Welcome to Season 3 of The Flourish or Fold Podcast! As a podcast host, I've had the privilege of engaging in enlightening discussions about resilience, a concept that is often misunderstood. In this first episode, I explore the concept of resilience and introduce the five practices of highly resilient people, a topic that I believe is crucial for personal growth and development, to you, our podcast audience.
"Resilience is the essence of being human, it's intimately and directly connected to our humanity."
"We are all both a masterpiece and a work in progress."
Welcome to Season 3 of The Flourish or Fold Podcast! As a podcast host, I've had the privilege of engaging in enlightening discussions about resilience, a concept that is often misunderstood. In this first episode, I explore the concept of resilience and introduce the five practices of highly resilient people, a topic that I believe is crucial for personal growth and development, to you, our podcast audience.
Resilience: An Inherent Part of Our Humanity
Resilience is not an external attribute that we need to acquire; it's an inherent part of our humanity. It's about how we respond to the three C's: challenge, change, and complexity. These moments of difficulty and adversity are not setbacks but opportunities for us to uncover our hidden strengths and talents.
The Reverse Bucket List: Appreciating Our Challenges
One of the concepts I introduced in the podcast was the reverse bucket list. This is a way to appreciate how challenging moments have shaped us into who we are today. I encourage everyone to reflect on their own three key moments and consider how those experiences have formed them.
The Five Practices of Highly Resilient People
1. Vulnerability: The Power of Authenticity
The first practice of highly resilient people is vulnerability. It involves being able to connect deeply with ourselves and others. Vulnerability is not about sharing everything with everyone, but rather about aligning our inner thoughts and feelings with our outward expression.
2. Productive Perseverance: Knowing When to Pivot
The second practice is productive perseverance. Resilient individuals know when to continue in the face of challenge and opposition, and when to pivot or change their goals. It's about assessing the situation and recognizing when something is no longer serving us or yielding diminishing returns.
3. Connection: Trusting Our Intuition
The third practice is the practice of connection, both with ourselves and with others. It involves knowing our worth, trusting our intuition, and navigating relationships. Aligning the connection with ourselves and others is crucial, and knowing what to do when they are at odds is equally important.
4. Grandiosity: Finding Gratitude in Challenges
The fourth practice is grandiosity, which involves finding gratitude in challenging situations and being generous in sharing our resilient stories with others. This not only strengthens our own resilience but also provides a map for others' survival.
5. Possibility: Seeing Opportunities in Challenges
Lastly, the fifth practice is the practice of possibility. Resilient individuals are able to see possibilities in moments of challenge and navigate the interplay between risk and opportunity.
Running Two Human Operating Systems
I also discussed the concept of running two human operating systems. When we feel one way on the inside but present a different version of ourselves on the outside, we are essentially running two different operating systems. This leads to internal turmoil and the need to expend a lot of energy to maintain the facade. However, when we align our inner and outer selves and allow vulnerability, we can operate with one human operating system, conserving energy and being more congruent.
Looking Ahead
In the upcoming episodes, I will delve deeper into each of the five practices of highly resilient people. I will also feature interviews with well-known individuals who will share their own stories of resilience. Stay tuned for more enlightening discussions on resilience and personal growth.
Here are some highlights of the episode to look forward to:
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:00:01) - Hey, listeners. Dr. Taryn Marie here from Flourish or Fold Stories of Resilience. If our podcast speaks to you, consider leaving us a warm review at the top of the page on Spotify or at the bottom of the page on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews and opinions mean a lot to us and it allows us to reach more good folks just like you. All right, now on to the show. Welcome to Flourish or Fold stories of resilience. I'm Dr. Taryn Murray, and on this series, we have the opportunity to hear from well-known people who tell their often surprising, lesser, well known stories of resilience. Hi there and welcome back to Flourish or Fold Stories of Resilience. This is season three and I am so delighted to be able to connect with all of you, our listeners, about well known people who share their lesser, well known stories of resilience. Now, season three is super exciting because we also are going to do a bit of a bit of an evolved show here, in addition to having some incredibly fabulous interviews from people that, you know, the CEO and founder Susie Batista of poo-pourri.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:01:30) - Remember those those commercials on television just genius marketing, talking to us about living with an open heart and a conscious mind. We've got Quintin Aaron, who is the star of the Academy Award winning film The Blind Side, talking to us about some incredible experiences, the loss of his mother, supporting his brother, and of course, being part of the film The Blind Side. And I'm also bringing to you some solo episodes. We're going to be having an intimate conversation, having an intimate conversation, me and you, about resilience and the five practices of highly resilient people. Now, since season two, something so exciting has happened. I, as you may know, have published a book, The Five Practices of Highly Resilient People by Some Flourish and Others Fold. And I'm just delighted to share this book with you, our listeners, for the Flourish or Fold podcast. And for those of you that are getting to know me and this content and this work for the first time now, our book debuted as the number three book in the world, if you can believe that.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:02:42) - Ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger's memoir, We also reached number one in a variety of categories, business and personal growth. And I've just been delighted to hear from all of you about your experience with this book. So we're jumping into our first episode, and this is going to be what we would call in the podcasting world a solo cast, just a conversation between me and what's coming up for you now. What I wanted to do was to actually introduce you to the five practices of highly resilient people. For those of you that haven't read this book, that aren't familiar with the content, that haven't seen it for some time, there's some really key points that I want to share. The first piece is that resilience is the essence of being human, and this is so powerful because so often when we talk about resilience, we talk about resilience as being something outside of ourselves, something that we have to go and find or cultivate, something that we need to go get and bring back and make it a part of ourselves.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:03:53) - And so what I find with so many people when I talk about resilience or wellbeing or mental health, that many people feel this this sense of dread, this feeling of like, yeah, resilience seems like a great idea, but am I going to be exposed? Am I going to find out that I'm wanting or lacking in terms of resilience in some way? So when we talk about resilience as being the essence of being human, what we get to do is we get to flip that script. We get to start talking about resilience not as something that exists outside of ourselves, but as something that exists within ourselves and something you might find really fascinating. You know, I love words. I love the English language. I love learning other languages. And there's a word in the English language called Sicilians, Sicilians as Early and C.E. and the word Sicilians means to find within us a series of hidden treasures, strength skills that exist inside of who we are, either to discover those for the first time or to uncover them.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:05:09) - And when we know this word Sicilians, what we find is that the word resilience makes a lot more sense because what it means is resilience means when we face these moments of loss, of rejection, of trauma, of disappointment, these are the moments. The moments of challenge, change and complexity were the three CS, as I call them, that reacquaint us or allow us to uncover the hidden strengths, the hidden talents, the hidden skills that live within us. So the first piece here that I want to impress upon you is that resilience is the essence of being human. It's the essence of who we are. Resilience isn't something that maybe we got or maybe we didn't. It's really our birthright. It's intimately and directly connected to our humanity. The second thing is challenge, change and complexity. I call these the three C's. Now the three C's are really the fabric of what it means to live in this human life. We can't engineer these things out of our life. And actually we don't want to.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:06:35) - Because when we face these moments, these three c moments, the challenge, change and complexity. What we find is that these moments teach us more about ourselves than the shiny moments, the moments in the sunshine. Right? These moments when we're in the rain, when we're in the storm, when we're in the darkness, when we're having that sort of dark night of the soul, when we don't know how we're going to make it through the three C's challenge, change and complexity are the moments where we really have an opportunity to amplify our growth. So not only can we not engineer these moments out of our lives, we don't want to because these are the moments of the greatest opportunity for our growth. And I think this also fundamentally changes the conversation around mental health and wellbeing and wellness because we get to stop feeling bad about facing the three C's. So often we think that we should be able to see around corners if we're strategic enough, thoughtful enough, intelligent enough, fill in the blank, enough. We should somehow be able to engineer these things out of our lives.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:07:52) - And we simply know that we can't and that we don't want to. And one of the things that I've developed in order to help us appreciate the incredible impact that the three C's has in our life challenge, change in complexity is this thing called the reverse bucket list. Now we're all familiar with the bucket list. The bucket list are the series of experiences of pleasurable experiences that we want to have in this lifetime while we're still here on this planet. And as I got a little older and had the privilege of engaging in some of those experiences on my bucket list, I thought, Wow, these are such incredible experiences. The ability to travel, the ability to see and appreciate new things, but really those pleasurable moments, while incredibly enjoyable. They actually didn't teach me as much about myself. They didn't amplify my growth to the extent that those difficult time, those difficult times did, those three key moments. And I got to thinking about this, and I developed something called the Reverse Bucket List. And what the reverse bucket list is, is an opportunity for us to look at our three key moments, our moments of challenge, change and complexity, and to be able to appreciate how that has formed us.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:09:26) - So the activity that I want you to engage in, the experiential learning that you can engage in here is you can grab a piece of paper and you can write down what are some of those significant three key moments that have emerged in your life the challenge, the change, the complexity, and then choose one, choose one of those moments and then look at how did that experience form you into the person that you are today. And as you answer that question, I think what you're going to realize is that, in fact, it's those moments that have been tremendously formative, tremendously important in creating you and creating the person that is listening to this podcast right now. And what I like to say is that, you know, we can't engage in self love. We can't engage in self respect in in positive regard for ourselves and hate or dislike. The experiences that formed us. And so this experience of looking at challenge in this new way through the lens of the reverse bucket list, what it allows you to do is to appreciate how challenge wasn't separate from who you are, but intricately connected to the person that you are today and how it's formed you into the person that sits before us.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:11:00) - Well, I am delighted to have you on this solo cast with me on this podcast journey. And as we talk about resilience, when I do my solo episodes this season, I'm going to spend some time talking about the five practices of highly resilient people. I have interviewed hundreds of people and collected thousands of pieces of data wanting to know are there commonalities in terms of how we effectively face the three C's? And in fact, I found that there are and those five commonalities, those things that the most resilient people do any time they face the three C's to create a more positive and productive outcome, have become the five practices of highly resilient people. And what I'd like to do today is I'd like to just give you an overview of what those five practices are, because here in season three, what we're going to be doing is I'm going to have a solo episode, I'm going to be talking to you, teaching you about resilience, about mental health, about well-being. And then we'll have an interview from a well known person sharing their lesser, well known stories of resilience.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:12:19) - And then I'm going to spend the subsequent episodes going deep into each of the practices. So the five practices of highly resilient people. The first one is vulnerability. It's our ability to be able to connect deeply with ourselves and also with others. Now, after resilience, vulnerability is one of those words that's profoundly misunderstood. You know, vulnerability is not about telling everyone everything about ourselves. Vulnerability is not about wearing our heart on our sleeve. Vulnerability is not about being transparent, about allowing people to see through us. In fact, we're going to be more vulnerable with some people in our lives. We're going to be more vulnerable in certain environments and less vulnerable in other environments with other people. But what vulnerability is at its core is the ability for our inside self, our thoughts, feelings and experience to match the outside self that we share with the world. And that's what we call in psychology congruence. The closer that our inside self are thoughts, feelings and experience is to our outside self, the self that we share with the world.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:13:41) - We have greater congruence. Now. Why is this important when we face challenge? Well, it's important because what we find is that in these three key moments, these are the times when when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, when we allow our inside self to match the outside self, that we share with the world, then two important things happen. One, we're not running two human operating systems. What I mean by that is when we're feeling a certain way on the inside and then we share a completely different version of ourselves on the outside, what we find is that we're running two different human operating systems. We're falling apart on the inside, and we're spending a tremendous amount of energy on the outside trying to look like we're okay. And so when we align these two selves, the inside self and the outside self, and we allow those to be congruent in that moment of vulnerability. We're only running one human operating system. When we run two human operating systems, we're essentially burning energy twice as fast in A3C moment when we need that energy most.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:14:53) - So we bring that into ourselves and we're now we're running one human operating system where we're more congruent. We're not attempting to be two different things on the inside and on the outside. The second thing is when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, what happens is people can see what's going on with us and we have the ability to get more information, to get more support, to get more knowledge in those moments, Again, those three key moments when we need it most. Now, when we go deep into the first practice of vulnerability, we're also going to talk about something called the vulnerability bias. And this is the thing that gets in the way of our ability to be vulnerable with others. So tune in to that episode on vulnerability coming up, because we're going to be talking about not only what is vulnerability, how do we cultivate it, but what is it that actually gets in the way of being vulnerable. And it turns out it's very likely a hard wired element of who we are as humans, an irrational fear that we actually have.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:15:59) - To overcome. The second practice of highly resilient people is the practice of productive perseverance. Now, productive perseverance is important because it's both an art and a science. For years, people have asked me, Do resilient people stay the course to resilient people keep going when they face challenge? And the answer is yes. And people have also asked me, do resilient people quit? Do they stop doing things when they face challenge? And the answer is yes. Productive perseverance is knowing the art and the science of when to continue. When we face challenge in the face of opposition and when in the face of diminishing returns, we pivot in a new direction or change our goals or what we're pursuing. And so what this means is we can be resilient when we stay the course and we can be resilient. When we quit something or pivot in a new direction. And it's all about how we're assessing the situation. Our ability to appreciate when what we're pursuing is no longer serving us, when there's diminishing returns, when it's a such an expense.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:17:13) - So that's the second practice of highly resilient people productive perseverance. The third practice is the practice of connection. Now, this is about the connection to ourselves and the connection to others and how we navigate the intersection, the interplay between the connection with ourselves and the connection that we have with others, with our connection with ourselves. It's about knowing our worth, knowing our value, trusting our gut listening, listening to our intuition, and our external connection is about the relationships that we have with others and how we navigate those relationships. And what do we do when the connection with ourselves and the connection with others is aligned? And what do we do when our connection with ourselves and others is at odds? Now, the fourth practice of highly resilient people is the practice of grandiosity. Grandiosity is a word that I coined to demonstrate what I was hearing from the most resilient people that I was interviewing And the most resilient people that I was interviewing talked about two things. They talked about being able to look on a situation typically after some time, A3C moment and to find gratitude in it.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:18:31) - They were able to look at those hard things and to say, okay, I wouldn't want to do that again. I wouldn't even wish that experience on someone in my life on an enemy. But when I look at that experience, I can see the good in it. I can see how a relationship was formed, how I avoided a crisis, how something better than I had imagined emerge, how that created a foundation for something else to be alive in my life or to grow. And then the second part, the All-city is about generosity. It's about being able to leaning in to that first practice of vulnerability, generously share our stories with others. And what that does is two things. First, it solidifies our own resilience when we share our resilient stories of effectively facing the three C's challenge, change and complexity. It solidifies our own strength, our own talents, those things that we uncovered within ourselves in those moments. And secondly, it allows us to share those gifts with others when we share our resilient stories.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:19:45) - How we survived that also becomes a map. It becomes part of someone else's survival guide. And the fifth practice is the practice of possibility. The most resilient people that I interviewed were the ones that were able to, in a moment of challenge, see it as a possibility and to be able to navigate the interplay between risk and opportunity. The most resilient people didn't overindex on risk. They didn't overindex on fear and they didn't overindex on this shiny new opportunity. Will not paying attention to the risks inherent in that. So possibility for us is about any time we're in those three key moments to be able to also see the possibility, the interplay of risk and opportunity and to appropriately assess that in our lives and to capitalize on that moment. And that leads us to closing out the five practices of highly resilient people. Now, what I did in my book is I also applied these practices to some key areas. I'm going to be spending some episodes talking about some of the key areas that people have been asking me about and how they can demonstrate resilience.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:21:06) - The first area that I'm that I'm going to be talking about is parenting. Whenever I give a keynote address or I'm on a big stage and I'm taking questions, inevitably I'll get at least one question from the audience where someone talks about how they can apply this work to their parenting, or they'll say, Gee, I really wish my 14 year old daughter or son was here to hear this. So I'm going to do a whole episode on how we can harness our resilience as parents and also pass that resilience on to our children. I'm also going to be doing a show on women and women in leadership. And let me tell you, this is not just for women. This is for women and men for us to talk about the special skills and tools and what we as women uniquely face personally and professionally, and how we get to harness our resilience in a new and different way and what that means for our gender overall. And then the third special episode that I'm going to do is on organizations, teams and leaders.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:22:09) - I'm going to be talking about how we can take resilience, mental health and well-being and apply this for people that are individual contributors, managers, those leading teams, people that are leaders and executives inside of their organization, how we can use the five practices inside of teams and how we can cascade that across our organizations to create companies that are more resilient, have greater mental health, and have better wellness and well-being. One of the things that I'm so excited to be a part of with so many of the companies that I work with, is this new strategic imperative on the part of corporations all across the globe where they're focused on the well-being and the wellness of their employees and companies are beginning to see themselves not just as ensuring that they don't detract from their employees wellness and well-being, but to actually see the opportunities, the training, the workshops, the resources and tools that they offer their employees as being a differentiator and as a way that they propel wellness and well-being across their enterprise and across their employee base. So I'm going to be talking about a special episode there.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:23:25) - So we've got so many incredible guests. I'm just delighted to have you be a part of season three. Welcome. And one of the things that I want to start off season three with is to talk with you about something that was one of the last pieces that I wrote about in my book. And this is the idea that as all of us are on our journey of growth and development, we are all both a masterpiece and a work in progress. So often we're so hard on ourselves about the things that we haven't gotten right, the things that we want to change, the ways that we want to develop in the world, the ways that we're growing, the goals that we're pressing toward. And it can oftentimes feel like we're incomplete or lacking or wanting. And yet at the same time. Right. There's also a sense of of complacency. If we become that masterpiece, if we do it all, if we finally get to that pinnacle moment, if we finally stop being hard on ourselves, finally stop finding flaws, are we going to be come complacent because we think of ourselves as a masterpiece? And I think what we get to do on this growth and development journey that we're all on together is we get to think of ourselves as both.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:24:42) - We are all both a masterpiece and a work in progress. And I think when we get to see ourselves as a masterpiece, as something that is being. Beautiful and perfect like a piece of art, just as we are today, and simultaneously know that we are also a work in progress. Just like the great masters who painted or sculpted masterpieces, they were never done. They always saw little things. They wanted to shift and change and uplevel and make better. And in that way, we're also still a beautiful work in progress. And I think when we get to step into this moment of seeing ourselves and our and our full potential and our full divine nature and the perfection of who each of us are as humans, there will never be anyone else like us on the planet. We are the one and only one that is like us. And that is such a gift and so incredibly important to remember that there simply never has been and never will be anyone just like you. We all have an incredibly important purpose.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:25:51) - We have divine gifts to bring to this world, to this planet. And we are all a masterpiece in a work in progress. Until next time, on flourish or fold stories of resilience, I am just so delighted to have you be a part of our journey. Now, next up, we've got an interview with Quintin Aaron, the star of the Academy Award winning film The Blind Side. Quinton is going to blow your mind with his back story on becoming an actor, how he was discovered and of course, his incredible stories of resilience, wellbeing and mental health. I want to invite you, if you haven't yet, to go ahead and purchase my book, The Five Practices of Highly Resilient People. I'm so excited for you to read this book, and our next episode with Quentin is going to blow your mind. Now, please go ahead. Download this episode like it, give us a five star review and as we get the word out about flourish or fold stories of resilience, please share this podcast with your colleagues, with your friends, with your neighbors, with your in the in the grocery store line when you're checking out.
Dr. Taryn Marie (00:27:03) - This is how we have the opportunity to share this work with so many people. Thanks for being here. I'm delighted to have you. And until next time, it's Dr. Taryn Murray. I hope you all continue to flourish more soon.