 This is Sarah Finn. She works as an agile practitioner at Red Hat, basically helping teams work more effectively together and not get blocked on things and have good processes and all of those things. Red Hat actually has a really awesome organization internally that focuses on helping teams with this and it's pretty great. So Sarah has been helping CPE and is not gonna talk about that at all really, but about something I think that we all need as human beings and as a project. I am wearing a FOSDEM t-shirt that is correct. Chat, and then after that, I guess we'll go straight into Rich. Yeah, I'll jump on and introduce him. Okay, okay, we'll do that. All right, that sounds good. So we've got two talks, both of them very good. All right. Good luck, Sarah. See you later. Thank you, thank you. Thanks for the great introduction, Matthew really appreciate that. So yeah, hi and welcome to the first session of the day on the last day of MIST. I'm sure many of you got to take part in lots of different hack bits and community quizzes and different sessions and that it's been really great. I've really enjoyed it. So today we're gonna look at resilience and explore it a little bit around how we can help ourselves and each other. So Ifa is gonna help out, she's volunteered, she should be on the call here, is gonna keep an eye on the chat. So if anybody has any questions or anything, add them onto the chat and Ifa will capture those. And then at the end of the session, if you have any time at all, then we can go through those. If not, I'll definitely reach out on a breakout session or somewhere in chat to address those questions. So we want to, on this session today, I will go through I suppose different aspects of resilience and why it's important. But it would be good for yourselves to possibly take out an opad and pen or open up another tab on your screen and start kind of jotting down a few things that might resonate with you around possible things that you could take on board to try and improve things in your own lives. So before we kick off, I just want to introduce myself a little bit more. So probably most of you have never heard of Sarah Finn. I've been working with CPE, so the community platform engineering team since November last year as their agile coach and trying to work with the team like Matthew said on addressing challenges that they might have and trying to get them to come together to find solutions. And that includes all their different stakeholders within the community as well. I'm from Ireland in the sunny Southeast, it's the oldest city in Ireland in Watford and it's living up to its name today. Sun is absolutely spitting the rocks. If I get to watch a Liverpool match on any day, I'm happy out, keen Liverpool fan as well. And I have a lovely family as well. You'll see a picture of those and a great dog that I love to walk. So for me, like team is the cornerstone of how we get things done and create a sense of happiness. And also taking time out to do a little bit of self-discovery. So my own self-discovery journey probably really happened about 10 years or so when I really needed to build on my own resilience and build on my own strengths, inner strengths to I suppose, allow me to progress. At that time, we were in a global recession myself and Alan had just returned from Australia and we had just had our daughter, Addison and both of us were unemployed at the time. So it was a difficult time to be in at that point. We did take some time out to pull the covers over our heads to blame the banks, blame everyone else. But then we came around and kind of said we are the captains of our own ship. We need to have positive thinking and be a little bit more optimistic and take our own actions that we need to take to build on our resilience and to allow us to move forward. So that's from a personal perspective. And then as I work with teams, the inclusion of teams building on their resilience is a huge thing within an agile team. As the teams are sometimes asked to think outside the box try to change a slightly way of working to be more collaborative. So their minds need to be open quite regularly to constantly continually improve over time. So building their resilience and strengthening their inner resources definitely helps on that journey as well. So resilience, what is it? Resilience is the ability to adapt positively in the face of adversity and change. So there's always going to be change. There's always going to be uncertainty in the world. But how we view that change and how we view that uncertainty is part of our resilience. If we look at it as a positive, as a more of an opportunity, then we're building on our resilience over time. So it might be worthwhile kind of jotting down what does resilience look like for you? Is it that you can absolutely take on any challenge that comes your way? Or is it that you reach out and collaborate with people quite regularly and have an optimistic mindset? What's important to note is being resilient doesn't mean that a person won't experience difficulty or distress. So there's no one that is unique and that does not experience difficulty or distress in their lives. Even billionaires, even people that would look like have the best lives possible, they experience difficulty and distress as well. But by cultivating resilience, it is possible to navigate our emotions. So to be aware of our emotions, how we're feeling, why are we feeling that way? And to learn from them. So how will I action this feeling? Is it something that I can do to make things better for myself? And harness inner resources to adapt and move forward constructively. So ensuring that I'm keeping my mental health and well-being on a good supply so that when things change, that I have the resources to allow me to move forward positively. So this board is meant to be as chaotic as it looks because we have never been in such an era whereby a lot of things are on our plate at the moment. There's a global pandemic that has caused us to shift our structure, our routines, our way of living overnight. And it has caused us to shift in our mindsets. Some people have kind of knuckled down and kept plowing away, hoping that things think that there's a vaccine that will come out tomorrow but everything will be fine. There's others that are trying to adjust a little bit more to it, to kind of ease themselves into it, to take it easy, be a bit self-compassionate. But there's lots going on. There's lots going on that's not giving ourselves a break, giving our minds a rest from everything that we're trying to process on a daily basis. So it could be that you're working from home, you're trying to juggle child and home school help. You have toddlers asking why all the time. You have a dog that wants to go for a walk every second. You have a boss that's saying, time for something new or whatever that might be every week or every day. Our colleagues or our friends, there's always something to digest and trying to get your head around as well. Also, we've never had so much communication which is brilliant in one sense. And in other sense, we really need to protect ourselves around it. So for example, we have our mobile phones. We're on our laptops quite a lot now that we're working from home and that can kind of sometimes continue into all hours, which shouldn't be the case. But we definitely have an option to view information at any point, which can just be overwhelming and eating into our wellbeing time and where we need to try and ensure that we're working on ourselves and giving ourselves some headspace. Also, with markets fluctuating all the time as well, it kind of leaves people might be feeling scared about what that might mean. And also with revolution and change and protests that are happening all around the world, which is amazing to see people come together and to really rally around something that is important to them. But again, it's something that we need to digest. So all of this can be a little bit overwhelming if we're not minding ourselves a bit more. So if we don't support ourselves to adapt to our ever-changing world, which in reality, it is here to stay. We've never been in such a fast-paced environment with all the technology that we have. But if an event happens in China tomorrow, our world and people are making changes are making opinions or whatever that might be and what's happening from other sides of the world. So this is it. This is the normal way of life now. So we just need to mind ourselves a bit more. Because if we don't do that, what inevitably happens is we all become burnt out. And I thought this was a good illustration to show what that might look like, whereby we're not looking after ourselves, our bodies, our ideas are very few. We don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. We're hiding under a desk at some point. Time is ticking away. And just being in a very stuck place of keeping on that hamster wheel without actually coming up for air. So what might burnout look like? So burnout, and I have experienced this myself numerous times and I still have to go back and really work on trying to help myself and build the resilience. But burnout usually starts with sleep problems. So we're bringing all the information that we've gathered throughout the day. And I've come across a stat on it a couple of days ago to say that our brain actually has 30,000 thoughts, I think, a day, which is phenomenal. I really need to look into that to see if that's an accurate fact. But sometimes then we can bring those into our bedrooms with it and then it can disturb our sleep. When we're not getting a break or we're not switching off on time. We can suffer from being able to focus. So things are taking a little bit longer than usual. We are low on our irritable mood and a lot of that can feed in from the sleep problems if we're not sleeping. We're not able to open up our minds to new ideas, new suggestions because it takes a bit more effort because we're extra tired. We can experience conflict. So with that, we could become a little bit defensive, a little bit angry around people having different opinions. Performing basic tasks become harder. We become exhausted over time. So some days you might have at the start of this pandemic whereby we were all kind of asked to work from home and a lot of people would have worked from home already. But we might have thought, yeah, we can handle this. We can keep on top of everything that comes with working from home. But over time, we could probably see ourselves deteriorating a little bit in regards to our tiredness, being able to manage things and all of that. So we can, when it's needed to be online maybe for more than your eight hours or whatever that might be in your working day, that's okay in very small exceptional circumstances but it can't be prolonged. We could suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. Feel empty or lacking in emotion. So we start withdrawing. Negative self-talk or we blame others. So we internally doubt ourselves, feel we're not good enough or we project that onto others. We withdraw emotionally from family and friends with inability to make decisions. I have been in a shop at the height of a burnout when a couple of years ago. And I think I remember being there for like a good five minutes, trying to decide what chocolate bar to buy. So it can come down to that. It can really paralyze you. And then when you have so many decisions, it just becomes overwhelming. Lose motivation, reduce initiative and creativity. So again, you kind of shrink into yourself a little bit and we start to feel a little bit stuck. So as you can imagine, when some people might say, oh, I think you're burnt out. It's a serious thing because it affects so many aspects of your life that you really need to look at ways of protecting yourself from experiencing that. So if you're not taking care of yourself, it is normal to feel burnt out. So it doesn't mean that you're not able for the workload or you're not able to manage family life or care for your relatives or whatever that might be. It does not mean that at all. All it means is that you need to take care of yourself. You need to build in those resources, mind yourself, mind your health, your mental wellbeing to allow you to be able then to take care of your work and what you're doing, your family and so on. So how do we recover or prevent ourselves from becoming burnt out? You build on your resilience. So you can either decide to go down the normal path of keeping your head down, the comfortable path. Everyone feels comfortable on the path that we take every single day. Even though it might be hard, even though we might be tired and exhausted, we default to that. It's an easier thing to do instead of actually taking action to try and resolve it. Or we can decide that, no, this is our cutoff. We need to improve on ourselves, to improve our lives and other people's lives. So we might take a slightly different route and take small actions towards building on our resilience to allow us to be more receptive to change, more receptive to things that are outside of our control. So who are these resilient people and what do they do? So first and foremost, they acknowledge change as a constant and seek to find the opportunity. So they no longer see change as an obstacle or as something that they have to kind of put up with and they're not happy about. They see changes, all right, okay, this could be a new adventure that we could go on or a new solution to something. So it's to seek to find the opportunity. They recognize that change takes time and effort. You could get up tomorrow morning and decide to take a walk, which is excellent. And you think, right, this is gonna set me up for the day. And it will set you up for the day. But if you don't take a walk for the rest of the week, you will slowly go back to the old patterns of kind of feeling a little bit low in yourselves. So definitely it takes practice and time. Set goals with realistic expectations. So within our psyche, we like to achieve things. We like to feel valued and that we're offering something of value towards society and to our community and our family and our workplace. But sometimes our goals can be too large and we feel like we're never going to reach them or we're kind of failing a little bit. So I would ask that maybe you would sit down and maybe draft up a few goals that you would like to tackle in a month, then bring it down to a week and then bring it down to a day. Maybe it's too small tasks each day that you would like to achieve. And when you achieve them at the end of the day, you get a sense of accomplishment. So you can celebrate yourselves a little bit. Value their contribution and those of others. So they feel, they believe in themselves. They value themselves and what they're doing. And they also ensure that they support and value others' contributions as well. They recognize they're accountable for their behavior and happiness. So they recognize that for them to be happy, it's not up to somebody else to make them happy. Whether that's their partner, whether that's their children in the goals that they have or the aspirations for them, whether it's work, it's up to them to make the changes to make them happy, to change their behavior in whatever way that might be. Accepting of their own strengths and weaknesses and ask for help. So they accept that they're not perfect. They don't know all the answers. And they ask for help when they don't know those. They view a challenge or a disagreement in a more positive light. So if, for example, I had a new solution that was going out tomorrow, and someone said, you know what Sarah, that's not actually as great as you think it is, because we have another solution here that does that activity just as well. I might say, when I'm in a bad place, I might go negative about it and maybe have a little rant and rave. But if I'm after really minding myself the few weeks before and kind of building on that and believing in myself, my response to that might be, okay, what are you thinking here? Do we need to tweak or change it? Or do we need to go back to the draw on board around it? So you're welcoming them into the conversation. You can see the value in that and the opportunity from another person's perspective. You create a positive narrative with optimistic thinking patterns. So again, you're defaulting to be positive. And again, it's yes, we're being realistic. We need to be realistic around things, but let's look at the opportunity that can emerge from this. Reflect and learn from their experiences and action and change. So yeah, we're gonna fail. Things aren't going to go to plan all the time. A lot of the time they don't go to plan at all. And that's good. You know, we learn from that and we move forward, but just don't forget to action them. So to put things in place on what you'd like to tweak going forward. They have emotional intelligence and emotional agility. So their emotions do not control them. They learn from their emotions. So if they're feeling overwhelmed, they kind of ask themselves, why am I feeling overwhelmed today? Is there a lot on my plate? Is there something I could do to try and reduce this feeling? Do I need to reach out to my manager and my colleagues and see if we can come together around maybe reducing or prioritizing the workload that's there. So let's look at some actions we can take today for a better tomorrow. So like building a muscle, increasing your resilience, as I've said, takes time and effort to do it. So you need to get up every day. If you decide that your action is to get up every day, maybe put on some music while you're having a little bit of breakfast and you do that one day a week. Yes, as I said, you'll have a good day, but try to do it for a full week or a month and see how things go. So it takes a little bit of time and effort and you will always default to the normal route, the route that you've always travelled that path. So you need to actively engage with doing positive actions yourself. So focus on four core components. Build your connections. So make sure that you have your support network. Try a little bit of face-to-face time. I know that's quite challenging now. With social distancing and some people are still in lockdown as well, but try your best to build those connections and always put the relationship first. Faster wellness. So look after your body. Look after your health. Make sure what you're putting in is good. Embrace healthy thoughts. So put things in perspective. Is the worst thing that could happen actually going to happen? Or what can we put in place to maybe reduce the impact of that? And find a purpose. We all need a purpose in life. And each day, sometimes when we are in this challenging environment now, we might struggle to possibly find our purpose each day. But if we set a goal possibly the night before for the day ahead, we have that purpose and we get up and we can try and achieve that. So there's just some practical tips and techniques that I jotted down here on two slides. I have been on a few resilience programs over the years and I found them really valuable. But one thing that I noted was there are very high level things that you might do. And I just thought I'd jot down a few practical things that you could actually take away today and maybe try. And I've just highlighted three of them in no, it's with no priority, but just things that popped up. So accept that you will have bad days. Don't overthink it. Take a break. Give yourself a break. Rest and reflect on it the next day. So again, stop striving for perfection. You will have bad days. Just keep thinking of the progress that's been made. Take a break. Just think of talking to yourself like a best friend would talk to you. Go easy on yourself. Set a shut off time and stick to it. So from the few sessions that I've been to on Nest, I've got to know and I've got to know over the last couple of months that the Fedora and the sent off community, there's no sunset time with all the different time zones that everybody's working in. It's always on. There's always someone there, which is amazing. It's amazing to see. But definitely it kind of pulls us in then to possibly working long hours or hours that they're eating into our sleep time and into our downtime. So try set a shut off time for yourself and stick to it. You will find new found downtime to do other things you enjoy and you need this to refresh and open the next day. So if you're continuously on that hamster wheel of work or for a hobby that you're really passionate about by contributing to the project, this is absolutely brilliant. It's great, but if you don't get a break from that, things become a lot bigger than they actually are. So you definitely need to prioritize getting some time away from the computer to actually enjoy other things. Stop striving for perfection. Be human, be real, become self-compassionate and believe what you and others can give each day is good enough. We're all good enough. Nobody expects anymore. So please stop putting yourself under that pressure and trying to be that superstar. You're good enough as you are. Anything that you can contribute is ideal and at that value. Practice gratitude. So think of three things you're grateful for before going to sleep. That's really helped me. Could be small things like I had a really good coffee today or a cup of tea. Have fun, have a laugh. You need to have that. If you can't laugh, we're in a, it's not good. So watch a funny movie. There's lots of funny shows on Netflix and things like that. We had the CPE pub quiz and bingo, which is great crack and share a silly joke of the day as well. And put things in perspective. Is this thing I'm getting worked up over life or death? Very little, I would hope, is actually death. So Parker, leave it to the following day. See how you feel then. So how can we support each other? We can listen to each other, protect your relationship first, be respectful, have a regular sync with your mates and your teammates. Discuss how you'd like to work together and support each other. Give positive feedback. We always default to when we experience something negative that we need to tell people about that, to ensure that maybe they don't go through the same thing or that we need to fix something. But let's try and default to give them a little bit of positive feedback. So if you like something, tell somebody. They'd be delighted to hear. Ask someone else for help. Encourage others to try new things, offer help, and become open to each other's ideas. So ask questions, get a little bit inquisitive around how people are doing and get involved a little bit more. So the question is to you now, what positive steps will you take going forward to support yourself and others throughout the rest of 2020 and into 2021? So thanks for taking time out to attend today. For even just attending this session, you're already on the path to positive change. So I'll open the floor if there is any questions around that. Hi. Hi, Marie. Jumping on. Is Eva helping you out with questions? Yes, she was meant to be there. Now maybe there was no questions. So if there's no questions, that's totally cool as well. People were just having some really good conversations in the chat, which I was participating in reading. Oh my gosh, you're getting claps and more claps. Oh, amazing. People are really loving it. We were talking about all the different ways that we unwind, some strategies on how different people disconnect from work. Brilliant, that's really good. So yeah, there was a lot of awesome feedback here. That is really cool. And I can share this deck as a PDF as well. And I also have additional support links as well. They're only like two or three minute reads or they're podcasts that might help too. So thanks so much to everyone for your time today. And I really wish you the best of luck on your resilience journey.