Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier on How You Create Your Resilience Plan EP 410

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on Passionstruck. Most of us, especially for high achievers, we tend to think we're right. That our thoughts are actually pretty good. And a lot of the time they are, however, some of the time they may not be. And if we develop tools to be able to check in with our thinking, identify when it's actually not that helpful, then it is an opportunity that is entirely in our hands to optimize. Welcome to Passionstruck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is

Starting point is 00:00:45 to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passionstruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 410 of Passionstruck, ranked by Apple as the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, be better, and make a meaningful impact in the world.

Starting point is 00:01:28 I have a special invitation for you. I'm excited to introduce our new Passionstruck quiz that comes out of my new book, Passionstruck. It's a unique opportunity for you to discover where you stand on this Passionstruck continuum and you can take the quiz at Passionstruck.com. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have Episode Starter Packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize and convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show, either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starterpacks to get started. In case you missed it, earlier

Starting point is 00:02:02 in the week, I interviewed Dr. Judd Brewer, who comes back to the show to discuss his new book, The Hunger Habit, which is based on his deeply researched plan, proven to help us understand what's going on in our brains so that we can heal the guilt and frustration we experience around eating. I also interviewed Bob Sutton, a distinguished Stanford professor and best-selling author. I was recognized as one of the top 10 B-School All-Stars by Business Week. However, Sutton's influence goes far beyond the academic realm, reshaping also contemporary business thinking. And in this episode, we delve into his revolutionary book, The Friction Project, which is about the friction that exists in every organization. Our interview guides listeners and

Starting point is 00:02:39 becoming adept friction fixers, enhancing workplace efficiency without exacerbating the problems. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. If you loved today's episode or any of those others, we would appreciate you giving it a five star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments and hear from our listeners. Now let's talk about today's episode and our fast paced high pressure professional environments. Resilience is often taken for granted.

Starting point is 00:03:03 Leaders and business professionals accustomed to grueling hours and high expectations, tend to believe that they are inherently resilient. However, the truth is starkly different. Resilience isn't a natural trait that comes bundled with success. It's a skill, one that needs to be consciously developed and nurtured. This is where a remarkable guest, Dr. Marie Aline Peltier, an award-winning mental health expert, provides invaluable insights. Drawing on her extensive experience in clinical psychology, corporate advisory roles, and her dual expertise in psychology and business, Dr. Peltier challenges the common misconceptions

Starting point is 00:03:35 about resilience. Her upcoming book, which releases, on February 6th, The Resilience Plan, a strategic approach to optimizing your work performance and mental health offers a transformative roadmap for professionals. It's not just a book. It's a practical guide filled with relatable stories, exercises, and custom strategies to build and sustain resilience. In today's conversation, Dr. Peltier will debunk the resilience myth, advocate for a

Starting point is 00:03:58 holistic approach to mental health, and share practical strategies that can be tailored to the unique context of our professional and personal lives. So whether you're a leader, a team member, or someone navigating the complexities of the modern workplace, this episode is for you. Get ready to explore how you can build a resilience plan yourself that's not only effective, but also personalized to your life, ensuring your success and well-being for years to come. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

Starting point is 00:04:32 I am so excited today to have Dr. Marie Aline Peltier on Passionstruck, otherwise known as MH. So thank you, MH, for coming here. Oh, thank you, John. Fabulous to be here. It's so fascinating how interconnected professional networks are. And I initially came across your work through a mutual friend of ours, Dory Clark, who is a memorable guest of mine in episode 284, which was in April of 2023. And in that discussion, we delved into the importance of playing the long game in our careers and lives. And I noticed that Dory has endorsed your upcoming book, Resilience Plan.

Starting point is 00:05:11 Could you share how your past crossed and the influence that her work has had on you? I think anyone of us who's crossing path with Dory or even Dory's work will probably influence how we see our choices and our work. Mine crossed hers and through her books and then some work I did with her quite a while ago actually that continued to plant seeds in terms of the kinds of things that made sense for me to consider now and moving forward in my work. And so just a lot of inspiration. Yeah, I just saw that she won the thinker's 50 award for third time. So that's really fantastic. I'm so happy for her.

Starting point is 00:05:54 Yes, I agree. Well, coming on the show, you asked me one of our favorite episodes was and Dory's actually got a lot of rave reviews. So I should have mentioned that one, but I'll do it now for the audience. Last week, I happen to have had a fascinating discussion with Dr. Elizabeth Lattie about the Finnish concept known as sisu, which is a way of life for the Finns. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but it's really a form of grit or resilience on steroids. Yet there's no French or Spanish or English translation, but it's a way of life for

Starting point is 00:06:34 the fins. And it leads me to this question. In your opinion, is resilience about toughing it out, staying positive, or something more complex? It has elements of these two things. It has an elements of persistence, element of optimism, hope, these aspects. However, it's not only this, because if all we do is put our head down and carry on regardless and tell ourselves it's gonna go great regardless. We are likely missing parts of the overall picture. We are likely having blind spots, minimizing some aspects of it that then don't allow us to have visibility

Starting point is 00:07:23 on the full situation and therefore puts us at risk. It's not something that can be sustained. It's not the overall picture, but it's not completely unrelated. But I think if we just go for this, then we're at risk. Okay, and in the resilience plan, you open up with a captivating account of an eight-day journey that you and your husband had through the Canadian Rockies, where you highlight

Starting point is 00:07:49 a particularly significant experience crossing a river on both the first and eighth day of the trip. And this seems to have been a defining moment for you. Could you share with us what you learned from that experience, how it has influenced your perspective? Yes, it is a situation where we were in this trek in the Rockies for eight days and bottom line is at on day eight of this overall adventure, we were exhausted and everything and lots of parts of this context. And I almost drowned really in what saved me from drowning, just so we all have a bit of the picture. You can forget the book if you want more information. But the learning is what's most important is how what happened in well,

Starting point is 00:08:36 India and my husband saved me. Obviously I'm here. But the learning in this situation was both a learning that applies directly to the trekking. And initially, I thought this was my only learning. Plan better, plan for the reality of the changing context, plan for adaptability. And both Nick and I learned that in that particular situation. But then after, as I was reflecting on this work, I realized how it also connected with the experience that many of us have as leaders, professionals, high achievers, highly resourceful, generally resilient, capable people.

Starting point is 00:09:17 And the thing is, when the overall context is pretty good, supportive, things are going well, things going the ways we want. We happen to have the conditions that will actually support our resilience. And where we are more at risk is when the overall context, like this day eight in that trek situation, when the overall context has changed, even more demands are happening, which, hello, we have this all day every day, even more demands, but then larger ones, unexpected ones. And often, and I see this in my coaching work,

Starting point is 00:09:56 they will come absolutely from the professional side and often at the same time from the personal side. And then that's when we're most at risk of just trying to meet all these demands, not investing in what would have protected our resilience. And then of course we're trending down. And that's when the resilience goes down and all the consequences.

Starting point is 00:10:20 Yes, my audience, which is comprised of high achievers might resonate with this idea of being at the brink of burnout and exhaustion, the metaphor of being swept away by the relentless currents of our personal and professional lives. In your experience, what are some of the early warning signs that high achievers should look out for to recognize if they're being taxed beyond their limits. If we think about, we use the word burnout very often, mostly to refer to being exhausted. But there is an actual definition of burnout coming from the World Health Organization. It involves mostly three things.

Starting point is 00:10:58 Exhaustion is one, then cynicism. So we've lost hope to influence anything, to change anything, and impact on our performance. So that's when we're fully burnt out. And burnout is not a diagnosis, but it can lead to diagnosis like anxiety and depression. The thing that's important and useful for us as overachievers now is that burnout does not happen suddenly. Sometimes we realize it suddenly when we're far on the continuum, but it built over time. And so that means we have a chance to catch these things earlier. So before being exhausted over here, we're overextended, but we disregard it, we minimize it,

Starting point is 00:11:39 we don't pay attention. We should. Before being cynical, we're disengaged, less thrilled, less excited, less satisfied with what's going on. And before we have impact on our performance, you're going to have more things going through the cracks. Having some things go through the cracks happens. It happens to all of us, even at the best of times. But then when you start seeing more things, you've just sent the wrong proposal to your clients, you've sent another one proposal

Starting point is 00:12:11 to them. This is outside of your usual falling through the cracks. This is uncharacteristic, right? And so we want to pay attention to these signs. And then other specific signs could be just your concentration going down, your ability to make decisions going down. Another one that sometimes people don't catch is feeling nothing. And sometimes my clients will think, it's a good thing. Like, I'm not getting all stressed out about all these demands. I'm not getting all frustrated about the things that are not going well. And then I ask, are you still feeling happy if something really good's happening? And they said, no, I don't. So they've stopped feeling.

Starting point is 00:12:49 And that is also a sign to pay attention to. For me, when I experienced pretty severe burnout, the only thing I can liken it to is, I think there's a term for a low-grade depression that gets stronger over time, dystemia. It's the closest thing that I can equate to, at least my experience of burnout, because I knew for a long period of time that something was changing. But for me, it was this gradual change that was happening so slightly that you almost

Starting point is 00:13:26 don't even notice that it's occurring until you start seeing some of the larger manifestations happening. And for me, the worst was the one that you brought up at the end, which is I just reached a point where I felt completely numb. Yeah. And it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had because it was as if I was going through the days and it was as if nothing was mattering. And I've been doing a lot of podcasts recently on this topic of mattering. And I was wondering if you felt there's any correlation in people feeling that they're lacking significance or meaning or mattering and the potential impacts of feeling burnout. Yes. Yes. In fact, research would support this.

Starting point is 00:14:23 Numerous studies are looking at this relationship, and you're right to call it the correlation. It's not causation. Usually it would be too hard to prove. Anyway, it's often very complex for equations with many variables in them. But yes, conceptually, one of the ways to think about burnout is in the relationship between us as individuals and our work.

Starting point is 00:14:44 And it's the mismatch often, the challenges in between in that relationship. And it's very important to think of it this way, because burnout is not something that belongs entirely in the individual here. Sometimes we think about it this way, and it can have very personal consequences. But it's in the relationship. And that's important because that's where the solution is. The solution is not just in us, in individuals, very often it's mostly actually in the workplace side. But what I often say to people I work with,

Starting point is 00:15:17 whether it's my psychology practice or my coaching practice, is that even if most of the cause for the problem in this relationship is in the work context, we here as individuals cannot just sit there and say, well, the cause is over here, I'm not gonna do anything and wait, because if we do this, we're going down. So we still want to increase our resilience over here

Starting point is 00:15:42 individually to deal with this situation. Part of it will include all kinds of actions. I would argue they need to be very customized to you in your context. For some, it will include this element of reconnecting with your values, with what's meaningful for you. Then that may inform your decisions of what's going to happen next. And I think maybe that's a good time for you to introduce something that I read about in the book, which is something that you call the strategic resilience double helix. And I was

Starting point is 00:16:19 hoping maybe you could describe what that is for the audience so that they could understand it better. maybe you could describe what that is for the audience so that they could understand it better. Yes. Thank you for asking about this. Well, you know how we all convey different ideas differently, sometimes with words, spoken, written, and all these things. As I was doing this, exploring with curiosity, looking for visuals that could potentially represent what I'm talking about in the book. We are all familiar with the double helix for our DNA. But then I looked at this and the more I looked at it and started reading different ways in which it's used, for example, in the nature.

Starting point is 00:16:58 Plants will use this shape to be even more resilient in the nature. But then also the double helix itself, I was looking at it, I was like, okay, each side is almost like two sides of a ladder. And when I work with people to increase their customized strategic resilience plan, even if the main focus is on the work side, it's very important that we consider

Starting point is 00:17:23 both the professional one side and the personal, the work side, it's very important that we consider both the professional one side and the personal the right side. So both the professional and the personal side need to be considered. And then the rungs on what looks like this ladder corresponded well to concepts that I think we need to visit in order to create our customized strategic resilience plan, things like our values, elements of our sources of supply and demand, elements of our context,

Starting point is 00:17:52 and then creating our customized strategic plan. So in that sense, it just was a very simple visual that everyone knows of that could work to represent this model. Okay. Well, I want to ask you a couple of questions about it, because in the book, you discuss the human tendency to maintain momentum and the reluctance that we often have to embrace change often leads people to believe that it's external factors like their work that need to change rather than themselves. And given that challenges can stem from work, the individual or the

Starting point is 00:18:30 interaction between the two, how do you advise clients or individuals who may be listening today to identify and address the true root causes of their stress or dissatisfaction? Sometimes this can be done through self reflection. And I found both in my work and my personal experience that sometimes it is useful to actually do this in writing as opposed to just in your head, because the head will spin and go in all kinds of directions. And sometimes you'll end up

Starting point is 00:19:00 doing a reflection on something that you've already done, but you didn't write it down until you revisited again. So I would say in writing, because there will be many variables in a situation like this one, some that belong to you, some that belong to your personal context, some that belong to your work context as well. And so I would advise to start number one, writing down some of your own values, what's most important for you in life, personal and professional. And then starting to another list, looking at all your sources of demands. So what requires energy from you? And we can talk more

Starting point is 00:19:42 about where I go with this and sources of supply. Because see, the more you do exercises like this, and there are others, what's now happening is you're giving yourself visibility, literal visibility, because you wrote it down, on your current context, it will protect you from blind spots, minimizing certain elements, ensure you have more visibility. And when you do this, then it makes it easier to see your next step. Sometimes you'll sit on your own, sometimes you'll work with someone like a coach, a psychologist or a mentor, a colleague, get someone in your family, a good friend to help you see more clearly.

Starting point is 00:20:23 But you do need to step back and increase your visibility to figure out the next step. And in your framework, you describe resilience as a ratio, if I have a correct, as supply versus demand, where supply encompasses methods to increase health and energy and demand refers to anything that requires energy from us, be it positive or negative. Do I have that correct? This exploration of part of what is in your demands and what's in your supply is one of the tools to assess your current situation. The overall resilience will be impacted by other variables as well, even including some of what we talked about, how meaningful is what you do kind of thing. So we don't want to say that this is the measure necessarily.

Starting point is 00:21:08 It is one of the tools. And in fact, what I'm doing in the book is bringing tools that we use in the business context, usually to create a strategy, whether we're launching a new product or a new service here. And some of these elements will include looking at, okay, what's our value as an organization? What are the sources of demands and supply that are impacting us

Starting point is 00:21:32 internally as an organization that will allow us to produce this service or this product? What elements of the external context may impact the demand for it and the success of our launch, for example. So I'm basically suggesting, let's use these same tools over here for us as individuals to get more clarity on our situation so that it can inform a plan that is more realistic and customized for each of us. So that supply and demand aspect is one of the tools.

Starting point is 00:22:03 It's one that many actually say is a bit enlightening and in fact leads to actions even at that point for them. But it's one part only. Yeah, I think all of us can relate to being in the work environment and we already have all these demands on top of us. And then our boss comes over and says, whatever it may be, I'll just give the example of maybe you're in a group that provides services across multiple functions. And all of a sudden there's a project that's going in a negative way.

Starting point is 00:22:36 And they come over and say, we need you to allocate part of your time from these other projects you're working on and take some initiative on this one as well to help save it from going into disaster. These demands hit us and it is so hard when they are happening to say no to that person because we want to please, we want to see ourselves as the savior at times. What is your recommendation for when those types of things hit someone where they're

Starting point is 00:23:10 already at capacity and now they're being asked to take on something even more? Yes. These are complex situations. So number one, recognizing this, it's not, oh, here's John, the simple answer to this. No, they are complex. They often will require reflection. And in many situations, you cannot just say no, actually. Right?

Starting point is 00:23:32 It's a nice, really great if we had this option, but we really do not have this just say no option. It's not realistic. However, we want to be, again, I'll stay with this idea of being realistic about the overall situation. So this, in this case, and each recognizing that each person's situation is different, so they may require different things. But the overall direction is we have a new demand coming and we have the same resources here. So therefore, something else needs to shift.

Starting point is 00:24:06 If all we do is try to incorporate it, things will shift anyway, but without our conscious control or decision and probably with more pain. So might as well always take that leadership. And many of us have worked with project managers. You're the leader of a team, a big project is happening, a project manager is assigned to you. When we work with a project manager, and more things need to happen within this project,

Starting point is 00:24:35 we as leaders will usually go to our project manager and say, okay, add this to the list, hoping that they will say, great, yes, no project manager will say this. What they will say is, received your request, I will get back to you with impact on current scheduling or something like this. They'll say it better than me.

Starting point is 00:24:53 But John, yes? Yes. That's what we need to do with ourselves. You almost adopt a project manager mindset. New demand is coming in. It's your boss. You're not going to say no to your boss. But what you can say, okay, here you,

Starting point is 00:25:07 and I can see, let's say, the logic for me helping with this project, let's work together to find what else needs to shift. Which of my current projects can either be put on hold or I'll invest less in each of these current projects to create that capacity. And I would very much encourage all of us to use the visibility of our boss in this situation

Starting point is 00:25:32 to help inform what we shift. Sometimes we take it all in our shoulders and it's sometimes hard to see. It just feels like everything is needing us at 100%. Let's use the visibility of our boss who's asking us this additional demand to inform what can shift and where. That's part of what they have.

Starting point is 00:25:51 They have a broader visibility than we have. Let's use this to help inform our shift. Well, thank you for answering that, M.H. And that was a great metaphor and the way you explained it and how that happens to us in our own individual lives and how we need to be more like that project manager. So I think that was a great takeaway. One of the things that I have been talking a lot about recently is when I've been discussing

Starting point is 00:26:17 topics like resilience or grit or perseverance, oftentimes we are taught in society that we need to persevere over whatever might be hitting us or we need to be resilient. That's the most important thing. What I wanted to ask you is, how do you think our intentionality or the intentions that we have impact resilience or the way we apply grit. Tell me a bit more about, can I ask, tell me a bit more about what an example perhaps of what you have in mind or in which way intentionality, in which way do you mean it here? So a good way to explain this is let's say you're on that mountaineering trip that you were on with your husband,

Starting point is 00:27:06 and you are encountering things along your way day two, day three, that are now starting to test your resolve and that you want to get through this and you need to be resilient. Are you being intentional about how you are applying that resilience? Meaning, are you simply going through the motions because you are so dead set on wanting to achieve this goal that you're putting your health and potentially safety at risk by intentionally pushing yourself

Starting point is 00:27:41 or could you intentionally look at the situation in another way in saying, perhaps I need to slow down or maybe we were too ambitious about the road that we were trying to undertake and I need to take a step back and reassess where we are and maybe we need to do this in 10 or 12 days instead of 8. So it's that use of our intentions. Yes, yes, it makes complete sense. Thank you. That's it. It's a great description. We do want to be, it probably is true of any goal we have, right? If we are clear on that goal and we have a plan will help us stay intentional because just having a desire to focus on, say, resilience is good.

Starting point is 00:28:29 However, in situations of high demands, in the absence of a plan, it may be hard in this moment to identify the thing or the actions that may make sense for us. Yes, being intentional would be defensively beneficial. It has an element, also the way we're describing it, of this mindfulness we hear often about that research also backs up and it's connected. Yes, we want to be clear on that intention, given that it will support basically everything we do,

Starting point is 00:28:59 personal life or professional life. That's probably I would argue a good intention to have, especially if it's paired with a plan, because in each of our situations, let's say we define that, yes, we want to increase our resilience. We want to create our own plan. And we are aware that there will be situations where we may become less intentional about it. Then part of the plan may actually be to increase my intention intentional about it, then part of the plan may actually be to increase my intentionality about it,

Starting point is 00:29:29 increase my mindful reminding of myself, of this importance on a regular basis. So, we'd say yes, important probably for all of us, and for some of us, it may actually breach a point where it's actually part of my plan to nourish that intentionality. Okay. I appreciate that, M.H. And your chapter three has a really interesting title. It's Cognitive Behavioral Management for Tapped Out Professionals and Leaders. And in that

Starting point is 00:30:02 chapter, you discussed how we often think of so many of the roadblocks as we've been talking about as being external to us. However, what we don't realize is that the one thing we do have control over and could change our situation is our thoughts. Why is it that we so often fail to be intentional about our thoughts? And this is where I was leading to this question. Yes, I like it. Probably a number of reasons.

Starting point is 00:30:33 Number one, we think many thoughts all day, every day. And we don't have time to be aware of all the thoughts we're thinking that would not be very adaptive. So we don't pay attention to be aware of all the thoughts we're thinking that would not be very adaptive. So we don't pay attention to all of them. Okay. The other thing too is we tend to think that our thoughts reflect the reality. And so we don't question them because we're moving along here. We're getting things done.

Starting point is 00:31:01 We're proceeding. So we don't tend to question them. We're getting things done, we're proceeding. So we don't tend to question them. And most of us, especially for high achievers, we tend to think we're right. That our thoughts are actually pretty good. And a lot of the time they are, however, some of the time they may not be.

Starting point is 00:31:19 And if we develop tools to be able to check in with our thinking, identify when it's actually not that helpful, then it is an opportunity that is entirely in our hands to optimize. Okay. And I understand that. Oftentimes, what ends up happening is we accept our thoughts as reality and these perceptions end up shaping our feelings and behaviors leading to a negative spiral. As I've gone through cognitive processing therapy, these things are often called stuck points. These stuck points happen to us as a result of trauma, but as you rightly put out, they also

Starting point is 00:32:07 can cause us to have ramifications in our work lives as well, because we hypothesize that we need to be validated or disproven by evidence rather than absolute facts. by evidence rather than absolute facts. And I wanted to ask, what do you think are some recommendations to avoid this risk of being caught in a downward spiral driven by these stuck points or an examined thoughts in our lives? Yes, yeah, that's where we have an opportunity.

Starting point is 00:32:42 Sometimes those points where we can get stuck or spiral down can be related to situations of earlier trauma. Sometimes they're not really necessarily related to a situation of earlier trauma. They may be related to beliefs we've developed earlier in life that we've kept that were actually helpful and adaptive before,

Starting point is 00:33:06 but they're just not at this point. So I want to keep this in mind as well because sometimes people will say, I don't have a trauma situation that I know of and yet I'm stuck here. And sometimes that's how it happens. So I'll perhaps answer with an example. So let's say you have someone who's become very successful as a high achievers and all, and they get to a point where they're feeling the burnout is not too far. Like, we're, whoa, it's starting to feel like it.

Starting point is 00:33:36 And let's say they start, they say, okay, I'll look at my thinking, then they may realize that their usual approach to incoming demands is, I can do this. I can do anything. Bring it on. Bring it to the busiest person. That's me. I'm going to get it done. And that is potentially what got them to where they are now.

Starting point is 00:33:58 But then as things continue to progress, the level of demands is just becoming impossible. And sometimes that's when people will realize how this may be a belief they learned earlier in life. That's how their parents were. That's how they approached their academic, their education, and it worked well for them at the time and it worked up to a certain point. But now that belief needs to change.

Starting point is 00:34:23 When demands come to me, I will feel like saying yes, and I need to pause for a moment and say, do I have the capacity to take this on? Do I need to tell the person, love this idea, let me get back to you by tomorrow? Now we've incorporated a buffer that will allow me here to go and look at my overall situation with a clear eye, not in the moment, not responding from what I just respond to fast because I'm used to it,

Starting point is 00:34:54 stepping back and possibly changing that pattern of thinking, possibly getting back to this person and saying, really wish I could, if we want me to do this, that's your boss, we really need to look at shifting something else, for example. Okay. And I'm going to go at this a little bit differently than I planned to. In the back of your book, you have two different appendixes, appendix A and appendix B. Appendix B happens to be strategic resilience plan activity sheets. And the reason I'm going to this is because you were just talking in many ways about how you go about creating a supply and demands inventory, if I understand that correctly. But in this activity sheet, you also tie it into other chapters of the book, such as your core values. Can you go through that a little bit

Starting point is 00:35:45 and how you create a priority values list? Yes, and it connects with what we were saying earlier about the importance of meaning. In this particular exercise, again, in the spirit of getting to a customized plan, we want for each of us to start with our values. We know from research on happiness that the degree of connection between clarity, number one, of our values and connection with how that's represented and what we do will increase

Starting point is 00:36:14 our happiness. This particular exercise involves writing down, and I call it your values or sometimes I'll say, just go for what is most important for you in life. So we don't want to be to get stuck on, oh, is this a value or not? If you love mountains can go on that list. So you go and you're right, what's most important for you in life,

Starting point is 00:36:37 your values, that kind of thing. And you can go, look, right at the list, 10, 12, 15, as many as you feel inspired to write. At the same time, when we're going to get to creating your plan as we're preparing to creating the current customized resilience plan, you can't work with 15 values. It's going to be just you're going to be too spread there. And so what I often found myself recommending to people is pick a few right now. And when you're writing them also, don't worry about the order. You don't want to order them. It

Starting point is 00:37:10 just complicates this exercise in ways that are not helpful. You just have your list. Pick a few, maybe two or three, that you will start to work with for this particular strategic resilience plan. And sometimes I say the other ones are still important. Obviously, I just asked you what's most important for you in life. So we're not crossing the others. We're just leaving them there for right now while we focus on, say, these three. And the next step that sometimes I encourage people to do to keep exploring how these values can come to life in your particular context is to start writing down what would be two or three ways that this value could be observable in your life.

Starting point is 00:37:56 Let's say one of my values was time in nature. Love it makes me feel good whenever I like it. Then I would write things down, okay, well, I may like to do an eight-day trek. I may also like to just step outside for five minutes in the middle of a busy day and get fresh air. And now you see how that's starting to inform what the plan could look like over here. Okay. And what are some of the common challenges that you find people face when designing their resilience plan and how can they overcome them? Well, usually by the time they get there, it's actually relatively doable because now

Starting point is 00:38:32 we've done all this work getting there. So it actually makes it decently easy to do. I would say the common challenge I see most often is how when you create a strategic plan, any strategic plan, even in a business, you will have usually say a few strategic pillars, key directions that you're going to invest in to reach your goal. In this case, when we're creating our own strategic resilience plan, we may have say three pillars. Maybe you could have four or five, but let's say three. That is usually doable. What then happens, just like in a business strategic plan, you would have under each pillar, tactics,

Starting point is 00:39:14 so actions that bring this particular pillar to life. And here's the challenge. High achievers will put actions that are not actions. They are the whole project, big thing done. And it's so big, we don't have time that we don't do it. We really need to rein ourselves in. Otherwise we're gonna do nothing, nothing's going to change.

Starting point is 00:39:41 We've been there. So we want here to have very small actions. If there is a big project that needs to change, we've been there. So we want here to have very small actions. If there is a big project that needs to happen, then you're carving out your one next step. And sometimes a test that does not come from research, just me and my work, that I'll say is, okay, look at your action here in each of these pillars. And are you 85% sure you can implement it tomorrow?

Starting point is 00:40:10 If your number is below this, oh, I will know tomorrow is busy. It's maybe more like 20%, maybe whatever. Scale it down so that it gets so small, so doable, in how busy your life is that you will be able to implement it. So that's the main challenge and the solution for it. Yes, and in my upcoming book, I have a whole section where I take what you're talking about and I make it more real for the person because I call it the deliberate action process because what I found in my own life is that we get so many

Starting point is 00:40:45 demands that are hitting us, but to your point, if we're not prioritizing them and then really logically articulating a process that we're taking action against them, then they end up not happening. And so I think one of the most important things that you brought up is that you've got to measure and track your progress while you're implementing this resilience plan. Yes, still true. The good old, what gets measured gets done, right? So once you have learned how to do this resilience plan in your own life, and let's say you're

Starting point is 00:41:21 a leader over a team, how can you as a leader then effectively encourage and support resilience building within your own team? Yeah. A number of ways. And I dressed some of it in the book. The book is more focused on us as individuals, although it has questions that can be discussed as a team. That's one way you can use it.

Starting point is 00:41:42 But what we know from research and best practices, there are a few actions that will help build this resilience. And I'll give you some examples before even getting into the details of this overall, asking your team members what they need is a good one. You're asking, you're listening, and you try to help implement what they need. And I say this, I know it's probably most leaders would say that is something they know they should do.

Starting point is 00:42:11 We don't always do it. And if we are not a leader, let's say we're a member of a team, then even if our leader is not asking, let's tell them what we need. We need to increase that communication both ways. That was important before it became even more important during the pandemic. And even though that's now going into a different phase, other things are increasing. Generative artificial intelligence and the speed at which it's coming through will require that we're checking in and listening and helping. So we want that line of communication. Getting into the specifics, some of the key variables that will increase teams resilience

Starting point is 00:42:52 and to protect them more from burnout. It's not an end to note because we cannot get to that degree, but we can decrease risk, is paying attention to their workload, checking in on the workload. And often I say this and people want to move to the next one because they don't think they can change this one.

Starting point is 00:43:12 I know I've been there. I've been in senior management role. I get it. What we're saying here is workload is a key variable and we want to explore it. And no, we're not looking to change 85% of it. We're looking to change very small percentages, but these small shifts will often have a significant change

Starting point is 00:43:32 on the experience for all of us. So workload is one factor. Community is another one, something we know from research, practice, we've experienced it, makes a difference. But sometimes as leaders, we maybe think that it will emerge on its own organically, which sometimes it does.

Starting point is 00:43:51 It is also something we can build. We can create structures that will allow us to check in with each other, support each other, be together, experience each other as team members, and build community. Another one I'll mention is civility and respect. Often as leaders we think yes, obviously, it can often be better. And we know from research that when it does, it does protect the team from burnout and increases its resilience.

Starting point is 00:44:21 And one concrete example of action you can take there as a leader is when you notice someone saying or doing something that for most people would generate a sense of feeling very respected, name it, observe it out loud and name it. What you're then doing as a leader is conveying how in this culture we very much support and value this. And that will encourage even more people to do it once they're not. These are some examples. Okay. And then a follow-on to that would be, what tips would then you give that leader for integrating the daily resilience planner into that team's daily routine?

Starting point is 00:45:01 Well, that tool is a bit more designed for an individual because it's a bit personal. Here's a way in which as a leader, we could encourage this. And it connects with research that tells us how when as leaders, we share our struggles, the constructive feedback we've received about ourselves. All these pieces were increasing the trust that the team will have in us. So that's positive in that sense as well. So you could decide to share your own plan or part of your plan or even an action in your plan that you took in order to nourish your own resilience, potentially share with your team how you got there, possibly sharing with them resources

Starting point is 00:45:57 you have access to in your organization if they want, whether it's employee and family assistance programs, internal trainings that are available, books that may resonate for them, whether it's your book, John, mine, or others, but using different sources of information because we want to recognize that each person may need something a bit different, but the important pieces you're talking about, the overall topic. but the important pieces you're talking about, the overall topic. M.H., I wanted to ask if you were going to talk to the audience and give them the top three takeaways that you hope they would gain from today's discussion and reading the book, what would those be?

Starting point is 00:46:37 Yeah. I would say because your audience, like you said, high achievers. And I work a lot with the high achievers as well. So I would say the first is to realize that yes, they are very often highly resilient, and that they will be even more often highly resilient if they invest in it. We don't want to assume that it's there and we don't need to do anything about it. So we need to do something. Second would be that to see how either through their reflection in the book or however else, to realize that these actions do not take a lot of time. Often what makes people discount taking action is they say, I don't have time. They do not need to take a lot of time. And number three, it needs to be customized. And just trying to implement a checklist that we all receive, right?

Starting point is 00:47:33 We got this, I got this email recently, MH20 articles to increase your resilience. Great source. Do I read 20 articles this morning just because this thing, no, it needs to be customized for me. And I think that's the third key takeaway I would suggest. Okay. And I'm just going to read something from the closing of your book. And that is, you say that in it, and I'm going to paraphrase here, if we're going to show up, if we're going to

Starting point is 00:48:04 make a difference, we need a personal strategic plan. we're going to show up, if we're going to make a difference, we need a personal strategic plan. If you want to show up for your own resilience, you need your custom mental health strategy designed around your personal and professional life. You need your helix, which we discussed. This is what will give you the edge that you need. And then you end by saying that none of this is going to happen unless you take what I call is deliberate or intentional action to make it happen. And I think that's where so many of us often fall short as we come up with these great plans. We have these great things that we aspire to do, but then we end up living our lives in autopilot and we fail to take those actions. So if there was one takeaway that a listener could get on those lines from you, what would it be?

Starting point is 00:48:51 It would be how accessible it is to do. I've written this book in a very, it's a very concise book. If you've got a longer flight, you can get it getting in the plane and you'll have your plan getting out. So it's a short investment with a huge return. Okay. Well, I'm age. Thank you so much for joining us today and congratulations on your great book. Thank you, John, and congratulations on yours. Thank you so much. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Marie-Aline Peltier and I wanted to thank Dr. Peltier for giving us the opportunity to interview her.

Starting point is 00:49:27 Links to all things Dr. Peltier will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John R. Miles and our Clips channel at Passionstruck Clips. Please check it out and we would love it if you would subscribe. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one community place at passionstruck.com slash deals. I also wanted to introduce you to the passionstruck challenge.

Starting point is 00:49:51 You can find it at passionstruck.com and it comes directly out of my brand new book. And in it, you can find out where you sit on the passionstruck continuum. You can also find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles and you can sign up for a work related newsletter on LinkedIn. It's titled Work Intentionally. You're about to hear a preview of a very special Passionstruck podcast episode with Angela Duckworth, the number one New York Times bestselling author of grit. She is also the co-founder of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose purpose is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosalene Egbert Chang, professor at the University of Pennsylvania,

Starting point is 00:50:28 co-director of the Penn-Warton Behavior Change for Good Initiative and founding faculty co-director of Warton People Analytics. I'm wearing this vest that says character lab, and I'll just say they started it with me when I was already a psychological scientist. I think the idea of character is everything, everything about you that's good for you and equally good for other people. psychological scientist. I think the idea of character is everything. Everything about

Starting point is 00:50:45 you that's good for you and equally good for other people. I think that includes grit. I honestly do think that when you have passion and perseverance for long-term goals, it is good for you and I think it's good for other people. But character also includes honesty and kindness and generosity generosity, and humility, and creativity, and the list goes on. So character is plural. And when people say, oh, grit, character, I wanna say grit, which is one aspect of character.

Starting point is 00:51:17 And when you talk about intentionality and integrity, honesty, to me, that is a great illustrative example, if you will, to explain the point. The fee for the show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know someone who is struggling with how to build resilience, then definitely share today's episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share this show with those that you

Starting point is 00:51:41 love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next week, go out there and become Passionstruck.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier on How You Create Your Resilience Plan EP 410

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