Episode 048 – Seekardo Short – Resilience – signs you lack it, the six-stage process to tackling, cultivating, building the resilience muscle and more

Harms: Hello it’s Harms here and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo show, where today you’ll be experiencing something new, which we’re calling a Seekardo short where we’ll be sharing with you tools and techniques for creating rapid turning points today. So without further ado, let’s get into the show. 

Hi Ro, what are we sharing with the listeners on a rapid turning point experience today?

Dr Ro: Hey Harms, hi folks, thanks for tuning in. 

Today’s subject is resilience. 

It’s a subject that has been on the back of my mind for some time. I think we’re seeing a lot of shy change happening in the world at the moment. 

More importantly, it’s how people are reacting to that change and what I’m feeling is that people are really feeling quite beaten up by the set of circumstances both economically just in terms of family, relationships, health, so this is a really important subject to tackle and what I think we want to cover more than anything else is a really simple process that if you just take even an element of this it will start to make a change. 

Sometimes it’s just breaking the stagnant experience that we’re having right now it’s creating a break in that inertia, making movement forward to change our circumstances. 

Resilience is not just something that is for the moment as we’re recording this any time you get into a situation where you feel emotionally beaten up, financially beaten and the world is on top of you it’s just reflecting back in. 

There are six steps I’d like to go through.

Harms: What we’re saying to the listeners is especially in the world right now we’re going through an extremely challenging time and by having this awareness on how to dip into these six stages you’re going to take us through allows people to recover quickly from difficult situations, that ability to bounce back. 

I guess the next question is, what is the opposite of resilience? What do you see? What have you observed when somebody isn’t cultivating or demonstrating resilience?

Dr Ro: When you talked about resilience there, that’s a lovely description, it’s bouncing back, it’s being able to resist what’s going on around us and filtering. Whereas the opposite to that is just overwhelm, everything is coming at us from left right and centre. 

Whereas under certain circumstances, you might be able to filter that that’s just gone that filters literally broken down. It’s a little bit like your muscles are exhausted and you don’t have the emotional capacity to differentiate between what’s a small item versus a big item so everything feels overwhelming. 

It could be emotional breakdown, tears, frustration or is the other thing, the fight flight situation where people shutdown and they can’t deal with anything else. Or just that I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to handle the situation. 

Our ability to resist, to differentiate, to filter to say no has gone, so it shows up as not being able to wake up in the morning, feeling apathetic, feeling exhausted, not feeling like your immune system is strong. Of course if we’re stressed our immune system drops and we get ill and at the moment that is probably not a good thing either.

Harms: If somebody stays in these ways or these behaviours is it possible for somebody to remain in this state of powerlessness, we’ve spoken about being a victim mentality in the past where they just lose the ability to bounce back. 

Is that fair to say?

Dr Ro: People can stay there for years Harms literally, you’ve been at live events with me where people have come up and said I just feel like I’ve broken out of this bubble I’ve been in for ages, so sometimes it can take an experience to break that but it can also take experience to put us in that space. 

It’s a significant emotional event and particularly at the moment I think under the Covid conditions it’s creeping in. The phrase if you put a frog in boiling water it tries to jump out but if you boil it slowly it stays there and I think that’s what’s happening to a lot of people’s emotions 

at the moment and my fear is that it will bake, this sense of apathy, not knowing what to do. Heaviness may bake around people’s external life, such that when we come out the back of this they may not get out of it as quickly as people think they can get out of it and if we find for example, as we go into the summer things ease off a little bit, but we’re still in lockdown then we go into another phase of this in the winter of 2021, for example, we could be in a really difficult position back end of this year in terms of people’s emotional state and the way they deal with things. 

We have to tackle it head-on now.

Harms: With that phrase in mind tackling this where do we tackle this? How do we start? 

What’s the process you mention there are six stages,

Dr Ro: I would love to take the listeners through this right now.

First step always, always, always is a state change. 

Now this is a term that has been used for decades now, in the world of NLP, for example. Certainly when I started looking into this back in my early 20s which is what 30 years ago, I found that just even when I was feeling slightly down if I made an immediate physical state change it changed the way I feel. 

We know this because you can be having a really tough morning and get a phone call to say you won the lottery or you won a prize, or you go in to work and then you find out that you get a pay rise or something happens in your life that instantly changes the way you perceive that moment. You get up, you walk around, you celebrate, jump up and down, you go get yourself a drink, an ice cream or whatever and you suddenly feel the difference. Unfortunately, when we are in a state of overwhelm or feeling that we don’t have resilience everything around us crushes our physical state. 

We get smaller, we shrink down, we breather shallower, our shoulders come down, eyes go down our whole physiology changes. 

The first thing to do is literally change your physiology. You can do that by breathing, by jumping up and down I have a rebounder in my office if I feel a little bit flat. Literally standing up and walking, but get yourself out of the physical environment you’re in, so number one is a physical change. Jiggling my feet, shaking my body, vibrating whatever it is adds to that number two change of environment, so getting up, getting out, walking out the office, walking out your house if you can. 

Even walking onto a balcony taking a deep breath, but doing something to change the environment because we associate an energetic feeling to a bad experience that we’re in. If we’re in a place or a feeling city and our energy is flat then if we can move from that spot to even just moving five feet away, 10 feet away to change the environment. 

The last thing is if you can’t do any of those for example in an office you can’t move around very quickly and you’ve got to stay there just close your eyes and take a deep breath and go into a form of meditation, so it’s literally counting in on three or four, five, breathing in and breathing out again. 

Listen to some personal development, put on a video and audio something to inspire you that is rapid. Try and get yourself away from electronic gadgetry. 

So EMFs electromagnetic frequencies can actually cause problems. Blue emission of light from screens anything like that but you have to change your state. You cannot stay in that physical place, and that physical state and become resilient. 

You have to move your physiology to become more resilient.

Harms: On number two there change environment interestingly enough recently you spoke to an audience of 800 people on a Saturday, now for those people as an example, they’re very entrepreneurial and they themselves will be going through a rough patch. 

They are locked down their businesses may have faced hurdles and blockades because of what’s going on but what they decided to do was change the environment by being around and surrounding themselves by certain people going to watch a keynote conversation or speech on the top of communication, which is what you were doing. 

However, it is that principle of changing the environment to do something different on a Saturday, which you may not have done which hopefully would have broken the state of many people there feeling like their business was against a brick wall, not going anywhere, maybe couldn’t see the future. 

I wanted to re-emphasise the point of changing the environment as the feedback we got from that event 800+ people was oh my god, this was incredible. I feel fired up and ready to go again, and that kind of feedback is exactly the demonstration of what can happen when you change your state.

Dr Ro: On that note it is a very good point. 

The environment is a physical environment that surrounds you and number three was the internal environment. If you do some work on the inside your mind as well as put yourself into a space may not even be going to another event, but you can be on a Zoom call and feel like you’re surrounded by a lot of great people as well. 

But if your body is static and you are experiencing pain, overwhelm, a lack of resilience everything in your emotional, physical state anchors to that feeling. 

The minute you change it you jump up and down, you move, you run, you breathe you shake that off, it’s what happens next to make sure we don’t go back into that state.

Harms: Number two Ro, what happens next after a state change?

Dr Ro: In the process of changing your state you have to remove any distractions. 

So let’s say for the sake you do get out, you go for a walk. Don’t take your phone with you, don’t take your laptop with you, don’t take anything with you, just go and walk in nature. If you’re in a city just walk along the street, but just stay focused so whether it’s a case of just bring your singular focus down to a couple of key things. 

I’m going to give you three big questions, but focus on where you want to be not where you are, the fact that you’re feeling overwhelmed is because all you can see in front of you is I’ve got to deal with the kids, I’ve got to deal with that problem my finances, I’ve got to deal with that issue with the bank, I’ve got to sort out that question that came from my boss, I’m trying to write this book at the moment also I’m worried about my mum’s health, I got into this argument with my family, how do I deal with that? 

All of a sudden all these things are going on around us and we just don’t feel like we can see a way through it so it’s a little bit like firefighting Harms, we’re literally focusing on multiple things at the same time and when that happens it actually vibrationally creates more stress, so we have to singularly bring our point of focus back to one place. 

So remove any distractions, any noises of people around us trying to talk to us and see if you can in some way get to nature. If you can’t get out to nature then may be another way to do that is just close your eyes. Imagine yourself walking in the mountains, by a stream, in a meadow or through woods, but you have to remove distractions.

Harms: Removing distractions is a word that jumps out to me there because one of the things that can keep you in this state that you’re currently in which lack of resilience in your body is some of the languages, the conversations, the media headlines, social media posts that constantly are refreshing on your feed which imagine you are on that walk you’re starting to feel like, my state has changed. 

I’m removing distractions and getting focused all of a sudden your phone pings you looking at it. It’s the latest news update on Covid suddenly you’re back into that original state which you’re trying to get out of. I think removing distraction jumps out.

Dr Ro: On that note what is really powerful is to change the way the speed at which you walk. We have literally hundreds of different ways we walk. There’s 23 ways to look at snow. If you look at the Inuits we don’t realise it, we’re walking it’s the same thing.

So actually just by changing the speed of your walk, walk as though you’ve just won the lottery and you’re going to pick up the money from the bank or walk as though you’ve just been told that you’ve won a brand-new car and you’re walking to the garage and you’ve got to be there in the next five minutes or you don’t get the car. 

Walk with a sense of purpose and just walk and smile and imagine an amazing thing happening to you, and that alone will shift your focus. It brings your energy back and your body suddenly starts to vibrate at a totally different frequency.

Harms: Once we’ve achieved that what do we do next?

Dr Ro: In the process of changing state we’ve got focus, removing distractions. 

Now all we do is we define the situation because the thing about being resilient is being resilient to what? Is it coming on a personal level, relationship, financial level, health level, family and kids level? Dr Ro it is all those things. 

Exactly so now we have to define our situation if you can and you had a bit of a walk and stretch come back with a blank piece of paper and you write down and define the situation literally write it out. When it’s in our heads, in our hearts there are multiple conversations going on, try as best you can capture it on paper. 

For me it’s one of the easiest ways to do it, don’t type it, write it if you can. Just clearly state what the situation is that I’m in right now and if you have to write the whole thing as a big messy description first and then rewrite it into sections. 

Might be a personal life, professional, financial life and compartmentalise each of the areas that happen in your life that is causing you a sense of I’ve lost my resilience. If you’re out and you can’t write it down and you’re out for a walk speak it out loud. 

Okay, this is the situation right now. This is happening in this part of my life, this is happening in this part just talk it, define it and then having done that, maybe five to 10 minutes go back and break each one down into key bullet points. Try and simplify the picture rather than make it more complicated. 

Harms: I think the message here is just write it as it is. 

Write what you’re feeling and another way to describe this I imagine is just to download all those things floating around in your head at any one moment in time, start to download it from mind and heart to paper. 

Once this is there what can we do with information?

Dr Ro: One thing you said there is important Harms, as it is not worse than it is or, more optimistically than it can be for now. It is simply a factual description of the situation rather than all the emotions like, she said this and then this happened. I got so furious and angry. 

Actually just state it on paper and often when we do that we go actually, this looks ridiculous now having written it down this isn’t quite as bad as I thought, but when you’re in the experience you react to it when. But when you see it on paper it’s very, very different. 

A good way is to float up into the air and look down at it from above and take a look at it from different angles. 

Step four is to define the situation so there are three big questions. 

The first question is what do I think the solution is? 

Having floated up, looked at it, written it down, spoken it out loud, tried to compartmentalise it, factionalised it, I’m feeling overwhelmed and feeling like my resilience levels are low. What is the solution? Is it an overall solution or is it actually a case of a solution to each one of these areas? Look at the things that you have control over.

Harms: What you’re saying there is we can’t change the macroeconomy. We can’t change the decision on the government’s policy around Covid, we can’t change the fact that we are locked down or not. 

We can’t change certain industries, all these things are out of our control, but do suck our attention and focus and become major distractions as we discussed. I think what you’re saying Ro is focus on exactly what you have the power and influence to make a change within and I think that’s what we need to identify. 

If by happy chance you start to write down things which are out of your control, you can quickly spot them and cross them out. It could be one or two items which are in your control but at least you now have identified what you can do.

Dr Ro: Even if you find yourself doing it, great. 

Always ask the question, can I control it? No, cross it off boom. 

So what’s the solution to that which I’ve written down or the solutions to start with, and within those three questions just a couple of mini points to that. See it as it is now and if you can’t see a solution from this point then imagine yourself five years older looking back at the you that is now and asking the question I’ve solved that, five years from now what would I’ve done to solve it? Often that’s the easiest way to do it. You look backwards and say I’ve solved it. 

You can do the same thing by fast forwarding your life. It’s a timeline therapy I do sometimes with people. I say imagine we’re standing there looking back. What would you have done? Oh my gosh, totally different, I have a different perspective. 

Number one is what’s the solution? Number two is who can help me? 

Look around you. It could be somebody close to somebody further away from you. Somebody you know is a friend of a friend, even someone that has been through something similar. You’ve got to do what and then who can help you with that and then the third big question is, what resources do I need? Do I need finances? Do I need tools? Do I need to pull in some equipment for this? Is it a skill I need to learn? Do I need to go back and relearn something from the past? 

What are the resources that I need around me to help me solve this situation as it is right now?

Harms: My big question is what if you can’t understand or what if you can’t identify what the solution is because that has a knock-on effect on questions two and three who can help me, what resources do I need? 

But the fact that you’re looking back, they have a phrase hindsight is a wonderful thing. What we’re trying to do here is create hindsight, visualise hindsight, imagine hindsight and then these answers will unlock.

Dr Ro: When I’m doing one-to-one and people say I can’t see a solution to this, if that’s the situation I might say to you Harms, imagine that you knew the solution secretly and it’s tucked down inside you and you are sat there looking at it and you go it’s obvious actually. What do you think that would be? 

They go well, actually I think the solution is this and they’ve suddenly found it without realising. That’s another way to do it or I’d say to you who do you know that has kind of been through this already Harms and you go well funnily enough I have got a couple of friends who have had a similar situation. 

So if you were them how would they tackle it or that could be who can I go to help me with a solution.

Harms: When we talk about big question number two who can help me we’ve expanded on this in the past: coaches, mentor’s, friends who can be objective, friends who can become a mirror for the situation going on. 

Friends who can ask you these powerful questions and these processes but I think personally defaulting to a coach who has the skills is always my number one preference.

Dr Ro: I agree. 

That was number four of the three big questions so we go to five. 

It’s an important one to take a look inside. You’ve mapped it all out. You’ve got some idea it doesn’t have to be perfect, we’re trying to break the inertia, trying to get out of that situation where we’re stood in one place and we’re now moving into first gear. 

Don’t think about the overall solution just think about making some sort of action, something that breaks the inertia. 

Now we take a look and say what are my strengths, my core strengths? 

Every single human being has a strength all of us do. So how do we look for that number one go and look at past experiences. Where have you been in the past where you actually had a strength to deal with something similar to this, there will be some point in the past or how have you tackled this in a different way? 

Maybe a slightly different situation where you had strength and when I talk about strength, I’m talking about what qualities do you have. Resilience could be one of them, ability to communicate, ability to overcome difficult situations, you may have the ability to ask questions, you might be likeable, you might be good with numbers, you might be good with people skills. Whatever you think you’ve got that skills that are needed for the solution and if you don’t think you know what they are go back to one of the people we talked about in question four. 

Like Harms said maybe a coach or a friend and say what are my core skills? When I’m faced with difficult situations what do you see in me? What’s a strength that you see in me? 

Every single person will have those strengths and ask yourself what strength can I bring to the table for this situation?

Harms: You mention past experiences, you mentioned looking at how you tackled this before, then magnifying the strengths another way you could do this and we spoke about this recently is a lot of people are very strong and their strengths display when they’re doing work or helping other people. 

That could be another place to tap into. 

Whereas you don’t typically think about doing all those tasks either for your employer that you do for your business, for someone you work for, your own particular business partner you may be supporting all of these avenues where you display your strengths, but it’s not often that you have to use the strengths internally for yourself to cultivate resilience. 

So once we can look at how I show up in this part of the world, how do I show up in this part, what do I do for my employer because without a doubt, you have fantastic results for your work within your own business and it’s about tapping into those. Because those strengths can also be applied to you internally when you have a look, especially in this stage five.

Dr Ro: Another question to ask is who have I helped that has kind of been in this situation and you go yes, I remember Mary, John and they were feeling like this, I gave them this help and broke that down. 

It doesn’t have to be personal, it could be business any environment like that which leads us to the last stage and that is what do I need to do next? You just simply ask yourself having done all this, what is the next step? 

Be aware of your state management, so it might be that in order to get that next step you are walking anyway but you just jump up and move around, you change your physical state. You just ask yourself what is the first step? How do I climb the first step on the ladder? Is it making a phone call? Taking an action? 

Writing something down, sending an email? Is it speaking to a friend, whatever it is, decide on it and do it because that breaks the inertia and then we go back to the step one which states management, environment and try to stay in the cycle of growth that’s the key thing, but what is the next step? 

That’s really the thing I want to point out here.

Harms: What we’ve discussed is what we mean by resilience, how people show up and Ro has described with you a way to tackle this to re-cultivate resilience in your life and that is managing your state management, removing distractions and getting focused. 

Number three defining the situation, number four answering those three big questions that we described, five internally looking at what are your strengths and then six deciding what is the next step for you to take. 

Because you may be somebody who is aware of this and if you are aware of these situations what you can start to do is just jump into whatever stage is applicable. 

You could have removed the distractions, but you didn’t realise at stage three is just to download and write it on paper you may have been missing those three questions. 

What I’d say is the key here is to do something to shift the inertia and just dive into any stage, any step that we described based on where you feel you are right now. With that being said that’s myself and Ro signing from this Seekardo short. 

See you in the next episode.