From Setbacks to Comebacks:
Mastering Resilience Against all Odds

Let me get in. All righty. And I will hand it over to Cori.

Hello, everybody. Good morning. Happy Thursday. Welcome to Culture Community. My name is Cori. I'm a leadership coach and culture consultant at the Perk, and we're so excited to have you all here with us today. And if you love learning, if you love leadership, if you love culture, taking your teams and organizations to the next level, you are in the right place. Can we go to the next slide? Thank you. It is an extra special Culture Community this month as we are welcoming our Forward Fest participants. I'd love to see a show of hands. Who is here? How do I see you all? I need to see you all. Raise your hand if you were brought to us today by Culture Community or Forward Fest.

Yay.

Wow, lots of you. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So Forward Fest is a week-long event this week, celebrating and supporting entrepreneurs. And this event is made possible by the wonderful sponsor, leaders on this screen. Somebody's calling. All right. And a little bit more about who we are. So we are a group of people passionate about being great leaders, intentionally building great cultures, and we are super passionate about community. This is a space to learn, develop, and grow, connect with each other, and be inspired and activated to make positive change in the world. And we're throwing all the confetti for our eighth birthday. If you were on right away, our amazing cheerleader Troy was talking about our eighth anniversary. Thanks for that shout out, Troy. We are so excited to have you all here and all of the confetti for Leah, for this amazing community eight years ago. We can keep this going for the next eight years and beyond if you all help us out and join us monthly. We do Culture Community online every month. Our next topic is The Power of We, Thriving Together in a Multigenerational Workplace. It's on September 26th, and you'll be hearing from myself and my amazing teammates, Jess and Emily.

All the information is on our our website, so you can sign up now. And I will hand it over to Emily.

Awesome. Good morning, everybody. So my name is Emily Smith. I'm also a leadership coach and culture consultant at The Perk. And if you don't know about The Perk, I just want to take a few minutes before I turn things over to Leah to tell you a little bit about us. So we are a Premier Leadership and Culture Development Studio, and our mission is to build the world's best leaders. Here on the screen is just a handful of the amazing clients that we have the absolute privilege of working with. And you'll notice that it's a lot of different industries, a lot of different size companies. But really who we absolutely adore working with are people with growth mindsets. They are excited to learn, to grow new skills, to grow in where they're at in their leadership journey, and help those around them grow, too. So if that is your mindset, you are in the right place. There are a lot of companies that do what we do, and there may be even some that have the same mission as us to build the world's best leaders. But how we do what we do, how we do what we do for each program that we create, is what we are so proud of and really what brings the magic to each of our programs.

Let's listed here on the screen. The five things that we make sure that we incorporate into each of the programs that we design are we make it fun, we make it human and safe, we make it custom, and we make it last. We do a lot of different programs, but the four that we are most well known for are listed here on the screen. So the first one, first and foremost, is our Custom Leadership Development programs. So like I mentioned on the last page, we make it custom. We love working with people to get to know what is their vision and mission? What does success look like, and what are their goals, what do they want to help their leaders learn? Once we get clear on that, we design a custom program to fit those needs. This could include live training, group coaching, and one-on-one coaching. Another thing that we're really well known for are our team workshops. This covers a lot of different topics and can vary from a two-hour workshop to a workshop series. Then I have a couple of frameworks listed here on the screen that we're well known for. Our first one is our clear leadership operating Leadership Program.

This leadership training program is 6-12 months long in a cohort style, so a group goes through this training. They learn these skills right here listed on the screen, which are the skills that we've identified in the clear leadership operating system as the things that you need to be doing every single day to be a world's best leader. The last framework that we have is Trust by Design. In this framework, we walk your team through our Trust by Design framework and help them learn how to be an intentional, high trust, high performing, high achieving team. So that is a little bit about the perk. And now I will turn things over to Ms. Leah.

Hey, everybody. Who's excited? Nobody. Great. So first thing I want to do is I want to do a check-in with you all, and we're going to use the Annotate feature. So that is this little green pencil. Steph, you might have to come off mute because I always mess up where this is. It's on the bottom of the screen. Is that right? Awesome. I'm doing better. I'm learning. I'm growing. So on the bottom of the screen, there's a little pencil. And so you can use the stamp feature. And I want to know, what does work feel like for you right now? You feel like number one, feeling a little stuck. Number two, feel like you're drinking from a fire hose. Number three, things are good. You really couldn't be happier. Where are you at right now? It's really good to know that most of my team is drinking from a fire hose. That's good awareness to have. Awesome. So we have some people who feel stuck, people drinking from a fire hose, some people who are feeling good and happy. That's great. You You can also put in the chat. Yeah, you can put in the chat the numbers too, if you're having trouble with the annotate.

Awesome. Three, two, two, and three. Good. Can someone from my team clear these for me quick? Thank you so much. All of your feelings. Someone's feeling all of it. All of your feelings are valid, and you are all welcome to feel those feelings today. So before we jump into the good stuff of our content for today, I want to go over some ground rules and expectations. This is just to make sure we have clarity from the get go of how we want to interact with each other in this space today. So first, please be present. Eliminate distractions as much as possible. I would love for you to put... Well, if you're on your phone, don't put your phone down. But silence, text, slack, Teams, put your email away, all that good stuff. I really want you to give yourselves the gift of this time, of this space for you to be outside of your day-to-day business and really be focused on yourself and your own learning, your own growth, your own development. Sound good? Can we get behind Yes. Next, please ask questions. Please engage. Please participate. This is not just going to be a lecture.

This is more workshop style. So I will be asking you questions. I want you to use the chat to ask questions, to share comments. We will be doing a little bit of a workbook today. So please engage. Please participate. There's no such thing as a stupid question in any workshop that I do. So please ask any and all questions. Sound good? Also, I should note, when I'm looking over here, I'm looking at all of you. You're all on this screen, so I'm not losing my mind and suddenly staring off into the distance. All right. And then I saw my good friend Michelle Ventcherini is on the call today. And one thing I've learned from Michelle, I love this, that she says it's a mantra, she says, and We've really taken it as an intention in every workshop that we give, and that is that everyone here has something to learn, and everyone here has something to teach. So be open, be open-minded, be open to learning something new today, learning something new from me, learning something new from everyone else on this call, and be open to sharing, sharing your ideas, sharing your perspectives, sharing your thoughts, your challenges, your celebrations with the intention to teach those around you.

Sound good? Can we get behind that? Love it. And last but not least, my Friends, please, can we have some fun? Can we throw some confetti? Culture Community is turning eight today, and also resilience can be really fun. Okay, so we are aligned. We know what to expect in our space today. Why are we here? What is our purpose? We are here to talk all about resilience. We're going to talk about what resilience is. We're going to talk about why it's important. We're going to talk about how to build it, how you can strengthen your resilience. We're going to go over four actionable strategies to help you do that. And as a part of today, you are actually going to be working through and completing your own resilience action plan. So if someone from my team, Dan, I think it's you, can put the link in the chat, you all You can go to this link, and it's just a downloadable PDF. But this is something then that you can work through over the course of this workshop. And if you're not able to download it, that's okay. Just grab a piece of paper, and we can work through that together as well.

So let's start with What Resilience is. Now, there's several different definitions out there of what resilience is, and this is the one that most resonates with me, the one that I use with the clients that I work with on building and strengthening their resilience. And it comes from Cy Wakeman. And Cy Wakeman says, Resilience is the ability to stay the course in the face of obstacles and setbacks. When you are resilient, you feel calm, purposeful, and confident in your ability to produce results regardless of your current circumstances. You do not seriously consider throwing up your hands and quitting or resorting to excuses. If you say you have tried to do something, you did not only try one thing. You tried a dozen or more. You persisted. You employed problem solving and you asked for help. That's a really key element at the end there. You asked for help. Being a resilient person means you're not doing everything on your own. You're asking for support. You're asking for help. Now, in every resilience workshop that I do, I always like to play a video clip of Resilience in action. And this is one... This is a new one.

I've never played this one in a workshop before. I actually found this one over the past week when I was hanging out on Instagram, and this just totally struck me. I'm going to play it for you. It's about a minute and a half, so sit back, relax, and

enjoy. ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm curious. What comes up for you as you watch that video?

Well, I would say that, to me, it's like he never gave up, right? And he eventually made it there, and that took a long time to get there. I also thought, Gosh, this guy's got to be really dizzy at this point.

There, both accurate. What else sticks out to you? Sometimes when he falls, he ends up back on a different level of the step. So falling or failing, right, doesn't mean that you're back to square one, it also doesn't mean that you're always back at the same spot. So evaluating that and then pushing forward. Yeah, it's fantastic. Do you notice, too, he got to the top and still fell and still had to get back up. What else comes up for people? That's what it feels like to have ADHD, I think, in a very visual way of just the reminder that it's a constant back and forth of focus, not focus, dealing with all the other mental health stuff that comes with it and all the other life things. I actually really needed this today. So thank you. Good. Good. Thank you for sharing that. I like how it shows that more than one way can get you to what you need. He tried the stairs and it didn't work, so he resulted to bouncing up the side. Yeah, right? He didn't just take the path. He could have just gone to the beginning of the stairs and walked up, but that's not the path that he took.

It's awesome. Oh, gosh. You don't have to watch it again. I promise. So I think it's important when we're talking about what resilience is, it's equally important to talk about what Resilience is not. So what are we not saying when we talk about resilience? Resilience is not, Suck it up and do it, grin and bear it, just go at all costs. Resilience does not mean that you push forward and persevere no matter what. Perseverance, it can be a really, really valuable trait, but it can also cause harm when the right action is not to persevere. The right action is actually to pivot, to change directions, or to even quit. And resilience, it involves knowing when to persevere and when to quit. And Simone Biles is such a great example of that. She's really redefining what resilience looks like. And one thing that Adam Grant said about Simone Biles that I think is so spot on, he said, She has taught us a valuable lesson at the Olympics. Overcoming adversity takes time. Resilience is not about how quickly you bounce back. It's about how fully you recover. You can't judge people's strengths when they fall. Their fortitude is visible when they rise again.

Simone Biles, she knew when to persevere, and she knew when to quit. In Tokyo, that was not the time for her to just grin and bear it, suck it up and do it. That's not what resilience was. It was a time to pause, take a step back, pivot, change. What some people saw as quitting, it was her sticking up for herself. So resilience involves knowing when to persevere, when to push through, and when to pivot, when to change course, and when to even quit. And as we all know, she came back this year absolutely crushed it, stronger and better than ever. Resilience is also choosing to be in the arena. So Theodore Roosevelt wrote this very famous speech, The Man in the Arena. And for those of you who read Brené Brown or studied Brene Brown, she's really brought this back to the forefront. And so I'm going to read a portion of this speech for you. So what Theodore Roosevelt says is that it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errors, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.

It goes to the man who spends himself in a worthy cause who at the best, knows in the in the triumph of high achievement. And at the worst, if he fails, at least he failed while daring greatly. And you are all in the arena. Whatever work you do, whatever job you have, whatever company you're at, you are all in an arena, and you have chosen to be in the arena. And What Brené Brown says, she says, I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we cannot have both not at the same time. Vulnerability and resilience is not winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up. It's having the courage to be seen when we have no control over the outcome. It is not weakness. It is our greatest measure of courage. So I want you to think about for yourself in your own life, I want you to think of a time when you overcame a challenge, a challenge that was important to you.

And as you think about that, I want you to consider, maybe you take out a piece of paper, you can write this down or just reflect in your head, but as you think about a time when you overcame a challenge, what did you struggle with? What did it feel like for you before you overcame that challenge? What did it feel like for you on the other side? What was your mindset as you were working through that challenge? Who was around you? Who was there to help you overcome this challenge? What did you learn from this experience? So take a couple of minutes and reflect on that. This is one of my favorite where I get to see people's reflection faces. They're always great. Deep in thought. Who would like to share? What is the challenge you've overcome in your life?

Well, I mean, I can share. I'm not very good at reflecting as a general consensus, but there is a most recent thing that happened that comes to mind. So I play amateur disk golf and compete in tournaments. And like any sport, there's a mental part to the game, and it can be very frustrating. And so this last week, and I just had a local tournament at a course that I never play well I don't like the course. I don't play it well. And I went in. It's a two-round tournament. My first round, I shot 15 strokes over par, which is pretty significant. If you're familiar with golf in any sense, disk golf is the same concept in terms of scoring. And it was rough sitting an eighth out of nine people and probably not going to have a good day from that. I called my husband on lunch, and he's just like, I know you can do better. I know you can shoot even par out there. I know you've got it in you. Just talking through it all. And I was like, I've never shot that. If I would shoot that, that would be my best score at this course.

That's not going to happen. And he's like, Just go out there and do it. And so I did it for my second round. I ended up shooting even par. It was the best score I've ever had out there. I jumped four people to finish in fourth place after having a pretty terrible first round. And The struggle is the mindset, right? The first round, I overthought everything, and then I got down on myself because I knew I wasn't doing well and things weren't going right. And that led to the entire end result there. And then the second round, there was nowhere to go but up. What's going to happen? What's the worst case scenario here? So I didn't put as much pressure on myself. I just went out and did. And then as things moved along, and it became obvious that it was possible and I was close, it got exciting. And then it drove me to be like, well, now you got to do this. You can't come this close and not achieve it. And I think my biggest takeaway from that experience is that it's really how you look at it. My mindset was completely different, and I had a better result because of that, and I let it affect me the first time.

You control the outcome.

Yeah.

Thanks for sharing. That's a perfect example. I love that. Also, I love that it was your husband who helped shift your mindset. It's so important to have that community, that support network. It's amazing. So I want you to think about, outside of yourself, I want you to think about somebody in your life, whether you work with them or in your personal life, someone who you think of as a resilient person. And I want you to think about what is it that they do? What do they do that shows that they're resilient? How do you know that they're a resilient person? What comes up for you? Feel free to write it in the chat, or you can call it out, too. How do you know that this person is resilient? I think for me, it's that they don't lower their standards for themselves in a hard time. They might give themselves grace. They might say, Hey, I'm not at my best to do X, Y, and Z right now, but I'll be back. But they don't completely check out of the game. Yeah. So they have that self-awareness, take that time to get back to their best, but they don't lower their standards.

I love that.

I recently had, and I have a direct report. She's our Instructional Design Manager and Trainer, and she had just spent the last twelve weeks creating a training for a new platform that we're debuting, and she's actually training it right now. But the The server that all of her training material was on was wiped overnight. And so 12 weeks of work was gone, and she truly had a meltdown. She called me and I was like, You know what? You're allowed to have that meltdown. You are allowed to have that. I was like, You need to take a break. I was like, She's a big yoga person. I was like, You just need to take 30 minutes, step away, go do something for you and come back with a clearer mindset. And And she's been working for the last 10 days, 12 hour days, trying to get this back and ready to go. So she's definitely someone that I can see is resilient and definitely picked herself back up, understood that I couldn't help her because it's not my field. But I was there to emotionally support her and then gather anyone in the company that could help her to be able to give that lift that she needed.

I think it's also important to point out in that story, too. She felt her feelings. She had a meltdown, and you allowed that to happen, and then she was able to pick herself back up, too. It's not just when a server gets wiped, we're like, Yay, this is amazing. It's an opportunity for me to get creative and innovative. It's like you have to- Yes. And she didn't have a meltdown in person to anybody other than herself, but she let me know, which was helpful to me that she trusted me enough that she could share that with me and be like, This is the worst thing ever.

But then happy to be able to understand She saw the light and she was able to sit there as horrible as it feels, like you feel like you can't go any further, and now you have to do it, that she was able to successfully fix it, complete it, and is training this week. So in person, which is the first time she's done it in probably five years since the COVID.

We should definitely be sending her some virtual and physical confetti. That is for sure.

Absolutely.

So when it comes to looking at resiliency in individuals, there are four different areas, four different areas of attributes and qualities that we often look at. So first, self-awareness, support and connection, well-being, and adaptability. And so as you look at this screen, elements of self-awareness. So Resilient individuals, they practice emotional awareness. They use self-compassion. They tap into their purposes. Excuse me. They tap into their personal strengths. They're able to distinguish what is in their control, what is not in their control. In terms of well-being, resilient individuals, they prioritize health and self-care. They utilize self-regulation practices. They ensure time for recovery and relaxation. Resilient individuals focus a lot on support and connection. So they readily ask for support. They ask for help. They seek feedback. They seek They see it as essential to progress, and they handle their mistakes with grace. They're also highly adaptable. They see uncertainty and change as impermanent. They're able to reframe negative thoughts to better align with their reality. They are able to view setbacks and mistakes as opportunities to learn, and they're really able to take control, move forward, and take action, positive action in creating the lives that they want.

So as you look at all these, I'm curious. We're going to use the annotate feature again. Which one of these do you do you feel like you are personally, particularly good at? Because every one of us, we are resilient humans. So which one of these do you feel like you are particularly good at? It could be the a full section, or it could be an individual one on here. See, uncertainty and change is impermanent. Ask for support. Prioritizing self-care. Practice emotional Awareness. Distinguish what is and isn't in their control. Great. See a lot of adaptability, folks. That's awesome. See, collaboration is central to progress. That one's getting a lot. Really cool. Awesome. Okay, can my team wipe this for me? We're going to go to the next one. Thank you. Now, as you look at these Which one are you curious to use more? Which one sticks out to you is like, You know what? I want to focus on this one. I think if I did more of this, it would have a positive impact on my life. A lot of people in the well-being space. And asking for support. Great. It's good to have this awareness.

It's good to know where you are strong so you can keep that going. It's also good to know where the other areas that you can focus on, you can work on in order to increase your resilience there. It's great. All right. Now, that's a little bit about what resilience is. Now, let's talk about why it is important. The ability to bounce back from setbacks is often described as the key difference between successful and unsuccessful people. So resilience, it has a positive influence on your work satisfaction, on your engagement. And research actually shows that resilience can help protect you from physical illness as well as lower depression levels. And let's talk about why resiliency is important in business. Resiliency can actually be a strategic competitive advantage for you. So a resilient company, when you're a resilient company, you are able to quickly adapt to you're able to recover from setbacks, you're able to be innovative, you're able to Excel in the marketplace. How many of us are working at organizations right now that are adapting to change or needing to be innovative? Just to A few, yeah. Resilient companies are companies that are prepared for the unpredictable.

And in the world today, everything is unpredictable. There's constantly new technologies, new competitors, shifting landscapes. And so it's really important that we practice becoming resilient organizations so we can be adaptable, we can pivot, we can change, we can be innovative and creative. And there's a quote from Simon Sinek that I love, and he says, A great leader does not simply want to build a company that can weather change. A great leader wants to build a company that can be transformed by change. They want to build a company that embraces surprises and adapts with them. Resilient companies may come out of the other end of a people entirely different than they were when they went in, and they are often grateful for that transformation. So here's the thing about having a resilient company, though, is that resilient companies are built by resilient people, by resilient individuals. So it's important that we are resilient individuals, that we are resilient employees, we are resilient leaders, so then we can create resilient cultures and resilient companies. So the question then becomes, how do we do it? How do we build, strengthen our own resilience? And there are four different areas we're going to focus on today.

And these are the four elements of the personal action plan as well. So we're going to talk about purpose, Purpose, mindset, community, and recharge. So first, purpose. To build resilience, it's important to get clear on your own personal connection to your company's mission, vision, or values. Or you can have the whole company or your team getting super clear and connected to your team's vision, your team's mission, your team's values. Because remember, you are in the arena and you are going to You're getting your ass kicked. And on those days when you are getting your ass kicked, when things are really, really hard, you need to be able to pull it back to, what is this all for? Why am I doing this? You need to be able to reconnect to your purpose of why this all matters for you. And so some reflection questions that you can do to really hone in on your purpose, What is this all for? You can ask yourself, What gets you out of bed every morning to do this work? What are you working towards? What's it all for? What do you stand for? How will the work that you..

How will the world be different as a result of the work that you do? And why is that important to you? Then this last question on here, this is a new one. I was actually as part of Forward Fest in Madison this week, I was at pressure chamber on Tuesday. Yeah, on Tuesday. And it was basically startup companies who are pitching their ideas. And then there were judges who worked at venture capital firms. And one of the venture capital judges asked the company, What metric are you trying to move? At the end of the day, what is your North Star? What are you working towards? And I just love that as the concept. When we think about our work and what's important to us, ultimately, what is the big metric we're trying to move? What is the needle we're trying to to move. So I want you to take a moment. You can pull out your action plan. We're going to fill in the purpose piece. But as you think about these questions and you think about your work, what comes out for you? What's it all for, for you? On those super hard days, when you have these challenges that you are just working through, why does it matter?

What's important about it for you? Who would like to share? Does anyone want to share what their purpose is? What gets them out of bed to do the work that they're doing on those hard days, what they reconnect to? Be in the chat. I need to be there for my LGBTQ professionals. Yeah, Kara says, Creating a better workplace for all employees.

Yeah, I feel like I approach this a little different just personally, what gets me out of bed in the morning is my morning run.

But I think that that movement gets my physical and mental vitality ready so I can be there for other people.

So just thinking about it that way is that you have to be present with yourself so you can be present with others.

Yeah, that's a great one.

Question, Leah. Is it a singular purpose or can you have a dual purpose? Because when I think about it, the company I just joined, it's to grow the practice, but it's also to support the people that make up the practice so that we can be successful. So one is overarching, but there's a dual purpose.

Travis, I'm glad you asked that question. You are not allowed to have a dual purpose. You must choose one. No hard and fast rules there. No, that's fantastic. You can have multiple pieces of the purpose. And With this, too, we're focusing a little bit on workday, but you might have a different personal mission, a personal purpose. And regardless of where you work, that personal mission, that personal purpose is there. So you can absolutely have multiple purposes. What's the plural of purposes? Purpose-i? It's everyone's homework. Let's go figure that out.

I'm not sure, but I like it.

Ashley says in the chat, Changing the future of work, especially Especially for untapped, underrepresented groups. Amazing. These are amazing purposes. Okay, so that's element number one, being clear on your purpose. The second element, which we talked about a little bit with Disk Golf, is Mindset. Research shows that your mindset plays a significant role in determining the outcomes of your life. Your mindset, your perspective, your thoughts, it directly impacts whether you succeed or fail at work and in life. And so your mind, it can be your very best friend. It can help you get clear on what you want and who you want to be and how you want to get there. Or your mind, your thoughts, they can be your worst enemy. They can hold you back. They can keep you from doing the things that you want to do or being the person that you ultimately want to be. And my favorite tool, my favorite framework for helping to manage our mindset and realize what we are and are not in control of is the thought model. And the thought model is derived from cognitive behavioral psychology. And what it teaches us is that we have circumstances in our life and in our work that are out of our control.

And it is our thoughts about those circumstances that drive our feelings. And it is our feelings that drive our actions. And it is our actions the things we do or do not do that ultimately create our results. So if you don't like the way that you feel about something, about a situation, about a project, about an interaction, traction, hold it back to your thoughts. How are you thinking about that circumstance that is influencing those feelings that you're having? If you don't like the results that you're getting at work or in life, take a look at your thoughts. What are the perspectives? What are the mindsets that you have around that situation? You are not in control of the circumstance. This is a fact. This is something that has happened or is happening. It is not in your control. But you are in control of your thoughts. You are in control of your mindsets and your perspectives. So as an example, let's say that your circumstance is your solution to the problem did not work. You have a problem, came up with a solution, your solution did not work. That is a fact. It has happened.

It's emotionless. This is what it is. Let's say the thoughts you have around this are, this is hopeless. What feelings does that thought create for you when you think this is hopeless? What feelings feelings does that create for you? Failure, exhaustion, anxiety, sadness. So when we have the thought of this is hopeless, we feel exhausted, we feel anxious, we feel defeated, we feel frustrated, what actions might we take? What might we do? I'd probably give up and stop moving forward. Yeah. We might give up. We might spin. We might not try. We might lower our standards. We might shoot ourselves in the foot. What results are possible with those actions? Negative results? Not a lot. So let's shift the exact same circumstance, okay? Our solution to the problem did not work. What is our thought is, You know what? I always figure it out, and it's always better than I could have ever imagined. I don't know what the solution is yet, but I always figure it out, and it's always better than what I could have ever imagined. What feelings does that thought create for you? Hope. Hope? What else? Empowerment? Opportunity? Validation? So with those feelings, what actions might you take?

Pivot. Maybe try again. Maybe ask for help. Maybe do some research, outreach. And with those actions, what results are possible? Limitless results? Clarity? Limitless possibility? Our mindset has such an enormous impact on our feelings, on our actions, on our results. Kayla, you talked about it earlier. Your mindset, you said, was the key to taking you from just phoning it in or shifting and coming in however many... What did you jump? Like 100 places? Is that right? Pretty much. It was a 15-stroke swing. So pretty much. Your mindset has a major impact. And so resilient mindsets that you could choose to have, things like, I am resilient and capable of overcoming any obstacle that comes my way. I love this one. If you were able to believe in Santa Claus for eight years, If you can believe in your sofa five minutes. You woke up today, you might as well be a badass. Your greatest battle comes right before your greatest breakthrough. These are all mindsets to keep you in a resilient state. And I want to make a point that these are not mindsets that are promoting toxic positivity. We're not saying when bad things happen or things don't go your way, that it's like, yay, I'm just super happy no matter what happens.

One of my resilient mindsets is, you know what? I always figure it out, and it's always better than I could have ever imagined. That keeps me grounded that keeps me just believing in my being competent in my capabilities that I will keep trying and I will figure something out, and it's going to be even better than I ever imagined. So this is not a have a toxic positivity mindset. This is what are the mantras, what are the things you can say to yourself to remind yourself to stay in that resilient state. So I want you to take a moment and on your action plan, maybe write down a mantra or a quote or something that helps you to feel empowered, inspired. What is a mindset that is going to keep you in a resilient state or bring you back to a resilient state? Some clients also like to do their walk-up song. So what is the song that... It's like a professional wrestler. So when you're dealing with a challenge or you're having a rough day, What is the song that you plug into that just boosts you up and keeps you going? If anyone wants to share their mindset or their walk-up song, I would love to hear it.

My walk up song, it's Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. One time, I totally had a mental breakdown for a huge presentation. And I did that thing where I sat in the parking lot. It was super early, and I called my sister, and she played that song for me over the phone. And it was like, Oh, my God, this is now my favorite song. It totally worked. I rocked it. I love that. That is so great. M&m, Lose Yourself. Love it. Mindset, The Challenges, Where the Magic Happens. That's a good one. The Champion by Carrie Underwood. Danger Zone, what is it? From Top Gun? That's a good one. How about Erica? Did you want to share?

So now I need to create a walk-up song or a walk-up song. But my favorite quote has always been, and it's actually hanging on the wall behind me, so I should probably look at it so I get it correct. But if you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito. The mosquitoes love me, and every summer I have many, many of them. But that's just... I feel like that mindset can come into play in so many things. Sometimes the work we do kicks ass, but we don't necessarily feel like it's made much of a difference in what we're doing. And this always reminds me that every little thing makes a difference.

Yeah. Love that. Thanks for sharing. How about one more? Who wants to share their walkup song or their mindset? I'll share mine, Clia. Oh, no, go ahead. No? Okay, cool. My walkup song is Beyoncé's Formation. I think that it is so fun, and it starts slow, and it's this real like, all right, it's a military call to action. Okay, we're doing it. Let's do it. We're going. Let's go. All I love that. Such a good one. Thanks for sharing, everybody. Okay, so we're clear on our purpose. We have our mindset, we have our walk-up song. Now, the next one I want to talk about is community. So resilience is not a solo sport. We're not playing singles tennis. We're playing doubles tennis. I'm not a tennis player, so this is not going to be a good analogy. There's no tennis beyond doubles, right? No. It's just like, God, no. Stop with the analogy. But it's like you have a lot of people on your side of the tennis court. So building resilience is not something that we need to find deep down inside of ourselves. So it's not like, Hey, you need to build your resilience.

Go in this room by yourself and figure it out. Dig deep. That's not what resilience is. We actually become more resilient in the process of connecting with others, especially in our most challenging times. So to build resiliency, you need connection. You need healthy relationships. People in our support system They provide so many amazing benefits for us. They can provide empathy, they can provide levity, they can provide laughter. They can bolster our resilience by sharing a perspective that we might not have considered. Kyla, your husband shared a perspective with you that you might not have considered at that moment. With mindset, it's so important because it directly impacts whether we succeed or fail. But we do not have to be the ones to come up with that perspective shift. We can lean on our community. Again, it's in our control. We can choose to shift our perspective. But this is where your community can come in. I'm really stuck on this thing. I'm really feeling really bad about this thing. Can you help me look at this? What's another perspective we could take on this? Our community is really important because they remind us that we are not alone in our struggles.

With community, though, the thing that I want to point out is that this is not just having people around you. It's focusing on the right relationships and the right connections. So your support system should include people who you trust, who care about you, who want the best for you, people who are honest with you, who build you up, and who positively energize you. The people that you want in your community and your support circle, these are people who will help you when you ask for it. And remember what we talked about earlier, a big sign of a resilient person is somebody who asks for help. When you are resilient as an individual, you ask for help, you ask for support. And the people you want in your support network are those that will help you, that will support you if you ask for it. So I want you to take a moment on your action plan and identify who's in your support circle. Might be people at work, might be people in your personal life. Who do you have that you can reach out to, you can lean on? Who are the people that are going to care about you, but will also be candid, will also be honest with you?

Does anyone want to share somebody who's in their community, their support network? And yes, everyone can get a copy of this presentation. Shelley, thank you for asking. We will send this video and also the slides as well. Diora Parker. Yes. I feel like she is one of the most wonderful support people to have. Does anyone want to share out loud? Someone who's in their support circle?

I can. Yeah. So I have maybe five friends that We are very, very, very close. I have my best friend from school, and we FaceTime every day. I know that's ridiculous, but don't envy me.

I love it.

We have been through all the ups and downs in life, and I trust her enough that I don't take anything that she says to me too hard. I mean, too hard in the sense that I know she's Whenever she's telling me something that I don't want to hear, it's coming from the right place. She has helped me so much to grow up. I have a couple of friends here in Madison that are the same for me. And that is great to have because that's my people, my tribe. And yeah, that's it.

It's fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. I love that FaceTime every day. It's amazing. All right. And so our final piece of our resilience action plan, what we can focus on to build our resilience is recharging. So resilience is how you recharge, not how you endure. The key to resilience is trying really, really hard, then stopping, recovering, and then trying again. So our brains are like sponges, and they can only soak up so much information before they need to be dried out. And you'll see a picture here of a race car. I don't know if it's NASCAR. One time I said NASCAR, and somebody who was a big NASCAR fan said that was not NASCAR. So it is a car racing thing. And I'm curious for all of you, how does a race car win the race? What do they need to do to win the race? Turn left. It's a good call first.

It's dependent on a It's not just one individual.

Yes. It is a team thing. That is so true. And to win the race, cars have to come to a complete stop and literally have their wheels taken off and replaced. You cannot win a race if you keep going. You have to come to a complete stop. And we are just like race cars. We cannot win the race that we're in if we just keep going and going Going and going and going. We need to come to a complete stop. We need to have our wheels taken off. We need to rest. We need to recharge. And what's nice about when we as humans take a break, even when we take a break, our brains are not totally checked out. So when we stop focusing on the problem or the task at hand and do something different, our default mode network kicks in. And what's great about our default mode network is that it plays a significant role in our memory making, in envisioning a future, creativity, connecting the dots, making meaning. This is where our brain starts to make meaning for us. So this is why you have really great ideas in the shower, is because you're not focused on the task at hand, but the default mode network of your brain is activated.

It's why when you're on vacation or you're taking a walk away from your computer, you start to solve problems. Things start to make more sense. The dots start to connect. So in order to do this, first, I want to say taking a break looks different for everyone. So this is not judging how people take breaks, or rest, or recharge. But what neuroscientists say is that to have your default mode network kick in, you need to let your mind wander. So you need to do something that doesn't require a lot of focused brain activity. So some of the things that they suggest are taking a walk, getting away from your computer, taking a walk in nature is even better. Doing something like vacuuming, gardening, taking a shower, sitting with your eyes closed. Daydreaming. We worked with Nina Nesley earlier this year as a perk team, and she is fantastic. She's a neuroscientist, and she studies burnout. How cool is that? A neuroscientist focused completely on burnout at work. We learned so many amazing things from her. One of the really important things that we learned was how to rest and recharge in a way that is friendly for our brains, where our brains are actually getting that rest that they need so we can be resilient individuals in a resilient team.

She She had three tips. First thing you need to do is let tension out. In some way, let stuff out. So this could be... It could be sweating, so doing something that's exercising, or it could just be getting your thoughts and ideas out, so doing something like journaling. But you have to let tension out. Then you have to limit information in. So give yourself space to stop processing new information. This means put down your phone. Don't scroll on TikTok or whatever the cool things that everyone's on these days. But you have to just limit the amount of information that is coming into your brain, and you have to lower the barrier to entry. The best form of stress relief is whatever you are actually going to do. So if you say, Okay, you know what? I'm going to let tension out. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to limit information in. So I'm going to go to the gym. Okay, great. But if you've never been to the gym and you're like, You know what? I'm going to start working out three days a week, and I'm going to go to this gym that's 45 minutes from my house, that's just a lot.

So lower the barrier to entry. Do something that you are committed You're doing something that you are actually going to do. And I really want us to shift our mindset around rest and breaks and recharging. Rest and breaks are productive. They are an investment in our well-being, in our resiliency, and in our productivity. So When you are feeling overwhelmed, when you are feeling like, I just can't solve this problem. I can't do this thing, take a break, rest, recharge. Let your default mode network activate. Let it solve the problem for you or give you a perspective or give you an idea that you hadn't considered before. So on your action plan, I want you to go to your recharge section. What are some well-being practices that you can put into place for your own physical well-being, your own mental well-being? Maybe it's things you already do, so keep doing those. Think about what will you do to make sure that you are taking a break? Remember, you are a race car. You have to stop. You have to replace your wheels in order to win the race. I love this. Water bottle sticker that says Rest is resistance.

Great. Stand Up Palibord and Lake Wingra. Yes, I will meet you there. Who else wants to share maybe something you're already doing to make sure you're recharging or something you want to start doing? I go to Burn Boot camp if you're in this area, and I'm in Madison every morning with my next door neighbor. So it's a recharge because you get to work out. Plus we're both moms and working and all the things. So going together in the morning without kids or work. And it just is like girl talk the whole morning when we're driving there, and then we die a little bit at the gym and then drive back home and start the day. So I really love doing that. It's amazing. I know there's several people on this call who are burn boot campers. Yeah, I see Amy, too. That's awesome. I think she's also crazy and goes at 5:00 AM as well. We go to different locations, but very early. That's great. How about one more? I love to cook to recharge. I think that it's a lot of fun to put all of your ingredients together and make something not only delicious, but fun to make.

I find a lot of recharge in it. That's awesome. And I will say we've done a lot of work. I've done a lot of personal work over the last year on burnout, on resilience. And I will say this has been the biggest game changer for me is focusing on recharging. I learned that for myself. I was going on walks, but I was listening to business podcasts, and that actually wasn't allowing my brain. For me personally, it wasn't allowing my brain to actually recharge. So I had to shift the content that I was taking in when I was doing these restful activities for my brain to truly get that rest that it needed for me to stay in the game. So this has been a big area of focus for me personally this past year. Give yourselves a round of applause. You made it. You made it through your Resilience Masterclass. So I want you to take a moment. I want you to think about what was your biggest learning from today? What is something you want to take from today? One thing that you want to take from today and put into action. It could be something you learned from the content.

It could be something you learned from hearing from others share, something in the chat. But what is one thing you want to commit to putting into action from today's workshop to make your life better, your leadership better, your team better, your company better, the world better? Shifting my mindset and challenges. Reminder to incorporate more wellness. Yes. Place Alist for different mindset modes. I love that. Getting super clear about my purpose. Yep. Relying more on community. Absolutely. You're not alone. Reach out and feel... Yep. Does anyone want to share out loud their commitment, you're 100% more likely to do it when you say it out loud. That's not real science, but it sounds really good. I'm interested to see how putting that mindset, the map out, putting that into practice and seeing how that works. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a great tool to use to reflect, too. So I use that in my journaling. So this is the circumstance that I have right now. This is how I feel about it. I don't feel great. Okay, what is my mindset that's causing me to feel this way? Okay, what's a different way I could look at this situation?

So I like to write it out and have it part of my daily journaling. How about one more? Leah, I think my big takeaway is for recharge, I have been shifting tasks instead of taking breaks. And then I wear myself out so much that I just crash. So actually recharging instead of shifting from home needs to business needs to whatever, before I get to that crash point and I just sleep and call that recharging. Yes. When you said you crashed, I was picturing your race car just crashing into the side. Can you How it looks these days. I'm thinking the same thing, too, because I thought I was good at recharging, like going on walks, but I'm always listening to some business podcast or something as well, and realizing that maybe limiting what I'm intaking while I'm recharging would help actually recharge. And test it out. For some folks, walking listening to business podcast is the recharge that they need. I was just noticing a total difference on my brain and in my burnout level and my resiliency level when I shifted that. So again, play around with it. See what works for you and see what doesn't.

It's different for everyone. Some additional resources for building resilience. I love the podcast, How I Built This. It's just a fantastic podcast. He talks to all these different companies and their stories of how they came to be. And it's even the most successful companies of successful people. It was like a 20 plus year journey of so many highs, so many lows. It's just these incredible incredible stories of resilience. And so I always love to hear other people's stories as well. So that's a great one. Documentary, has anyone seen The Rescue? So good. I know Dan Rohe has. Dan and I have watched it probably 17 times. But this is a You just have to watch it. It is such a good story. It is so well done. It is a documentary, so it's a true story, and definitely recommend that. And then if you need some music, just help put you in that resilience-based Hamilton. I mean, just a story of resilience. So good. And then last but not least today, my friends, we do have a little call to action if you want to sign up for this. So internally here at the Perk for the past year or so, we've been measuring the health and resiliency of our culture by looking at three different metrics: trust, burnout, and belonging.

And so we've been measuring it internally. And now we have created in a way where you can take the assessment on your own. It's a free assessment, but you can see your own levels of trust, belonging, and burnout. So you can really assess your resiliency at work and in your culture right now. And then also, I have my whole team take this, so then I can see as a team, where do we stack up? So we can put that link. Oh, Dan, put the link in the chat. Fantastic. Feel free to sign up for that if you are so moved. And with that, we have about eight minutes left, so I'll open it up. If anyone has any questions or things you want to discuss further, I would love to do that. Or we can sit in silence. That's fun, too, as long as we're together. Let's sit in awkward silence, Leah. Deal. Do you want me to breathe heavily into the... Just like a really uncomfortable slow breath? No. I would love that. Okay, great. What's coming up for people? What questions do you have? Oh, Rachel, I think you're talking, but we cannot hear you.

I just don't want you to think we're ignoring you.

Can you hear me now? Yes.

Awesome.

Okay. Now, I don't think I can hear you. It's a mess. I'll ask my question in the chat. Okay.

Sounds good. I think what's coming up for me, Leah, is I need trigger or things to tell me when I'm getting to that point where I need the reset. When do I need community? When do I need the mindset shift? The awareness factor of going through the processes, so that I'm not like, Oh, I'm too late. I crashed. I think that that's spot on, Diana. It's knowing what are your triggers. And so that requires reflection. And now that you have the awareness of these four things, too, you can play around with it. One thing I noticed for me is that I'm a really creative person. I have a million ideas every day. And what I've noticed is when I have days where my creativity is zapped, that is a trigger that I'm close to burnout. When I don't have new ideas, I know I'm closing it on burnout, and so I need to take rest. I need to recharge. Whereas I didn't know that a year ago. I just thought it was part of my process or whatever. And it's different for everyone, right? So I think just having that awareness now and starting to notice what are things that are starting to take you out of place, or when you completely burn out, be like, Okay, let me look backwards.

What things could have indicated that I was almost here? Absolutely. Call me up. Just tell me all the stuff going on. I'll be like, All right, I think you're close.

I think I sorted out my problem, so I'll try it again. So a small team. I have a team of three people in our leadership team. As I'm passing along the things that I'm learning, I'm always wondering, what's the best way to sprinkle this information and sharing with my cohorts versus... I don't want to dump a bunch on them. I don't think that that's helpful. But as a leader, what's the best way to slowly... What would be step one for slowly getting them some of the things that I'm learning.

Some of the things you're learning from today, about resilience?

Yeah. In general, today, or leadership, resilience, things like that. I find that sharing practices is good, but I thought about sharing this particular worksheet with them or even what I did today. But that's always the question is, what's the best way to start getting some of these practices incorporated with your team as well?

It's a great question. And I will say there's no right or wrong answer. So Diana put in the chat, share the recording. That could be a start. You could have them do it. Yeah, definitely. You could share the recording. You could even chop it up a little bit of like, Hey, I want us to all watch this piece of it, and then we're going to talk about it together as a team and how it would be for us. Erica said, Pick your favorite takeaway. The other thing you can do, and I encourage teams to do this, is you can do a team action plan as well. You Even if you have, let's say you have a challenging project or a big client or something, let's put together a team resiliency action plan about this thing. What is our purpose? Why is this important to us? What's the mindset that we as a team want to choose to have about this? And on the hard days working with this client or on this project, what is our song that we're going to play? Who is in our support network that we can reach out to, whether it's each other or outside, to keep us in this resilient state?

And what are we going to do to make sure we're taking a break? And what are we going to do to check in on each other to make sure we're taking those breaks? So that's. I love that idea. Together, you can also learn those elements as well.

Yeah. I like the idea of condensing it down into something applicable. Like take this one scenario REO, and let's figure out how we're going to be resilient as a team surrounding that. That's great. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. What else is coming up for folks?

Amy Edmissen has done some work in terms of failure. And I think about resilience, Hey, you might fail right now, but it's not the ending spot. And you've actually done some work with me, I think, about in COVID, Cori had shared We had some group sessions about progress principle. Have you looked at any of that research that Emi has done? And does that impact maybe how you feel about resilience purely from a failure perspective?

I have not looked at it enough to make a well-informed Yeah. Comment.

Okay.

But I will. Okay. Absolutely. But I do think failure is an important piece of resilience, because again, it's your perspective. It's how are you looking at it? It's hard for me at this point to really see what things were actually failures, because there was so much learning. We have so much learning we can take from our failures and apply it to doing things differently. And that is a marker of resiliency. Are you able to look at your failures? Are you able to look at your setbacks and see the learning, see the growth that came from that? One of my favorite, My favorite Steve Jobs quotes is, You can't connect the dots of your life looking forward only when you look back. And it's so true. So you go through these failures and it feels like the worst thing has ever happened. You're never going to recover. And then you get forward in life and you're like, That had to happen because that led me here, which led me here, which led me here.

Right. She talks about that, the greatest failures that we have in life can create the greatest successes. And you try to minimize recognize failures as much as possible so that they can be learning moments for yourself. And so you don't want to make... If you work in a corporate setting or even a small, medium, large-sized company, it's like you don't want to make the crazy failure. But if you make small failures that you can learn from, those can help in terms of resilience and your own personal growth.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, my friends, we're at 9:45. Go off into the world. Be resilient. Be amazing. You all are awesome. Thanks so much. We'll see you next month. Bye, everybody.