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S1, E8 The Career Coven: Resilience
107 Plays9 months ago
We all need resilience - in work, and in life. Recovering from setbacks is part of everyones journey. In this episode, Bec and Annie cover times when we’ve not felt resilient, our own ‘watch out’ signs that our resilience may be low, and what we both do to maintain our resilience now. They talk about the importance of having a longer term mindset, and spending time on self care can be critical to increasing your resilience and recovering from burnout.
Listen to find out answers to:
- Do you have be optimistic to be resilient?
- Can you find resilience on your own? Or do you need other people?
- What are 5 things everyone could do to increase their resilience?
Content recs and little extras from this episode:
- Sara Pascoe at the Hay Festival on how experience makes things easier to process
- The Body Keeps the Score - Dr Bessel van der Kolk
- Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker
- The stress bucket exercise
- NHS mental health services - if you need a bit of help from a professional
- If anyone you know is struggling with mental health - the Samaritans are always available when you need.
Enjoying this content? Please give us stars and follows on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think! hello@careercoven.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Resilience
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello. Hello. I'm Beck. And I'm Annie. And welcome to The Career Coven. This is episode eight, which is on resilience today. um You and I, I feel like we have quite a lot to say about this, Annie. Yeah. Yeah.
Redefining Resilience
00:00:24
Speaker
Good ampad. I used to, um maybe I'll just open with it. When I was in my first job or one of my first jobs, you know, my boss always used to tell me to be resilient and I would like, I like hated that term. I thought like, why the fuck are you telling me to be resilient? Like that's just you telling me to kind of put up with nonsense.
00:00:44
Speaker
and But I now like deeply understand that that is not what it means. ah um But yeah, I used to like, I used to think that that term was just a bit of an excuse to say, like, just keep going under all costs, you know, keep keep going. And that's not really what it means.
Concept of Resilience and Stress Management
00:01:04
Speaker
why I mean, similarly, I i was told to cry less in my first job. not I'm grateful for that feedback because I do cry less and I think that's good feedback. That's useful. but yeah that's sort of Sort of cut from the same cloth but sure but shall we unpack it? What do we mean by resilience? What do we think it is and it isn't? Yeah, so I mean I think it is like bouncing back from setbacks and
00:01:37
Speaker
doing that and still being able to like push through and be positive and like keep on track. um I read one definition that said it is being able to bounce back gracefully, which I thought, I'm not actually sure that is what resilience is, but um I think it is like being able to get back to like still feeling very positive after like significant setbacks, which we literally all have in our career, right? Like everyone faces setbacks. So um what do you think it is? ah Yeah, I would agree. I think um when when I was doing a mental health first aid course, um a really useful exercise that they get you to do and and you can do it with others ah is to talk about like a stress bucket. And you write down, you list out literally everything that is stressing you out that goes into the bucket and then you work on, um okay, well,
00:02:35
Speaker
where are the holes in the bucket, which are your coping mechanisms. So how are those stresses flowing out and is the bucket too full and overflowing or have you got the right balance of your stresses and your um yourre kind of coping mechanisms? And I think that's a really nice way of just for me thinking about how you hit an equilibrium of of being resilient is just making sure that you are doing enough to be able to cope successfully with the kind of setbacks and stresses that come in. Obviously setbacks and stresses might vary widely in scale. um I think probably for the purposes of today we're talking about like day-to-day stresses rather than like a very traumatic event. But
00:03:21
Speaker
I think it is like we have stress all the time, everywhere, like getting on the tube is stressful. um So I think it's about making sure that you try and reduce the volume of stresses, but also that you have better coping mechanisms to deal with those stresses as well. I think to me, that's the kind of balance that we need to get to with resilience. Yeah, exactly. And I think falling within that to an extent is like, I think it's a learned behavior. It's not something that you innately like are born with or or have. I do think, you know, people who have had very stressful childhoods have probably like learned coping mechanisms for stress earlier. Some of those can be really good and some of those can be really negative because you learn them when you're quite young. But I would definitely say that
00:04:18
Speaker
um it's something that you can develop resilience over the course of your career and your life um rather than it being something that just some people have and some people don't. But I do think the baseline is possibly different for different people or actually definitely different for different people. Yeah, and I also think it gets easier to be resilient over time when I think I was watching this great clip on Instagram that I'm never going to be able to find for the show notes, but um I'll
Building Resilience Over Time
00:04:50
Speaker
try. And it was from Sarah Pascoe and and she'd been asked a question about like um her younger self. And she was talking in her response about how the first heartbreak that you feel feels like the worst thing in the world because you've never experienced it before and you don't know that it's going to be okay. And then you keep going through heartbreak and then it gets easier and you have another data point to contextualize it and so on. And I think that also just applies like,
00:05:14
Speaker
at work or anywhere else in your life where if you know that something bad is going to happen and it's going to be fine after you feel less nervous about the thing that's happening. Yeah and I actually I forget that all the time because I feel like I've done so many different jobs in such a short space of time but like I feel like I've seen a lot for my kind of 13 or 14 years working Which is great actually because it I think it means that I find lots of things not that stressful anymore because I've just seen such a big variety of situations. But I can also say I'm very guilty of like forgetting that other people don't have that like breadth of experience and that other things can
00:05:58
Speaker
that I don't find it stressful anymore can still be really really stress stressful as you say the first time it has you see something happen like someone gets fired from a team like that can be really stressful if you've never been in a team where someone gets fired um and it can lead people to kind of panic and maybe feel less resilient and be really stressed but like you know once you've been in as many teams as we have and you've seen that that's just part of the course of working and it's not a big You know, it's not a big deal and those people usually find a new job and are completely fine. um Then it all gets a lot less, less stressful. Yeah, definitely. So is there a particular time that you have in your mind if we think about like why resilience is important? is um I have one in my mind, but I'm going to ask you first, is there a is there a point in your career where you've hit the red zone and that's made you learn how important it is?
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, i think there's I think there's two points for me. One is... very early like and I think a lot of people hit like almost a red zone or a lot of like Taipei personalities almost hit a red zone in their first job because they're just like so much to prove and like, oh my gosh. So I would definitely say that was one of my first job and then obviously maybe it's not obvious, but for me, you know the main one is is my company you know and the the end of that experience, you know the last few months
00:07:26
Speaker
of Alva were extraordinarily tough for me on a personal basis. I really was so stressed and you know I didn't have a visualization of a bucket but um if I had a bucket would have been like out the window so full I would have dropped it and Susan's barking because she's like we don't talk about this we do not talk about this period we've just flogged this out but um you know I think the thing that happened is
00:07:59
Speaker
I was really stressed and I was trying to like do a lot of things for the company and the team and like just keep everything normal for everyone else and inside you know was really really struggling with all the things that were on my plate and um and just the amount of pressure I was putting on myself just all all me stuff and then I stopped kind of looking after myself and I think will kind of go into how self-care kind of fits into um managing yourself and managing resilience. Now you know what I can see is I do think I was quite resilient for quite a long time and in that chapter but I as soon as I lost the ability to like think positively at all that was you know it was gone it was like once I lost sight of the goal which I definitely did a bit
00:08:52
Speaker
I, um towards the very, very end, literally the last kind of couple of weeks, it was all quite fast. Then it was like, I just can't keep this up. Like I've lost that, you know, lost that longer term perspective. and um How did you recognise that you were at that point? Or was it someone else who recognised it for you? It was definitely someone else. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't talk to that many people, but I was lucky that I spoke to my family. I could recognize that, like, I was stressed, you know, I was stressed, but I couldn't fully see the extent to which I had kind of lost my way. And, you know, it really materialized, like, for me, a lack of resilience really, really materialized in, like,
00:09:34
Speaker
intense like my self-confidence it just went like i had it for ages i was fine i was fine i was fine and then it just went and all of a sudden it was like all that hatred and like pain it just turned inwards it didn't turn towards anyone else and um yeah as soon as that happened it was like okay no we've like crossed into the abyss of like not a not a good place now and then you know it wasn't it wasn't a terrible story like the outcome was actually fine for the technology and etc so there is a happy ending to this like you know low low but definitely it um it was a very very tough time and i think
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, the the the critical moment for me was when I lost that, like, ability to see the longer term and then it was very hard to stay resilient because I think that's what you need. You need this kind of longer term game, a longer term view. You also just need a bit of hope, right? Yeah, exactly. Hope is so powerful, even if it's just a tiny shred of it. um But if you can't feel hopeful about anything, that's really difficult. Yeah, and and I also, you know, I started to, which I think is quite normal when you get in a bit of a panic and you lose resilience and stuff. It's like, I started to really obsess over the things I couldn't do and not all the things, the many things that I was still doing and that I could do. What about you? What was your time?
Personal Stress Experiences
00:11:01
Speaker
Well, mine, mine was like during my COVID crisis response and I, I find it really fascinating when I, when I reflect back on this, because actually I don't remember a lot of it and
00:11:13
Speaker
something has happened in my brain where like I have not actually processed the memory correctly about that period. But, um ah you know, it was right at the beginning of COVID was when I was made to run the the COVID policy team for my department. And, and that was like, you know, closing and reopening sectors and people dying and you don't know what's happening. And in 2020, there was, you know, No vaccinations, no one knew anything. 2021, you know, you have 60,000 new cases a day in the UK and it's grim. It's really grim. And you sort of do whatever you can with the tools that you have, which are really limited with a bunch of politicians who you just, general election, registered to vote. um But um i what I found really fascinating was that everyone
00:12:06
Speaker
that, you know, I would turn up to work every day, I would do the work, I would, you know, it would start from about 6am, I would be working until I go to sleep, I'd try to go to sleep at midnight, I'd have a horrible broken sleep, or I'd just like panic wake up being like, here are all the things I haven't done. And that's just what my work was like for basically on off two years. And at the time everyone was sort of like so the the work that you're doing is like amazing and it's really incredible and you get all of these really nice compliments about like basically just destroying yourself for work and I think
00:12:38
Speaker
um I remember in the the first lockdown in in sort of June 2020, my resilience, um my sort of like display of stress is just to like bottle until like it's way too late and then to like fully explode. Me too. It's really, it's really healthy. And I remember having one of those and then I was like, I need to have a break from doing this role and they replaced me with three people.
00:13:10
Speaker
Um, and I was like, oh yeah, fucking, I should have probably said something earlier. Um, uh, but you know, part of, part of resilience, like that is a very interesting parallel between both of us actually. It's like, I know that if I'd like kind of admitted to myself, like some stuff earlier would have been a totally different outcome, but I just, you know, you just don't, you're just like a heads down kind of operation. You also just don't want to be like, I can't do it. you Like, you don't want to say that to yourself. And you don't want to say that to other people. You want to be like, I want to be the person who can do it. And actually, that's total self sabotage in the long term, um by doing that. So
00:13:50
Speaker
um I, it only really occurred to me after I left crisis response, I went on this unbelievably beautiful holiday. It was, we went to the Maldives. We were meant to, it was meant to be our honeymoon. We booked it on Black Friday in 2020 when it cost nothing. um And our wedding got rescheduled. So we went on our honeymoon before we got married anyway. um And I just felt like in this like totally disassociated days, like the whole time, But I just couldn't, I couldn't decompress. and And like, it was the most beautiful Hyundai, but I had a horrible time. And actually since I've left that it's taken me months and years years to kind of process it. But what I know for sure is that there were so many physiological signs of just really chronic exposure to stress and cortisol. And like the way I just totally ignored for years, like, um,
00:14:49
Speaker
I got this like chronic eczema that wouldn't go away that was like inflammation triggered. And like, there's obviously something happening in my immune system with like yeah information and like seeping badly and like having insomnia for so long and all those kinds of things. And you're like, your, your ability to totally ignore some really obvious signs is kind of astonishing. Yeah, amazing. Amazing. And I mean, I did that, even though it was my literal job every single day to tell people, to tell women how to look after themselves, how to look after their hormones, you know, how to like manage yourself, like how to manage your stress, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The importance of not being too stressed in menopause.
00:15:31
Speaker
And actually all the physiological like mechanisms are kind of the same. Like if you make cortisol too much, you make it over oestrogen. So your oestrogen depletes and then as a woman, you know your cycles change, et cetera, et cetera. And then everything's connected, right? And that was my literal full-time, all the time job. And people were like, what like why can't you apply any of this to yourself? And I was like, I don't, I'm different. i I didn't really believe I was different. It was what you said, which is like, I just wanted to prove I could do it all. all that I think I haven't actually read this book. So that comes with that caveat. But lots of people have been recommending to me the Body Keeps the Score, um which I think has probably more childhood than I'm comfortable talking about as an armchair psychologist for once. But there are some really interesting points around like,
00:16:27
Speaker
how cortisol manifests physically. And yeah, I think it's about overall how overwhelming experiences impact you in in how you conduct yourself. And one of the things I was reading about was that, you know there is ah you can have um kind of chronic ah exposure to stress manifest in things from like not being able to pay attention, but it could also be things like hyper focus, which I think is something that I identify with much more than I do with Um, having a short attention span is when you kind of want to disassociate from your experience and get really thrown into something. And I think that was probably the whole of my COVID experience, but it was just really fascinating.
Physical Effects of Stress
00:17:07
Speaker
I think <unk>ly a step back on the kind of physical experience of resilience. Cause I think the emotional experience gets quite a lot of attention, but the physical experience is always there.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, and they're totally interconnected, right? Like I think you'd rarely meet someone who was at the bottom of their emotional resilience bucket and that they were like, but I'm feeling great. You know, physically I'm absolutely amazing. Like those two things just don't happen because obviously the mind and body are connected. And yeah, I have read that book and it is good. It is good. I definitely, um, You can definitely, if you read it when you're in the trauma, which I did, I was like, I'm fucked. I'm fucked for the rest of my life. I'm now physically just totally going to be fucked forever. But actually, um you know, that's not the message of the book and it is a very useful and a very good book. So that was our, those are our sub stories. Are they not? Yeah, that's, doesn't get much worse than that. okay
00:18:19
Speaker
um So what makes you more resilient now? I think I have like an approach that a lot of people will disagree with um and it sort of contravenes any bit of career advice ive I've ever been given or anyone's ever received, which is basically just you could just care less about work. um cat Um, caring less for me is really good at keeping work in perspective. It doesn't mean that I don't care, but, um, I, I just, ah I sort of promised myself that I would never let my career get to the point that it was so important to me that it would be the sacrifice of literally everything else. Um, and when you kind of step off that podium and go, oh, there's so much other shit I could be doing or excited about or care about.
00:19:17
Speaker
And it's it's a lot easier to just not give a shit when when like someone's being in really rude or annoying or you know a decision is made that you don't agree with because you're like oh well whatever we're here now so let's just get on with it and I think it just puts me in a more pragmatic mindset. Yeah so my I remember like deep in the the depths of my despair my brother had a phone call with me where he told me to do this he just said he's like a huge kind of nihilist like believes that nothing means anything except for love and he's actually not like he's not like a hippie but through his lived experience he has been like it's all kind of meaningless except for just like who you love and the people around you
00:20:01
Speaker
I can't get to that, like I can't just full exposure, I can't get to that level of like inner peace. But um yeah, he, he called me as, you know, all the worst, the stuff was happening and he spoke to me for two hours and he just basically tried to convince me that, you know, it was all pointless. Like it was, it was all pointless. Well, I bet that's a difficult pill to swallow in that mindset though. Yeah. I was like so far in the other direction, like I was just so far in like the the only thing that matters is like can I pay my team and like what I'm doing that I had like I had just lost complete perspective on what was important and so although him telling me that it was pointless was not useful
00:20:49
Speaker
it was useful to the extent where I was like, whoa, okay, it's probably somewhere in the middle. Like, I do believe that the things I do really believe that how you spend your time does matter. And like, that you can have a great impact on people with how you spend your time, but like, I also respect his opinion, which is, you know, that jobs and stuff can be a bit pointless to some people and they are a means to an end and that end for a lot of people is like your family life or your personal life or you know your cats and dogs and and things that you love doing and how you like spending your time. And so I think that is really, really useful. um I had to land somewhere and in the middle.
00:21:29
Speaker
yeah you to be honest because it's not like you've gone oh like suck off my career you're like still in fucking high-powered place you're just maybe not doing that to the point where you can't enjoy your life outside of it at all yeah i think like i enjoy work for the fact that like i am i'm mentally stimulated and socially and emotionally stimulated by what goes on at work but it's not the only thing that gets me going. It's not the only thing that gets me excited. And I do think that a part of being resilient is having other things going on in your life so that when some things get bad, you have other things to lean on. Like this little potty, you know, had a bad day at work, but we've got a pod recording. What a beautiful way to end the day. Yeah, you're a hundred percent right. And I think, um,
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, when all the things are really bad, like all the parts of life are really unstable or really bad, or like have trauma in, which was, to be honest, what I was going through and that in those years to an extent. um but the experience is just it's just numbing it's just like numbing levels of like overwhelming pain so I think it is really good advice to like be able to see okay you know if your job gets bad maybe your relationship's good and like there are some things that are kind of much more constant like your relationship or like your
00:23:04
Speaker
dog or your children, those things aren't similar, but I've just said to them in that order now, um that are like more permanent than kind of one job or one meeting or one experience. And I think, you know, probably making sure that your time is balanced over the things that are really permanently important and the things that are like, you know, short term, high pressure important is also like another thing to to look at. Yeah. What else have you got on your list?
Perspective on Failure and Resilience
00:23:31
Speaker
What do you think makes you resilient now? So now I'm like so comfortable with failure that it's, maybe it's a development area. Like I sort of expect that lots of things will, lots of things that you hope will succeed will not succeed fully or will fail. And that is just like part of life. And I think that that came from the one thing I wanted to succeed most, failing ultimately and in my eyes anyway.
00:24:03
Speaker
and um that's been really perspective giving because almost like I've lost this one thing that I wanted so much that now like everything else seems much smaller and much more manageable because I will never go through that experience again. um I also take a much more like long-term view of of everything like I sort of understand that I can't control everything happening day to day and I don't see it as worth my time to try and control it. I think it's more about how you kind of adapt and roll with the punches and still try and like get what you need to done and kind of looking at my job in that way has made it all much kind of more interesting and much kind of easier to get through because I kind of see everything as like oh I wonder if I could do that.
00:24:57
Speaker
let's give it a try um rather than like all the pressure I used to put on myself which did lead to an erosion of my resilience because like a lot of it was just self pressure you know like you said you just wanted to win prove that you could do it like that to me now I do put pressure on myself because I like doing a lot of stuff I like achieving I like solving problems but I think I do that in a way of it's just more more curious. And I have a much more long-term view of like the 40 years more I'm going to work, um which I just didn't have at Alpha. I really was like, this is my entire life for the rest of my life forever. And um now it all sounds honestly naive.
00:25:42
Speaker
But that is, you know, that's how I thought when I was, when I was doing, you know, my, my own thing that I cared about so much. Um, so yeah, I've got, I've got a few things in there that have helped me. What else has helped you? like I like what you said about control. And I think that's like a genuinely where I focus most of my like resilience philosophy around is like, I, I only worry about things that I can control directly. more like an influence, but even influencing, you get into a bit of a like, could I actually influence this or, or, um, am I, is that wishful thinking that I can influence something? But focusing on those two areas of of like, these are the areas that I can make change and, and actually make a difference. And then you just have to shut down the noise on the rest. Like so much stuff you could worry about is literally an infinite list. Um,
00:26:36
Speaker
that that's just not productive, like worrying about it doesn't change anything for you, but I think one of the, I i think we've spoken about this before, but one of the, I have a journal, I'm i like shit at discipline of journaling and I only basically journal when I am having happy a moment And so my journal reads it's like this horrible like tome of bad moods. Exactly the same as me. Exactly the same as me. like If that was my that was my legacy, if I just suddenly died and they found that notebook, they'd be like, oh, what is wrong with her?
00:27:16
Speaker
um but ah When I'm feeling overwhelmed, what I like to do is to do a really messy mind map where I write down literally every single thing that I'm thinking about that's taking up my head space. And then I'll work out like which of those I like pick three, get a highlighter, circle them. And the whole page looks like a big mess, but you pick the three areas that you think will have the biggest impact on improving your mood and is in your control. And if you just do those three things, it's honestly, it's like having medicine for your mind. Just even writing it down is really helpful. Yeah. That's an amazing tip. And I definitely agree with like writing it down for sure. It helps me like process and structure, like what I'm actually.
00:28:01
Speaker
thinking ah but yeah it's funny because if you read if you read my diaries or I don't even know if they're diaries they're just sort of like scribbles it's just like sort of gibberish in like like an incoherent bad mood of some description there's a lot of like one words that are just underlined just just so many times for me and I think the other thing that like I um much better at now and I always kind of coach people on is developing and understanding and self-awareness about when you're entering your red zone. Like I always think of resilience like a battery and you can only go so long on the battery without recharging it and you hit the red zone and that's like your iPhone going like we need to go in low battery mode um and
00:28:53
Speaker
The longer that you leave it going closer to the red zone, the longer it takes to recharge. And you have to be able to recognize when it, when you go into the red and like there are always signals for me, it will be like, I will start sleeping badly is normally the first one. And they always say s sleep is the gateway to like mental health more gently. Yeah. um So important.
Exercise and Resilience
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah. So I think just knowing when you're hitting the red zone and managing that actively rather than just. slipping further into the red zone and I think yeah ah hard everyone's going to have different coping mechanisms like mine is just like definitely sleeping um and not over scheduling and you know decompressing between work and bedtime and I spent so much of my life working on sleep hygiene because I had insomnia
00:29:42
Speaker
um Why We Sleep, excellent book. Don't know if you've read it, but. Yeah, if I have read that. Yeah. Another excellent one. Very important. and I agree. sleep is Sleep is always one of the things to go like pretty, pretty early, I think for a lot of people actually. But as you say, some people don't recognise it. They think, oh, you know, it's just not sleeping that well, just a bit restless. and um But if that goes on for a long time, it really, really can affect your resilience, your decision making, you know. Um, I just also, say if I, if I'm short on like 90 minutes of sleep in a given night, like I am without a doubt a wreck the next day. And like, so, so much more reactive, so much more emotional, so much more irritable. Like it really makes such a big difference. I mean, the other thing that like we've spoken about this before, you can do a lot of exercise. Um, uh, you know, I normally like to go to boxing, especially when things get spicy at work, because you feel like you're punching someone, but, um, it is.
00:30:41
Speaker
I think getting out of your mind and completely tiring yourself out gets some of those jitters and reactions out of you. Yeah, a hundred percent. And that is the first thing to go for me is I stop exercising. And, you know, I wasn't exercising at all during that period. I was just working like every living breathing moment and I wasn't sleeping very much either. Both of which, you know, now I would see as things to be very careful with, but yeah. And I think the last thing that helps me be a lot more resilient is like, and maybe you will disagree with it. You work in very different environment to me, but in general, in small teams, I think.
00:31:24
Speaker
most things aren't personal, they are totally professional, even things that feel really personal, often aren't personal to you at all, they're about like other stuff and I definitely think so much more about that when I have like a terrible meeting or like something goes wrong or like I feel like someone's just, you know, being a bit off or I'm finding it hard. I'm like, this isn't gonna be about me. And I think not necessarily that the Alva stuff, but definitely earlier on, if I think like other times where I felt less resilient. I've also probably thought that like the world was kind of revolving around me a lot and almost being a bit paranoid of like, why don't they like me? Like all of this stuff.
00:32:07
Speaker
And now I'm like, that is not what is going on. Like that is not what is going on at all. I think it's really easy to come up with some sort of like weird self-centered conspiracy theory about how everyone is like existing in the world to annoy you personally. And like, that's just not happening. Like i I tend, it's taken me a while to get to this, but like I try to always assume positive intent um and where I sort of find like catch myself assuming something else. I'll go, okay, but what if it was actually just them being incompetent and then I feel better.
00:32:46
Speaker
yeah I think assuming positive intent and also like establishing positive intent can also be helpful like in a meeting and things get a bit tense you can be like look we're all here for the same reason, which is X, right? and ah And if everyone's like, yeah, actually, we are all here for the same reason, and that is X. And you could like reset things that are starting to feel a bit like, ugh, by sort of agreeing that everyone's actually just trying to do like a thing. And it is the same thing, even if everyone's coming in at their own little angle and their own little perspective. But I think when I was younger and I had less experience, and I do think this is linked to like time and experience, like you said at the start,
00:33:25
Speaker
but when I was younger that all felt like very kind of personal and you know hard to cope with and hard to kind of process whereas now it's like what? No one actually cares about you, turns out. Exactly, but that is like, you know, it's a bit, it's a bit of the same kind of philosophy as like, it's not that important. It's like a bit of just care, care less for better outcomes. Like care less so not to like kill yourself with worry and like, you know, make yourself feel really bad. Just care slightly less, focus on the outcome, not the path to it, you know.
00:34:04
Speaker
Um, so yeah, those are a few of the things I think have got, got better.
Tips for Boosting Resilience
00:34:09
Speaker
One thing I want to talk about is some practical tips for people to increase their resilience. You know, short fire, five minutes, five minutes, five, five, that wouldn't be very short. Five points for you to just increase your resilience if you think you're getting into that red zone or you just want to top up of your resilience. Number one, book a holiday. Great. Just just have some time off. Yeah. Okay. You go next. ah Number two, think about failure as an opportunity to learn. We've talked about this so much that I almost don't want to say it, but it is very, very useful in the world of low resilience. Susan is barking to agree.
00:35:00
Speaker
the Um, okay. Next number three, I would go, um, I think just take a walk. If you're, if you find yourself in a workday and you're like on the edge of just any emotion that makes you not feel good, just shy that top down, go outside. Um, another a little walk break, especially when you're about to have a like fizzing moment at your laptop. I think it's really helpful. Yeah, for, I think we you said it, but it's like identifying what is within your control and what you can change in a situation and then what isn't and only kind of focusing your energy on the things that you you can make progress with and you can kind of control. Last one, you. Okay. I'm going to try and condense a long point i made earlier into something short. If your face is a particular thing that you find triggering,
00:36:01
Speaker
you could just go, what is the consequence of me not caring about this specific thing? I like that. I like that. Okay. Let's talk about self care and resilience.
00:36:18
Speaker
o ah either one Someone who's professed not to have looked after themselves. Yes, yes. I mean, yeah I think that self-care, like some people see it as like a bit of a dirty word and some people see it as like something to absolutely obsess over, right? And I'm definitely somewhere in the middle. I'm like, let's do some self-care for sure. But I'm not going to spend all my time self-caring. Like I'm not just going to constantly be in the bath with a face mask, kind of listening to the arches or whatever I would do. I'm not sure I'd listen to the arches, but that's what I said.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah, but I think it's really important for the reasons that we've both said, which is like it is an opportunity to kind of recharge your own batteries to like take stock of what has happened in your day and understand like the things you can't change, how like the things that are stressing you out, the things that are going well, like I see self-care is not just like putting on a face mask, it's actually just giving yourself time. I think often that time is alone actually and like not talking to other people. um A walk like you said is another really good
00:37:34
Speaker
moment for like a micro dose of sort of self-care in the middle of ah a day is to just kind of let yourself go on a walk and kind of process stuff. But yeah, I think having having kind of extremely not cared for myself for probably two two straight years And what I was doing instead is I was just working. you know I was just trying to do output and like move stuff and I probably wasn't that successful because God knows what I was doing all the time. But I just didn't have a single boundary between Alva and me. If someone got in touch on the phone line at 12 at night, I would pick up.
00:38:20
Speaker
you know nuts right it's like i didn't want that person to feel like they were alone but that was like way beyond the realms of like what was you know what was normal um so I think I can say with like clear and definitive truth that like going that long without any self-care is really a route to nowhere. But I think there is there are really practical things that are kind of termed within self-care, which is just like, for me, self-care is just a moment or some moments to prioritise yourself, just be on your own, like take a bit of a breath and whatever you do to kind of relax, like do that thing. So I think if I had
00:39:06
Speaker
done more exercise if I had, you know, I'm trying to think of other things I enjoy, but now the only thing. sorry know very Unrelatable to a lot of people, Annie, but um but i guess I agree with you. And I think like I have, when I was going through CVT, I have an iPhone note of like things to remind me when I sort of lose perspective a bit of the things that I enjoy doing that are like really quick and easy things. um Good idea. That's a practical tip.
Resilience and Mental Health
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah. And it's just, you know, when you lose, when you lose a bit of track of yourself, um that's a nice way to just remind yourself that like, there are things that you like doing that are actually nothing to do with work. And you should go and do some of those. I think one of the we haven't spoken about it directly. But I think
00:39:57
Speaker
it's probably important to touch on is resilience and the Venn diagram of mental health overall. Um, I think there's coping mechanisms that are obviously healthy ones and ones that are like less healthy. Like I think if you're having, um, if you're having a really tough time at work and you're not sure about your resilience that you spend all of Saturday watching a TV show and disassociating, like that's probably not that healthy. Um, I mean, but i I sometimes do that not as a coping mechanism because I actively enjoy it better much. um That's rotting and that's different, Beck. Rotting is different. Self-care.
00:40:37
Speaker
you did it If you're highly engaged and you're texting your friendship group about what is happening in your series and you're excited about self-care, if you're like staring blankly at us at Love Island from the bar, that's something different. yeah and i think um you know like I don't know, five years ago, if you'd asked me like, what are my coping mechanisms for a hard time at work, I'd probably say I'd go go to the pub with my colleagues and blow off some steam. And actually, you know, alcohol is not a particularly good coping mechanism at all. Because that will just make you feel worse, longer term. And there's, you know, lots of other issues with that. but
00:41:19
Speaker
You know, there's nothing wrong with the glass and brine. And that is most people's, that is a very normalised coping mechanism. I think that is still the majority of people's kind of coping mechanisms, though it is changing, right? That was definitely mine. You know, it's not like I didn't drink for two years. I did. Like there were nights when I like saw people who had fart and it was COVID. So it was not, you know, that often, and but it wasn't good for me. Like when I wasn't feeling resilient to have a drink was, was very, very bad actually. I think it's also like you, you, when you're in that mode, you're kind of just like, oh, fuck it. And then you're like, I'm just going to get really drunk. And then you're like, wow, I feel the worst I've ever felt. And I felt, I feel lower.
00:42:00
Speaker
the day after than I did before I started drinking. So, you know a bit of a slippery slope. The anxiety is really real. when i And beie anxiety just opened its little door to me and i was like actually makes me not want to drink terrific agreed agreed but I think it's good that people are kind of talking about that a little bit more now. And it does seem like things are going in a slightly better direction in terms of, you know, work, social stuff, not only being like 100% just drinking now. But yeah, I agree. Some coping mechanisms are healthier than others.
00:42:36
Speaker
for sure. Yeah. and And I would also say, like, if, if there's someone listening to this, who feels like they've tried healthy coping mechanisms, and they feel like they still don't feel better for that, then I would just say go to your GP and talk to them. Because, you know, there is, there's a spectrum of this conversation, which is actually, this is a mental health issue. i And, You know, you and I are not qualified to have that conversation, but the GP certainly is. And there's many things yeah that someone could seek as interventions, which, you know, range from like talking therapies or lifestyle changes or medication or whatever. But, you know, I think if you, if you've tried and you still feel like on the edge of tears.
00:43:21
Speaker
positively, then then like, that's a really big red flag to go and look after yourself. Exactly. And that's not normal and in the way that like, you shouldn't pop with that. And I think that there are loads of, as you say, medical and non-med and non kind of pharmaceutical, but medically credible interventions that you can take when you are just really, really struggling to cope. And there is like absolutely no shame in taking them you know it's like one on one in three or one in four GP appointments now are about mental health and I think that should show that like it is a hard world to like cope in and it's really normal to sometimes need a bit of help and so yeah I think it's really really important for us to say that yeah long term if you're feeling if you're feeling like you can't cope or if you're feeling like everything is just too much there are
00:44:15
Speaker
different ways that you can seek help and we will put some of those in the show notes as well because it is a very very good point and there's nothing to be ashamed of especially if work is is getting you down like there isn't anything wrong with that being the cause and I think some people feel like really ashamed you're it's just my job I just it's just this it's like no it's not it's your life because we work for a lot of our lives and that's one part of your broad life and so if it's making you feel really bad you know Um, and you, and you, yeah, and you need to seek help. Yeah. I mean, you can totally have like low moods that has been circumstantially triggered by work. That's an extremely common thing to experience. And I think, um, you know, one of the, in order for you to go to the GP, it will require you to hold up a mirror to yourself that things aren't working out. But I think the more that everyone does to take the sting out of that, um, the better because, you know,
00:45:14
Speaker
everyone should thrive. We all deserve to thrive. Yeah, exactly. And it for different people, it takes different things to help you thrive. Like everyone is different and what works for one person might work for another. On that, I think there is something about, you know, is it easier to, well, for you, I guess, personally back, was it easier for you to kind of find a more resilient place alone? Or did you seek the help of other people? do Do you seek the help of other people? I'm just curious as to whether we think that you can like find resilience totally on your own. It's a really good question because I i really believe for me, what it took most of all is for me to recognise in myself that I wasn't okay. And I don't
00:46:06
Speaker
I think I had to make that change first before I started making good changes about my own resilience, but everyone around you is the support network that brings you back up. Um, you know, I don't, I don't think you can tell someone and then they'll immediately listen like you need to go and fix your brain. Like, yeah yeah I don't think that's like the path to change. I think the path to change is me saying, I need to fix my brain. um But I think you need everyone around you. um What about you?
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's an interesting one because I definitely think there were, as I said, there were pivotal people in my life who did start to kind of hold up a mirror and be like, no. like that's not normal what you just said it's not normal at all and it's not okay and that was when it was like oh those were probably the things that impacted my kind of self-realization the most as I was like oh that was that was quite a strong reaction that one
00:47:13
Speaker
um But yeah, you can only, you can only change the things you want to change the same way that you can't, you know, I couldn't have seen you in that time and been like, come on back, let's just get a bit more positive and resilient. Come on. la so we would have told you a fuck off like yeah and um You know, you can never change people who don't want to change. And so yeah, I think I agree with you that it's it is about your own kind of self-discovery of like something isn't something isn't right. um But I do think people can be really important reflectors of like what's going on with you. um And I think that I would have been even slower to realize what was going on had I not had people start to say no. Yeah. I mean, if you have if you are in that kind of headspace, you probably don't have that amazing self-awareness.
00:48:09
Speaker
but you're probably also in denial. So like that self-reflection process may not be the best one at all. And sometimes like it is actually helpful to have someone being like, are you okay? That's kind of insane um as to kind of prompt you into that mode. Yeah. And then I think, as you said, on the recovery side, I think it is much harder to just, to like recover and process, you know, from these moments like totally on your own. I think trying to be able to find a few people and it doesn't really matter whether they're professionals or whether they're friends or family or whoever really, but that you can talk to this, to them about this stuff, like how you're feeling, what's going on. I think it is really important because when you're just being very quiet, you know, people don't really know how to help you.
00:49:02
Speaker
Well, you can't read your mind, right? And like, especially if it's like over WhatsApp and you just don't reply, like they don't know what's going on. Yeah, and we know people that have done that, you know, not replied over WhatsApp and people have been really, you know, the people texting are really concerned. yeah i I do that, I did that at Alva, right? I definitely lost friends over those two year periods because I just couldn't, I couldn't face replying. It was like, how are you? And I was like, oh, if you, the real answer to that question is something that most people I don't think really want to read during COVID. um But actually like,
00:49:38
Speaker
That was, that should have been a moment where I was like, oh, that's sad. You know, I don't want to send this text, but I was just overwhelmed. I was like, I can't kind of cope with all of this. But as I started to talk to people about the way I felt and like recover from this, you know, the majority of people were like, I've been there. you know I've had that moment myself and then in that like common ground as we are kind of talking about it today you realise that like this is part of it like this is part of most people's journeys is as and figuring out for yourself what works and what doesn't is part of this like
00:50:17
Speaker
journey that we're all on with our careers and our and our life. But you don't know that if you aren't able to talk to anyone, how you're feeling or
Support Systems and Resilience
00:50:26
Speaker
what's happened to you. And if you have a lot of shame about staff, so I would definitely say it doesn't have to be everyone. But like, it's really, really helpful to have people to talk to you as you start on that recovery from whatever you're going through. um Just because once you've said things out loud, they they sort of they take on you know a voice, a meaning of their own and they're real. And then you can't get away from the fact that you were feeling that way. Someone's reaction to it, I think helps you process like, my God, you know that was extreme. Or that was you know that is something that I felt too. And like that is something I think other people feel. And I was really surprised how many people kind of said to me,
00:51:11
Speaker
you know, wait no one's got the same journey but like I've definitely been here and I'm so sorry and are you okay and what can I do and you know the answer was usually nothing right but they listened and and that was really helpful. It's not even really about them doing anything it's just about like empathising and I think you know anything that makes your experience feel less isolating makes it feel better. Right one last question and then I think we're wrapped with this because it's hitting on an hour Go. um Do you have to be optimistic back to be resilient?
Optimism and Resilience
00:51:48
Speaker
I don't think so. I say this because I don't feel like I'm a particularly optimistic person, but I think you need to have hope.
00:52:00
Speaker
like i I think in order for you to recover from setbacks, you have to believe that the thing that you're aiming for or shooting for or the vision that you have for your life is much grander than the thing that is, that you're facing at the moment. So I think you need to be like net optimistic, but I don't think you need to be like overall optimistic. What do you think? Yeah, so you mean you don't need to be like a peppy, positive pony. God, no. Absolutely not. Which neither of us would follow. I don't think anyone who like who's listening to this probably is. I think they've self-selected out of the pod audience. Yeah, sure.
00:52:42
Speaker
um Yeah, I think that's that's interesting. i What I would say is I think being a natural optimist, if you are peppy, poly or whatever I just said, that probably does help. like I think that probably does help. But um I also believe that like pragmatism and realism is like a real powerful thing and can also help you have that kind of ultimate resilience of like actually understanding not everything will be good and that is fine. Yeah, totally.
00:53:14
Speaker
Like it when you hit the setback and you don't you no longer have this sort of organic optimism to rely on, that you have to fall back on making making the most of what you've got with what you have, and which is fundamentally just being pragmatic about it. Exactly. And I think some people that get hit hardest with the you know resilience depletion is actually the people that are incredibly optimistic when they realize that it's not all sunshine and roses and sometimes really bad things happen.
00:53:50
Speaker
Um, I actually have definitely seen like really positive people be really, really flawed when something bad happened, just because they were such an optimist that they almost didn't believe that like life happens to people. So I think it's one of, I think it's the reason I asked you is I think it's a really common misconception that all resilient people are optimistic. And I think that's just not true. You know, well I mean, I think. Well, I'm now going to say that we're both very resilient people. We're not necessarily peppy pollies.
00:54:25
Speaker
I'm definitely not a peppy polly. Good. Okay. It's been lovely to chat, Annie. Thank you everyone for listening. I hope you've enjoyed it. um Next episode will be on hybrid working. um as ever create that one isn't it hybrid working resilience but more like factual it's a bit of a different style it's very very very different to the the emotional roller coaster of resilience but yeah looking forward to getting into it and so if you have found us somewhere on a platform please give us lots of stars share with your friends so that other people can find us too
00:55:04
Speaker
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