 New Frontiers online workshop. My name is Ants Cabral. I'm part of the EHF team and we're running these online workshops to continue a lot of the work that we intended to run earlier this year in February in Auckland and New Zealand at our large New Frontiers in-person gathering. But as the COVID situation has unfolded, we've turned to the online space to continue this work. So we're running several of these sessions with many EHF fellows working across different areas like investment and regenerative agriculture to keep an eye on the website for more of those. And just a quick note that the applications for cohort 8 of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship are closing soon. So June 1st is the very last date for applications and this will be the last EHF cohort in our pilot program. So if you know someone that's interested in applying, now today's a great day to let them know. And for the session today, we're really lucky to have Dr. Gallia Bahar-Monteith joining us. She's an EHF fellow from the Incoming Cohort, Cohort 6. A psychologist by training with a background in deep corporate New Zealand. A PhD in mind-body healthcare that has stemmed from her own personal lived experience of being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, which led her on an exploration of vitality. Her current work, Pivoting Through This Crisis, is all about mobilizing knowledge, leaning on evidence and experience-based methods around wellbeing. So she does a lot of writing and sharing and taking complex things and making them more accessible and more meaningful to people, which is a topic very close to my heart as well. So before I hand it over to Gallia, I'm gonna let Paula from EHF introduce us to the features that we'll be using on Zoom today and get us started. Kia ora, everybody. Nice to be here. Just wanted to say that if you have any issues, check issues, feel free to reach out to me on the chat window, and I can help you with that. And during the presentation, Gallia is going to be showing some slides. And if you have any questions, you can use the Q&A box that is on the bottom of Zoom. That would be a great way to help us go through the questions during the meeting as well after the presentation finishes. You can add both questions as well. So if you're interested in someone else's question, you can vote them, and then we can go for the ones that have more votes. And that will help us have like a clean call today, a clean meeting. And something that we are interested to know is like, where are you joining us from? So if you can add in the chat window, who are you joining us from and how you're feeling? That's something that Gallia and we are interested to know. More about you we'll be sharing as well. And as you can see, we are live on Facebook at the moment and we are recording this and it's going to go to our new frontiers playlist on YouTube that we will share afterwards with all of you. So these slides are going to be available as well. So thank you, Gallia, for that. And we will look the chat window for more of your information or where you're calling from and how you're feeling. Gallia, the process. Yes, thank you, Paula and thank you, Ants. And welcome everyone, I can't see anyone. So really excited that you took some of your precious time to join me to talk about something that is extremely close to my heart, which is vitality. And in this context, I'm focusing on leading with vitality and what it means in this context. So when I think about us moving to level two, I first thought about this topic when we were moving to level three. I think level four was a marathon, was a sprint, sorry. I think level four was a sprint and we had to really get together as a team of five million people here in New Zealand and get through the COVID sprint to begin with. And now we're looking into the end of this year and into probably some of next year and it's going to be a marathon. It's going to be a marathon in terms of our psychological well-being, definitely in term of health and also from an economic well-being perspective. So just like athletes prepare to sprint differently than they do to marathons, I think it's important to think about what is needed for us as leaders to take people and make sure that they come to the other side of the marathon with a sense of vitality as well as well-being and resilience. The thing to be mindful of is as we emerge from this period of lockdown, we didn't have the perspective and our people didn't have the perspective that they normally did around them to keep them grounded and real. And what I am concerned about is that people may have found themselves being locked in downward spirals. I'm seeing evidence of that. This is something that I've worked with many clients in the past, my self-experienced state and something I think a lot about. And I think it's important to understand what might that look like either for yourself as a leader or for the people you work with. So usually a downward spiral starts when there was a tough and prolonged professional and personal challenge. Well, we're all going through it. Then what might happen is that there's going to be sleepless nights. So this is all stuff that happens to us in the privacy of our own homes, in our own heads. And if we don't talk to people, those around us don't necessarily know we're getting caught in one. And then we become more and more irritable, which may lead to dysfunctional relationship at work or at home. Then it leads to us exercising less, we're feeling more tired, we don't have the vitality, we don't have the energy that we normally do. And then we eat worse. We crave that sugar and God, we're home now. So the fridge is just there and the cupboard's just there and we can just go and eat those high sugary foods, which of course mean that we'll exercise less. And then we do the thing called catastrophizing or in the context of COVID is ruminating. What is it going to look like? Am I safe in my job? How is my leader doing? These are the stuff that happens for a lot of people, most people to some extent, I find myself in these spaces quite frequently. I do recognize them, but that is something that more and more people are experiencing and I'm seeing it all around me right now. This interns, which is less understood does have a causal relationship with increased inflammation. And inflammation is the marker in the bloods of dealing with infection. So that's what I get tested on when my blood tests in terms of how am I doing for my own autoimmune condition? And I'll talk about that a bit later on and take some questions on that as well. Then we get the very loud mouth in a critic, especially when we feel when our jobs are at risk. And we start second guessing everything that we do. And without external perspective and some people are in bubbles of one, that loud mouth critic can be very, very, very vocal without a counter voice there, which is really the role of us as leaders. We become very susceptible to colds and viruses. So that is the link to our health system. And as a consequence also we become more prone to conflict. You can do it in any particular order. I just thought this makes sense. And then leading to increasingly more troubled relationship which then can lead to us having serious health challenges. So that's a downward spiral. And I often have been called in to work with senior leaders who themselves found themselves in the downward spirals without recognizing they were in one. The moment I started painting it for them, they did recognize it for themselves and often for the people. And I think just taking a moment to look at it, it makes a lot of sense. And it helps us start to think, okay, so what next? Now, I also had lots of people who have said, okay, so if I'm caught in a downward spiral, what's the next thing? Do I reverse my way out of it? I don't think that's helpful. Think of a downward spiral in physics term. Think of it as like a snowball. The more energy you give to it, the bigger it becomes, the more you spiral downwards. Rather, what I advise leaders to do for themselves and for the people who they work with who may be in a downward spiral and now they've heard about it, they recognize it, is to start a virtuous cycle at the spiral at the same time. So the downward spiral is happening. Don't give energy to it. At the same time, it's happening. Start a virtuous spiral, knowing that the downward spiral, if it doesn't get any energy, eventually will dissipate. So what does that look like? In the context of COVID and we are going to level two now, for example, I started journaling daily because the moment you take your thoughts from your head and into the paper, they don't look so scary anymore because you can look at them and start testing them. Start moving a little. I couldn't emphasize that more. I know people are Zoom calls after Zoom calls after Zoom calls. And I will try and be half an hour for this presentation and that we can finish on the hour because I don't think an hour and a half Zoom call is vitality inducing personally. I also think that when we schedule our days, we have to make sure we have time to move a little every day. Learn to meditate. I'm so happy I can talk about meditation in polite society now. Meditation and I know that's really close to aunt's heart as well. Meditation is fantastic. And meditation is a great way to calm ourselves down and to also model to the people that we lead, be it our staff, our family, or our friends, how we calm ourselves down. Practice gratitude. Today I was talking to a friend of mine and one of my projects is very challenging and my friend said, well, you need to practice gratitude that you have a project, even though it's challenging. And I'm like, yeah, fair cop. I think practice and gratitude is incredibly important and reminding ourselves that this time, the things that we do have, rediscover things that give you joy. When you're feeling really down, so when I work with clients who come to me and find themselves in this space where they have no energy and especially no vitality and I'm reminded of a particular client who was an up and coming young woman. She was on a path for a partnership in a professional services firm and she spent the whole first session that we had together, crying. And when I talked to her, what emerged is that she was hardworking. She was on that leadership path. Her leaders really supported her in being a leader but what they forgot was that she was also a young mother and that she used to be almost professional player in hockey. And she hasn't had time because the first thing that she gave up was her hockey which was the thing that made her move and the thing that gave her joy. So in that one session that we had, what I said is I will not be working with you until you rediscover hockey and bring it back into your life. Rediscover things that give you joy and as leaders we can help our staff, we can help our people, we can help our family to do that. And then we can spend time with the good guys. So as individuals and as leaders of others we can make sure that we create the environment and the atmosphere where people feel that they are looked after, that they are supported, that they have people who have the backs. Do things that bring you joy. Don't just rediscover them, also do them. And yes, watching funny movies is good. I have a limit in household consumption of movies and Netflix is that I can only do so many stressful dramas. I also have to balance that up with things that make me laugh. Move more and cultivate your inner coach. A great way to counterbalance that inner critic is cultivating your inner coach. When you do a good job, stop and actually pay attention to what you think made that job a good job. Also, make sure that you take on board other people positive feedback. In my work in New Zealand over the years I've experienced so many times when I give someone positive feedback, they go, oh, that was nothing. No, it is something. That's the way to cultivate you inner coach. I have a heck. It's called when I need them email box where I put all the lovely email people send me for when they think I've done something well. And when I feel that my inner critic is getting very, very loud, I go back and have a look at the evidence of what people have sent me. And do we have any questions at this point? That is a very good question. We're getting lots of comments saying I'm loving it and I'm enjoying it. No questions yet. So maybe just if anyone has any quick questions they want to pop into the chat. Now is a great time. Now is a great time. I'll pause and get some questions. Okay. I'll move on and I'll stop later on. So why vitality? I think about words a lot. It kind of comes with the territory of writing a PhD. So I thought a lot, I had this sense of not very comfortable about the discussion that I saw taking place really focusing on resilience. And to me, vitality speaks of hope, of possibilities. It speaks of buoyancy, of passion, of vigor. We love spending time with people who emanate vitality. We can almost feel it. It's that kind of je ne sais quoi. It exists in different cultures and in different languages, like je ne sais quoi and in my language of Hebrew as well. And I sort of think of vitality as being resilience plus well-being plus something else. So where did it come from? Where did this passion for vitality and really thinking that this is the thing that we tend to lose as we go through COVID and the marathon that ensued with resilience and well-being? Nine years ago, I was diagnosed with an extremely rare autoimmune condition. And it is an overactive immune system. The condition is called Chextras Vesculitis. And those of you who are Kiwis may know the broadcaster, Tony Strait, who has publicly spoke over here on battle with CSV, Chextras Vesculitis. And when I was undergoing very, very aggressive treatment to shut down my immune system, which was comprised of chemotherapy and steroids therapy, I was really resilient. I approached my illness with as many tools as you could possibly imagine, being a psychologist and a coach. So I was resilient. I also had well-being. I have a loving family who looked after me. But the thing, something was missing. And that thing that was missing that I came to realize later on was vitality. And that's why I try and organize my work on vitality is that thing that we should also try for that is more than, it's more than resilience. It's more than well-being. It's the next thing. It's the thing that will drive us through what it is that we're dealing with. So as I was thinking about that and researching and using evidence-based as well as drawing on my own personal and professional experience, I came to conceptualize or think of these pathways for accessing vitality. Now, these pathways are not a recipe. I'm not gonna give you the playbook or the buy numbers, how you're gonna get vitality for your own life. What I will give you is the best evidence-based and experientially tested ingredients. And it's up to you as individuals to play with them and to find the right ingredients to give you vitality in your life as leaders and then coach, support and lead the people around you to do it for themselves. And we lead in every sphere of our life, be it in business or in families as mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and so on and so forth. So I did come to these three pathways through my own ill health experience and also recognizing that there isn't one pathway to rule them all. They're all underpinned by good sleep, exercise and healthy food. This is not the focus of today's talk. The focus of today's talk is to give you a strategy for each of those three boxes of values and purpose, positive emotions and spiritual and mindful practice. All together, practiced these pathways enhance the relationships in our lives as leaders and as human beings. And all of them have been demonstrated to not just be a nice to have in a kind of psychological wellbeing sense. They actually amassed have when it comes specifically to dealing with COVID in terms of enhanced and strengthen our immunity, our immune system. I'm gonna pause now. Any questions, Ant? There is a question. Yeah, it's sort of actually going back to something that you said before but I think it's related to what you're talking about now as well. On the point of rediscovering the things that give you joy, what is an approach or how might you talk to somebody who self identifies that lazing around or eating junk food brings them joy? And we know that that's something that is causing or part of that negative downward spiral but how do you frame that or what's the way to approach that? That's a great question and I've been asked that and in fact, I forgot to say that rediscovering things that bring you joy is not alcohol. So alcohol also, we all drink more, we know that but a way to do it is to say, okay, what brought you joy when you were really young? What brought you joy when you were really young is a great way to frame that because then people think back about the things that brought them joy before there were couch potatoes and ate junk food all day. You can preach but from experience it doesn't work but if you really push them, so when you were really little what were the things that, when do you remember when you were really little that you were feeling really, really happy and then you'll be surprised? I've had executives who told me that the things that brought them joy when they were young was building models or roller skating or skateboarding and in the park across the road from my house I've been seeing people do yoga, run a lot more, play more with the children. So I think that is a really good way of framing it taking them back to when they were young. I'll start with values and purpose. So values and purpose is now almost so commonplace that it's ubiquitous in how people think and talk about organizations. To the point where there is a certain amount of cynicism around it and I think COVID-19 has provided us with incredible storytelling opportunities as leaders to talk about the practices of what it is that we did through COVID-19 which is a reflection of what's under the surface in terms of our purpose and our values. I really think that as leaders we need to take this time to reflect, reshape and reframe and realigns our values and our purpose with what we actually did during COVID-19. So if you think about supermarkets, oh boy, do they have an opportunity to tell the story of the purpose of supermarkets and the supermarket workers? If you think of all those tech companies who at break even or almost pro bono provided solutions for people to stay connected to find out what's happening with respect to COVID-19, find out about the alert systems. Personally, I am a co-founder of a social change enterprise called Professionnel and I'm sure there's a few of professionals on the call do say who you are so I can look later on the chat. And when we went into level four, myself, my colleagues Jane and Marisa, we were like, oh boy, what do we do? What do we do? How do we define ourselves as an organization that sets itself up to support working women? What can we offer? And we started a series of free support group calls where women can dial in from all over New Zealand and meet other women who are working from home and talk about the challenges and seeing that they weren't alone. So it's a fantastic opportunity to tell that story of what it is you actually did through COVID-19 and how that was a reflection on your values and your purpose. The next one is positive emotion. Positive emotions are incredibly important. I have three there, I debated if I should just have the one but I'm only gonna talk about the one and you might think love is a very odd thing for a person with deep corporate knowledge in New Zealand to talk about. It is a signature strength, it's called the capacity to love and be loved and it's really all about fostering and building relationships with others and relationship with others is a key way by which we can enhance vitality in our life, if not the key way and for others and especially as leaders. It is an evidence-based approach from the field of positive psychology and this is the one that I used consistently when I was undergoing the immune suppression treatment that I was. In my personal and professional experience, that's what I start to work with first, really enhancing the experience of positive emotions in leaders' lives and leaders to enhance it in the lives of those around them. So this is a really simple exercise but one we forget all the time and that is responding in an active constructive ways to good news. So as a leader, if one of your staff member managed to win a contract during COVID-19, you may be thinking, oh my God, I just let 20% of our staff go, how will we deliver on this contract? What you say to the person who did that is responding in a very active constructive way what a great achievement that was and how proud you are of them, ask them to give you details and how they managed to do that so that you can live a journey. There will be time later on to worry about the details and how might that happen. I remember telling a colleague of mine about a potential opportunity that was open to me professionally and she said, that's great. But if you thought about this and if you thought about that and you just feel like internally you are deflating and it's very hard to tell in Zoom calls and a lot of people will continue in Zoom calls, I will say over index and being active and constructive in the way that you respond to good news that are coming through the people around you. And finally, spiritual and mindful practice. Now there was a call that came in, sorry, a question that came in before the talk today and how do you talk about spirituality in the context of business New Zealand? And I think the access to spiritual and mindful practice is that mindful practice. I think the mindful practice is particularly important at this time. This is a very simple mindful leadership practice that I came across in researching and it comes from healthcare. It's called the donor practice and it really is so simple and yet incredibly powerful. I think it is important to stop ourselves from being reactive. It is easy to become reactive at this time. This is part of the downward spirals that most of us experience to one degree or another. So what is it? Stop what you're doing. So if you're on a Zoom call and someone says something completely outrageous to get all of your hair curls going up, don't respond, stop what you're doing, take a few breaths. And I can't overemphasize an answer. I'm sure you have thoughts on that from your meditation practice. How important it is to really breathe and it is breathing through the nose and out through the nose and really take a few breaths and then observe and check in with what's going on around you. Just look around you, just remind yourself, ground yourself in the reality of where you're at and be purposeful in how you proceed. Respond, don't react, think. If I respond in this way, what will the outcome be? And that is a simple mind for leadership practice. The thing to me about spirituality is the more you spend in mindful practices, spirituality then comes. And speaking for my own personal experience, well, I've known for years and years and years the importance of meditation. I didn't do it. I thought that the end of yoga was enough. I just didn't do it. And it took many years of breathing, of practicing mindfulness before I was ready to access meditation. And that's why I don't push people to meditation or spirituality. Everybody finds it in their own space and in their own pace. Galia, there's a question here that's really relevant to this point. So I wonder if I can just ask that. Of course. It's from Mark. He runs an incubation program supporting small startups and businesses. So obviously they're facing immense challenges in this environment and they've been introducing mindfulness and wellbeing tools to try and assist in increasing resilience and coping with stress. But the question is that some of the people are so deeply ingrained in their worry and their fear that they struggle to make a start to just help themselves. So he's curious, how can we assist in those very, very early steps when someone might be really deeply in a pattern of worry and stress? And that's the downward spiral. So I think the best way to assist going, when you are in a really deep crisis, the best thing is to stick to the facts. So when people are really, really in a worried state from my experience is that rumination really getting caught in the negative thoughts and the what if scenarios. So as leaders and working in this particular environment it's really writing things down and looking at the facts. And some of them are really difficult but having those facts down enables you to deal with something real and not box the shadows. I wouldn't even go to mindful practice at that point. That's my personal view. If I work with someone at this level of stress I start with really interrogating the facts and dealing with what's in front of us and what's actually under our influence. There needs to be a level of calm before you can bring in mindful practice and in those tools you need to get yourself to a level of calm to be able to do so. So I'm gonna share a personal story and that's when I was spinning out when I was being treated for my condition and I was on a huge, huge degree of steroids. So those of you understand I was in 75 megaday of steroids. So all I wanted to do is eat and scream and hopefully in the same time. So when someone said to me, well, have you thought about meditating? I nearly smacked them because I was in such a high level of stress that I couldn't even get there at that point. So there is a level of supporting to the point where you can actually practice this. But as leaders, we can and we should. And if we practice them at leaders, that does help the people around us to also access it as well. So I have another strategy. One that I've just recently discovered I undertook a leading with humor course, short course with Stanford University. And they did this thing called the human audit. Now, humor is incredibly powerful. And I picked humor as a particular strategy because we know how powerful humor is. In a recent survey that I spoke of in the course, they mentioned that 98% of executives prefer employees with a sense of humor and 84% believe these employees do better work. And studies show that humor makes us appear more competent and confident, strengthens our relationship and unlocks creativity, which is really important. I found that particularly fascinating. Apparently the average four year old laughs as much as 300 times per day. Whereas the average 40 year old by comparison laughs 300 times every two and a half months. Now, laughter is a great way of bringing vitality and also release and stress. Now, not all of us are funny. That's why the human audit is really helpful. So when I did it, I found out that I actually laughed quite a lot. And that the people who are around me and the closest to me really makes me laugh, make me laugh. The interesting thing for some people on the call is you may have heard the non Kiwi accent. I am Israeli, I'm a Kiwi. I've been here for 20 Mambo years, still have my accent. But as a consequence of being someone from a different culture, I realized that I didn't make people laugh. And then when I thought about that, I realized that my humor to begin with was quite different and I see Paula nodding. It's quite culturally different and a little bit dark. And people didn't find me funny to be quite honest about that. So I think that this is an interesting one for those of us who come from different cultures and maybe New Zealand is more ready now for different humor. But it's kind of important to think about and how we can bring it as leaders to our organization. I do know a leader that uses one of those tools. Every morning she collects the fun is that people send her and she puts an appropriate one in the space where her team collaborates. So there are many ways by which we can bring humor and it just requires for us as leaders to really be mindful about that. Any questions? Nope, yes? There are a couple of thoughts here. David, please clarify if I don't get this quite right, but there's clearly a lot of caution around managing the second wave of COVID and so reemergence is sort of tempered by worry and concern and fear. So he's just curious, wondering how you are addressing the expansion and contraction pattern with your clients? Very cautiously. So personally, I am absolutely airing on the caution side of things. People ask me personally, I am at risk. So I will not be changing much as we move to level two and really taking each day and each week as it comes. No one has a magic, I don't have a crystal ball. So I think being overly cautious is a good way to approach it and accepting that people will have different levels of comfort around what's coming down the line. And being open to that is really important. So some people will want to stay working from home and my clients are absolutely open to that for this stuff because it is a very tricky situation we find ourselves in. So I think if anybody has a health condition, being overly cautious is better than ignoring what's coming. We don't know what's gonna happen. It's been three days now when we had no cases. If anything, I'm going to let myself loose for the first week and then probably retract back personally. And the same I will advise clients who are in similar position or have people in that position. Now the next slide I want to talk about is the science of psychoneuroimmunology. I'm not gonna get into that in great detail. I'm just very mindful of the time. But there is a whole field of science that for the last 30 years have experimentally studied the links between our psychological states and emotions, the functions of the immune system, the brain functioning. Now I never heard about it when I was being treated. No one ever told me that there is a whole thing. So when I practiced enhancing my positive emotions through my own treatment, it was because it felt good. Now as a type A personality and very ambitious and driven, I kind of felt a little bit better about it. A little bit self-indulgent is the product of my culture. And it isn't. Enhancing the experience of positive emotions to all of the practices that I outlined and more that I write about and talk about at greater length is incredibly important in strengthening our immune system. There is a link. The two are not divided. Our body and our mind work together in very complex ways, which I will not get into in this talk. But it's important for us to realize it's not a nice to have. It is a must have. It is something that we should be mindful of and work to achieve for ourselves and for others as a way of living and especially at this time. So this is my last slide. There's a link there to my website. And I'd like to finish with this quote that came from a very sort of straight laced academic article. And I thought it was a beautiful quote. It's positive emotions both open the mind and nourish the growth of resources. When we experience positive emotions through our actions or the actions of others, we open how we think more broadly. We are able to see more possibilities, more options. We are able to think creatively. And that also nourishes the growth of our resources to deal with greater difficulties and more adversity later on. So I'm gonna open it up for discussions and questions. Ants, if you can curate the question for me. Sure can. There's one here that's bubbled to the top already. This is from Marco in Brazil. Who says, I believe that being an example is the best way to lead people towards a positive spiral. But often people close to you do not necessarily want to be helped and it can create a barrier. How do we break this barrier to help people? And I guess I can also add in some framing there that like sometimes you meet those people who are just so damn perfect and seem to have all the answers that can create like a tension. Curious if you've had any thoughts about how to navigate that. Well, first of all, if anybody out there thinks that I'm one of those people, I really am not. So I experience small spirals all the time. So all the time. And I'm quite open about that and find situations very difficult. The thing is I recognize and I know what needs to be done and I do what needs to be done. So to the question is, first of all, lead by example. I have teenagers and those of you who have teenagers know it's difficult. And what I realized is when I tell them what to do, they never listen. But when they observe me and see what I do, they do listen. So I think that leading by example is really important, especially at this time. What can you do to enhance positive emotions and those interactions that you have with people? If we go back, come in my slide, I'll try and go back to this slide here. If you as a leader, take the time to learn you things about the people who work for you. If you show that you are curious, you start a virtuous cycle for them without telling them that they need to do one for themselves. If you can reframe the situation for yourself and for others in a positive way, again, show them, this is something I live by, show, don't tell. Show them how to do this, don't tell them to do this. Great, there's one point that you made that I really like which also relates to one of the questions here. Just that, when you were talking about the upward spiral is something that you can start directly even while you're struggling in downward spirals. I really like that and I think it helps make it more accessible. So there's a question here from Wenus. It seems that there is a lot of social anxiety about moving forwards in post COVID, people not knowing how to act towards each other, how to come together, what's okay and what's not okay. How do we make that positive and fun? For example, what can we do instead of hugging? I'm just, I'm wanting to connect the dots between that and what you were saying before about taking small steps. I think being explicit about it is really important. I think that if you have a team that is going to come together, I mean, I've been explicit and told my friends that they can come over and that we will be taking the temperature because we do have one of those guns and of temperature guns. And I am personally quite anxious about this scenario. So I think that setting some ground rules and actually checking in with people and not assuming we're going back to normal and fun ways think people can come up with some suggestions, there's been the elbow tap, there is the namaste greeting, make fun, use humor, find something that is funny and be explicit, it is, it is. It's not easy, it is really, really stressful. Something that I've heard a fellow psychologist who really works with families and children that's Dr. Natalie Flynn talk a lot about is always be calming in the context of parents. And I think we can always be calming in the context of leaders. We might not feel calm, but we can always be calming for others in how we behave. Great, there's another question here which relates to when you mentioned before about cultivating the inner coach, I really like that because you hear so much about the inner critic everywhere, maybe just in my circles but that's a very common phrase but I haven't heard much about cultivating an inner coach. And there's a question here which I think is related which is around how about the effectiveness of redefining self-confidence. And so I'm curious, what are some practical steps or some things that you might recommend for people who do want to cultivate their inner coach or redefine their sense of self-confidence? That's a great question because I'm working on doing a quick tip video on cultivating your inner coach. It's something that resonates. I believe that the best way to cultivate your inner coach is through evidence, is through the facts. So first of all, make sure that you are clear about the things you do well. So be inviting them down, keeping your CV up to date, looking at all of the achievements that you've done. We often go from one thing to another without stopping to reflect on the things that we've actually done. The other thing I've mentioned and maybe people didn't hear that, we're communicating a lot now through email and we're sending each other some very nice emails. Keep them, call them my feedback box, my affirmation, my inner coach. Keep them, go back to them, look at them, stick to the evidence of the things that people tell you about what it is that you do. I'm not sure how I respond to the self-confidence question. I think that in my experience and my own personal research, working with many executive, mainly women and men over the years, is that successful people have their own definition of success. So perhaps it's time to start to think what do you define a success for yourself? And it is the ability to have a calm household where your children feel that they're being looked after and loved by you, where you are able to deliver to whatever that looks like, but redefine what it is that you consider success and then look for the evidence to demonstrate how you have done that. I hope that helps. Yeah, that's great. There's another question here around, so three of the words that keep popping up in business and corporate speaker are resilience, agility and adaptability. And obviously those things are sort of interconnected and you mentioned resilience, but I wonder if you have any quick thoughts on how that might relate to the other two. So that's a really interesting one because I do know that comes a lot with corporate speak. Now I'm not, this is the kind of once, it's a half an hour presentation. I do much more in-depth workshops on those topics, but there is a very important theory in positive psychology called the broaden and build theory of the function of positive emotions. So negative emotions have a purpose, an evolutionary purpose. When we feel scared, we run. When we feel negative emotions that come from fear or sadness really narrows our options of what we decide about what we're going to do. We're not gonna be explorative. We're not gonna look around for other options and other alternatives. That's cyber tooth targets coming our way. We're gonna run. Positive emotions, and that's my last quote really, what they do is they open our mind. So resilience, I'm a little bit to be creative and agile and adaptive and creative and think of the different options. We need to feel safe. We need to feel that our job is safe, that the organization we're in is safe. Otherwise it is forced and it is a very difficult ask to do, sometimes impossible. So I think that we need to be mindful as leaders as to what we ask of our people and at what time we ask them to do the thing that we ask them because I don't know about you but if someone tells me to innovate right now, I really can't. And when I have to do complex projects that requires deep thinking, I create the space for myself and that's how to do. To really expand the way that I look at the world to come up with those nuggets because if I'm under pressure, I cannot come up with that. Now of course in organization, it's not always possible but if leaders are aware, they may create little bubbles within the environment so that people can experience that and I know of practices that do that. Fantastic. There's some really great questions coming through folks so thanks for this. You've obviously prodded some brain cells today which is great. There's a couple here that are connected I think. And given that there's folks from all over the world here so everyone will be in sort of different stages of lockdown but definitely some sort of shift from the normal. There's a question saying, I heard somebody today compare coming out of lockdown to astronauts returning to Earth and the psychological effects of returning to a familiar environment but that has fundamentally shifted and changed. And similar to like what are the dimensional shifts that you think will happen in thoughts and actions and people post COVID. So the question there is, do you think this is a useful frame for us and are there ways that we might be able to proactively mitigate some of this culture shock? I think that it's useful in so far as it's useful for you as an individual. That's what I said, I don't offer a recipe because people conceptualize things differently. I do find that the spirals are really universally helpful and they are also used in research. Is it as extreme? I think in some environments it would be as extreme as astronauts coming down to Earth and other environments that will be less extreme. I think checking in regularly is a key thing to help our people and know that we see them, that we hear them and that we are aware of what's happening for them. That is what we can do as human beings for other human beings. And for some it will be experienced as astronauts coming down to Earth. Others would be a case of I can't wait, I missed my workmates, I really can't wait to get stuck in, I don't have any underlying health conditions and I'm not in any risk group. So it's quite different. So let's not make any assumptions about what it would be like for other people and check in with them. There's a question here. We humans are inherently social beings. Now it's hard. Do we need redefining the ways for our relationship satisfaction? I don't know. I think we just need to make sure we invest in relationships. So one of the very senior executive I've been working with raised this question and said, well, you know, working from home has worked really well for the organization. But what he's missing is that link with young people and having access to young people and the thinking and that kind of bump conversation that you have. And I think we just need to be more purposeful and mindful in how we do that and accept that some of that will not happen. And then how do we then make sure that we do hold on and cultivate the relationship so that we do have them in our lives? I personally don't think we're gonna go back to normal on the way things were beforehand. I think it is really important that we are more deliberate in how we think about the important things for us and how do we cultivate them? Makes a lot of sense. I think one question that came up for me is it seems like wellbeing has an opportunity or like to become more well-known and to come into more focus. And you mentioned at the start of your talk that you're appreciative that you can now talk about meditation in normal society and it's not weird. And I'm curious, what are the things that you think about? What can we do to further reduce those barriers and make this sort of conversation and these sort of proactive steps that we can all take? How can we make them more culturally accessible and digestible? By doing exactly, this is why I'm doing this talk. So, you know, somebody who's relatively hard-nosed, talking about all these dimensions, I'm asking those of you who are out there who are leaders to talk about your own meditation practice, to share, you know, Brene Brown talks about stepping into arena and being vulnerable. And as I said, I knew the importance of meditation but it took a long time before I felt that I was spiraling to the extent to which I needed that. And by talking about that and raising it in public conversations like this, that is the first step in my view. You can't force someone to meditate. Trust me, I try to force my teenagers. That doesn't work. You can just talk about what it does for you and show, not tell. That's great. So, we're getting close to the hour here and we've covered a lot of ground today and conscious that it's the end of a long day for a lot of people. So, I'm curious if there's one sort of final message or one practical piece of advice that you would recommend, what would that be? So, if I look back to this inner coach and cultivating the inner coach for ourselves as leaders we can cultivate the inner coach of others. So, when someone sends you an email that reads really well take the time to give a specific positive feedback via email to that colleague or staff member so that they can put it into there when I need those books. Take the time to really be deliberate and mindful in how you give evidence-based feedback to the people around you. This is in the context of leadership. So, if every single person on this call does that tomorrow three times, well, three people will feel better and you will feel better for doing that. That's a fantastic piece of advice and it relates very well to our final ask of everybody which is Paula's just put a feedback form in the channel there and you'll also get it in your inbox. But perhaps there will be a perfect opportunity to take some of Gali's advice and give us some positive feedback. But yeah, thanks everybody so much for joining us today and there's been lots of great reflections in the chat. We've really appreciated those and really good questions. So, I think that's all from us and I'll just say a quick goodbye and let Gali and Paula do the same. Thank you, everyone. I'm sorry I couldn't read all the comments. I see there is now, the latest question is there is and you say nowadays that virtual is the new normal. What thoughts do I have, especially me, Vivek, being a healthcare professional has a huge impact and is experiencing a paradigm shift. I think we need to be really practice self-care and self-compassion. I didn't go into that, that's another tool but as health professionals, if any, need to practice a lot of self-care and self-compassion and be explicit about those challenges. Do tell your patients, I know my GP told me the challenges that she's facing in moving to virtual world. On a spiritual level, if I was to say what it is that I'm trying to take or what I'm taking and seeing is the level of kindness that people are showing one another. And if there was something that we should keep going forward is that kindness and really paying attention to not just our needs, but the needs of those around us. So on that note, I will say goodbye. Paula. Thank you so, so much, Galiya. I feel bright my day, honestly. It was just what I needed today. So thank you so much. Thank you everybody for joining. You'll hear from us over email with the form with the YouTube playlist with the slides that the amazing Galiya's going to share with you all. And this is in our Facebook. So if you wanna check the video again, it's there, if not, it's on our YouTube playlist. And it's been a pleasure being here and having you and San Galiya and the audience. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye.