 Hi, everyone. We might get started. I think we're two minutes over. But you're all very resilient, so I'm sure you're fine with that. You'll be able to cope with it. My name is Peta, so I'm the Career Development Manager here in the Business School, and this is my colleague Tamsen. Hi, I'm the Career Development Advisor in the Business School. So that's the introductions. So, this evening, we're going to talk about how to be positive, flexible and resilient in this very quickly changing environment. Things are just changing. It seems to be quicker and quicker, doesn't it? September and people are already talking about Christmas. Have you made your Christmas plans yet? That's a time where we really need to be resilient, isn't it? So we're going to actually address what resilience really is and then how to respond to events, particularly adverse ones. And then the impact of our thoughts. Our thoughts have a lot to do with resilience and will give you quite a few helpful resources as well. You don't have to worry about taking lots of notes because we will make our PowerPoint available to you. So you'll get an email with the PowerPoint. OK, so just a pretty dog picture, really. So stuff does happen. So this poor little dog, my world is spinning. So resilience helps us cope when our world is spinning. And in terms of why, it just seems to be a very topical thing these days, doesn't it? We're seeing quite a lot about resilience in the media. There are workshops about resilience. I think it's the pace of change. The economy has a lot to do with it. When we were doing workshop for this research, for this workshop, Christchurch came a lot up a lot, didn't it? It certainly did, yeah, heaps, yeah. And other sort of significant world events, like things like fear of terrorism and those sorts of things, which may not have been so dominant in the past, yeah. The global financial crisis seems to have had an impact even now. They're talking a lot about that. Just economy in general, technology, the pace of change, the internet, digitisation, all of that has having a big impact. And making us sort of have to be more resilient to cope with it. There are greater expectations in the workplace. There seems to be this thing where we have to do more with less. In short-term contracts, part-time work are becoming more and more common. And so the idea of sort of a job Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, is slowly diminishing. And then stress and burnout is increasing because of all of this. So resilience is very important and just seems to be becoming more so. Yeah, and that burnout, one of the effects of having all that technology, is that now, do you ever feel as though you get away from work, are you always contactable? Well, most of us are. We've got our phones, we've got computers, and people are expecting us to work later in the evening on weekends and things like that. They're expecting us to be present in the workplace, even when we're not present in the workplace. Another issue with millennials is that whole fear of missing out. So people putting stress on themselves because they want to do anything. And there's been a lot written recently about how millennials are burning out earlier than previous generations because they want to get everything done. They want to be doing the gym at 5 o'clock in the morning and they want to be socialising at 11 o'clock at night. And in the end, your resilience can weaken with that happening. So, I mean, one of the things that can affect our resilience is some sort of myths that we live with. And one of those things is happiness is a natural state that we should all be happy all of the time. Well, actually, no. Evolutions left us with a fairly strong fight-or-flight response. So, happiness is something that we have sometimes, but it's certainly not something, a state that we are naturally programmed to be in all the time. There's also this sort of myth that if you're frustrated, then you're actually defective, that you shouldn't be frustrated. Well, again, being frustrated is as normal as being happy. So there's nothing wrong with that. There's a sense that in order to be happy, in order to create a better life, then we have to get rid of all those negative feelings and we have to exclude them from our lives. But actually, doing that can actually do you more harm than good, so not such a wise idea. And there's probably one of the greatest myths of all, the myth that you can control what you think. And we may think that we can, but it's actually our control over what we think is actually relatively limited. So what's resilience? It's the ability to balance back from adversity. I think you said, Peter, it's like a tree. Rather than breaking, you bend down and then you come back again. So that's a sort of a visualisation that you can have. It's the ability to work through challenges to not be overwhelmed by them and it's the ability to overcome obstacles, not to be stopped by them. And as I said, they fall down seven times, bounce back, and get up that eighth. So I've got some examples here. So Starbucks. So Howard Schultz. If he had given up after being turned down by banks 242 times, there might not be Starbucks. Some people may think that might not be a bad thing, but it just depends. JK Rowling, if she'd stopped after being turned down by multiple publishers, we wouldn't have Harry Potter. There's another Harry Potter coming out, well, not Harry Potter, but another movie set in that world in November, if you're fans. I think it's mid-November. It's set 80 years before the Harry Potter world in New York, which will be different. Well, Disney, can you imagine a world without Disneyland? 302 times he had to try and get his concept through and get the money and the funding for it. So just going to show you our DVD. So Steve Jobs is very sort of... he's a well-known person with a lot of resilience. OK, so while you've been listening to that, you've probably sort of determined some factors that made him resilient. So at each of your tables, just take a couple of minutes to discuss the factors that you identified in that video that made Steve particularly resilient during those what were quite challenging and difficult times. So at each of your tables. OK, it would be great now if you'd actually share with the room. So could each table... just shout out one... what you thought was how he showed resilience during those hard times. So start to put a table at the front there. One particular factor that helped him. He had a really positive attitude all the time. Positive attitude, yep, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. How about this table here? Easy to talk quite a bit about trust, didn't they? He thought I thought that it would all work out. And that faith that, yes, things would be... things might be hard now, but they would be better in the future. And how about this table at the front here? Look quite similar to the other table that his ability to actually deal with uncertainty. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the... Actually putting himself in that really difficult situation. Yeah, but something that wasn't lost. Indeed, and having the intestinal fortitude to know that if he walked that was at seven miles just to get a really good meal or one day a week. So yeah, really putting it out there. Yeah. Indeed. And how about the table behind? Yeah, I mean that shone through, didn't it? And it shone through in his message there at the end about don't settle. Also the fact that he sort of learnt so much from his mistakes. I think that also came through a lot, didn't it? Anything that you noticed, didn't it? He talked about curiosity and intuition and he talked about having the confidence to follow your heart. So those things stood out for me. Yeah. Absolutely, so... So he was able to regulate his emotions. He didn't sort of let the fear of failure or embarrassment and things like that stop him from actually trying. And even if he failed he just picked himself up after a while, quite quickly actually and started again and tried something else. And he did that multiple times. He seemed to sort of embrace challenge. He didn't sort of see it as a barrier. He actually accepted it and embraced it. Saw it as an opportunity, I think. Then of course you've got persistence in the face of setbacks. He also, I think, saw failure as sort of like basically helpful feedback. And these are all things that help when it comes to resilience. Positive thinking, he did sometimes. You know, things did get him down. But then he would sort of reframe it and think positively about the situation. Because how many of us could actually feel that being set from one of the most major companies in the world is actually, in the end, a really good thing? Hindsight helps, though. It's true. Hindsight is a fine thing, yes. So these are the factors that do help with resilience. Positive thinking, sort of being able to regulate your emotions. Those are probably the key, but the other ones as well. I think the other ones really do fall out of those first two. So what about you? So we'd just like you to sort of like take a moment and talk about it on your tables if you want. Think about what you observe about yourself when you are resilient. And then what do you observe about yourself when you're not? And the impact sort of, you know, mentally, physically, socially, emotionally when you're not being resilient. Just take a couple of minutes to think about that and maybe talk about it with each other. Okay, I think if we wrap up your group discussions, now this one's a lot more personal so I'm not going to pick on tables, but if anyone's happy about sharing any of these answers to these questions with the group, I'd encourage you to, but it's very much voluntary because it's a lot more personal this than talking about Steve Jobs. So is anyone happy to share perhaps what they observe about their self when they are particularly resilient? So that passion enables your resilience? Yeah? Anyone else? Okay, so adversity being actually an advantage because you're then able to better cope with adversity in the future? And it's stretching and growing your boundaries as well what you're able to do. You just stretch each time a little bit more. So that comfort zone expands each time? Yeah. Anyone else? How about that second time? What do you observe about yourself when you're not so resilient? Is anyone happy to share that? Well, for me, sometimes it's when I'm tired. I tend not to bounce back so quickly if I'm physically exhausted or mentally exhausted about you. Actually, I think tiredness has quite a big impact on it. It can affect mood definitely so if you're not feeling resilient I think it's out of balance. That's how I tend to describe it these days. I'm not quite balanced. So I might be feeling anxious or unhappy or whatever it is but I just feel out of balance. A lot of this is about emotional self-awareness and understanding our emotions and how things have an influence on emotions. Also seeing things a bit like stair jobs, seeing things don't dwell on the failures. It's an opportunity to learn and instead focusing on success. If we go back to what we were talking about before from an evolution perspective we're actually programmed to notice our failures because through noticing the failure that our ancestors actually survived. Those who didn't notice failures and didn't notice that there was a lion in the bush they're the ones that died. Our ancestors were the ones that dwelled on the failure and the negative and the scary things that might be in the bushes. So it's kind of an inbuilt thing that is really hard for us to cope with. Understanding choice that we do have choices being aware of other people around us. Being able to deal with conflict can be really hard. And understanding that there is a really big link between what we think, our thoughts, our emotions and our body. So what we think can have a big impact on even to something like our heart rate. Our autonomic nervous system has a big impact on that. So all of those things, just emotions have such a big part to play in controlling them or maybe managing them is a better word. Absolutely. Someone mentioned that when they were not feeling so resilient often the motivation to exercise, the motivation to get out and do stuff that you usually do, and I think that's also part of that whole physical connection that you lose those motivations and then your body doesn't get the exercise and then that goes back to the brain so it can be a bit of a vicious circle when that happens. One of the things we're combating is that of that whole left-right brain conflict. So your right brain tries to say the colour that your left brain is insisting on reading the word. So trying to control our thoughts is actually really difficult because that battle is going on within us. You had a good... Yeah, I was at a workshop recently talking about a particular part of thought control and I love this example. He said, so if you can think about a box, think about what colour is that box? What shapes that box? Is it rectangular? Is it a round box? Does it have any particular exciting features? Is it perhaps blue with polka dots? Does it have something poking out of the box? Now, don't think about the box. What do you mean you don't? What are you thinking about now? Probably you're starting to think about that box because I told you not to. So that's the whole thing is it's really, really hard to control your thoughts because your thoughts do not want to be controlled. And also our brain doesn't process the word not. So if you tell yourself don't fall over, you're going to fall over. So if you tell yourself things like don't, not, do not, anything like that, the negatives, our brain doesn't really process negatives. So as soon as you start thinking don't fall over, don't trip, don't trip, you trip. Yeah, strangely, body in the brain. In the brain. So yeah, so it's more a fact of managing your thoughts than controlling them. So because you can manage aspects of your thoughts but it's actually that level of total control that's a lot more difficult. Actually frankly almost impossible. But it's also realising that there's nothing that's actually good or bad except you thinking that it's good or bad. So it's actually thinking about the effect that your thoughts are having on you and on your resilience. So when it comes to managing your thoughts it often starts with self-talk. If you think about the things you actually tell yourself so you do something that is wrong and then you beat yourself up about it, you tell yourself you're an idiot, you're stupid, what were you thinking? And we actually talk to ourselves in a way that we would never talk to another person. We're criticising ourselves, blaming ourselves, putting ourselves down quite a lot. Some of us do it more than others. That's sort of based on whether you're sort of like more of an optimistic person or more of a pessimistic person but we all do it. It goes back to that sort of evolutionary thing where we're programmed to be negative but unfortunately we beat ourselves up quite badly. It is possible to practice positive self-talk and just be aware of our thoughts, monitor our thoughts and when we catch ourselves being rude to ourselves sort of just stopping and sort of thinking about what we're actually saying and being kind to ourselves essentially. It's hard to do but it's a thing that it's really good to practice and get in the habit of doing. So when you find yourself sort of thinking negatively, challenge those thoughts, work to replace them with positive ones or reframe it. So looking at that, what do you read there? OK. So we have an optimist in the audience. From the laughter I would say most of you. What's actually was quite reassuring to me is I'm the pessimist in the room and Tamsyn's the optimist but Tamsyn also read Opportunity is Nowhere which made me feel so much better. Sorry, Tamsyn. It's perfectly all right. Basically, optimism is associated with way better health outcomes. Just from a health perspective, trying to be an optimist is actually a good idea. They're the type of people, life gives you lemonade, you make margaritas. Forget the lemonade. Sorry, life gives you lemons. They make margaritas, not lemonade. It's boring. So it has a positive effect on your mental, your physical health. It helps you respond better when it comes to chronic diseases as well. There are studies that show way better outcomes if you're an optimist. And this is also something that can be learned. You can actually practice it and train yourself to be more optimistic. And you think of it in a career context how incredibly different those two statements are if you're actually thinking Opportunity is Nowhere. So this is another way of looking at the optimism and the pessimism. So I'm definitely trying to teach myself that the glass is half full, not half empty. But sometimes it can actually be quite good because cheer bunnies like me sometimes like to look at things so positively that we don't see the perhaps some downsides and some disadvantages. So in any work team it's really actually good to have a mix of optimists and pessimists because it might be that pessimist that actually makes you realise that such what sounded like a fantastic idea you might have to actually look at this risk and counter that risk before you actually carry that idea out. So to spectrum, some people are way there, some people are there you're trying to sort of be an optimist with a little dose of realism. Indeed. Putting positive thinking into practice so you can actually reframe what you think so if you sort of, I'm not going to do that, I've never done it before instead reframe it to think that it's an opportunity to learn something new. You might think that it's too complicated so just sort of once again it's thinking outside the square or tackle it from a different angle so it's just reframing your thoughts and making them more positive. And this is really important in careers because how often do we actually not take advantage of an opportunity because we've actually self-taught our way in a negative way into thinking that we can't do it so we just we won't take advantage of that opportunity. If Steve Jobs had a thought it's too radical a change and hadn't thought let's take a chance I'm not going to get any better at this I'll give it another try but it does take practice to do this. Acceptance and commitment training is a way of increasing your resilience so the acceptance part of it is accept your internal life and try not to struggle with it and be present in the moment rather than spending all your life looking backwards and thinking if only I'd done this just accept it and move on. The commitment is choosing the direction and life that you value and then taking action to live the life that you really want so it's a combination of a few different things practices to actually help you to become more resilient. But by crikey of course as we talked about your brain and your body is often fighting against you so you've got the whole I want to control my life versus evolution where your body is doing the whole fight and flight because that's what's worked in the past it may not necessarily work now because we don't as often have those sorts of situations but in a career context we can take flight strategies we can take a day off because we just can't bear going into face that difficult situation or in the fight strategies you might find that that you're trying to force thoughts away, force feelings away but accepting them and actually just moving on is a better way of coping with that. If you think of it like a pressure cooker if you keep trying to sort of suppress the thoughts the feelings, the emotions at some point there is going to be an explosion. And as you were talking about another fight strategies is that whole self-bullying so every time you find yourself doing that actually would I give this advice to a friend? If you wouldn't then perhaps you shouldn't give that advice to yourself. And taking charge in sort of the fight or flight thing using some affirmations to replace those negative thoughts can be a way of overcoming that fight response. And also challenging the thoughts as well. And challenging the thoughts indeed. I'm just reading, arguing, countering or challenging thoughts I can just imagine you having a fight with yourself. Sorry, imagination, funny thing. So another aspect of acceptance and commitment training is actually to sit down and think what is the actual issue because sometimes when we actually step back a bit and clarify that issue or that problem in our mind we actually realise that what we thought was the issue might not be the major part of the issue at all it may be something else entirely. So making sure that what you're struggling with is the actual the core issue. And then thinking about it, okay are my feelings unproductive and unhelpful? Is there anything that I can do about this situation? If I can't do anything about that situation then actually just accepting that you might actually just have to find a quiet space just to do that step back and make room for those bad feelings. Don't shut them away, just accept them and then set them aside. Because if there's actually nothing you can do about the situation then there's no point in going over and over and over on the situation again. So accepting those feelings and then placing them aside. This is from the Executive Coaching Centre sorry, Reading and Sideways. They do workshops here in Auckland on this sort of stuff. And one of the examples they gave as a place where you could find a quiet spot was sort of driving home from work you're alone presumably in your car so that would give you a chance to actually be able to sort of think about what happened and make room for the bad feelings and there's no one around that you could possibly scare. And taking yourself away from other people can also stop the emotional backlash that could happen if someone disturbs you while you're still doing that processing of those difficult feelings. However, if in that consideration of the problem you actually realise that your feelings are productive and helpful and that you actually can change the situation then taking that committed action based on your values to address that situation then that's something that you can do. So there's a couple of different options in how to cope with those difficult situations. I think the key is just stepping back and analysing it and don't letting the emotions get in the way. So taking a deep breath and just thinking about it. Choosing one's attitude. So this is something we do have a choice over like Victor Frankl in the Holocaust. He chose a very positive attitude. Which must have been darn hard in the Holocaust. A lot of the time he was thinking about his wife and it was getting back to his wife that was holding him together. So having someone or something like that that means a lot, a great deal to you. OK, so some positive strategies for developing your resilience. Nutrition and sleep, it may sound obvious but making sure that you're well fed and that you're well rested are actually incredibly important in resilience. There's a lot of studies that show that if you're neither of those then your resilience really does dip. To actually practise activities that increase your energy so actually identifying those activities and practising those more and conversely activities that really deplete your energy that you're kind of dreading and it's really taking you down. See if you can minimise those activities. We've talked about practising that positive self-talk and talking to yourself like you're a friend, not an enemy. Focusing on issues that are within your control and I think that I've read a little bit over the last few days about the Christchurch earthquakes and how the people who actually struggled most with the resilience during the earthquakes were the ones that applied within themselves a high level of control because they actually didn't have control over what was going whereas those that actually were able to mostly be resilient were those who were able to accept that they didn't have to have control over all events in their lives and so there's been a lot of work done and studies on the Christchurch earthquakes. A lot of interesting reading out there. We were a friend over the weekend on Sunday and she was talking about how she went into the office. She started off talking about a lot of things that were happening at work and it was mainly around people issues and personnel and a lot of change of staff and basically she didn't have much control at all. So then she was talking about how on Saturday she went into the office and she cleaned up her office so she threw out a whole lot of paper. She spent seven hours tidying up her office so we were, as we do, analysing that and it was because she had control over that she could decide whether to throw that piece of paper out or not and that was about the only thing that is in her control at the moment at work. So seven hours just basically recycling a whole lot of paper but it made her feel better because it did give her that sense of control. Connecting with others was also really important and again to use the Christchurch earthquake example a lot of activities that happened during the Christchurch earthquake was because people wanted to help other people. Crack was going on all around them but connecting with other people made everyone feel much better and so they became much more resilient as a result of the positive feedback that others gave them. One that I like is the find three good things and I do notice that if I don't do that on a regular basis I do start to get out of balance and that's one of the ways I get myself back in balance and you can do it at any time but I tend to do it at night just after I've gone to bed and I just think about the day and I don't limit myself to three but it can be just minor little things for the past and I saw a bird who seemed to be digging and digging and digging in the garden and it was just lovely watching it or it might be a rainbow or the other day I had five tuies in my kauai tree just little things like that can make all the difference. Part of that is being present so not that whole mindfulness it may sound like a buzz word now but actually being present in the moment and noticing what's going on around you rather than letting yourself be taken over by your thoughts and your feelings actually bringing yourself out of that and starting to notice the world. Because we tend to focus on the past and the future but we don't tend to focus on the present. And that's all those racy colouring inbox who would have thought a couple of years ago they would have thought a couple of blocks so go figure but a lot of people get a lot of benefit out of them because they have to concentrate on colouring in they have to really focus on that and that allows them to exclude other stuff that's actually intervening in their mind and just have some mental peace. That's why some people like gardening for example it does the same thing for some people and my sister I could never understand it because the only time at home where she could be on her own she was sure that the children wouldn't turn up at the clothesline because they'd get a job but also too it was just the whole meditative rhythmic thing of doing that and being outside as well. Another great thing as far as improving your resilience oddly enough is being nice to other people so being kind to others can actually help boost their resilience but also your resilience someone told me years ago so I practice this every morning I visualise that it's going to be a really good day and then I give myself a big beam in the mirror every morning so the first thing really that I do every day is a really nice positive thing so those sorts of visualisations there can be all sorts of different visualisations but that can assist you as well it can be a goal seeing yourself actually achieving the goal some people do vision boards so they actually do stuff out and have a board that they look at every day one thing to remember though is get help if you're struggling or even if it's just to share with friends or family or colleagues what's going on that can be very helpful as well and if things are really overwhelming you that's what the professionals are there for to assist you through times where you just can't really cope so we have talked a bit about optimism and things like that if you actually want to take a test online to figure out whether you're an optimist or a pessimist I actually did that test I thought I was being a realist I don't know but they have lots of different tests University of Pennsylvania so authentic happiness so they have lots of different tests you can figure out what your strengths are they've got one about 24 core strengths a general happiness scale they've got the grip test so if you enjoy that sort of thing you could always go and have a look you've got to register but don't worry about that they're very happy for you don't have to go to the University of Pennsylvania to do the test they're happy for everyone to do it because it's just more information for them for their research there's another website that I particularly like which is called Action for Happiness and this is just an example of some of the actions at work so they talk about sort of find your strengths, focus on using them at work really listen to what people are saying we do have a tendency to not listen so much get happiness on the agenda at your workplace so this is particularly if you're a manager that's an idea look for the good in those around you create a happier environment at work so when you click on one of these actions what it does is it takes you through it gives you a little bit of an introduction and then takes you through to websites recommended box different sorts of surveys and various other places there's an app, there were a number of apps that I saw so lots of different resources that you can use to help with this sort of thing so the URL is there and as I said we are going to send you the PowerPoint so so besides work they also had chats for family and friends how you can sort of in your local community as well I'm not quite sure how many they have but there's at least 50 so one of the resources is the CAM website which was actually being developed here at the University of Auckland it was developed for the med school students but it's evolved beyond that now so anyone who wants can have a look at that website they have a lot of resources on there they have quite a lot of meditations that you can download I can't meditate I'm really, I just can't do it I'm totally thinking about other things but I stopped feeling so bad about that because the author of Eat Pray Love who spent all that time in India trying to learn how to meditate they actually can't meditate either so that made me feel a lot better about that however that website does have a walking meditation which I can kind of do so there's different strokes for different folks I think it's called so I've already talked about Pennsylvania University Mental Health Foundation has resources as well it's got a fantastic website with heaps of stuff inspirational stories recommendations for books these sorts of things one of the books that I've got here tonight came from their website so really rich resources and a lot about resilience Action for Happiness, Resilience Scale there's something called the Happiness Institute and then Positive Psychology is very popular now so that's been around since the late 80s I think it was these are just three of a whole lot of different books that are out there so as Tamsin said there's this one even under pressure which you're welcome to come and have a look at feel the fear and do it anyway so I first read that I think it was probably the 80s so it was kind of before computers so if I read it just recently it's quite funny from that perspective but it has a lot of really good stuff in it and then the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that's also a last century book but it's a classic just updated a little bit the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin she has two children she lives in New York, she's a writer she feels guilty about wanting to be a bit, be more happy so she sort of talks about that in her book but what she did is each month she took just one thing that she wanted to address so it might have been clutter so one month she just worked on her clutter another month she pretty much said yes to everything so it was things like that so each month it was just a different thing which I think is a nice manageable way to do it she has another book as well which is about habits and one of the reasons that we've given you all these resources is that resilience often is not something that you just are going to achieve sometimes you actually really do need to work at it and that's why we've given you all those resources to assist you if you're struggling you're not feeling resilient to give you some techniques to assist you in that process I think for all of us it's something different like I said some people can't meditate some people can so there are sort of like different techniques that suit all of us so we'll just leave you with this final thought and thank you very much