Ten take-aways from this session:
- Listen to positive voices
- Be realistic about what you can’t do
- Focus on what you can control
- Audit your social capital
- Grow your optimistic perception
- Learn from your mistakes
- Enjoy your accomplishments
- Personal mantra: everything happens for a good reason
- Do something different every day
- Create a healthy mindset for your self-care
***The following transcript has been automatically generated and is presented here unchecked***
LinkedIn Live on resilience
Thu, 8/18 [3:09]PM • [1:02:15]
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
resilience, people, resilient, talking, thinking, bit, adversity, perception, linkedin, life, self awareness, bounce, deal, nick, grow, social capital, happening, stuck, reflect, jenny
SPEAKERS
Nadine Powrie
Nadine Powrie [00:01]
So we’re alive. Welcome to my LinkedIn live. I’m Nadine Powrie, Executive and leadership coach and mediator and I live in the beautiful home county of Surrey.
Ah, Hi, my name is Jenny Lynn. I’m a facilitator and leadership development consultant. And I live on the borders of Newcastle, and Northumberland, in the north of England.
I’m John Danes, and I’m based in Gloucestershire, in the UK. And I think the thing I’d like you to know about me is I have a healthy lack of reverence for authority. I will tell you to help stop interrupting leaders and organizations improve.
Nadine Powrie [00:47]
I’m Nick Sheriff, former school inspector, and educational consultant, and I live in work in Dubai. Well, welcome, everybody, and welcome to everybody who is watching us around the world. And I want to put this dis LinkedIn live today into a bit of a context. And back in August, it was August 2020, when I was thinking of applying for LinkedIn live, I had no idea how much this LinkedIn live application would actually test my resilience. And there are two kinds of sorts here. And Nick is smiling because he knows what I’m going to say. So on one hand, I had little conversations in myself, were telling me there are 706 million LinkedIn users nothing, you just cannot mess that up. And it’s very difficult to not mess something up when you don’t know about it. So we are streaming with streaming out. And I didn’t know anything about streaming. And so I had to learn. And I was thinking, you know, what, if people are not interested, what if people don’t find it? Particularly, they can’t take anything, anything from it, or what if we don’t have any, I don’t have any impact. And for people who know me not having an impact is really a tragedy, particularly when I invest myself so much. And on the other hand, I had that little voice in myself, we thought, what actually, what a great opportunity to share thinking, share perspective, share views, engage people from all over the world, have a voice speak up, grow on international network. So what I’ve learned from from that is that resilience can be tested by adversity. And then it can be also tested by positive changes, which is exactly where I was, when I started my LinkedIn live. So then I thought, let’s talk about resilience. And here we are today. So thank you to the three of you for being here with me today to reflect on resilience. What a pleasure, thank you. Maybe it’s worth starting, and maybe covering some early ground some sort of definitions and ideas, maybe of what resilience is, because when I was looking at it seemed rather clear. And then I came across this other word, called metal, as in the test of somebody’s metal, of metal, and it’s different. So I think, just to sort of put it on a metal is, is someone’s character, a person’s strength, their fortitude, their courage, with dealing with hardship, the ability to take on a challenge to persevere, without giving up using a resolve the fatal differences, though, that could end up breaking you, which is why it’s not resilience. You can throw yourself at these things with tremendous bravery and courage. But that’s not resilience. Resilience is that amazing football term from the 90s on soccer a am which is bounce back ability, you know, you have to come back from the adversity. And I think that that’s the main difference. You know, they talk about words like recover, after a system failure or reset. The difference between the oak falling over and a storm and the little reed bending in the wind and still being there afterwards with with the same roots and, and foundations. So I thought it’d be good maybe just to lay that down as a start point. Yeah, yeah. And before we just move on, I just want to share something because what I’ve got here, I’m often asked if we are rehearsing this mundane life, and we’re not so what I’m going to do is I’ve got this prepared for anybody who wants that and I’m going to be writing some ideas down so that at the end of the session, then people can take it Weighing some ideas. So, Nick, you’ve just said that resilience is our ability to bounce back. Yes. And and, you know, how can people bounce back when sometimes they feel like they’re at the end of the, you know, they’re at the end of what they can do, they can’t do it anymore. They’re just stuck there, they’ve had enough, they had their lowest of the lowest. How can people bounce back? I think just to say, bounce back is a cumulative term, for lots of other things that happen, that mean, you’re there in the bounce back position. Another definition that I liked was someone wrote the capacity to navigate and negotiate our own personal resources. And I think that’s a bit more useful, because it sort of suggests you’ve got some tools, you need to start deploying the tools. And they help towards creating a bounce back ability for a particular situation. I mean, what do you guys think? Did you think that people? I mean, do you think that every but every single person has their own tools in themselves to to bounce back? The
God, Jenny, no, go Jenny.
I think sadly, I think that’s not so or they may have the tools, but they don’t recognize them, or utilize them. And I think that with resilience comes a certain amount of self awareness. And the self awareness of the situation, which you need to bounce back from and acknowledging this is a bad situation, and looking to how you can move on from that. But I think very sadly, you see, and I’m seeing some people at the moment quite close by here who are just not haven’t got the equipment and are becoming so overwhelmed by the negativity, that they’re finding it difficult to bounce out of that negativity, because it is a downward spiral. And I think the further down the spiral you get, the more difficult it is to bounce back. So I think that it, it would be lovely, if we all have that equipment, and perhaps deep down we all do. But I think that some people find it harder to access than others. And I think what we’re hoping to do today, perhaps is give some tips about how you can access that more effectively.
Nadine Powrie [07:27]
John, what did you want to say?
Well, the thing I was gonna say me actually follows on quite nicely from that it was. And just to go back to your question, do we all possess that skill? I mean, I think there’s a nature versus nurture aspect to this as, as maybe there is for a lot of things. And I guess, you know, we maybe have an innate amount of natural resilience, which maybe comes from our genetic makeup. You know, I haven’t studied this, but I’m just sort of suggesting, however, I, I think that mostly so on the nature nurture, nurture, continuum, I think it’s probably mostly a learned thing. Whether whether it’s an intentionally learned thing, or whether it’s learned, because you’ve had a pretty rough time and, and sort of emerge from it. So I think I think we are equipped with a sort of innate level of, of resilience, because of who we are and where we come from, but that, the knocks and scrapes and experiences we have to our life, then add add to that and turn us into the, you know, more resilient person that that would perhaps work towards me go.
Nadine Powrie [08:55]
That I picked up a couple of things that one is, deep down, we all do, as Jenny said, and then this notion that you can learn it. Interestingly, some scientists describe it as a failure of systems that you do have from an evolutionary sense systems to deal with adversity. And they are things like, we’re predisposed to attach to relationships, we have a learning and thinking brain. We have neuro cognitive control systems. We have religion, spirituality, culture, education community, but they talk about those systems can get hijacked by the adversity, and then they don’t work for us. So I think you’re right. I think we’ve got these things innately, but we don’t yet maybe see quickly enough when they’re being hijacked by a situation. And then, you know, maybe we’ve not got the tools to deal with that hijacking. But Jenny, Jenny on Iran mentioned self awareness, and I think that I’m in certainly the best leaders I’ve worked with, have developed great sense of self awareness and are able to reflect on their core components of what is their resilience. And when we, when we ask them, they’re able to pinpoint to score components. And I have done that exercise myself, when I was a head teacher, particularly at the beginning of my headship, because I wasn’t quite prepared for it, and PICU doesn’t really prepare you, when certainly when I did it, at that time, it didn’t prepare me and there was a point in my first year where I thought, you know, all I’m doing is, is dealing with problems after problems, leadership is a very lonely place. And I was struggling, because every single day is coming to me, and I didn’t have a system in myself to, to make it work. And my coach at the time said to me, Well, what are the opportunities that giving you and it gave me an opportunity to start self reflecting and being a lot more aware of on those components, which were making me resilient? Well, it was going to start to make me more resilient leader. And there were three things for me. The first one was perception. So it was all about how I was looking at difficulties. And instead of thinking, well, that’s a completely, you know, crippling event that is happening here, I was just seeing it as a difficulty. The second one was about my, the responsibility. So, you know, I’m responsible for my own thinking. So I choose the way I think. And therefore it’s linked to perception. And the third one was control. And in terms of control, it was more about spending my energy on what I knew I could control, and therefore starting to grow from there. So for me, it did help me understand who I was, and having clear components of what my resilience was made of. And then I could navigate that. And I’ve always talked about perception. So but that’s just, you know, I’m just giving an example here, a practical example.
We’ve had, we’ve had a comment from Craig, it’s good to see you’ve joined us, Craig, which I think is relevant at this moment, because Craig Craig is just asking us whether whether emotional resilience is is a different thing from what we’ve actually been talking about, or is it essentially the same? I mean, he has a different words, but I’ve kind of hopefully, Craig figured that into a coherent,
Nadine Powrie [12:56]
it’s a good, it’s a good point, really, because given 100 people with the same circumstances, they all would react differently, some without resilience, some with resilience, different kinds. And that would manifest itself differently. It might be worth sort of just going over, like the what happens, what resilience is, just before we get into the traits. So our human brain wants to stay in something called homeostasis, which is your normality. And when it gets outside of that, it panics a little. And that’s that adversity. Interestingly, there doesn’t have to be a negative. We used to have professional golfers when they started to play really well. And the numbers were very different than they used to do you know what they panicked exactly the same way as their numbers were when they were below it. It just felt different. But I think once you get this adversity from homeostasis, then you end up the research is aimed for outcomes. The worst outcome is you end up with dysfunctional reintegration, you can’t get past it. And that’s what resilience does to you, then you come back with a certain amount of risk of reintegration. But with a loss, there’s something missing from the experience, then the best the the normal one is I come back to homeostasis and I carry on. But there’s another one, which I found. And this is called resilient integration, or post traumatic growth, thriving, post adversity, that some people can take that experience not only come back to normal, but they move on and they they use it to to their Betterment they they grow from that experience.
I think you’re that’s really interesting. And I think what you’ve just said is spot on and as he was starting to go through those four things, I was I was kind of waiting for the for the last one because I really, I really believe that and you know those Who are better equipped to deal with this? Use it in a positive way. So yeah. And so it. And I believe that we, we, we have bits knocked off us, and we’re shaped as we go through our lives. And one of the best outcome for that is to use those experiences not to let them completely crush us and destroy us, but actually to emerge stronger from I’ve seen that on several, several occasions. Yeah,
I think we talked about that, didn’t we kind of, we’ve talked about that before, is that there are certain, I think most of us in our careers, I mean, we’ve all got fairly long careers behind us, some of us longer than others. And in those careers, we’ve had fairly significant challenges that we’ve all had to deal with. And I think that having gone through a real emotional and career challenge, I found, I didn’t feel very resilient because of the way I was feeling at the time. But once I kind of got back on the horse, and realized, actually know that that situation isn’t going to define who I am. And the only way I can prove that is by being successful in my term. So I think that that knock, that I had personally enabled me to become more resilient, because I felt that my real response to it wasn’t as strong as it could have been. And I think that the had the same thing happened. Now I would be in a much better position, because I’m more self aware, and have better a better toolkit, and perhaps a bit better self awareness of who I am as well.
Nadine Powrie [16:56]
But Jenny, Jenny, how did you overcome? You know, did you just I mean, you didn’t wake up one day thinking, I’ve got it. Now. I understand everything. I totally get how I am. How did you? How did you find out? I mean, did you work with somebody? What was the mechanism in place?
I start I think I think my my immediate reaction to that is probably the right one. And I think it’s about listening to the positive voices drown out the negative voices. And I think that it’s very easy for somebody if somebody says something negative to you have to take it to heart. But if somebody says something positive to you think oh, well, no, not really. And I think that I have to seek feedback. And listen to the positivity ease and build an almost reframe the, the view I had of myself from that. So I
Nadine Powrie [17:53]
think that that’s one of the things that comes through all the research is this notion of relationships, and the sense of community, that the better relationships, you’ve got that group of people, like you said, the ones you want to listen to, who may not give you always positive feedback, but it comes from a positive place, because they want you to do better, because one of the other things is about being realistic. But But I think there are the I don’t know whether we’re talking about the skills, because I think you can build a skill set that then helps you be better equipped for resilience. But there are some other things which you probably could call like outlooks one is like that. Your self perception, and how do you view your self? You know, Can Can I get myself out of a situation? Or am I totally beholden externally? The relationships who are not sort of mentioned, but then the situation or one being genuinely realistic about what you can and then what you can’t do? I mean, no one is saying everyone can get through COVID-19 Because I don’t think anybody ever planned for that. So some things are almost it’s sensible to say look, I haven’t got an answer, because you’re not meant to have an answer doesn’t mean you’re any less. And then the last one is this notion of that I keep picking up which is purposeful, and meaningful your your your life means something and therefore the development of you as a person, you see as being valuable. Yeah, you know, those aren’t skills but they are sort of outlooks on how you see the world and yourself. Both it’s, it’s interesting what you say Nick, about being realistic about what you can and what you can do. Because sometimes if you are if we are feeling a little bit overwhelmed, we tend to look at the glass is half empty, as opposed to half full. So if you give a piece of paper and on you know left hand side what you can do and then right hand side what you what you can do, sometimes people and might have one column that is, that has much more money than the other column, and then you take them on another day. And then actually, it’s, it can be quite different. So for me, this is, this is a live document, you know, that we should be working on almost every day because things change. And I, you know, we can use different colors doing it in in different ways. But just to grow that length, so that what we can do can change because everyday we change we we learn, I mean, you know, the US for six months ago, we were in Dubai, we had no idea that today, we would be on LinkedIn live using stream yard. And you know, we had no idea and we have more skills. So things we can do today that we couldn’t do just six months ago.
It’s also keeping track of the positive net, because at the moment there’s it’s Coronavirus is everywhere, and the words and the news and everything else. And then at the end of the news, sometimes you get a good news item. And I think that unfortunately that we’re being pushed into focusing on the negativity. And I think that the the positives that have come out of this, that we’ve talked about in previous LinkedIn, in terms of people’s relationships in terms of people re communing with nature, getting out there, building relationships with family having more time to do the things that they want to do. So I think it’s keeping that reflecting on both what Nick and Nadine said, it’s keeping that focus on the on the on the on the the good things and being optimistic. And I think that it’s easier said than done. Because if you’re in that downward spiral that we talked about earlier, and somebody says, Oh, you need to be optimistic and look at all the good things you’ve got. That can be really challenging. And I think it’s I feel it’s incumbent on me to kind of try and flip things whenever I can, to say, oh, you know, this bloody thing, it’s gonna go on in another six weeks, and what will you and I said, Yeah, so I try to flip that so that people are looking at the benefits, I can’t do it so well in my own head. Because that’s much more difficult. I think it’s much easier to do it with other people. John?
Yeah, well, I just wanted to get again, it’s funny how this happens. We joined by Jeremy, which is great, Jeremy, thank you very much knew you’ve put something really, really interesting. There, which which, picking up on on I can remember who it was. Someone was talking about lead leaders in organizations who are only interested in this is what Jeremy is saying. And some one of us was talking about being being surrounded by people who, who don’t ever give us anything. It was Nick, because he was talking. Certainly a bit garbled this, but I’m remembering it. I’m speaking. That’s tricky. No, it was it was about you saying that. As we we don’t, we don’t often hear the negative. The negatives, we just we just hear things which are which are positive. And, and actually, in terms of growing up becoming more resilient and helping to move us on that fourth category you mentioned, it is really important. And it taps into what you were just saying their journey to to have people that you know and trust around you. And if you’re a leader, people are being able to trust those, those dissenting voices, if you like the the plants in the organization who think completely differently, and will make a suggestion to, which isn’t along the lines of what you want to hear necessarily, or even what they think you want to hear. But it’s designed to move. Well, it’s not designed to but it has the effect of moving you on and developing you. Yeah, Jeremy, thanks for prompting that. I
Nadine Powrie [23:50]
think that’s really, Jeremy is in Dubai, actually very close to your neck. Oh, there we go. But it’s interesting that Jeremy mentioned, mentioned trust because actually, over the past six months, we and I have seen it have accelerated the trust that we have with the right people for ourselves, you know, certainly the four of us. We have accelerating that trust and that has certainly contributed for sure in my case, to building my own resilience with what’s happening in the world. Tapping into the trusted friends, the trusted colleagues and the family as well. So trust is absolutely key when you want to openly talk about your own resilience and you know, not being afraid to be vulnerable and say things as they are sorry, that’s a good point. I was gonna jump in on the back of Jenny’s bit about, you know, you can be worried you’re not going to get it right all the time. But if you don’t listen to the right people, it can look very negative. And then you said vulnerability. Now, what often resilience can, I think inadvertently look alike? If you have to stand out the front and put yourself in that vulnerable position? That’s not true. Last view, remember when we were doing distance learning, somebody said, they read something that said Maslow before bloom? Yeah, that was restructured resilience, another Maslow thing. Apparently resilient. People don’t do the pyramid, they turn the pyramid upside down. Oh, brilliant, because they realize they don’t need to have absolutely everything to start helping in affecting other people, they will help with whatever they’ve got, which often thought was really cool.
Well, can I can’t not jump in at this, because that’s, that’s one of my big things that actually, and I think there’s a faith aspect to that, which is that if you find your purpose, this doesn’t apply to children, which, which is often how Maslow is used. But I think it applies to certain other things. He’s fascinating. If you find your purpose, this is the thinking. So if you turn that that pyramid, upside down purposes at the bottom, then everything else, including warmth, shelter, food, water, whatever, those are on the very basic tier, which are now at the top, they will just follow on, because you’ve found your purpose in life, and therefore, you will be sustained. There you go.
Yeah. Simon Synnex. finding your why isn’t it? Do you know what something
Nadine Powrie [26:41]
I don’t normally follow him. But today, I just
think it’s wonderful.
Nadine Powrie [26:46]
He said this thing that I thought about thinking about things differently. He said, he went for a run did a 5k with a friend of his and they both finished and at the end, there was a free bagels. Oh, yes. I saw that. You see that? And he’s, he says, oh, let’s get some bagel. His friend says no, no, I’m not queuing up. He said, No, no, they’re free bagels queue up. It’s a no, no, no. And he says that weird. Some one, he could see the goal and what it was, and the other person could only see the problem and get into the goal. It’s perception, isn’t it? Always. It’s back to what I said at the very beginning. I mean, perception can actually it can send you in a very specific direction. That is not always right. And I think other things like I mean, even Tony Blair said it, I remember I was doing some outdoor education. And we were talking about risk. And he supported us to say that kids need to feel and perceive risk, even if it’s only perceived risk, because life will be risky need to deal with it. And there is something about being resilient. That means you don’t avoid risk that you need to bump up against it, get a feeling of what it’s like, in order for you to take on maybe greater risks, like you know, getting through a COVID pandemic. But some guy said, I think I see it there for talking about the resilience is not necessarily innate, it can always be improved. I think that’s probably right, you can always get better at it. I would say, though, that you the whole point of this is you can’t tackle it on your own. You can be resilient, but I’m not sure. Everybody can develop their resilience on their own. They need some sort of external system, you know, culture, religion, other people family in order for that to work. Yeah, I think yeah, Mahmoud Mahmoud, is actually my accountant. He’s just an amazing guy. And he did a LinkedIn live last week in sales, so I’m really pleased that he’s listening. Hello, Mahmoud. And thanks for listening. Yes, I don’t know what I wanted to say, Nick. You’ve just said something. And I’ve just lost the thread. Thank you. Yeah, taking risk. Yes. It’s about it’s about taking risk. But it’s also about talking to people you’re saying. And, you know, right now, we’ve all done our maps of who we can talk to, you know, the friends, the family, the colleagues as well. I mean, we’re having very difficult different conversations with colleagues and clients at the moment. And I guess, you know, everything is an opportunity to improve your resilience. Every conversation is an opportunity to improve your resilience. That’s my I feel very strongly about that. Does need me saying something, John?
Yes, she Yes, she is. And then it disappeared whilst I find it. Yeah, she’s agreeing with Nick because he she doesn’t mean
Nadine Powrie [29:53]
as well. Hello? Tasneem. Yeah, the only way
the only way out is through. I mean, I think I think there’s a lot of a lot in that. No go on journey. So I just like
to pick up something that Craig’s talking about about people with undiagnosed undiagnosed autism, ADHD, and generally people with additional needs. Because I think that from my own experience, I’ve seen a number of special needs children and adults. And the resilience that they show just going through normal, everyday experiences is astounding. And I think that people, people who haven’t got these extra challenges have no idea what what other people are having to do just to get out of bed, get their clothes on the right way round, negotiate all the obstacles that they might fall over. And I think that if you weren’t resilient, in no circumstances, you would, you would crumble. And I think resilience is so so important, as a cornerstone for people traditional needs, but also for all children. And I think that if somehow that we can, you know, we’re all we all have an excellent teacher background. And I think that within schools, resilience is one of the most important things we can help our young people to develop. Because without resilience, it’s, it’s I mean, it’s been said in some of the reading that I was doing, and I totally agree is that it’s, it’s more important than anything else, is resilience, it’s more important to character, it’s more important than qualifications. Because if you haven’t got resilience, the slightest thing, going back to Nick’s analogy ballot, the oak tree, the slightest thing will fail you. Whereas if you have that resilience, you’re able to sort of drift and wave in the wind, without it becoming an issue. But I would just like to hold up my hand for these, these kids who struggle so much against physical or cognitive disabilities,
well, before we lose that, I just want to bang in something. And I’m their parents, I feel really Yeah. For that, and maybe broaden it to, to those who care for for anyone who has been through a difficult, you know, whether it’s a stroke, or some sort of palsy or something, though, those who those people themselves, but also those around them, who are, who are then thrown at their world is completely changed. And, you know, failing isn’t an option. Actually, if you’ve got giving up. No, no, exactly. Get get, you’ve got to find a way through anyway. Thanks, John. A shout out to those people. Yeah.
Nadine Powrie [32:40]
John, do you want to pick up on what Jeremy has said?
Yeah, okay, I can, I can just see Jeremy saying it’s weird how resilience seems to erode as we age. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating, though, isn’t it? That when we’re, when we’re younger, there’s a point that Jeremy is making we we seem to be able to navigate our way to the next and accept things. And then when we get older and more brittle. But, I mean, I do I, it is an interesting comment. I, again, I think it’s to do with attitude, and we what a lot of the things you could call that mindset, I think there’s essentially this the same thing a lot, a lot of things we’ve talked about have been sort of dancing around the edges of attitude and mind mindset and, and linking that with the conversation we had a little while ago is this nature or nurture? Well, at the start of our nurturing, and in fact, the start of our nature, and when when we’re little, the experiences we have set us up for for life. And so just to pick Jeremy’s point there, yeah, when you’re younger, you’re dead, you’re definitely at a point where you can cope with more, because you’re you you kind of haven’t learned to be sophisticated and cover things up. So you’re there’s a, there’s a, an honesty and a vulnerability to what to what you do and the way you go about it, which I think actually is important in, in developing these skills and attitudes for life.
Nadine Powrie [34:10]
Although, although I would say, I think the difference between young and old is this notion of the fear of failure, when you’re older, you got a lot more baggage failures a bit more close to you. You know, most kids come from a decent family and win or lose no one cares. And that’s taught to them by lots of their, you know, significant others who say, although I would say there are kids, you know, because I was doing my research, those that I’ve got terrible backgrounds, you know, growing up in war and famine and things like that, actually, they they can’t deal with it. They need the support network, because those sorts of things. No one’s meant to be resilient in and get through. And that which is which is terrible. I mean, there is a what I want to try and get to was this notion of them. Okay, so what then. So there’s things out there. And you can be resilient. But I think it needs us to change something, what what are you going to change in order to make sure you’re resilient? And how can you do that. And I read something right about the brain, which I worked out. And up, because I thought that the brain stopped growing new cells, and it doesn’t, it keeps going. And by the end of the podcast, apparently, we get one sale every two minutes. So you’ve got more brain cells, by the end of the podcast, and when you started, and there’s this thing called neuroplasticity, and that’s forming new connections. And you keep doing that. And we’ve got 100 billion neurons in our brain. So the opportunity is what I’m getting asked for you to rewire yourself think differently, is huge. And that’s the same in all of us. So you know, it’s not like this is unique this can be done.
Is that neuroplasticity? Yeah, yeah, the weather, we’ve got more brain cells at the end of the session about at the star depends on how many of them have died in between your rate of death compared with the growth,
Nadine Powrie [36:19]
but depends on how much football you’re playing, how much how many times you headed the ball,
I completely agree with neuroplasticity, I’ve always thought it was to do with neural pathways and being able to access and develop and enhance those are I
Nadine Powrie [36:33]
mean, in terms of resilience, it’s a bit like a skill, isn’t it? The more you attenuate the pathway, that myelin production, you can really attenuate that signal, you can get up an amazingly efficient response. But I just want just wanted to prove people, we all have the tools. It’s not beyond any of us to learn this stuff.
I think we have to feel that. Sorry, I can’t see your journey, because there’s a
Can I pick up on something there, Nick? Because what you’re doing, you’re comparing the kids who come from reasonable backgrounds, etc, etc. And everything’s fine. They don’t perhaps need resilience so much. And then you get the people who forgot the tough environment, who do need it, but may not have it.
Nadine Powrie [37:24]
Not not they need it. That I think when you’re younger, there is a less sense of the fear of failure, from lots of things. But I think there are situations where it’s not about the fear of failure, it’s that the environment is so terrible for some people that they need external help. I think adults seem to think they don’t need help, because they can do it all because they’re grown up. Okay. And we tend to think children can’t do it on their own, because they’re children, and we need to help them. And I probably would say the word that the reality is somewhere in between.
I misunderstood what you said.
Well, I’ll just add to that, I think the toughness of background that you’re mentioning has nothing to do with affluence. No, it has to do with, with that emotional is to do with love effectively at home, I suspect is that you have
Nadine Powrie [38:16]
fear of failure, it’s your exam results, going home with a D, you can be from a poor family, a rich family, some children, that’s that’s difficult, you know, being told you’re not at the level.
But let’s just say, let’s go, let’s go back to your 12 month old or your 18 month old, month, year old, you know, where, you know, they’re not worried about exam results. I don’t know about those sorts of things. But but there’s this structure in the security that they have in their world, their little world at that time, is building resilience, or isn’t it? And
Nadine Powrie [38:56]
what I’m trying to get what I’m trying to say is your point, the resilience bit doesn’t matter. Because that’s perception. As we were saying when a dean, you could you can perceive something different to me, the bit that’s constant, that people who have resilience have our loving families, whether you’re a child or adults, this network of people that seems to be constant, have resilient
people. Yes, yes. Okay. I see what you’re saying.
Not necessarily. Yes. Okay. People seem to be disagreed with every day. It’s not like neutral.
Right? Don’t even love it.
You can you get people who tick all the boxes that should make them resilient. You get people who come from loving families who are given all the right feedback and do not face major adversity or doumitt face major adversity. And it’s not necessarily although it may generally be a predictor of whether they’re going to be resilient or not. And I think in some ways, resilience almost takes that childhood stuff a step further, because I think that if you bring up your child to have to be wrapped in cotton wool, to do things for them, to not necessarily make them, make them, let them make their own decisions at a very young age, I take risks, all the things that are the building blocks of resilience, I think, are essential for children from a very young age to be exposed to. And I suspect, although I’ve got no scientific proof, that lack of that challenge, risk taking. putting yourself out there as a child is more likely to make people more rigid, and less resilient as they get older.
Nadine Powrie [40:52]
I don’t think you’re disagreeing are you what you’re describing is a set of traits of traits that given a fair wind means that you could be resilient without those you’re unlikely to be. However, that doesn’t take into account to other things, the environment those traits live in. And we talked about, you know, the relationships, the family, the your view of the world, which aren’t really traits, their perceptions. And then the fact is, you know, well, depending on the adversity, we could be at the bottom, we could be the dysfunctional bit where we can’t get over it all. Some people might come out in a thriving bit. I think all you’re saying is, Have you got a toolbox to help you deal with resilience that looks like the traits. I think sometimes the adversities too great for people with those traits. I mean, looking at COVID, I mean, imagine any business talking about business resilience now, how would they have planned for COVID? How did they get prepared for this? And I bet you they’ve, they’ve got elements of resilience and redundancy, if you like, in terms of they’re working to see if that’s okay. Well, we’ve talked about we’re sorry, we’ve talked a lot about family and relationships and how we can construct resilience. There’s one thing we’ve not talked about as I was listening to you, and being very quiet, Nick, been very quiet. i There is one thing we have not mentioned culture, you know, the role of culture, in building resilience, do you think that it has something to, to play here, the you know, living, connected culture and the influence that it’s having on building your resilience, the notion of class as well, you know, whether you’re working class or, you know, we the gender, age group, generation. I mean, we’ve got 2015 minutes left, I’m bringing that on the table. But I just want to widen the discussion a little bit here. Just we talked about having those innate adaptive systems like for evolution, culture is one of them. And I think you know, what, we are resilient in dealing with very different imagine, you know, like the social media comments on young people and how resilient they would have to be to go through that, and that probably doesn’t apply to us. So I think there is something about where you are in life, that means maybe the resilience is altered a little bit, or I don’t think the adversity is linked to age, though, I think it depends on how you perceive the events. If you put a lot of stalling on Twitter, or, or Facebook and someone said something particularly bad about you, you know, that might affect you quite badly. I mean, I couldn’t care less. But if you like the events, the same, it’s just the perception that’s different. I think that I don’t know. I mean, I’ve looked at orphans, you know, kids who don’t have parents, and I’ve done some, some reading on that. And actually, you know, there is a school of thought that says that some of those kids actually can be very resilient later on in life because of what they’ve experienced. So, I mean, research also says that being resilient can come from, you know, your genes, it can be its genetic, you know, part of it is genetic. Part of it is your experience. Part of it is how you’ve been brought up. Part of it is then, you know, what you become what you make of it and your self awareness. I think we’re back home to it’s an it’s a journey, isn’t it? And you can accelerate that journey, or you can slow it down. It’s interesting. I come back to what Joe And he was saying that, it seems it seemed to suggest that as you’re growing older, you’re perhaps less resilient? And I don’t know about that. I think it depends on people. It’s, it’s very, yeah, some sign says, this notion of protected protection factors, which is people places and things. And the risk factors are the events, and the things that cause the stress, or what we need to do is to use the protective factors to help people make them feel safe in combat, you know that the risks, so they give it to people, places and things, it really is not time related. You can have those in whatever stage of your life you have. So, so we’ve got 1515 minutes late left. And we want to give some strategies to people at the end of the LinkedIn live. So for the moment I’ve written down to listening to your positive voices or to positive voices, be realistic about what you can and cannot do. What else can we add to that so that people, you know, take something away from what we’ve been talking about.
It’s about the control, isn’t it? And it’s linked to both the points that you’ve made, it’s about focusing on the things that you can control and letting the other things. It’s like the negative voices to try and bypass the things that you can’t control and focus on the things that you can control. And actually make, do more than focus actually make your plans based on that, you know, I’m okay, I’m stuck in, we’re on lockdown here, I’m stuck inside, what can I do? Well, I’ve got the countryside on my doorstep, I can go out and have haven’t have a long walk. I can’t go into town and buy anything. That’s not essential. But that doesn’t matter for now. Because I can do what I do. I’ll do something else rather than dwelling on the fact Oh, you know, I really miss going to John Lewis. Any examples, but it’s about it’s about the control, isn’t it?
Nadine Powrie [46:59]
Yeah. example on how we can grow our resilience, John?
Well, I was going to link the control that Jenny just mentioned to, to sounds a bit formal, but almost an audit of our social capital, I think, I think our social capital action. And what I mean by social capital, if I understand it correctly, is is it basically who to call when you get in trouble? Isn’t it really who you can, you know, who you know, to call on. And so I think doing doing I don’t mean an official audit been able to mean it’s kind of being aware of, of what the contracts are, that you’ve got, what the support mechanisms are, who will give, and I think that probably links with culture, as well as its lovers fascinated by what you’re suggesting there. You know, the phrase, we used to hear quite a lot, it takes a village to raise a child. And that’s absolutely true in certain villages. I’m not sure it’s true of many villages in the UK, this particular day and age, because people are very frightened of, of letting their little Johnny going down to play in the playground because of who might who else might be there. And I think we’ve lost in a way that that aspect within certain. I’m sure there’s certain cultures that were that’s really a key bit of social capital. And that’s what Yeah, so my, my, my thing is, connect with your social capital. There you go.
Nadine Powrie [48:28]
Okay,
can I can I just put a couple more positive spin on that job, because what you’re saying about taking a village to raise a child, I mean, I live in well, it’s probably a suburb of new cars. It’s not particularly, it’s not particularly posh. It’s there’s some quite deprived areas around here and I’m on a local, I actually went on to Facebook. But there’s a local Facebook group. And you know, Halloween comes and I’ve stuck some sweets on the fence outside, you know, I’ll replace them every hour. Please help yourself to flowers, and they’re decorating the bus shelter. And the whole community is supporting each other. They may not be raising each other’s children, but there’s a real awareness of people who are more vulnerable than you are and actually coming together and doing something about it. And to me, that’s positive voices outside of the negativity of being locked in. Yes, I agree with that. And linking it to what you were saying about the social capital.
Nadine Powrie [49:28]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so sorry, go? Yeah, I would say, grow your optimistic perception. Because people being nice and helping you. It’s not it’s nice. What we need is people to be aware of what resilience is and how to grow it and people that haven’t got it, need to start recognizing it and what it can do for them, and then start looking for it. So on that I’d say welcome stress. take on the challenges of yours. Life, learn from your mistakes, be compassionate to other people try to rebound from failure, but not not that you always will, but that your first point of call should be I can rebound from this, and I should try to look for that. And then what they probably don’t do is then enjoy your accomplishments. You know, the rebound doesn’t have to be huge. It can be tiny. But if you don’t recognize that you did rebound, and that that’s an accomplishment and you put it in the bank, you can’t like do the next one. But that is all about self perception around resilience, I think. Yeah. Self
awareness. I think that last one, just a button. I think it’s fantastic. That Be aware of the wet, you know, the, the learning the progress you’ve made? I think that’s good. Yeah.
Nadine Powrie [50:48]
Writing celebrating. Well, actually, you know, pressing pause and just say, this is really great. There was two other some guy I frozen balls in me, some some guys saw, said, ask yourself the question, and it is, is what I’m doing thinking and feeling right now? Helping me or anyone else in any way? If the answer is no, ask yourself what’s the point of thinking or feeling like this? Because it serves no purpose. And there’s no aid for it? I mean, someone else said to me, jerawat, if the if you feel like there’s a an action plan for your problem, then you haven’t got a problem? Yeah, I mean, it’s back to that thing, you don’t have to solve everything. One step forward in the right direction is often all it all it takes. But you have to take it.
It’s not. It’s not so much about solving it. Because it’s, it’s it’s much bigger than that. And isn’t it? You’re absolutely right, Nick. And sometimes the most, the hardest step to take is that first step, that first positivity, once you’ve acknowledged where you are and the situation that you’re in, what’s the one thing I can do that will make my situation better, because you don’t need a whole list of things, you need one thing just to move you that one step, and then the next step will become easier.
Nadine Powrie [52:13]
Or maybe people like us who do know about resilience, could maybe look for other people. And like maybe suggest to them to take that first step. To say, Look, we get it, we can stand next year, you can step forward with somebody, you know, if you leave it to the individual, I think that’s very difficult to do sometimes. I think, I mean, for me, it is two things a, I have a personal mantra that keeps me going, when things don’t go my way, which is everything happens for a good reason. So when it doesn’t go my way, I say that to myself, I’m also I almost I am almost on automatic pilot. So it’s happening for good reason, move on, bank, I move on. So I am a robot, almost where I have no feelings, or just, I just move on. And the other thing is, I quite like to be proactive. So some of the things that we’ve discussed about is as a as a, as a response to, you know, adversity, conflict, trauma, and all of that. And I like to be proactive. So for example, I try something new. I change the way I do things. So I almost beat what’s going to happen so that I am resilient before it happens. And yes, I’m quite interested in in foreseeing what’s going to happen so that I am better equipped. So for me, those two things, yes, Jenny,
can I just add something to that? Because I’ve known you for some years. And we’ve worked together in all sorts of quite challenging situations. And I can absolutely verify that you say that. But you not only say that, but you say it was such conviction that I believe you. So it’s not you don’t just say it for yourself, you say it for whoever it is you’re talking to as well. And it’s a fact it’s not just your opinion, it’s a fact. And that’s the way you say it that’s actually really helpful and calming.
Nadine Powrie [54:25]
Oh, thank you, Jenny. Maybe just quickly to to give business a poke in the right direction. I read something yesterday, it said maybe business should move away and consider things that aren’t about hyper efficient, hyper lean, start considering the unexpected, rather than expecting, you know, profits to rise next year. You know, things can change. And I think maybe this COVID 19 experiences made people think you know what, it’s not always going to be business as usual. To my time in the army, I didn’t learn a huge amount I didn’t think until I thought about this, my boss used to say to me, every week, sit down for 20 minutes, have a cup of tea, just tell me what things might go wrong, what you’re going to do about them, just in case they do, and they never did. But you wonder whether that sort of thinking in this climate is not wasted. So, so far, we are listening to positive voices, be realistic about what you can and cannot do. Focus on what you can control. Do an audit of social capitals, so who we can call on grow your hone your optimistic perception, learn from your mistakes, enjoy your accomplishments, celebrate, everything is happening for good reason. So personal mantra, do something different, something new every day. So growth mindset. I had pretend we’ve got nine.
Oh, I would, I would add to that about something about self care. Because I think that if you’re not resilient, there’s there’s, there’s all sorts of negative feelings that you’ve got that might be about, you’ve been being a failure, because something hasn’t gone, right. And I think creating a healthy mindset, you know, about maybe having a routine, maybe eating healthfully going to bed at a reasonable time, making sure that you communicate with somebody. So I think there’s a whole range of things that you can do in terms of self care, that will enable you to be stronger in your Outlook, and perhaps be more
Nadine Powrie [56:43]
nicely to the Dean’s bit, I have it don’t ruminate. There is no need for you to attach a negative emotion to an event. That is you that does that you don’t have to do that.
It’s not you. Yeah,
Nadine Powrie [56:58]
it’s everything we do. I mean, everything we do, a lot of things that we do is a choice. And sometimes we choose to be, you know, unconsciously, perhaps which we are stuck. It’s because of what we, you know, when you do the self talk, it’s about what you say to yourself, and I have to be a saint? No. I don’t think like this all the time. You know, the Dean had to slap me this week to sort of say, you know, glass half full. So everyone slips? Yes, yes. But um, you know, that that’s, that’s the importance of having friends around you and knowing where to go? Capital. Yeah. Which is exactly what you said. And, and I think that, you know, we’ve what’s happened over the past six months, that’s exactly what we for, you know, we call ourselves those four people. That’s exactly what we’ve done. And we’ve actually not only survived, but we’ve thrived on it. Because every week we come back to an Indian life. And actually, we’re quite excited to do it, don’t worry, when we’re having a good stuff. We’re hopefully influencing, you know, some people around the world with little tips and strategies. And, and we feel we feel making a little bit of a difference. And I think it’s, it’s great, not what we had anticipated that we would do, but we’re doing it and not everything has to be planned. And that’s me saying that.
Yes, yes.
One more in the 11th Minute. What is it? Well, it came out of something that you said it’s this notion of resolving stuckness I think this is so important in schools, for kids learning in schools. What do you do when you get stuck? But I think it takes us through it. It’s got to be present in our in our adult life as well. How you respond when you’re stuck, is absolutely crucial. And that’s that’s your way out of the resilience paper bag, isn’t it? What what what you do? Yeah, I think that probably links to that. That could be that could be the thing link into a number of those boxes, actually.
Nadine Powrie [59:07]
Yes, it’s good. And actually that could be and also LinkedIn life seem.
How long have you concept of resilience paperback and like, visual image?
Well, it’s great habit, isn’t it?
Nadine Powrie [59:25]
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We could do one on change. Maybe a lot of things we’re talking about is the tools. But that means you’re in a different position. And we’re talking about new positions. You know, how do you move into a new position? It’s quite interesting. How do you manage change? I mean, I talk about it all the time with the people that I work with. in very different ways. So how do we manage change would be a fantastic LinkedIn live person next week. Okay, Tasneem is saying something she’s saying, Well, John, do you want to take
him saying it’s fantastic? It’s lovely to have you with us. What is the word she tells him saying it’s a wonderful discussion, though, of those those four people, I’m glad you loved it. Tasneem has been brilliant.
frustrating to get all these comments and not being able to respond to them. We can pick up the chat, but we can’t actually respond to each question. Stuff that’s come through today. That would have been really nice to respond to. But thanks anyway, for the people who have stuff in really added to the, to what we talked about. So yeah,
thanks for the positive comments as name is lovely. And I
Nadine Powrie [1:00:42]
think it would be, it would be fair to share with the world what we do after once we finished the LinkedIn live, we actually don’t switch off, we talk for about 2020 minutes to reflect on how we’ve done. We don’t measure our performance, but we look at we looked at well, I just said that the measures of performance? Of course I do, right, we looked at performance, I look at their performance, then we reflect on you know, the flow of the conversation, and we reflect on the quality last week we talked about, you know, were we talking for the same amount of time. You know, Are we interrupting each other because that’s something we’ve been looking at. So it’s it’s it’s before where we just you know, plugin Golding deny we talk but it’s also the after, where we reflect on, you know, we weld in, we work in education, we’ve always been reflective practitioner, and will continue to be so in the next 20 For the next 20 minutes will go off live, live and offline. And we will go and reflect but we will be back next week, same time, four o’clock, and we will be focusing on change management. That’s a really good one. I’m really looking forward to that. Great, thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Nadine Powrie [1:02:08]
And good evening and good night to wherever you are in the world.