.com. And I’m also on Instagram and LinkedIn.

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

Stella Grizont
I would start with the Vision Generator. So, if you want to be awesome at your job, you have to know what’s important, how you want to show up, and knowing your vision is so critical because it organizes your values, the steps that you take, and the behaviors you engage in. And so, that’s vision generator, and they can get that at VisionGenerator.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Stella, this has been a treat. I wish you much work happiness.

Stella Grizont
Thank you so much, Pete. Thank you for having me.