Deborah Gilboa's Blog, page 2

“Higher Level Resilience” looks like this

In a recent interview, I was asked “one last question” that I wished had been the beginning of the conversation. 

“When you do enough work on yourself, don’t you reach a higher plane where you’re detached and don’t need resilience anymore?”

I had So Many Things to say about that!

But we were at the end of the interview so I didn’t get to say anything but one answer. I’ll share that in a minute. For all of you who are willing to ponder resilience with me on the regular, here are the three important things that popped up immediately for me when the host asked.

Because resilience is our skillset for navigating change – and there is always change – we always need resilience.What exactly is a “higher plane” and do I want to be there? Seriously, I have so many goals and leaving this plane of existence with all my people and all the real experiences and emotions exist – being “detached” isn’t a goal that I have. What’s the real question behind this question?

That last one – what’s the question behind the question – became more clear to me as she spoke when I paused. She didn’t want to have to be resilient because being resilient is hard and painful and we all just want to move past it.

So my answer was this (and I want to know what you think) “We never stop needing resilience. And change is often hard – but the more resilient we learn how to be the less afraid we are of uncertainty and future change. We become more confident in our ability to handle whatever happens – and that confidence and competence actually makes us happier.”

Does that make sense to you? Do you agree? Comment and tell me. And also, if you’re on a higher plane I would really like to hear about it!

All my best,

Dr. G

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Time hunger

“Do you have the time for..” “I don’t have enough bandwidth.” “I’m so busy!”

I think every adult – and some kids – have experienced the sensation of time hunger. Needing or wanting more time to fit in the things that you have committed to do or would like to do and feeling their isn’t enough. Some people might even say they feel time starved!

That sense of time hunger, of being pressed and unable to fit everything into the day or week can deplete your resilience pretty quickly. Even one thing that takes longer than you anticipated or adds to your list can push you to frustration or overwhelm. Sound familiar?

So how can we guard against this thief of resilience and calm? Beyond talking about “better time management” which is a struggle for almost all of us, I want to offer a different way to think about this. 

When I was a kid and I’d say to my mom “I’m hungry,” she’d ask if I was hungry for vegetables. If so, then she believed I was genuinely hungry. Otherwise, she pointed out, I might like the idea of eating before dinner, or be bored or uncomfortable about something else. But if I was hungry enough to want something healthy, that was always OK. It was her way of getting me to question “hunger” as a reaction and make sure it was legit. 

We feel “busy” or pressed for time a lot, and the first step is to see if it’s really true or just a knee-jerk reaction to discomfort. Maybe you’re not time hungry, you just don’t want to do the thing you’re being asked to do next? Or maybe the issue actually fatigue. Or actual hunger! Or something else. So when you default to “I’m so busy!” in your brain, just double check that it’s true. 

Second, make sure that the things that are taking up the bulk of your time are “healthy.” By that I mean are the things taking blocks of your time actually lining up with the things that matter to you? Like taking care of yourself and your people, earning a paycheck, or making the world better? Are they adding to your wellbeing in some way or the wellbeing of people who matter to you? If not – if you’re pressed because you’ve committed your time to things that don’t match your priorities – that’s the junk food of time hunger. 

When you feel pressed for time, are you willing to stop long enough to see what might protect your resilience?  I’m curious!

All my best,

Dr. G

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What is “enough” resilience?

How do you know if you have “enough” resilience? 

You can’t ever know what changes lie in store for you, so how are you supposed to know if you’ve built or saved up or found “enough” resilience? 

The answer to this is two-fold. In the larger sense, you can’t know if you have enough resilience in the same way that you can’t know if you have enough money in your bank account. Financial experts say we should aim to have 3-6 months of living expenses in savings. This would cover us if the roof needs to be repaired or we can’t work for awhile or some other catastrophe befalls us. But if several bad things happen at once, it might not be enough. That’s just pretty unlikely. Carrying that idea over to resilience, we should make sure we hang on to enough extra to handle a car breakdown or a sick family member or a big job change… but if all those things happen at once we’re likely to struggle.

The second answer is the one that interests me the most. How do you know how much resilience you have in the bank? We’ve talked over the past weeks about indicators that resilience is lacking. How do we know when it’s plentiful? What would you check to look at your “balance?”

So let’s start with this litmus test of resilience:

Are you able to feel joy, even in and between stressful moments?

This is a great measure as it tells you you’ve not used up your resilience reserves. You’ve got enough for now, and more in the bank.

Will you think about a time that your resilience has been tested and let me know if you were still able to feel moments of joy? Do you agree that this was a good way to know that you were fundamentally ok, that you had enough resilience to handle that stressor?

All my best,

Dr. G

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Gathering our indicators

According to the research, as well as to your responses – and I very much agree – resilience indicators come in a variety of categories. 

Physical health – how healthy am I compared to my baseline?Thoughts – what is my internal narrative saying to me these days in stressful situation?Behaviors – how am I currently behaving as measured against how I mean to behave in each area of my life?Support system – do I have good access to and relationship with the people and things I lean on in times of stress?Bandwidth – what are my current nonnegotiable commitments and how well am I meeting those?

The eventual goal here is to create a short list of measures or questions to answer when we’re considering a big change or gearing up for a pivot of some kind, and strategies we can engage in to increase the resilience “in the bank” to be better prepared for obstacles and opportunities. 

What (if anything) is missing from these areas in your opinion? 

Pick one and assess how you’re doing, would you? And if you’d like, let me know – I’m interested!

All my best,

Dr. G

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When your thoughts get away from you

Every once in a while I’ll be driving around a turn – usually on a highway offramp – and think about what would happen if I didn’t slow down. Or I’ll be on a stage and think “what if I just sat down and looked at everyone?” These are called “disruptive” or “intrusive” thoughts. 

Ever had one? Chances are that you have.* Research shows that about 94% of people say they’ve had at least one thought like this that they can recall in the previous 3 months, and more than 99% of teens and young adults report these thoughts. 

If – and this is not the main point of my message today but I feel compelled as a doctor to mention – these thoughts are persistent or in anyway interfering with your ability to live your life, your brain is asking for help. Please talk to a psychological or medical professional.

Now, why would I be asking you about these? Because…

Intrusive thoughts are a good Key Resilience Indicator.

If you can pay attention to the frequency and content of thoughts your brain tosses your way that are disruptive or uncomfortable or unwanted, the better a handle you can get on your subconscious concerns. It’s not to say that the intrusive thought is correct. That’s rarely the case. This is simply an indicator of how stressed vs resilient your brain is at that time. 

Have you ever noticed your brain trying to get your attention in this way? Hit reply and tell me! I’m always learning with and from you.  

All my best,

Dr. G

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Resilience reserves

Do you try to keep a little money in reserve? That parking ticket/broken washing machine/unexpected medical bill fund? Or even a vacation fund for someday. Most folks, including me, do try to keep a reserve fund for those possible expenses. And even when we’re not able to do that, or we have spent it down, most of us aim for building up those reserves. It’s just logical, right? Adults know that expenses will come up – for bad and good reasons – and that there often isn’t time to earn the money then, so it makes sense to try to have it already.

The parallel to this, that I’ve been thinking about a lot since our last Think Tank, is about resilience reserves. 

We know that resilience is a growth commodity – it can rise when we work for it and fall, sometimes predictably and other times somewhat unexpectedly. A lot like our bank account balance. We may not have time to “earn” it when we need it. And we need it in times of change, both good change and bad change. 

It seems logical, too, that we’d care about having reserves of our resilience. So… how?

Well, it seems to me that the first step in this process would be looking at your reservesbalance. I mean, if I want to know how much money I have I look at my bank balance (luckily I’m past the time in my life where all I could do was search couch cushions and the pockets of clothes in my laundry pile).

We’ve talked recently about how one of the key indicators of our resilience is our motivation. Now I’m on the hunt – in research, thought and conversation – for the others. The question I’m working to answer first is this:

What are the indicators that tell you how much resilience you have right now? 

I have some ideas myself, and I’m happy to share those. First I thought I’d ask this group of incredibly smart, thoughtful people (yes, you!), what do you think?

All my best,

Dr. G

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Top 10 Motivation Intensifiers

Motivation is a Key Resilience Indicator – it tells you how mentally strong you’re feeling and how able you are to navigate change.Motivation is not a light switch, but more of a water faucet. It can be totally off, fully open or anywhere in between.

These are the two points we’ve dealt with in the past weeks to help us understand how to get our actions in line with our goals. So once you notice that your motivation is not where you’d like it to be, what do you do?

You probably know almost (or 100% of) every one of these strategies to swell your motivation. However, I think having these in one place is incredibly useful. Use this as a tool box for when you need it, or a comparison list when you feel like you’ve tried everything. Here we go, in no particular order:

Top 10 (evidence-based) Ways to Increase the Flow of Motivation:

Make that goal… smaller! Break a big goal into smaller, attainable piecesMake a list. Write down the steps and mark it off when you do it, even if it’s on your list every day until it’s done.Before and during (and after) data. Measure before you start, a few times in the process and after you’re done so you notice what you’re capable of changing.Notice the synergy. Pay attention to how working in one area helps you towards other things that matter to you. If you’ve started exercising are you sleeping better? If you’re moving on a project do you see team mates doing the same because of your focus?Tap into connection. Give your brain the safety of belonging by including others in your plan, your strides, your setbacks.Be intentional about your autonomy. Focusing on what you can control will increase your brain’s sense of safety and agency so make choices about how, when, where you work on your goals that feel best to you.Coach yourself. There are great reasons that coaches get good results from hyping their athletes and minimizing obstacles. Try speaking to yourself the way a coach you love would speak to you.Give yourself the gold star. Small rewards make your dopamine receptors happy – decide on a prize for working the steps of your plan and make sure you give it to yourself.Be an expert in you. Look back through what has worked for you in the past when you’ve increased your motivation – do THAT again.Connect to your why! Don’t forget to be super clear about why you want what you’re working towards and refer back to that daily.

Did I miss a strategy you love? Comment and tell me.

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Just one thing

Motivation is a hot button topic. Last week I wrote to you about watching your motivation as a Key Resilience Indicator. It’s an early warning sign for us that our resilience is dropping when we notice that we’re less motivated to do the things that matter to us. I asked you if you’ve experienced this and the responses were legendary!

Motivation, you told me, can plummet unexpectedly. You can wake up one morning and just feel no oomph – no burn to do the things you usually want to do. Other people told me about a slow leak until they noticed that none of their usual tasks were accomplished, that their relationships were suffering, that their hobbies were untouched. Still others felt like, since some major moment in their lives, motivation has been completely absent. And some folks talk about a daily struggle to find some motivation to make a change that matters to them.

So what works? When we want motivation, how do we get it? 

There’s no question that different strategies work for different folks, and that list is the subject of next week’s blog. But before we talk about how to get motivation we have to talk about an unnecessary obstacle towards the goal of motivation. We often talk about and see ourselves as “having it” or “not having any.”

Motivation is not a light switch. It’s not “on” or “off.”

Seeing motivation as binary presents a few problems, the largest of which is that we may never feel that we have enough of it and so we feel constantly “off.” We attach morality to motivation as a society – those who “have it” are somehow intrinsically better than those who “lack it.” That’s not reasonable, nor is it accurate.

Motivation is better likened to a water faucet. It can be off, dripping slowly, a steady stream or a cascade. What we need are strategies to turn the faucet up from wherever it is when we want more, so we can get the right flow for our needs and goals.

Does that make sense? How much motivation is flowing for you right now? And what have you done that has opened it a bit (or a lot) more that’s worked for you?

All my best,

Dr. G

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What your motivation might be telling you

I’m a to do list person. And not in a small way. I have an app (google Keep, if you’re interested) and I have SO MANY lists. Including 7 that are named each for one day of the week so I can get and stay organized about what I mean to do each day. I am 100% a person who will put a task I’ve already completed on the list for the dopamine hit of scratching it off. I know I’m not alone, where are my list people? These lists are an interesting metric for my motivation. Some days I check off allthethings – or at least a fair chunk of them – and some days I cut and paste most or all to the next day.  

Why do I pay attention to my motivation? Well, it turns out that motivation is a key indicator of resilience. When you want to know how your resilience is doing (I mean I want to know about yours, mine and everyone’s, obviously) it’s useful to know how motivated you’ve been recently towards the activities and behaviors that matter to you. 

Why should we check in on our resilience? Knowing how resilient you are at any given time allows you to predict, care for and improve your mental health! And leaders can use this to predict, support and improve the mental health of our teams. This is not a small advantage! 

You already knew that a drop in your motivation is a sign of stress. That exercising less or sleeping more or eating more unhealthy things than you meant to are indicators that you’re having a hard time. I’m hoping to give you a new tool to get an earlier warning of waning resilience. 

Have you noticed a drop recently in your motivation to do things that do genuinely matter to you? Hit reply and tell me, I’m interested. Next week we’ll dive into strategies to help!

All my best,

Dr. G

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So… I got hit by a car

Last week I genuinely got hit by a car. I – and this is not an aside in any way – am actually fine.

I was walking in a crosswalk across an intersection. I had the green – and so did the guy headed towards me turning left across my crosswalk. At least this is what we figured out after the fact. What I remember is being almost halfway across and seeing this car moving towards me and turning to face it (I put my hands out… to stop it??) and then thinking – and I apologize for the language but really thought – “Is THIS really fckng happening?!” And then I landed on the street and lots of very kind people had stopped and already called 911 (apparently my flight was a little dramatic) and this driver and his passenger were out of the car to help me. As it happens I had an earbud in and was talking to my guy on the phone, to whom I apparently said “I just got hit by a car!” Because I am the master of the need-to-know news in a crisis I guess.

Except it wasn’t a crisis. And this is the point of telling you about this. I was bruised and scraped but essentially unharmed. I was an EMT before med school and I have seen much less dramatic events do much damage to human bodies. 

For the last few weeks we’ve been thinking together about how we distinguish between bad days and difficult days. 

Last Tuesday was not a bad day and I noticed it because it so easily could have been. Maybe, by the laws of physics alone, should have been a bad day for me and the people who love me.  Instead it was  a little difficult (and so were the next few) but also a GOOD day. Because of how lucky I got, because of what didn’t happen. 

I’m filled with counterfactual gratitude – thinking about what could have happened and didn’t – and that was enough to make it a good day. A really really good day. The afterglow of that gratitude has echoed with every twinge I felt since then as my bruises heal and every time I cross a street. Brains being what they are, this won’t last but I’m hoping to carry the echo of it forward. Writing to you about it is part of that effort. Thank you for reading! 

Have you ever had this experience?

All my best,

Dr G.

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