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15. Become an Epicenter of Resilience with Lorca Smetana
10 Plays9 months ago
Sit next to her on a plane, ask what she does, and she’ll say “I grow resilience in people.”
Lorca Smetana has learned how to be with hard things beautifully—but that wisdom came at a cost. After surviving the Mt. Hood climbing tragedy at sixteen, she quickly realized ‘security’ doesn’t exist. Life is unpredictable, and our only real choice is how we show up in the face of uncertainty.
As a Resilience Coach, she acts as a ‘wilderness guide to the self’ for those who crave deeper confidence, peace, and self-trust. She teaches how to heal what hasn’t happened yet. She cultivates healthy emotional ecosystems. She reveals the path to joy independent of circumstance.
Some clients find solace at Lorca’s Montana farm, where she raises Icelandic sheep and white homing pigeons. Others collaborate virtually as they learn about supported risk, shedding emotional armor, and identifying “the problems they do want.”
Hear how Lorca intertwines resilience and entrepreneurship in her own life and why her purpose in the world is NOT to create the perfect business. (Pssst…neither is yours!)
For more inspiration, subscribe to Unbound Turnarounds on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!
LINKS:
- Connect with Nicole
- Connect with Mallory
- Connect with Lorca: www.lorcasmetana.com/about
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Unbound Turnarounds'
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Unbound Turnarounds, a podcast all about the challenges women business owners think about constantly, but rarely voice. We're Nicole and Mallory, entrepreneurs, friends, and co-founders of Business Unbound, a community helping women alleviate the headaches, heartaches, and backaches so work actually works for life. This is your safe space for the ups, downs, and the turnarounds.
Welcome Back & Guest Introduction
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Unbound Turnarounds. I am really looking forward to introducing our next guest today.
Meet Lorca Matana: Resilience Expert
00:00:40
Speaker
So we have Lorkas Matana with us, and she's here to talk all about resilience.
00:00:46
Speaker
It's so good, I can't wait. So Lorca is a vibrant resource for those curious about the inner workings of resilience, burnout, compassion, creativity, and deep connection. At the age of 16, she was a survivor of the 1986 school mountaineering tragedy on Mount Hood where nine people died, an event that inspired her early on to craft a life of resilience.
00:01:08
Speaker
Today, she is an expert in the human capacity to recover and sustain life and health from crisis change and burnout, and is a vibrant explorer of designed resilience. She founded a medical aviation nonprofit, holds a master's degree in international diplomacy, and served on the leadership development faculty of Montana State University, MSU. These days, she's a professional speaker, an educator and coach, and a regenerative farmer.
00:01:37
Speaker
So interesting. A celebrant and a writer. So she's doing lots of things. She architects resilience and wholeness, helping individuals, teams and communities better understand what it is to be powerfully resilient ecosystems for themselves and in the world.
Season Two Focus: Entrepreneur Wellbeing
00:01:53
Speaker
Oh my goodness, Lorca, welcome. We're so glad you're here. I am so glad to be here.
00:02:00
Speaker
Okay, so as a reminder to all our listeners, for season two, we're digging into entrepreneur wellbeing because we really feel like without it, without focusing on that mental and physical health, we can't focus on our companies.
Lorca's Defining Mountaineering Experience
00:02:14
Speaker
Lorca, we're really excited about your perspective because in our boost your brain wellbeing course, we actually talk a lot about resilience and we talk about that as a way to increase your ability to manage a heavier workload. So we really can't wait to learn a little bit more from you about this whole work.
00:02:31
Speaker
Love it. Well, hey guys, it's Nicole and I am really excited to chat with you too. I first wanted to get into something that took me down a real internet rabbit hole when I was looking at your site and your bio, of course. So as Mallory alluded, you actually had an experience as a teenager that seemed really pivotal for your own personal awareness of crisis response and recovery. So looking back, tell us a little bit about how that experience led to your first professional
00:03:00
Speaker
Endeavor, which was actually founding the Angel Flight Network.
00:03:04
Speaker
This was a long road. The accident that I was in was a mountaineering accident where a school climb of Mount Hood was hit by a storm and climbers were trapped on the mountain and it ended in a very hard way that completely changed our entire school. It changed my understanding of what I needed to be able to be with and focus on and how I understood my role and my job and
00:03:32
Speaker
determining how I can show up in the world the way I thought I wanted to, right? Before all that happened. Yes. We have this idea of how things are going to go. And fundamentally, resilience is not a thing. If you're not challenged, we don't need it. And it's a very beautiful word and a very broad word. And for me, there was a very powerful, instant invitation to get a lot more clear about what it was, what it looked like, and what's my role in being with it. How can I invite it? How can I become
00:04:02
Speaker
someone who resilience likes to be around, that resilience is my companion in the ways in which I meet a living world. So this was my new job, essentially, right? Alongside me to everything else I was going to do, which was, one, actually finishing high school. That was still on table. Of course, yes. Healing.
00:04:20
Speaker
in all the ways that that entails and which I thought I was like coming out of a hole, right? I was in a hole. My job was to kind of come back out so that I could lead a life that was invitational and that I could accept those invitations without crashing and burning. Yes. And with a new side project of just this almost an infinite curiosity around resilience itself.
00:04:45
Speaker
who are resilient people? Do they exist in the world? And what are they doing? What are they not doing? What are the tools? And what are the games they play? What are the mindsets? And what are the experiences they have? And how do they support themselves? And how do they accept support from others? And how do they set limits? I mean, all of that stuff just became not only interesting to me, but really, you know, survival.
00:05:06
Speaker
crucial thing. Yes. And that was like taking on a huge side hobby that informed everything I did. In fact, to this day, it informs everything. It's the lens that I don't have a workaround for. Right. It's the ocean ice women. Yeah. Yes. Yes. It's beautiful.
00:05:25
Speaker
And for a long time, you know, a lot of the healing and recovery and just getting back to a place that felt pretty normal, that was the job first. Full-time job. That that toolbox was a big part of it. And I was really beautifully supported by the kinds of humans I had, by the communities I belong to.
00:05:43
Speaker
And, you know, I didn't start the nonprofit path until I was well into grad school. In fact, it was a problematic thing because it was one of those things where you have an idea and you're like, that's a cool idea. I'm going to play with that a little. And then it just exploded. And all of a sudden I had all of these other humans who were like, oh, that's shiny. I want to come play. Let me be one of your people, your pilots, or I'll do that. And I was trying to write a master's thesis.
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, been there while not starting a pilot network. So that itself even was a whole new invitation to develop new kinds of resilience, right? Because the organization itself was one where we collected private pilots who were signing up to fly patients, medical patients for a non-emergency treatment.
Angel Flight Network: A Humanitarian Venture
00:06:33
Speaker
And so a lot of rural patients for whom travel was a problem. It was problematic. It was stressful. It was financially difficult. It was physically painful for a lot of them. There was a lot of emotional pain, not only for the patients, but in their whole family. And then I had all these pilots who were all friends and became friends. Sure.
00:06:55
Speaker
And I had a whole new invitation to be with other people's pain in a way that I hadn't had before, that I needed a whole new set of tools in the toolbox to be able to navigate that. And it was magical. It was extraordinary. But yeah, once again, it did put me right up against my current levels of mass activity. Right. Right. Your brain was probably like, no, you're fairly prepared, but also let's just stretch this a little bit.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, let's just see if you can handle this new thing. Yeah, which I feel like businesses, nonprofit or otherwise, are all really good at doing good stretchers.
00:07:35
Speaker
Okay, so your business kept evolving or rather you kept evolving, I will say, and you had a lot of variety of roles.
Dove Above Montana: The Story Behind the Doves
00:07:42
Speaker
You worked with Montana State University, but it was like another five-ish years, I think, before you dived into running a new adventure. So this is maybe like your second entrepreneur experience. Yes. What was a dove above Montana and how did it come to be?
00:07:58
Speaker
Delavub actually is something which it was a side thing and it remains a side thing, but it's very grounded in who I am and how I work. So the best way to explain this is I married a European and he grew up racing homing pigeons and it's his mad love. And so we have over here on our farm, we have lots of homing pigeons, racing pigeons, really high caliber, long distance.
00:08:27
Speaker
Talk to me about what lots is. Lost. A loft is like a chicken. A loft. I thought you said you had a lot. And I was like, it is a lot. Okay. I was like, when are we talking? Do we need an intervention? Okay. All right. We're good. All right.
00:08:45
Speaker
So we have 11 or 12 species right out of the far reds of it. My husband's work is intense and stressful and can involve a large amount of travel. And humming pigeons are his sweet home. Have who he is when he's with them is
00:09:03
Speaker
is so lovely and they just ground him and called him and he knows them so well. And so we had a friend who lost her daughter at a very young age and after a very long illness. And she asked Dushan if he could bring some of his birds and let them go at the funeral. And he said, well, I'm traveling, but Lorca will bring them. And I brought nine birds because she was nine years old.
00:09:27
Speaker
And at the cemetery, I released them and they flew up into the sky and they disappeared. And they were what you think of as pigeons, right? They're black and red. And afterwards, two separate people came up to me and put their hand on my arm and said, those were such beautiful white birds.
00:09:45
Speaker
And I thought, wow, that is, they expected white dogs, and they saw what they did. And that's what they saw. Oh, interesting. So I came home to Dushad later and I said, this is what happened. He said, do you want white dogs? I can get you white dogs.
00:10:00
Speaker
Or I said, yes, we want white doves. And he brought me in long distance racing stock, but they were weak. They were homing pigeons. Not all pigeons are homing pigeons. That's genetic. And I just started raising these white birds that I could take anywhere out and I could let them fly. And I would let them out from my hands or a basket and they would circle in the sky and they would fly home to my law.
00:10:25
Speaker
And whenever I did this, something kind of amazing happened inside people and inside me. And it's this beautiful nonverbal way to be with the hardest things. And for a while, you know, a lot of the work that I did really centered around grief and mortality and death. Right.
00:10:41
Speaker
and supporting people who were in it, because I knew that path and I couldn't be that for people. So
Doves in Ceremonies
00:10:49
Speaker
the Dems really became my colleagues in a way, offering something that I couldn't and I still fly them to this day. I'm now a little more official about it. I'm a celebrant and an officiant and I marry people and I marry people and I celebrate all sorts of different things with them. And very often my birds are there with us.
00:11:08
Speaker
That's an amazing story. Now I want one. But I do feel like your, well, somehow your capacity for the amount of things you do is insane. Mallory likes to say that I am very multitasking and diverse interests, but I think you have me beat by tenfold. So you are, you are raising the doves, but you're also raising two free range children, as you call them.
00:11:40
Speaker
And then you were like, you know what else I need? Maybe another business. Sure. This makes sense. So around, I think it was 2013 or so, something that you started really spoke to the heart of everything that you had gained on this journey. So tell us about when you were like, you know what? I think it's time to put these little pieces of the puzzle together and start a resilience training program. So how did that come to be?
00:12:03
Speaker
You became like an Icelandic shepherdess.
00:12:09
Speaker
The funny thing was I had toddlers at the time, and the farm was not what it is now, but it was definitely growing and had lots of moving pieces already. And yes, I was still working with deaths, with people who dealt with deaths especially. And that was everything from survivors of people who had died, family members, friends and all of that, but also working, spending time with, for example, first responders and hospice workers. And I was an organizer for a conference on death and dying here in the valley. So in Bozeman,
00:12:38
Speaker
And one of the pivotal things of resilience, which after being tested for a very long time, I would say this still is the first supporting piece of adding resilience, is making space.
00:12:54
Speaker
Like if you did nothing else in a situation, add some space, add some spaciousness, and notice where things are too tight or too packed or too constrained or fragile or brittle, right? Add space. So the first iteration of this whole thing that exists now, this body of work and this community, is that I kept feeling like when I met people who were
00:13:21
Speaker
on an edge, right? They were capped really low. When I was like, you need a day with me. You need to come to the farm. You need to just be with me for a day and let me take care of you and give you space, animals.
00:13:38
Speaker
a field or reeds or something living that you can touch. And you need to just absorb the lessons of a sustainable regenerating farm. Be said fluid that comes from real things and that you could even pick some up at yourself.
00:13:54
Speaker
And we're right here in one of the loveliest valleys of the Rockies. It's so rich and beautiful. And our farm is right outside of Bozeman, so it's really accessible from the sea. So I really felt like I could bring people here and in one day give them something that was a real reset button, a pivot point, that you would come back changed.
00:14:18
Speaker
And so my original view of that was mostly centered around the farm. I kind of thought of the farm as the thing that they were doing. But when I designed it, each person who would come to me, when I would design it, I would also spend a little time just sitting with them in my mind and thinking about them.
00:14:36
Speaker
there would be tools from my toolbox that would show up for me. Like, oh, we could play this game that I invented, or we could give them this prompt, or I think this person could really use maybe some clarity and space around this idea that they have, which may or may not be complete. They could use a little bit more space around that. Yeah.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yes, yes. And gradually I came to accept that it wasn't the farm. The farm is amazing and special and beautiful, but resilience and I don't need any particular place to do what we do. Yes.
00:15:15
Speaker
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00:15:35
Speaker
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00:16:06
Speaker
So on your website, I love this quote, you say, most of us don't want to be somebody else. We like being
Resilience as a Relationship with Change
00:16:14
Speaker
ourselves, but we want to be the version with energy and focus and direction and humor. That's what resilience training is all about. So can you elaborate on that and explain in your words though, what resilience actually is?
00:16:31
Speaker
Humans in health, people who are healthy and supported are awesome. They're so likable and they're so interesting. Every single one of them is so interesting. And when they are healthy, they naturally do awesome things. When they're in health and supported, they invent things and they heal things and they fix things and they grow things and they support. This is human nature.
00:16:56
Speaker
And so a lot of how I work is just to, that's my starting point. As soon as I look into someone's eyes, I'm like, there's that person. How cool they are. And then I get really interested, like what's getting in the way of them right now? Because there it is. There they are. And it doesn't take much.
00:17:13
Speaker
Last couple of weeks ago, I was in Portland and got in an Uber and when we got to where we were, I like got out and it's like hugs. That's amazing. People were waiting for you to see the moment to be seen. And so that's the starting point. And resilience is the state where internally and externally you have the exquisite conditions.
00:17:41
Speaker
for that aliveness and that openness to connection. And I've loved having various working definitions of resilience. And there's one that I love that says resilience is a long-term love relationship with change. I like to think of it as being a really healthy ecosystem, that it is being amazing at harvesting all available energy. It's energy harvest and management
00:18:09
Speaker
and being very careful about where your energy is being fed into you and where it's disappearing to. Because a lot of the problem is that I would say for most people, even though there are fairly obvious things that they might say, like, here's where all my energy is going. Sure.
00:18:24
Speaker
the most interesting work for me comes for the invisible and inner duos. It's where they don't even realize where it's coming up and disappearing. So that's really fun. And that has to do with generally with some more subtleties of self-knowing and of communication skills. That how much weight are you carrying around potentially in misunderstandings, in
00:18:46
Speaker
drama into your life in having expectations for yourself or tolerating expectations from other people that are dominating your awareness. That doesn't sound like being spacious, right? That doesn't sound very good at all. No opposite. It's, you know, it's very human, right? It's normal. Oh, yes. And we're doing it. We just don't like the sound of it.
00:19:09
Speaker
Right. Of course, you know, are you the kind of person who makes a lot of promises and just they're out there like kind of weighing on you. And so, you know, a big chunk of resilience involves house cleaning and hygiene. Sure. Cleaning up some messes, right, until you're like, well, gosh, I like living here. I'm feeling ill. Yeah. Yeah. But other ways are
00:19:30
Speaker
I think a really useful way to measure it actually is to just ask yourself how much bandwidth do I have? Yes. How quickly can I recover from difficulties? How graceful is my navigation of all that is? How do I cultivate a vibrant well-being through time rather than sacrificing now or later? And how do I have a capacity for health
00:19:55
Speaker
and joy that persists not only with beauty, but independently of circumstances. That's how you wake up. Yeah. And fundamentally, I mean, the longer I go with all of this, I can come up with definition after definition, but I really think of it as a placeholder word, probably just because I even had to redefine it just to be using it. It's the closest I can get. It's the quality which cannot be named, which is maybe life itself. Yes.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, no. I know you're laughing, but I mean, I am following you 100%. I am here for this. Well, you chatted about this a little bit, but just that concept of being able to carry a heavier load through life, right? And to have your joy be independent of whatever is happening around you. It feels a little bit like, you know, when I read things in the past, it's like the qualities of people with resilience. And you're like,
00:20:51
Speaker
Well, either you have them or you don't. You're the resilient person or you're not. And if you read these top 10 articles of whatnot, you might be like, I don't know. I don't think I got it. I don't think it's me. So how much is this really like is resilient a learnable trait? Like this is something that you can develop and learn.
00:21:13
Speaker
Is it mostly about moving that energy around and seeing where you're losing it? How does a person who's like, I don't think I'm a resilient person at all, and I don't know if I can be, like that's a learnable thing. This is definitely a hill that will stand out. Yes, resilience is learnable and teachable. And I have found sometimes that the definition of myself that I like the best, because it's so tempting to like, and you're invited all the time to label yourself. Oh, yeah. Right. So people can wrap their brains around you and who you are.
00:21:43
Speaker
It's frustrating. Stop doing that, everyone. Stop it. But I would say that the dynamic of me and others that I love, that feels the most accurate, is that I'm a wilderness guide to the self and the world. And that we ourselves are infinite wildernesses. And the world is an infinite wilderness. And there is no expert to all that. Humans don't have the capacity for it.
00:22:10
Speaker
But let's say that you're being called in to venture into the wilderness. Maybe you hear about this incredible natural marvel that like, I want to see that. They're like, well, it's way up in the backcountry. There are trails. OK, now what? Right. And you're like, OK, there might not be a trail, but there are.
00:22:28
Speaker
people who venture out there. And there are skills which are predictable that I'll need. And there are traits in myself that would be problematic if I actually want to get there alive and responsibly. And so those are the people that I really love the most, the ones who are like, I don't know exactly all the pieces of how I'm getting there. I really want to go. I want to be alive in this way. I want to see things that not everybody sees.
00:22:56
Speaker
And I don't want to waste this one extraordinary life. And what can you teach me that will help me get out and back, thankfully? And that I won't endanger the people who are with me. And do I know everything that's going to show up around the bend? Nope. But I can beautifully invent myself as someone who other people would love to be out there with and who would have confidence in and be trustworthy and fun. And that's a pretty extraordinary definition at the end of a life.
00:23:26
Speaker
And I love that metaphor because it reminds me of how sometimes when you're signing up for a retreat or something like that, they'll have a suggested training plan so that by the time you get there, you know, you're having the best experience and all of that. And this strikes me as your life slash business training plan of here's where I want to be. Here's the kind of business I want to run. Here's the kind of person I want to be while I'm running it. What do I need to do right now to build that resilience to make sure I can make that trip?
00:23:55
Speaker
safely and enjoy it and have amazing memories from that journey. And that metaphor really speaks to me as well, even though I don't go hiking, but you know, still. Well, I mean, it doesn't even have to be an actual wilderness. In fact, a lot of... Right. There's a big chunk of my work, which I like about... Part of your job with resilience is to figure out what your wilderness is, right?
00:24:19
Speaker
So I've got students and clients who are extraordinary in the backcountry. Right. They go deeper and farther than anyone else and they test their bodies and they're incredibly athletic and they are incredibly skilled. Their wilderness is not Antarctic. Their wilderness might be their girlfriend. Right.
00:24:41
Speaker
Or maybe making money for them. It's a place where they just get baffled and they get in their own way and they're not predictable and they don't understand what is not working. So if you did nothing else but understood that maybe you are pushing and pushing to get better at whatever your wilderness is, whether it's the business world, but knowing what your actual wilderness is could be really useful.
00:25:08
Speaker
Right. No, that makes total sense. Well, I you maybe have hit on this, but let's see if you have more wisdom to share on this topic. So we're saying building resilience makes you more prepared, I guess, for the inevitable adversity that's coming in life.
Resilience in Business and Personal Life
00:25:27
Speaker
But specifically for in business, how do you think this resilience, this effort of putting time into learning how to be resilient?
00:25:36
Speaker
Why is that so important in the business world or where can it really help us in running our companies? Do you have more to say on that? Sure. Let's look back at your last year. In your last year, you could draw a line between the things that you face that were predictable and the things that were not. Yep. And you can take a look at how you showed up, who you were that met those things.
00:26:06
Speaker
And so the understanding that the list of strategic ways that you can gather skills and connections and structural support that allows you to do the works that you do
00:26:23
Speaker
These are important pieces, and they're all in the realm of what you know. And so you go and you put together all of these pieces. But if you also looked back on the last year, you'd say, oh, and this happened, and this happened, and this showed up, and this didn't happen, and this fell through, and this person fell apart, and this person came through with something I had no idea about, and, well, let's throw in a pandemic, and like, you know, that kind of stuff.
00:26:51
Speaker
you realize people go crazy just trying to one, predict what they're going to need next and make sure they've got it. And it's an infinite game. You cannot constantly be on top of all of the technology, all of the new players, all of the shift in the climate in a country that you don't know is providing the pieces to the thing that you want to see.
00:27:14
Speaker
that I was now messing up people's ability to eat there, which is changing the political climate, which is causing problems. I mean, it's understanding the reality of the interconnectedness of everything and also what actually is truly making a difference in things that is beyond our human capacity to know. Our brain cannot do it.
00:27:37
Speaker
Our brain cannot do it. It cannot do it. And technological computer help is fantastic. We cannot grasp what our computers can give us. So it becomes a game where you, if I was trying to design non-resilience, I would give that assignment and say, yeah, keep up. Get back to me. Yes. Yeah.
00:28:01
Speaker
So instead, I mean, that's all very well. They'll say like, okay, you cannot succeed, right? And you can't. And on the same level that I could say mortality is real. My 18 year old son is leaving home.
00:28:14
Speaker
He has a one way ticket and I cannot keep him safe. But the bigger reality is that I could not keep him safe here. Security does not exist. And when I was 16 and I had just lost all of my friends, my teachers.
00:28:35
Speaker
and having this truth right up in my face, then the question is what next? Am I willing to stop taking risks so that I never ever feel like this again? Am I willing to stop climbing? I'm not. Right. Partly because we can die in so many ways, right? Yes. I think climbing is not actually effective. That's not dying. And then to go deeper than that, if I don't want to hurt like this ever again because I'll break into a million pieces, am I willing to stop loving?
00:29:05
Speaker
Nope.
00:29:06
Speaker
So given the fact that we are not safe and never have been and never will be, then what is the way which we can show up in the world? And for me, resilience is the only answer. Not that I can prevent any one thing from happening because I can't, but that I can be one of those people who can be with hard things beautifully. And my early lessons with this were around
00:29:35
Speaker
But now my lessons with this are around being a parent and having a business. And so do I do the organized work, the optimization work of having a business? Do I put the time in and say, hey, a website is a good thing? And being known in my community is a good thing. Being known in the larger world is a good thing.
00:29:59
Speaker
And I should also have specific offerings to make it easy to work with people so they can say, hey, this one feels like a good fit. You want to set up ways that make it as effortless as possible for transactional things to happen because they are tedious.
00:30:14
Speaker
Yes, we don't want to spend all our energy on them. We know all about that. Do I want to put the time in that says, these are good systems. These are good systems for people to pay me what I'm worth and to feel good about it and not be stressed or make it confusing. If people want more information about me, can we make that super light and easy as well?
00:30:34
Speaker
And do I have checks and balances so that I can be intelligent about where my money is and what it's doing? And can I learn about technology so that I can peel away all the technology that is not serving me? Can I limit the number of accounts that I'm maintaining? Can I find the humans who revel in doing the work that I am not good at? Yes. Thank you very much, Mallory. Yes.
00:31:03
Speaker
She's one of our clients. That's what she's hinting at, yes. So this really definitely resonates with me as a business owner and just as a human. I very much want security, safety, predictability, simultaneously total control over my schedule and everything that's going on. Fine.
00:31:24
Speaker
But also, I think a lot of us are very much like you were describing, like, I'm going to think of 10 things that could go wrong, or that could happen. And I'm going to prepare for those 10 individual things in some way, maybe, or if I can't figure out any way to prepare for them, I'll just worry about them. And I'll just keep using energy constantly. Versus what you're kind of saying is, instead of trying to prepare 100
00:31:50
Speaker
contingency plans just for today. And starting over tomorrow, maybe just focus on one contingency plan, which is make yourself a more resilient person, period, and then stop worrying about whether you'll be able to handle it. Is that a valid summary?
00:32:11
Speaker
It is. And all of these puzzle pieces, because I remember 12 years ago when I said, okay, no, let's make this a real thing, right? Let's invent a thing and live in it and see how this works. And I remember thinking, oh gosh, there's all this stuff I don't have.
00:32:27
Speaker
I don't have a website. I don't have business cards. I don't have clients. I don't have certain kinds of experience. I don't know how to do this or that. I was like, okay, there's my to-do list, right? And once I have all of those things, it'll all be in place and it'll all be, I mean, not easy, but it'll all be no fake. Each puzzle piece I put in place will make things easier and better.
00:32:48
Speaker
And there is a very strong function within resilience or that design for elegance, design for options, design, use good design, right? Everywhere you do that, freeze up the energy and lowers drama. So yeah, win-win. But recognize that, you know, there are people who have all of those ducks in a row and they are struggling like crazy. Absolutely. It's not a function of lack of demand and it's not an
00:33:15
Speaker
It's not a function of how hard they're trying. No, no, no. And in fact, all of those things are working plus they have plenty of clients and they are a struggling ecosystem. Yes. And it's because of all of the other things at play that they are not recognizing or affecting their resilience. And so I have steadily worked towards those things that I originally believed would be useful lately. Actually, there's been more of a process of saying, you know, I needed that, but I actually don't. I think I can get away without it.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, I've been without it this long. I probably don't need it. Where do you go, right? Or feeling like, oh, I need to have certain kinds of credibility or have had certain clients or there are certain rules of professionalism. Mm hmm. Whether it's a wardrobe or whether it's, you know, the social media platforms, you're on all of it that people say need. And you're like, do I know?
Optimization vs Transformation in Resilience
00:34:04
Speaker
No. Yeah. And I've been like tossing some of this aside and in some very ways that are very entertaining to me.
00:34:13
Speaker
and having a really beautiful impact of my work and my business and the way I connect with people. And that's just a function of, as you know yourself better, as you pair away the unneeded, you become beautifully transparent and clear about who you are and other things don't matter. People connect very cleanly, I think. So it's, do I still do these other things? Yes, but those are optimization. And I think,
00:34:40
Speaker
maybe a useful distinction to make would be the difference between optimization and transformation. And I still say optimization is important. I work carefully with my assistant. I keep my radar up for things that I can tweak and fix. And if someone says, oh, you know, Larka, it would be really helpful for me if you were doing something like this or if you have this. I'm like, OK, all right, let's go over there and do it. But ultimately, my place in the world is not about making
00:35:08
Speaker
perfect businesses, more perfect machines. I do enough of all of that stuff so that I can show up on another plane entirely along with it. And that's a risky thing to say, right? It's a risky thing to claim for yourself. If I can do both together,
00:35:26
Speaker
I think the world needs someone who speaks both languages of you being really extraordinarily you. I mean, just magnetically alive and giving this world what it needs so badly and with as little resistance as possible from the world and from inside yourself.
00:35:46
Speaker
And I think that's the only thing ultimately that will make a difference for all of us is how much of this is happening. And I love to see myself and my people, my students, my friends, as that we are epicenters of resilience. The more we are resilient, it goes out.
00:36:10
Speaker
And every way we're alive and efficient and transparent makes it beautiful to work with you. It makes it easier for the people around you to be beautifully doing their work. It's a real act of generosity, your part, to the world.
00:36:27
Speaker
Okay, so working with you, there's this phrase out there. And again, it's just so beautiful. I want to read it. So when we voyage, the person who arrives is not the person who began. With each resilient step, we have rejected disconnection, shallowness, and separation. So how does resilience
00:36:47
Speaker
specifically reject those types of things. I am an ecosystem and I am made up of all of these moving parts and connections and threads that are going out into the world and coming into me. It is so normal and human to want to protect ourselves. And it's not just human. This is a natural instinct of everything living on the planet to put a shell on, right? Yep.
00:37:12
Speaker
And yet, all of the things that we want the most truly lie outside that armor, ultimately. And does it mean we shouldn't put armor on? No. We put armor on when we need it. The problem is, is that we are so much better at adding it than we are at testing it and taking off stuff and saying, do I still need this?
00:37:31
Speaker
Can I afford to be without it? Can I be safe for now without it? And allow myself to take in the things that I really want, which are human connection, intimacy, making a difference, letting someone make a difference inside you. Among other things, risks, groves. Like a seed has to crack open. A crab has to crack its shell open.
00:37:53
Speaker
So it doesn't mean we have to take all of our shells off and run around naked all the time. Right. Have as strong a practice of loosening armor as we do of adding it, that we're constantly questioning the true need for it. And ultimately, we might be more tender in some places when we're beautifully resilient, but we are less fragile and brittle.
00:38:15
Speaker
And so I am right now, currently, this week, I'm very susceptible to emotion. I'm feeling kind of peeled open. I had a gathering of some of my oldest, dearest, best students. I went and gave a talk about Mount Hood back in Portland this month to the National Wilderness Risk Management Conference, where a lot of people I love and respect deeply.
00:38:40
Speaker
and I'm sending my son off. I am cracked open, right? Your heart is open and there is light coming and going from places that it hasn't for a while. And yet, despite this paradoxical fragility or vulnerability, I know I am more resilient to the world than many people who are completely protected or feel protected right now.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's beautiful. It is counterintuitive. I mean, it is going to be parts of our minds and hearts and brains, certainly, that are like, nope, this is not a good idea. I'm not quite sure where you're going next. Everything is tigers. Go back inside. This is not wise. Go inside. Lock the doors. Break it up. Yeah.
00:39:24
Speaker
My question is around the mindset shift that you're saying, even you with all of your tools and your greater context for what resilience is and how it shows up in your life, you still have these weeks where you're an open shell
Mindset Tools for Resilience
00:39:39
Speaker
and you're still like, I'm feeling all the things. So what are some of the mindset tools that you find really useful when things come up that are still challenging, right? Because even resilient people are still challenged.
00:39:54
Speaker
right? And they still feel uncomfortable. So what are some of the shifts that people can use in the moment to say, you know what? Oh, I'm starting to feel overwhelmed and scared and all the things and forget that I am a resilient person. Yeah. What kind of tools do you give them to shift that back to almost believing in their own power to survive any, well, anything that comes up right away when you ask that, which is this beautiful question, which is,
00:40:22
Speaker
What are the problems I want to be having? How are you designed to have the problems that I want to be having?
00:40:29
Speaker
And do I want to have the experience of being open to every emotion that comes through as a guest, right? For me, grief and love are pretty tightly intertwined because of my whole life, more or less. And my problem right now is grief and love are like right front and center on my doorstep. And because I raised a child who is ready to be in the world.
00:40:55
Speaker
And do I want this for him? Absolutely. Do I think he is ready to be in the world and be contributing and learning and all the grease and love are right there. We're like, you and this one, right? And that's the problem I want to have. Right. It's hard on my body. It's hard on my organization. Sure. And yet I want to have that problem.
00:41:21
Speaker
I want to have certain kinds of problems in my business and not other ones. I want to have certain kinds of problems in my marriage and not other ones.
00:41:32
Speaker
One really useful tool that I have, actually, is eavesdropping. I like going out into a really crowded place and walking and just listening to everybody, because chances are they're talking about their problem. Sure. Like, walks into a free station or an airport, and you'll be like, yes, that one. I want that problem. No, I don't want that problem. I don't want it. No, thank you. Thank you. No, thank you. Right. Have yourself on the back for the ones you don't have that you want, right? I mean, you're already doing a ton.
00:42:00
Speaker
on that front. And I mean, this is a really very small, specific example. I remember at one point I heard someone say, oh yeah, I always had people pay me ahead of turn. And she said, I never track people down. And I was like, this is awesome. I was like, was it me? Did you hear me say that? And at the time, I was just starting out. Like, I had this whole question. And I was like, can I design a business where there is zero tracking people down? Done?
00:42:28
Speaker
It's great. Or, you know, on the farm, the problems I want to have before we had any animals at all. In fact, this is probably like before I had a farm or my husband or any of this stuff. I was like, I want one of my problems to be that I have pages written of old problems. And a lot of them are true now, which so because. Yes.
00:42:50
Speaker
I had pages where I wrote, my problem is that the sheep got out again and screwed up my sunflower, or I'm exhausted because I'm pregnant, or because those are real three-dimensional problems that are out in the world, and I want them. That's the kind of problem.
00:43:06
Speaker
Do I want to have the problems where their financial crashes and burns because I don't know where my money is because I'm scared of having money? Do I want to have the problems where my partner and I suddenly wonder who each other are because we actually haven't been playing it so safe that we don't talk to each other about what we're scared of? No.
00:43:27
Speaker
Those are the icky problems, right? I'll take other problems. Some of these other problems that I want to have, I might say to myself, I'm not ready for that. That's too scary for me. Or I don't have the skills. Or I don't know how to look at numbers to be able to know, understand how things go. And at that point, I'm like, hey, I got a project. How do I support myself into having the kinds of problems that I thrive in?
00:43:51
Speaker
I have another word for what you're saying. I call them stresslings. Have you heard this before? So, blessings, but they also bring stress. Like being pregnant, it can be a massive stress, but it can be a blessing if that's what you want, right? Stressling. Stresslings. I like this. That's a good one. Yeah. We don't want nothing. We want to be beautifully alive. And so that actually is problems.
00:44:19
Speaker
So designed for your own perfectly weird, beautiful problems that you and your business are going to have and everyone else is going to look at and be like, really? I can do that. I can have that kind of problem. That's really cool. OK, I mean.
00:44:34
Speaker
I feel like we could just keep soaking in all of this wisdom that you have, but our time is coming to a close. So this is hard because we've talked about so many things, but let's say to close us off, if you could give our listeners just one action item in case they're feeling overwhelmed with all of the things that you shared, or maybe they need to take it in steps,
00:45:00
Speaker
What would be just one thing they could do after listening to this to help them build their resilience? Well, that was mean.
00:45:16
Speaker
All the things that you just said for the last hour, right?
Key Components of Resilience
00:45:20
Speaker
Okay, so, ah, shoot, my brain's gone in two different directions and I've tried to like listen to one. Okay, I'll let you have two if that was too hard. We'll let you have two things. Yeah, the problem is they have multiple pieces, so.
00:45:33
Speaker
Two things with 12 sub-things. All right, here's the thing. I would say, I had someone ask me once, we'd crossed the country together on a plane, we're coming in for the vital turn to the runway and he says, so what do you do?
00:45:53
Speaker
I said, I grow resilience in people and organizations. And he said, oh my God, I need this. Like, what's the short run reversion? Yeah, that's what we're asking now. I love you for asking that. That was awesome. And when I thought about it, there are three pieces and these are tested through the last four decades for me.
00:46:15
Speaker
If you are going to do in any difficult situation, the first one is make space. Where can I add space? Where can I add space? The second one is where can I add health? Where can I add health into a conversation, into a person, into my body? Hydrate even.
00:46:32
Speaker
All of these things sink as broadly as you can for these things. And health. And the third one is add lightness, which can mean shine lights in, it can mean drop things, let things go. Have a little fun. If you do those three things, within 16 minutes you have a different animal that you're working with, both inside and out.
00:46:54
Speaker
And on top of that, you have added agency back into the conversation. When we tighten up, there is a paralytic effect. And so by adding some expansiveness, just doing a check in these three arenas and say, where could this get added? Where could this get added? And where could this get added? And you might even think of it as a
00:47:17
Speaker
Like a cycle. Think of it as like a Venn diagram. Oh, yeah. So three circles that inter, yeah. Ideally, you could notice that certain actions that you might take or things you might let go might add both lightness and health, right? Or maybe they add space or lightness, like win-win, be efficient, be elegant.
00:47:35
Speaker
But I think aside from the actual impacts of taking those actions that you have come up with, because you know the answers to those things, clarity around resilience is diagnostic, then it's self-prescriptive. And it's all you, you know.
00:47:51
Speaker
And then the more and more that you are inviting these three things into your daily business life, you're designing for them ahead of time, you're healing things that haven't even happened yet, then your business will show up differently in the world from most. That was a great answer. See, I knew you were resilient enough to handle it.
00:48:11
Speaker
Well, I love this conversation. I think so many of us, when we start a business, a lot of what we hear are concerns from other people for us. Will it be all right? Is there enough work? Can you find health insurance? And here's all the other 20 things that you should worry about. Also, I mean, congrats, but you're so brave. Yeah, so brave.
00:48:36
Speaker
Yeah, Supreme, I could never do it. You're like, I don't know now. It seems scary. That's the burden. It's the how can I design something that is gorgeously supported risk? I want the risk. Supported risk. Yes. And I design for being supported inside and out.
00:48:53
Speaker
Well, and I feel like the resiliency piece is, it's kind of the answer to every entrepreneur's wish for safety and security, right? In a world that you just can't control. And that speaks particularly to me as that kind of person, but also I think to a lot of people who just are not sure that they can make it work or maybe their business doesn't feel like something that is safe and secure in the ways that they need.
00:49:22
Speaker
And just stepping back and thinking through what do I want to design this like so that I feel supported in the ways that I need. That's a pretty big mindset shift.
00:49:34
Speaker
Thank you so much for chatting with us about this. Let's do it again 12 times and we'll meet you on the farm. But yeah, I really love this story for people. I want them to think a lot more about this. It's definitely one of the most, I would say efficient things you could do as an entrepreneur is to focus on this one particular tool. So thank you for joining us and we will see everyone on the next episode.
00:50:02
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Hop over to UnboundBoss.com to join our community and leave us a voice memo. We absolutely love hearing from you. If you like the podcast, please subscribe, leave us an Apple review, and share your favorite episodes with other women entrepreneurs. Talk to you soon.