EP 19 - Dr. Danielle King

Welcome to another episode of the Exam and Athlete, I'm Clay Reichenbach. I'm so excited to share this episode with you all today because I know today's topic will resonate with each and every one of you. And the voice delivering this message is such a special human being, a beautiful human being. We recorded the episode you're hearing. We spent another two hours or so afterwards continuing the conversation and expanding upon the conversation. Today my guest is Dr. Danielle King. Danielle is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Rice University where she focuses the majority of her research on resilience. And today's episode is all about resilience. We talk about what it is, what it's not, how she studies it, traits that foster it, environments that foster it. And something that I've dealt with all my life, which is what do you do when resilience is not the problem? What do you do when efforts not the problem? And you still can't find your way. It was such a privilege to sit down and speak to someone who studies something like resilience. We all have this unique relationship with resilience. We all have our own thoughts and feelings about resilience. And I had the opportunity to sit down and direct this conversation wherever I wanted to direct it and to explore my thoughts and experiences with someone who actually studies it. We sat outside on the campus of Rice University. It was a beautiful setting. We had this beautiful conversation. I'll make sure and share some picks. But the conversation's not all roses and smiles. Danielle shares how resilience is not happiness. It's not success. It doesn't always solve your problems. And in fact, being resilient can oftentimes suck. And for my personality, it was refreshing and comforting to hear someone, especially an expert, be real about resilience. Because I didn't really know that or understand that. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your counsel. I so enjoyed sharing space with you for a few hours. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Danielle King. Guys, before we get going, I just want to remind you, if you like what we're doing here, please subscribe to the podcast. Please share the podcast. Subscribe to our socials at examined athlete on Instagram and Twitter. You can check out more about the show at www.examinedathlete.com. Your support, your kind words, your feedback will absolutely never go unnoticed. I promise you that. Thanks, guys. [music] Danielle, thank you so much for doing this. Totally. Today is all about resilience, which is your specialty. This is also our first ever podcast outside. You guys may hear some ambient noise, which I'm really excited about because it's beautiful here on the campus of Rice University. I thought I'd start today the same way you started your TED Talk with a quote by Maya Angelou, which is, "You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated," which I think encapsulizes. "Resilience pretty well." I love that quote. I love quotes. I lean on quotes to be honest and good and bad times. However, great quotes are easier said than done. My goal today is to talk with you about how we accomplish what she so eloquently wrote. Hopefully, you can shed some light on that. Why don't you start by giving us an introduction to your professional background and your focus. How do you describe what you do for living? I am an industrial and organizational psychologist. That means I study human behavior, thoughts, emotions in the work context, so in the workplace. I am a professor, and so that means I do research. I study these phenomena and I try to understand how do we influence it? How do we help people become more resilient? What are the outcomes? Why is resilience important? Why is it valuable? What does it contribute to an individual's life? What does it contribute to a workplace? Those types of things. I teach. Of course, we do research to generate knowledge and then we try to spread that knowledge to our students. Well, we're definitely going to get deep into what resilience is and what it's not. But before we do, hopefully we can get to know you a little bit better and maybe even resilience a little better. And I think we all have such a close relationship with resilience. I know I do. And I think because of that, many of the videos I watch from you spoke to me on a fundamental level, as if they were addressed directly to my thoughts or directly to my emotions. Do you get that often? And what do you think that is? I do. And that's one of the things that I love about studying this. Sometimes in science, we do things and it's really hard to explain the practical side or connect it to our lived experiences and resilience. I never have that problem because we've all been through something that is difficult, that is challenging. We've all had disappointments. We've all had failures. And so talking to people about what happens after that and all the different ways that their path can go after that is something that most people pretty easily connect to. Absolutely. Like I said, when I was watching, I'm going, oh man, this is exactly what I'm thinking or this is addressing exactly what I'm thinking. But before we get there, let's start with you a bit. So I know you're from New Orleans. New Orleans is a place for joy and celebration and wonderful memories for so many of us. And I imagine that's true for you, but I also thought your perspective may be a bit more complex than New Orleans. What's New Orleans for you? Absolutely. New Orleans is home. So it is my home, you know, my safe base, but it is a place that also taught me personally what it means to be resilient and why we all need to just be prepared for the unexpected to happen. I was in high school when Hurricane Katrina happened. And so I was relocated to Beaumont, Texas and my high school was completely flooded. So when we did get back into the city, I was at a third high school that saw more year. My parents own businesses. And so I saw them quickly have to rework their entire lives. And I was a kid kind of, you know, I was in high school. So I really was just shocked to confuse and like, we evacuate all the time. And then we just come back home. But you quickly got the feeling that this is different. Things will never just be the same after this. So that taught me a valuable lesson about even when your foundation is shaken. How can you learn from it? How can you grow from it? What beauty can you try and make from it? So that's kind of what I want to study and help other people do. I think you described that as seeing the silver lining and everything. Is that what you think those, how those experience influenced you? I do. And I want to clarify a little bit and say that when I talk about the silver lining, I don't mean that you have to think the trauma is good or enjoy. I don't enjoy hurricanes at all, even now living in Houston. So it's not that you have to just always be happy and always be positive. But looking for those things that you can grow from and how can you grow and what can this teach me kind of looking for lessons to build that resilience muscle is what I think I started getting practice with because of new oil. I often say that there's accomplishments even in failure, which is something I definitely want to get into. Let's dive into resilience a little bit from an academic perspective and define some terms. What is resilience and maybe even share what is not resilience? Yes. So this is a really interesting one because what you'll often find in science is that we, not every research will give you the exact same definition. And so what I say when I talk about resilience is continued effort and commitment to a goal despite adversity. So despite something making your goal pursuit harder or less likely that you'll accomplish it, despite that, you still pushing mentally and physically pushing towards that goal. But it doesn't mean that resilience is the end all be all correct. It doesn't mean that it's easy. No, not at all. Yeah. So one of the things that when I was listening to you speak or reading some of the things you've written, is that I realized that I kind of deify resilience as if once I'm resilient, problem solved. And to hear you explain it as no, no, that's not the case. In fact, it's not success. It's not happiness. It's not even easy for me was kind of soothing. I think it was soothing to hear that hard truth into kind of understand. I had an incomplete view. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Yeah. But you said it's not success because it is different than the outcome of like accomplishing the goal. And just because you're resilient, it doesn't always mean that you'll be successful, right? Just because you keep on pressing forward. But what I like to focus on and think about is that you are doing what's under your control. There's so much around us. I think this last year and a half has taught all of us that in a really unique way that there's so much, so many outcomes that are not completely on us, right? But what is under our control is do I continue to invest effort? Do I continue to try? Do I continue to do what I think will help me get to that goal? And that is a form of success, right? It's like, wow, I could have quit. I could have just stopped it. But I kept on going. I kept on pushing forward in a way that's healthy. And I hope we talk about that too, like boundary conditions too when it's time to know when to let go. But when you do keep it. pushing forward and investing that effort. That is a form of something you can be proud of, but it is not the same as accomplishing the goal and it doesn't always mean we'll be successful. One of the topics that organically comes up on this podcast a lot is what is success. Our very first one was with a Major League Baseball player through a perfect game and used to define success by perfect games and wins and how he came to the realization that that's a dangerous game to play. And that's kind of what I'm hearing too is be really careful with how you define success because if you start defining it by superficial outcomes like financial outcomes or winning a game, it may work for a while and it may actually drive you but it only works until it doesn't and then you're left in a bad situation which I would say arguably that happened to me because for a lot of years Daniel I think I define success from financial outcomes chasing financial outcomes and it worked it really did and I don't think it's really a bad thing as long as you keep in mind where your value is. Is that pretty close to what you're saying? Absolutely. I think the older I get the more value some gray area like it doesn't have to be black and white like this is success, this is not success, this is failure right I think that we can have a lot of different things that we use to measure success but we need to make sure that some of that is internal. Some of that is completely under our control right what can I be proud of about myself that I do and then some of those external things like how much money people decide to give me or those because I think for me I've learned that in the publication process right with these journals it's like all I can do is make the very best possible paper I can do the best research I can I can submit it but it's not fully under my control how the editor feels about the work and how the you know anonymous reviewers feel about the work so when I get rejections it's important for me to not internalize it and say you know every rejection means I'm terrible at this but instead say these are the things that are under my control I did them. Success is accomplishing you know publishing so I'm going to work hard I'm going to edit I'm going to do what I can to get there but if I don't I still know that I did all I could I did my best and that still is a form of success for me. Absolutely and one thing I say this a lot so if you listen to the audience podcast I'm sorry but when we have these conversations with someone like yourself and we sound so evolved in talking about where we put our success keep in mind that it's a journey and our entire life we're going to continue to screw that up so give yourself some grace so we may put our value in the right place today but then you may start thinking about those editors tomorrow and be down on yourself well let's back up just a little bit I've been meeting with quite a few social scientists and I've kind of been down this rabbit hole on what these experiments look like and the limitations of these experiments and dealing with a complexity of humans talk to me about how a social scientist studies resilience what is an experiment look like so one study that we recently got published is about resilience in the voice process so in organizations speaking up offering ideas and suggestions that's important and valuable but it can also be tricky some leaders feel threatened by individuals disagreeing with their ideas or trying to challenge a status quo and so we did this study about the ways in which leaders respond to voiced ideas and how we can help individuals who do speak up be resilient even if one of their ideas gets rejected and I thought about you know if I'm having surgery and there's an intern who gives an idea and maybe they're wrong that doesn't mean in five minutes later during the surgery if they have another idea maybe that could have saved my life but because their first idea was rejected they chose to be silent with any experiment kind of the benefit of doing those is that you can control right you put people this controlled environment you give them the information that you want them to take in put you manipulate something one piece of information so usually in psychological science studies it's some information some part of the narrative that I'm telling people to rate or respond to that's what I manipulate and resilience studies I can manipulate things like the type of adversity that I tell them to imagine they're in or tell them to report on or the significance of the adversity or the severity right like and then look at effects and outcomes and emotional reactions that people have to those different things often in my studies I like to get people's ratings of adversity severity because it can be very different what's severe to me might not be to someone else advice versa often I'm manipulating the adversity itself so putting people in different conditions and saying okay this is what you're going to do this is what you'll see you tell me how severe and how difficult this is to you and then I'll observe your reactions to it how do you control for that how do you control for what's a 10 for me could be a three for you how do you control that so that's the thing I don't want to control for it I want to measure it and model it I want to see if you rate something as a 10 then what helps you get through a 10 right and if I rate something as a three what helps me get through a three but often in studies people do control for it and they take it out but I think it's really interesting so I try to measure it and keep it in my models and say we have our perception of what's a 10 we have our perception of what's a three and the resources that we need for those different levels of severity vary so what I need to get through a paper cut is different than what I need to get through the loss of a loved one and I want to know when I think it's a three what helps me and when I think it's a 10 what helps me and that's also unique to all of us and we don't have to go down a terribly deep rabbit hole because this is probably only interesting to me but if you talk about causation versus correlation and maybe the challenges you run into studying humans because the things that I've learned over the last few months are the problems with self-reporting nature or not problems but the challenges with self-reporting nature and controlling variables and humans that maybe had a bad day before they showed up and did your survey where the other one may have got a promotion the day before they showed up and did your survey how do you think about causation versus correlation and I know you're trying to overcome that gap yeah the study design matters right like if I go out and I just survey a bunch of people in an organization I give you this survey at one time I can't really talk about causation because I didn't look at a cause and effect so that can give me some correlational information like what things tend to vary together in what direction like people who have more support in an organization to have higher resilience right that's like a correlation I could find then I could do an experiment in the lab where I manipulate the level of support I give people and I could observe the effect of that manipulation on resilience and then I could talk more about causation but I think it's important that we we all remember with these studies that it's never a hundred percent like even though I can find an effect and I can say oh I did an experiment I control for these things there was temporal precedence right this thing happened before this other thing so I can model that I can talk about causation but it does not mean that for every person this is what I'll observe because we are humans right we're just too complex absolutely it's all it's probabilities when we run our statistic we're saying there's a very high probability that this will cause this and for most people this would cause this but it's not it doesn't mean that for everyone that model will hold it that's what we'll observe well let's talk about what you have found let's talk about finding this thing called resilience what makes in general a highly resilient person is there any data that shows it's heritable do we largely develop that through experience wherever you want to take it yeah my work and the work of other resilience researchers has given us a lot of really interesting and you know useful information to understand it but there's a lot we still want to find out which is good for me because I'm like I have lots of years left in this career right and so I have so many unanswered questions and things that I want to know some of the things we do know is that there are things that are factors that can help us be resilient like there are researchers for study emotions and they talk about experiencing positive emotions can help us even in hard times right so it's not saying you don't sometimes feel the hardships but sparking joy or finding those things that boost our morale a little bit is helpful and one of the most widely supported effects is social support it's having a network having people you feel like you can talk to you can rely on which I think the pandemic also showed us is really challenging when we can't connect with people in the ways that we used to so those things like social support having that network the positive emotions also the the value of the goal matters right so when we tie important so we have high goal significance for more likely to be resilient when we can remember what do I need to do to accomplish this goal why is this valuable to me you know how would this affect things that I care about how does it align to my values or really clear on those things we tend to be more committed to goals and then so we'll we'll do things we'll try to find those nuggets that help us be resilient. Does that mean the goal can't be superficial in nature it has to be something grounded in what makes you valuable am I hearing that right? So that's an interesting question because potentially superficial goals can be of value to people so I don't even want to say like it can be superficial but if your value is understanding those deep rooted things and having an influence on the world around you then that's what your goal needs to be about if your value is just showing off to people that can be motivating you know those type of superficial things we know from social media they can be motivating for some people so it really is this personal experience of what do I value and the goals should be aligned to that and that helps us be more committed to those goals. What I'm hearing is all about experience is there any data that it's heritable that your genes can make you more resilient or is that mainly tied to experience? It's mainly tied to experience so we We see irritability, yes, but it's never the whole story. It is never this big-term thing, right? It never is. What I'm really, really, we should all be really, really, right? We do get to write our own story. There are some things that are irritable, like the diversity severity thing, like some people are a bit more vulnerable to feeling crushed by smaller things, or quote unquote, what other people might consider our smaller things. And that's something that's irritable. And it's tied to things like emotional stability and those types, but experience does play a part in that. As you get through difficult things and you get to see, like, I can get through challenges. I can work through these things. And these are the skills that help me. That's information that we take forward with us. One of the things that I think I understand is true is that adversity itself develops resilience, which is so tricky if that's correct, because the thing that you need resilience to combat actually develops resilience. Am I right there? I don't know that I would say adversity itself does, but it's a necessary condition. If there's no adversity, there can be no resilience. So it's like an important piece of the pie of the story, but the resilience piece, I think, is more tied to the resources. So if you experience an adversity and you have resources to overcome it, whether those are internal, personal, characteristics, or practices, that can help you get to resilience. But if you experience an adversity and you have no resources, you have no self-confidence, you have no efficacy and no social support, then it's unlikely that you will be resilient. - Have you heard of experience, expectant development and biology? It's the idea that I think we have like 20,000 genes, but we have trillions of connections in our brain. And so there's no way our genes could fully develop our brain for the things we experience. So in order for those connections to develop, we must have experiences that oftentimes within the forms of challenges or stressors or adversity to properly develop as a child. And so that's kind of where I was getting at, is if we don't seek out some sort of a challenge, if we don't experience some sort of challenges or stressors or adversity, depending on your definition, we may not develop into an adult that can handle those kind of things. That's where my brain was going. - Yeah, so the good news is that we all will, but you're right that there is value in experiencing those things a bit earlier because it's practice. Like you can learn from these experiences, you can learn from dealing with challenges. And maybe if you experience, unfortunately, huge traumas in childhood, maybe some of this stuff in adulthood might not seem so severe. Like, negative feedback. - And I'd probably stop short of huge traumas. But yeah, yeah. But I mean, you even mentioned in the first question that Hurricane Katrina taught you some things and maybe made you stronger today, even though, and I'm not suggesting that that type of trauma is something you should expose your child to, but I do read quite a bit of psychology on childhood development, and it seems that helicopter parenting is not something that should be done. So I'm very mindful of that with my wife is, hey, science shows that we need to let our daughter handle that mingle on the playground herself because if we come in every time, she doesn't build that muscle, if you will. Well, what I will encourage you to also tell your wife, which is good, is that you don't have to necessarily put your child in the situation because they're social learning theory that says, we can also learn from observing others. So even telling stories of people who have been through struggles and how they overcame it and what they did, children can also learn from that. So that's why I'm like, let's caution people not to say, you got to expose them, but also telling them and sharing your stories of resilience and the things that helped you and the hardships that you went through and how it affected you, children can learn from seeing and learning those things too. - That's a lesson for leaders, be vulnerable. Share with people what you've been through, especially to young people. What environments have you found foster resilience and what environments suppress resilience? - What I've seen so far is that environments that are open in terms of communication and like you just said vulnerability are important for resilience because when we experience challenges, either we can isolate and feel like I can't share that I'm experiencing a challenge or we can feel like I can share it and I can share that I'm struggling and I can seek support and help. So if it's an environment where it's assumed that resilience means nothing is difficult for you that won't foster resilience. And we recently did a study on leadership and looking at leaders who have this open voice culture where they really let people speak up with ideas, suggestions, share errors, and leaders that focus on learning rather than just performing that foster teams who are more resilient. - Yeah, I love it. - It's telling people you can make mistakes, you can share your mistakes, please do. So we can all learn from them and that that's okay. - Yeah, and have these type of conversations. It's so funny you mentioned that. I was speaking with a few college friends last night that I've kept up with and through doing this podcast, they've suggested we wanna do this as a group. What you're doing, we wanna do this once a month with five or six of us to share what we're dealing with. I'm surrounded with former athletes. I don't think that's something that athletes historically have done. And what I've learned is it doesn't have to be with a professional. It can be like you said, can be your family, can be your friends, but create space where these type of conversations happen consistently. And that's what I'm learning from this experience is so many people are going, I need to have these conversations more often. I don't need to ruminate and dwell on it every single day because that also is not any more helpful than never talking about it, but there needs to be space for it and there needs to be time for it. - Absolutely, the space for that vulnerability, the space for knowing you're not alone in the struggles, the space for hearing other people's stories of how they got through it. And learning from and contributing resources to each other. That's why things like employee resource groups are great work, employees who share an identity can get together and share stories and exchange resources and support one another. Absolutely. And someone goes, wait, Danielle had that feeling? - Yeah. - And you're like, yeah, didn't you know how that feeling Clay had that feeling? Yeah, I had that feeling. And here's, yeah, I love that. Well, this is something I shared with you the first time we spoke, which is something I think a lot about. What happens when resilience isn't the problem? I know resilience for you is getting up early, working out, meditation, working towards a goal. That's my default too. All of those actions come easy to me. I can give you max effort in the face of adversity. I can give you max effort in the face of a setback. However, what I've found to experience is there's still a lot of space between that effort and happiness. And there's even more space between that effort and fulfillment in life. So what is your advice to hold on to confidence when you're in that space, to find comfort in that space? Because what I've found is oftentimes that path of opportunity is longer than you want it to be. I think that what's important for us to remember is that, again, everything is not under our control, but there is a lot that is under our control. And we can control our mentality. We can control our perspective. We can engage in things that control our mood to a large extent. Thinking about those things that help us to keep on going, that is the thing that we can add to this equation of success and happiness. But also realizing that resilience is not happiness. Those are not equals. It's like, yeah, you can be resilient. You can put in the effort, but that will not always mean happiness. So it's good for us to often pause and say, OK, if I'm being resilient, but it's killing me, or I'm experiencing burnout, and it's making me feel worse and worse and worse, maybe it is time to rethink those goals. Maybe it is time to make a big shift. And that's OK. Even as the resilience lady, I'm not here saying, no matter what the goal is, you never give up. No, I am saying that if it is a goal that is valuable to you, it is helpful to your life. You have positive and healthy reasons why you're connected to it. Absolutely do what you can to achieve it. But the minute you start to see that pursuing this is harming you and others, then there's time to pause. There's always space to shift our goals, right? We are humans who always have many goals we're pursuing at once. And changing those goals is also adaptive. If we learn, hey, actually that strategy I've been doing is not getting me close to the goal. Shift that strategy. Or actually I realize that goal isn't really what I want is what my parents want. Or it's what someone else wants for me. We can drop that goal. We can shift to be resilient towards something else that is going to give us fulfillment. Yeah, I want to come back to that point for sure. For me to share a bit, when I've been in those spaces, it's much more natural or my nature to worry than it is to believe if that makes sense. And that worry can take a lot of energy. And then I find that my actions indicate I'm making progress, but it doesn't really fill that way. So I love those points you're giving about maybe taking the space. And you said earlier, celebrating those small victories and highlighting the positive because there are achievements like I said, even in failure. And while I'm speaking of failure, be mindful of your labels. That's what I've learned, too, is one can fell without the experience or the person being a failure. And I think you can take in the time to pause or speak with someone you trust so they can highlight those positives when you don't see them, where they can say, hey, that label you're putting on there is not great because I used to do that. That was a failure. And if I didn't call it a failure, I'm not being strong. I'm not being mentally strong. And I realize, wait a second. If my thoughts are important, and if my actions are important, then those words, I used to describe those things are probably important to you. Absolutely. In the stories never ended. We always have the opportunity to say, you know, that wasn't the outcome I wanted, but what can I do now? What's my next step? Let's talk about that. You're the lowest point because there's a quote that I want you to say to us again from Martin Luther King. When you're at those most difficult times and the human response is to shut down, is to ruminate what's most helpful to find positive energy? And I'm trying to direct you to that MLK quote because I just love it. I love it. Yeah. It's definitely saying, I can't run right now. I can walk. It's okay that failure hurts. It's okay that failure is not what we want. It doesn't feel good. So if we feel beaten down, that's okay. Telling ourselves, like, I'm not an emoji smiley face. I don't have to always be up. We are humans. We all have our insecurities. We all have base failure. I definitely have resiliance is not always easy for me. And I know all the research. But sometimes I do feel defeated. And I have to tell myself, that's a part of the human experience. And this emotion is teaching me something. And now the ups are going to feel that much better. And I'm going to appreciate them so much more. What is the next step? What is the one step forward I can take after this difficulty? I'm not even going to put the pressure on myself to run. I'm going to say I can step forward. What does that look like? Yeah, what's that very next step? I love that. And what that quote says to me is, like, if you can't fly run, if you can't run walk, if you can't walk crawl, it says just move. And so in preparation for this, I did some research, like what solves depression and the things that do exercise, outside exercise in particular, reading, person interaction, which during COVID, I think kind of jumped out at me as this in person interaction is actually what combats depression and we didn't have that. So what I'm hearing from that is just move and focus on other people. Those are the things I kind of learned just preparing for this and going, huh? All right. And I think it's pretty intuitive to me. Exercise is important. Getting in front of people is important. But there's actually research that supports that. Absolutely. We are humans with only so many resources, right? Our resources are finite. And we have to replenish them. And all of those things are things that replenish our resources that build up our store so that the next time we get hit, we have something to draw on. If we kill ourselves and we just work, work, work, and we don't take care of ourselves, then the moment things get difficult, we're already spent, right? We're already burned out. So we have nothing to give to this extra thing that is a hurdle I now have to get over. So we have to take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally, the way we talk to ourselves. And the people who we surround ourselves with that talk to us, that speak over our lives. Those things are absolutely a part of what it means to be ready for resilience or the environment that helps us to be resilient. We're going back to that same point you made early focus on what you can control. You can control one step. You can control going for a walk. Control that. This is a good parallel pathway to cognitive distortions. In moments when resilience is most needed, it's easy to be irrational by relying on cognitive distortions. And for those of you listening, a cognitive distortion is unhelpful thought pattern, like reasoning with emotion, instead of logic, or running every situation through a negative filter, an uncharitable filter. Correct me if that's wrong. But is there a link between avoiding those cognitive distortions and resilience? Absolutely. And those things that you just talked about, the things that help fight depression are the things that we need to do in the moments when we feel like, wow, like I'm being really negative about this. I feel really hopeless and I feel helpless and I can't even think of the next step. That's when it's time for us to say, I am going to go for a walk. I am going to meditate. I am going to call a supportive family member friend. I am going to make an appointment with my therapist. I am going to eat a healthy meal that makes me feel good or just watch something that's funny. There absolutely are those moments where it's hard to see through those clouds and that's okay. We can do things that help them lift a little bit for ourselves. Absolutely. Well, let's come back. I'm not skilled enough at this to get my outline out of order. So I have to come back to your quote, resilience does not mean going the same way. You had that quote earlier today, but you also said it in your TED Talk. And here's what it said to me and you can confirm or deny whether this is true is that in a high level pursuit, particularly in athletics, it's beaten in our brain to never quit and deciding to move on or dedicate yourself to something different, especially when that pursuit is important to you and maybe even part of your identity can feel like quitting and make you feel like a quitter. However, learning when to quit, even though I don't like that word, maybe it's beaten in my brain, learning when to move on is extremely important. So walk us through, is that a correct interpretation? What do you mean when you say resilience doesn't mean going the same way? Does that mean, hey, I don't, I don't have to be that person anymore. And that's okay. Yeah. I think that a thing that's important for us to think through in those moments is that difficult does not necessarily mean harmful. You brought up a great point earlier about how sometimes these journeys to success can take longer than we thought and that feels hard. That's different than this is harming me. When we are engaging in resilience, when we are setting our minds to things, when we're setting our bodies to things, is it challenging? Often yes, absolutely, especially for those big goals that are tied to our identity and important to us and other markers of what we think is success. Is it difficult? Yes. And that's okay to push through those difficult moments and realize this is difficult for most people. And that's why it's a goal. That's why it's great. I told myself that in my PhD program all the time, I was like, they don't hand these out. Right. I got to earn it. So it's going to be difficult. But harmful. When things start to harm us. When our efforts that we're investing start to lead to life and self harm. That's when it's time for us to rethink those goals and ship those efforts to something else that's not harmful. Yeah. I mean, that could be physical. That could be financial. That could be emotional. That could be mental. I mean, when I was thinking about shutting down a company that I had to do in 2020 and my nature was like, no, you just keep spinning the wheels. Find another customer. Find another avenue to keep this company going. And it felt like quitting to not do that. And it comes to a point where you have to kind of separate and go, wait a second, that's not a good decision. And it's not quitting. Resilience doesn't mean going the same way. That's why I love that line. Is that kind of spoke to me? And it kind of, it gave me comfort again. It gave me soothing to say, you didn't quit. You analyzed the situation, the risk outweighed the rewards. And you moved on to something different. And that's okay. And again, that's you being vulnerable in your TED talk and you giving that speech kind of gave me the comfort to say, give yourself some grace here. And as humans, escalation of commitment is a real thing. Like we feel like, but I've invested this much time. So we have to also be aware of that bias in our brain. And a quote that I of course can't remember in this moment who said it, but something that I think about that I really like was we say, you know, I've been in, maybe you have a abusive supervisor, but you're like, you know, I've been here for three years or whatever it is. The quote was that the only thing worse than being in a toxic situation for three years or a harmful situation is being in one for three years and one day. It's like, it's okay. Like, yeah, you spend some time and you got lessons out of that. You got learned, you know, things that you can draw on forever experiences, just living, being alive, great. But that does not mean because you have been committed to something that you always must be committed to that same thing. And it doesn't mean you're a quitter. It doesn't mean, but you need to be objective and you need to speak brutally honest to yourself if you are quitting. Right. And it is your PhD program that you could overcome. But that's why again, these kind of conversations with people you trust, because maybe if you're not being objective, you can go to someone that can and say, yeah, you need to keep moving forward on there. No, hey, you're making the right decision. I'm going to transition into something that I think might be a disagreement for us and maybe is a little controversial and that is thinking of yourself as a victim. So I want to hear your perspective on this clearly, their individuals that are victims. No doubt about it. However, I've always functioned with the idea that thinking of myself as a victim or seeing myself through a lens of a victim is a problem and never leads to a productive destination or even treating others like a victim. Do you agree? Do you disagree is viewing oneself through the lens of victimhood ever helpful in cultivating resilience? I think that labeling ourselves as a victim just in life, no, saying that in every difficulty and every challenge in every situation on the victim, no. I think that a dose of realism means recognizing our part in the things that happen while also recognizing just structures and systems in place that do victimize a lot of people. So I think that there isn't a one answer, but we do have to say, okay, what again, I keep going back to this. I didn't even know this was a theme for me, but what is under my control? Are there actually things that I've done to create this outcome or not? Are there things that I could have done or can do or not? And a lot of times there are things that we just cannot control and we are a victim too. And so in those situations, it's like, yeah, that sucks. And I'm the victim here and I still can do something about it. Being a victim doesn't mean I can't do anything about it, but it means I don't have to beat myself up because it really wasn't my fault. The lesson here is that sometimes life is unfair. And so what can I do in these moments when it is unfair to take care of myself and be resilient in my way despite this disparity? - I think that's a beautiful answer 'cause it is complex. And actually as I was writing that question, I'm sitting there questioning it, 'cause there are times when you're clearly a victim, but I think it goes back to my quote earlier about one can felt without the experience being a failure or the person being a failure. I think one can be a victim without viewing yourself through the lens of victimhood. You said focus on what you're controlled. That's my main issue with it is I never wanna remove my autonomy and thinking of myself as a victim seems to me to feel like I don't have control and I feel like that's not a place you wanna be and to be resilient. Ideally you wanna feel like I can take complete control of going on this walk. I can take control of my thoughts and my actions and I think that's where it's coming from but I like how you just clouded that view a little bit and made it a little bit more complex. - I will say that there is power in recognizing the things that we can't control 'cause then we don't have to beat ourselves up about it. If you feel like everything is on you and every outcome is only by the grace of your effort, any failure can feel like a self failure and an identity based like I must be a failure. But I think there is a balance to saying like, you know there are a lot of things that aren't on our control and that's freeing and that can take some weight off our shoulders to say, you know this is a system that I have to navigate that is not fair. What does it look like as the victim of some things that are unfair to say this is under, you know this is where my power lies and this is what I can do, this is how I can understand and even work to fix the things that victimize people. - Yeah but those can be mutual excuse if you can recognize those things and still have a view of yourself however you want to. - Absolutely. - I think absolutely, I love that. Well let's wrap up here on expanding from the individual to the collective, to the society. One of the things that I preached at my previous company was the importance of treating those around you with honor and dignity and respect. I believe that when you treat people with respect, when they feel part of a community that respects them, resilience comes more naturally. And so I tried hard to emphasize collective humanity and value and I want to end on that note by asking you how do we as a collective as a society encourage resilience and actively avoid fragility? - I think that that's such a great question and where I see my research going and something I'm really interested in is this co-creation of resilience. It's saying yeah there are individual things that we can all do but they are also environments and collective factors that make resilience possible because we are human right? So I could be as strong as I want to be but if I'm dealing with an abusive supervisor from nine to five Monday through Friday, that's gonna be really hard. And at a certain point I can't. Right, I can't just overcome those work challenges and deal with this interpersonal trauma. And so I think that it's valuable for us to recognize as collectives, as a society, you know, what are some challenges that people deal with that they don't have to, that we could remove? To remove the need to be so resilient so often in some cases and also what are the things that proactively we can provide people to build up their resources so that when they do experience struggle they have something to draw on. They have support, they have resources, they have the things that they need in those moments. Even before they actually need it, before it gets too bad, right? How can we proactively create those systems of support? - Yeah, look outside yourself, look to bring other people with you, look to create environments of your leader where honor, dignity, and respect are just the norm. I love that. And I think the thing that occurred to me here and you say that is by creating those type of environments I think you develop pride and resilience in yourself. And so by helping the collective, you're actually helping yourself in a way that's maybe a bit selfless. - Absolutely, it's very interesting to see this push for more and more people engaging in being better leaders and being better employees and really looking out for each other as we go through this difficult time. And I think it's kind of counterintuitive in a way but just focusing on the bottom line is not what actually helps us to be resilient. It really is taking care of people that makes businesses thrive and grow and the people make up the place, right? So without taking care of your people without that dignity giving people that feeling, they're not gonna be as productive, they're not gonna be as creative. So we really do have to nurture our teams, our employees, our coworkers, our supervisors if we wanna be successful as a society. - Absolutely, one of my great business mentors is my mother and she would say the same thing about motivating people that you don't have to use a hammer to get the job done and actually the more productive way to motivate people is by supporting them and being honest with them. And sometimes that honesty is a hard truth but if you've created the right environment you can do that in a way that's not smug, it's not demeaning, it's just matter of fact. And those type of environments I would argue are the proper way to motivate people. It's not hammering on people or creating an environment where people feel tense which going back to athletics is the athletic environment I grew up in. But I've kind of learned since that even in sports those are not the environments where high level of performance takes place. High level of performance takes place in an environment that's warm and joyful and jovial and also where hard truths are given to each other. - Yeah, and that's where the resilience drives where we have this environment where we feel like I can fully show up, I can learn, not just any aeromic, I have to be anxious and nervous which creates more errors, right? I can really learn, I can really thrive here, I can really grow here, that's where we're more like this. And I can accept Danielle saying that wasn't good enough. That wasn't enough effort because Danielle's created this environment where I feel comfortable and I can swallow that and I can feel like she's being honest with me and sometimes being honest means that wasn't the effort you needed to give. That's not good enough or the ability's not there yet. - And what helps is when that's mutual right when leaders are also open to feedback like, hey, actually the way you delivered that was more personal than about the task. So can we in the future focus on the, you know, that could not create that environment too where it's like we should all be trying to help each other grow and develop. - That's another thing I heard from the mentor one time is you can learn something about running a company from every single employee, from the lowest level to the sea level suite. If your ears are open and your eyes are open you can learn something about running that company from anyone. Well, this has just been wonderful, Danielle. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for suggesting this beautiful outside environment. I hope we'll keep in touch. Absolutely, it was a pleasure. (upbeat music)