Deborah Gilboa's Blog, page 8

Who do you need to be ok?

Hi! need

How are you?

Do me a favor and think about your answer to that question.

Specifically, think about the process you go through to authentically answer that question. When deciding how you are, do you think about your schedule? Do you think about how you slept or if you’ve had a chance to do things that bring you joy? Do you take a moment to feel how you actually are at that moment, mind and body and soul?

Or do you think about other people?

I’m on a trip, learning with a couple hundred incredible women (and a couple dozen great guys) and I hear so many conversations that start with “How are you?” The answers range, but the second sentence, the explanation or elaboration sentence, almost never talks about the person who was asked the question. That person instead, explains how they are by talking about their kid, or their partner at home, or their boss or the state of the world. All of those loves and roles and hopes are incredibly important, for sure. However…

What if how you are was actually just about you?

It’s incredible that you’re connected to others, that you feel love towards and meaning with and even responsibility for the wellbeing of others. But having your state of existence depend on someone (anyone) else’s feelings is a pretty big risk for you and fairly large burden on them.

There is a saying that I’ve always hated: “You can only be as happy as you least happy child.” We have tons of empathy for our kids and it’s so easy to feel their feelings as much (or even more) than they do. But that puts them in a tough spot and you as well.

Let me ask this another way. Do you have a person in your life who, when something is really hard for you, you hesitate to tell them because you know that it may be even more upsetting or frustrating to them? That’s what I’m talking about.

When my kids were little I used to say to them “Your feelings are YOURS. Your behaviors are mine.” And that was a good lesson: they could express any feelings to me that they had without me trying to correct or fix it – but they had to learn how to control their behaviors no matter what they were feeling. This has stood all of us in good stead, but it turns out this was a big lesson for me also. It took years and years of parenting for me to learn this lesson. Their feelings are THEIRS. Not mine.

It is possible to be ok even when your people aren’t. need

It takes effort and focus. And you will be healthier for it.

So, how are you?

All the best, need

Dr. G

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We need to be believed

Hi! believed

Did you know that people in high trust organizations (businesses in which the team members report a high degree of trust with each other) also have:

74% less stress50% higher productivity13% fewer sick days29% more life satisfaction40% less burnout

On an individual level, trust increases oxytocin which decreases cortisol. In English that means that trust makes us feel safer and happier and less stressed, overwhelmed, afraid.  And it’s not only being trusted that creates those chemicals – so does trusting others, and actually trusting others gives you higher levels of oxytocin (the good-feeling one of that pair).

Cool. How does that translate into a strategy or action item? I’ll tell ya.

For yourself:

You need to be believed, and be believable. Telling your truth in ways that other people can hear you (not assuming people will “just know” how you feel) is crucial. Avoiding exaggeration or stretching the truth or actually lying matters because your brain won’t give you the good chemical reaction if people “believe” something you yourself know isn’t true.

For others:

Do your best to believe what your people tell you. This does not mean taking their word at face value when you have a concern it’s not correct. It means finding a way to talk about that concern you have. It means asking more questions, listening, collaborating to find out what is really happening. And (and here’s the best tip in this post) it means believing their emotions are true for them. That’s all empathy really is anyway, and we all know that we can show empathy to someone else even if we see the situation completely differently.

Building trust will make you and your people (at work, at home, in your community) safer and healthier. Would you hit reply and tell me one relationship that could use a little more trust in your life? 

All my best,

Dr. G

The post We need to be believed appeared first on Ask Dr. G.

Breathe outside air

Hi! breathe

A quick and simple directive today. Breathe outside air – and notice it.

The health benefits of breathing outside air – especially near plants or flowers – are well documented. Higher levels of oxygen increase serotonin (the chemical that we perceive as feeling happy). Improve sleep. Boost creativity. 

The health benefits are boosted by noticing how you feel – which makes you breathe slower and deeper. Even if it’s only 3 deep breaths before you go back inside to whatever has your focus you should notice that focus improve and your sense of wellbeing increase.

I know that a percentage of you (looking at you camp folks) are thinking “I’m outside all the time!” And to you I say – fantastic. And also, it’s a busy season for you. Are you taking the time to notice?

Our brains benefit not only when we do what’s best for them. The benefits increase when we do it on purpose, notice it, name it.

Try it? And let me know what you notice!

All my best,

Dr. G

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What if you just asked?

Hi! AI

What are you most worried about right now?

Are you worried your customers won’t buy again? Do you think you have an employee who is looking for a different job? Are you wondering if your boss is satisfied with your work or if your board chair trusts you?

Are you low key concerned about your own health? Or very worried about the health of someone in your family? Are you scared that your child isn’t doing well or that your partner is unhappy?

Any of these concerns can leach your resilience like a string that slowly draws water up and out of a full cup. Since none of them are pressing – at least not in our waking hours – we tend to ignore them. We put out the fires and don’t give much attention to the hot spots that could burst into flame. But they each represent a change you’re somewhere between a little and a lot afraid to confront.

Yesterday, on the Think Tank, we were talking about AI and our fears about it. The episode isn’t released yet for rewatch, though if you’d like to know when it is (the strategies we found for approaching AI were great!) just sign up. Anyway, we were talking about our fears and I expressed my concern that I don’t know when AI is giving me truth and when it’s just scraping inaccurate data and leading me astray. Malte Neibelschuetz (join to hear me pronounce his name!) told me that I could just ask the AI “how are you finding this information and how accurate is it?” I told him that sounded like someone getting a diagnosis from me and then coming to me for the second opinion, but he replied that AI will very closely assess its sources and give its own accuracy – or lack thereof – to a rigorous degree.

That made me realize, most people would do the same. No, I couldn’t tell you to the second decimal how accurate my diagnosis is, but I can honestly assess my degree of certainty and then you can choose if that is good enough for you or you want that second opinion somewhere else. And this got me thinking about resilience.

Resilience is the ability to navigate change towards a positive goal.

If you’re worried that there is a change brewing – at work or in your world or in your own body – that you aren’t entirely prepared to handle, the first step is to get more information. 

Ask the question out loud. Ask your customers how likely they are to return to your service or product, ask your team member if they’re looking for other work. Ask your boss or board chair how their trust level is with you right now. Ask your doctor about your health, your loved one about theirs, your child how they’re really doing or your partner to tell you about their happiness.

Asking will make you more resilient, better able to navigate whatever is coming if you’re right that it is. And if you’re wrong, you’ll pull that string out and toss it away so it can’t keep pulling your resilience up and out of you one drop at a time.

What’s something you could either address or toss to make you stronger?

All my best,

Dr. G

The post What if you just asked?  appeared first on Ask Dr. G.

Can I prescribe this?

Hi! prescribe

In medical school we’re taught – and rightly so – that all interventions have side effects. Xrays emit (a little) radiation. Medicines – even placebos – can cause unintended problems (ask me about the patient I had who almost choked to death on what turned out to be a sugar pill in the control arm of a research study). And then we’re reminded, just when we start to get too anxious to suggest any therapeutic actions for our patients, that not intervening also has risk. The overall lesson is that every interaction we have with a person has consequences so we better start weighing the possibilities and aim towards a good balance of “best outcome” and “least possible harm” that depends on the situation, the patient, their family, their goals and beliefs and age and and and…

(this is obviously not an advertisement for going to med school)

Everything we do and don’t do has risk. I’ve spent a lot of my medical career challenging this idea, imaging that there must be something (Therapy? Exercise? Sleep???) with no negative side effects but alas… they all have some mischief they can cause albeit unintentionally.

Except, maybe, I might have found it.

Gratitude.

Gratitude, which has been proven to lower blood pressure and heartrate, decrease depressive symptoms, lessen anxiety, decrease pain and help prevent some diseases.

By noting consciously three things you’re grateful for daily, or spending 15 minutes in conversation (with yourself or others) about gratitude, or keeping a gratitude list, you get a whole mess of positive effects. 

And no side effects documented.

Gratitude is simply the effort of noticing and appreciating where you’re lucky. By taking that second step you get far more benefits than just being lucky in the first place.

I’m grateful for you, because you opened and read this (52% of you do each week – how lucky am I?). I’m grateful to raise the boys I have. I’m grateful to be 53 years old and able to walk without pain. 

What luck do you want to double by noticing it?

All my best,

The post Can I prescribe this? appeared first on Ask Dr. G.

Sometimes “The Good” takes Resilience

Hi! resilience

This week a dream, a prayer of mine, came true. My son returned from combat to visit. So much joy! Through some fast footwork and the help of people who know us and people who don’t and my partner’s heavy lifting on problem-solving and logistics… I got all four boys together and it was glorious. He was home for five days and is now on his way back to base.

I appreciated the heck out of every second I could.

And? Appreciating the heck out of every second is hard. It took a lot of my energy and strength to focus on the amazingness happening right then. To pause on the logistics. To do my best to actively ignore the obstacles and challenges (that don’t magically disappear during special moments). To let go of the five-days-from-now-he’s-leaving thoughts.

Have you had this experience? Have you needed a surprising amount of energy to squeeze a great moment to get all the joy? Have you felt that feeling gratitude and appreciation for a longed-for moment (or a bunch of them) takes a surprising amount of effort?

We can make this easier though. There are several strategies that strengthen our ability to really take in good times and feel during and afterward that we’ve had the benefits we expected. The one that helped me the most this week is the concept of “and… I choose.”

This strategy means acknowledging the opposing feelings and then choosing which I wanted to focus on right then.

My example: When I got some stressful news just before our weekly Friday night dinner – the first time I’d get to have my boys together for that in so long – I talked to myself. 

I’m feeling angry AND so grateful and happy. I choose grateful and happy for right now. This might last for the whole evening or just a few minutes or anywhere in between. For me it lasted about an hour until I thought of the thing that made me feel angry again. And I chose again. Later in the evening after we were home and everyone was doing their own thing I chose the anger for a bit. Talked to my person about it. Got some sleep. 

Resilience means navigating change with intention towards a positive goal. In this case the positive goal is to appreciate the good change while you’re in it. We waste a lot of time missing out on happiness while it’s happening and can waste even more time feeling regret or guilt about that later. There are a bunch of ways to strengthen the ability to enjoy the good. If you want to learn about more of those strategies let me know. Either way I’d love to hear what you do to take in the good while it’s happening.

All my best,

Dr. G

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If you don’t agree, can you still care?

Hi!

Last week on my Think Tank on Resilience we dove into the topic of authenticity.

This was a selfish choice on my part. I wanted to talk about authenticity so that I could figure out how to be authentically me and still be kind. Because my true, authentic reaction to some statements, some people, some situations is… not kind. Impatient, dismissive, frustrated, bored, sarcastic, sure. But kind? Not always.

There are a ton of reasons to aim for authenticity. The most practical is that authentic leaders have stronger teams – people do better work when they believe in and trust their leader. The most self-interested reason is that authenticity improves mental health by building connections (only if you bring your true self can you believe that you belong and are safe, otherwise you think people only like the fake version of you). 

My concern has always been that my authentic self is a little much for some folks.

Enter Pat Wadors, the Chief People Officer of UKG (look ‘em up if you’d like but suffice it to say she has 15000 employees looking to her for human resources and guidance). She tackled this question head on and taught me this lesson:

You can authentically disagree with someone and still be a good leader, if you authentically care about their wellbeing and success.

To quote noted author and behavior expert Ariel HaLevi, “You can be right and empathetic, just not in that order.”

To be a good leader we do have to care about our people. We get all of the advantages of being authentic, if we lean into that caring while we bring our true selves.

Do you have a time or a role in your life where you fear letting out “too much” authenticity?

All my best,

Dr. G

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What if you changed the pattern?

Hi!

For the month of March, we’ve been talking about how to be resilient in the face of a stress just doesn’t get any better. You’ve told me about frustrating family members, money stress, health issues, negative self-talk, global worries – all kinds of things that are out of your control and definitely add stress to your life.

We have walked through an exercise to figure out:

What is the stress that’s unchanging and continuously problematic?What is your reaction to that stress that you don’t want to continue having?What warning signs precede that reaction?

And today I have just one last question for you to finish this out:

How could you change the pattern?

I’m definitely not talking about the outside stress – we’ve determined that is something you can’t control. But, as my mom of blessed memory said to me on more than one occasion, “If you can’t change the problem, you have to change your reaction to the problem.” This is an exercise in how you might choose to do that.

Some people use pretty drastic measures to change their body’s and mind’s reaction – like putting their face in ice water or screaming a word out loud. There are a lot of other options – and less likely to attract the attention of everyone nearby – if you’d prefer. The idea is the same though, distract your brain and body from the usual pattern of stress -> reaction by sticking something in between those two.

If this idea of interrupting the pattern appeals to you, there are two steps to follow:

Figure out an interruption that will work for you (that actually makes you feel better)Practice inserting it after the stress but before your reaction until it becomes a habit

Last week I mentioned that one of my unchanging stresses is the hate I get online. Antisemitic comments are growing for just about every Jew I know and I’m no exception. I mentioned that I feel my reaction to this in my stomach, a sense of being unfairly “in trouble” from someone who has power over me but doesn’t see or understand me or seems to hate me for no reason.

An interruption that I know makes me feel better is to stretch – I love the feeling of moving my body in a way that doesn’t hurt but does make me feel because that sensation reminds me how strong and lucky I am. 

So my plan is to practice – every time I get a hateful DM or comment – just as soon as I get that feeling starting in my gut I’ll breathe really deeply into my stomach, stand up (if I can, it’s awkward on airplanes) and stretch my neck, back and arms up. Every time until it’s a habit.

Is there something you could practice when you start to have the reaction you don’t want?

Sometimes resilience is choosing how to feel ok even in the midst of something that is not ok.

All my best,

Dr. G

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How do you stop yourself?

Hi!

We have a bunch of new folks in the community this week (hello restauranteurs and hello camp professionals!) and so here’s a recap of the topic we’ve focused on here for March:

How to be resilient in the face of stresses that never resolve.

There are three steps in this answer. We spent a week on step 1:

Name the stressor. You did that!

Last week we started the hardest step:

Catch yourself before the response.

I asked you to start this process by identifying the response you don’t like in yourself. So if you’re catching up, name the stressor that is most frustrating you and just isn’t going to go away. Then name to yourself how you react to it that you wish you didn’t.

Wow, did you all respond like wildfire to this question. Some people want to stop yelling, some want to stop feeling worthless. Others want to stop arguing, and still more just wish it didn’t bother them since it’s not changing. I promised last week that, once you’ve figured out named the response you want to change, it would be far more possible to stop it.

Many people talk these days about being triggered. That means, from a psychologic standpoint, an event that elicits a response. Triggering gives us the (false) belief that, once the trigger is pulled by someone else, we have no control over the response. Adults can learn to change the response – and kids can learn to do that also. How do you catch yourself?

Notice your response as soon as (or before) it begins.

This noticing is a skill.

This noticing takes practice.

Noticing that response you don’t want as it’s getting started – or anticipating it even before it begins – is hard! But stopping a reaction once it’s gathered steam is much harder. So this week I’m asking you to figure out the very first sign that you’re having a reaction you don’t want to choose.

What’s the first sign in your mind or body that you’re going to yell, cry, storm out, throw something, insult someone, feel terrible about yourself, give up, give in? Notice that one. And then try to notice the more subtle sign that preceded that one. And maybe there’s even one before that?

For me, the stressor I can’t change is getting attacked online. The reaction I don’t want is to feel powerless. So far the first thing I’ve noticed is a feeling in my gut that feels the same as when I got in trouble as a kid. I’m not sure if there is a sign before this one, but I’ll pay attention this week and see if I can find an earlier warning sign. No doubt I’ll have the opportunity because online life is just like that.

Comment and tell me what you notice about you. It’s your expertise in yourself that is going to help you create the responses you want – and be the person you want to be no matter what stresses come at you. That’s resilience.

All my best,

Dr. G

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The space between the stressor and your response

Hi! stressor

Last week we talked about the stresses in our life that don’t change.

I asked what you face that is reliably stressful and you wrote to me about all kinds of things. Someone is the caretaker for an older, ill-tempered family member who’s sick and hasn’t gotten any nicer. Someone gets debilitating migraine headaches, a number of people work for family-owned businesses with a boss who hasn’t ever learned to care about the people who work for them. A lot of people live with someone with poor behavior. Many of you are reliably stressed by the attitude or behavior of a teenager, a parent, a sibling. And yes, mothers-in-law got more than a few mentions. Really, just about all of us have something in our lives that is stressful and not going away any time soon.

As I mentioned, my Mom always told me “If you can’t change the stressor, you have to change your reaction to it.”

I quoted Victor Frankl, who said:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

And I said this week we’d talk about how we can use that space between to strengthen ourselves and actually change our response to the stressor.

There are a lot of stressors outside our control. And we can’t always “just” quit the job, end the relationship, kick the person out of our lives. Sometimes we need to find a way to live with whatever the stressor is without letting it mess up our lives, our day, even our mood. And the power to do that is in the “space between.” So that’s why we should do this work.

How do we do it? There are three steps and we’re up to number two.

Name the stressor. You did that!Catch ourselves in before the response.

This is the hardest step. Stopping ourselves after the stressor and before we respond to it. You’ve named the beginning of this space (the stressor) so now I want you to name clearly the end of the space – the response you are currently having that you don’t like.

What is your current reaction to the demand, the pain, the annoyance, the person that you would like to change? This is the end of the space between. If you can name the response you want to change, then next week we’ll be much more easily able to change it.

So go ahead, search your experience and tell me (if you’re willing) what is your current response to your stressor that you don’t like? What is it you’re thinking or doing that you would like to change?

All my best,

Dr. G

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