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Welcome back to mental health week on the we're for good podcast. We want you to feel cared for this week. So be sure to visit our full landing page with resources and more at weareforgood.com/mentalhealth. We're so glad you're here.
Hey, I'm Jon.
And I'm Becky.
And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, we're so thrilled.
We are so thrilled. We are returning for mental health week we have one of the kindest, most authentic humans in our midst. And we're going to be talking about resiliency today. And so if you are someone who whether you're in the nonprofit field, social impact sector, wherever you come into this conversation, this is something we can all learn from. And I'm just so excited about it, Jon, because I need this my life right now. So we're totally leaned in. But we want to introduce you to one of the most extraordinarily kind humans in our midst. Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal. She is a PhD, an internationally sought after keynote and virtual keynote speaker. And she has this groundbreaking qualitative research that's unlocking the potential to harness resilience. And she has this wonderfully accessible, thoughtful, engaging and interactive style that you all are just going to be a sponge as you soak it all up, because it connects deeply with people who are both motivated, and people who marvel at their previously unappreciated resilience. So just real casual, She's the former head of Nike's global executive leadership development team. She is also just a has a wonderful doctorate degree from the University of Maryland, we gotta give a shout out to her undergrad at the University of Michigan. But she is also the author of this highly anticipated book that's coming out called Flourish or Fold: The Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People, we love that she dives into the neuro psychology of why we do what we do and how that impacts our body, our minds, our life, the choices that we make. So we're so glad that she has come into our house. She's going to bring the uplift and we're going to figure out how to be tenaciously resilient today, Taryn, get in this house for so excited, you're here.
I'm in the house.
You are! From Philly. We love Philly, welcome. We're gonna dive into, you know, what is a wealth of information that you have love when I see women with PhDs. Thanks for going for it. But before we dive into this incredible work that you have been exploring for quite a while in your life, we want to get to know a little Taryn like, take us back. Take us back to where you grew up. Tell us about your life and kind of what informed you to go on to this path today.
Oh, goodness, little little Taryn. What, what to do.
What to say to little Taryn?
So many things to tell little Taryn. You know, it's interesting, a great question that I asked people or sometimes people ask me, they say, you know, if you could go back to your former self, and you could give at any point in time, and you could give your former self a piece of advice. What would you say? And some people I've talked to they, they're like, I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't tell myself anything. I'm like that seems rude with yourself, do past self a solid, you know. But I tell them I tell little Taryn or big tTaryn, whatever point in time, I time travel back. I'd say it gets better. And that's a really great way to think about our lives that maybe, likely the best is still yet to come. And I love thinking about things that way. You know Yeah, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and went to the University of Michigan. I was bound and determined to get myself out of Ann Arbor.
You did it. Congratulations.
I did it. I did it 24 and a half years old. I really wanted to go to a different school, undergrad. Sorry, University of Michigan. And my dad was all like, well, you can go to another school undergrad that is ranked as good as Michigan, and costs as much as Michigan or less. And I was like, Oh, thanks, dad. That's amazing. And then I went to do my research, like in state tuition for half. Oh crap, I enjoyed my time in Ann Arbor. And I've been touring around the world since people are like, oh, so did you go straight from Michigan to Philadelphia? And I'm like, No, I, I lived in Washington, DC. I lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, I lived in the Greater Hartford Connecticut area and finally landed in in Philadelphia. So it's been quite a journey.
Well, I mean, so I feel like now you are just known for this powerhouse of this neuro psychology work and talking about resilience and talking about vulnerability catches up to that part of your story, like how do you go from this person that was trying to escape Michigan to like somebody that's on stages, teaching people how to walk through this kind of deeper stuff of life? Catch us up with that.
I love that question. And something that's come up for me in my two decades of study on resilience is I've started to see this work and to think about this work in a different way than I think at some other practitioners or researchers have approached it. And one of the core tenants of the way that I think about resilience is that we are all fundamentally resilient. Resilience is the essence of what it means to be human. And so for anyone who's listening to the show, for the two of you, who have, you know, come in today, like we have made it through every single challenge, change, complexity, disappointment, rejection, loss, turn of events, trauma. And when we start to think about resilience that way, I believe that it makes it more accessible for us, because then we stop talking about resilience as being something out there, outside of us something we have to go get and find and cultivate. And so when we get to sort of take that power of resilience back and say, this is something that fundamentally exists within me as an essence of what it means to be human, then we start to have a different conversation, because the conversation then begins from a place of abundance, it begins from a place of wholeness, it begins from a place of having, rather than from a place of scarcity, where we have to go out and get something or cultivate it. So that's the first piece. And the second piece is that resilience is something we can always we can always enhance, right? We can always become more resilient, we don't have to go out and get it. It's not you're resilient, or you're not. And we can always cultivate our resilience, it gets to be a lifelong journey focused, of course on progress, not perfection.
Okay, when you're saying this, I believe that because as a dad to you know to four kids, I see that like, kids are massively resilient, you know, I think we like use it as a protection to be like, oh, it's gonna be hard on the kids and like, no, they're really like, resilient compared to us adults that are more set in our ways around stuff. So I, I believe that that's within us. And it's almost like we wander away from that maybe, or we get scared of it or lose it or whatever, we have to build it back. I don't know if that's true, but that's my own personal experience, it feels like.
And I I love this concept of the practice, the ever growing practice of resiliency, it's not, you know, it's not tangental it's, it's a spectrum. And if you just keep practicing it, you know, you're gonna get better and better at it. And that is a really hopeful idea for someone as controlling and type A, someone like myself, you know, because especially I think about empaths and perfectionist and all of all of us out there who have these tendencies to just beat up ourselves or to just sit in the negativity and that's so harmful and that's not to say that your feelings don't have value, you know, have some some merit to him. But this practice of just letting go moving on forgiving yourself forgiving others, it's got to be something that builds a whole human. So I love that tone setting. And I want to move to something that I feel like and I'm going to ask you Is this a starting point because I want to talk about vulnerability. Because this is a word we use on the podcast, probably almost every other episode, because we saw something really startling happening in our organization, when we work within nonprofit that when you are vulnerable, when you show up and put yourself out there, yes, it's frightening, but, but then you become a magnet to other people who are vulnerable, and they gravitate towards wanting to know that story. So I want you to talk a little bit about this practice of vulnerability and the importance of it, in our workplace and in our lives.
Yeah, I'd love to do that. I love what the two of you also said, Jon, about parenting, and Becky about control and perfection, I think it's worth mentioning something about that before I dive right into vulnerability if that's okay and I'll tie it to vulnerability. Bonus.
What a pro.
You know, as parents, I think part of demonstrating vulnerability and helping our children cultivate resilience through the practice of vulnerability is being willing to demonstrate uncertainty, and to allow our children to sit in a place of uncertainty that's age appropriate for them. And I'll give you an A practical example of what I mean. So you mentioned my book, The five practices of highly resilient people that's based on two decades of research, interviewing hundreds of people collecting 1000s of pieces of data, to really understand how we as humans, effectively face the inevitable moments of challenge and what we can do in those moments to create a more positive and productive outcome. And so when my son, my younger son, Sawyer, he's eight now he's in third grade, when he was going into kindergarten, we went to go register him for kindergarten. And lo and behold, he was like six, on the waitlist. And we were like, a waitlist for kindergarten. We did not know, well apparently in our district, kindergarten is not required. So even though we live in the catchment, first grade, you know, you can go no matter what if you live in the catchment, but kindergarten, they're not required to provide. So here we are six on the waitlist. Summer goes by, you know, he's moving up. Now. He's number one on the waitlist. And so they were bringing all the kindergarteners together for kind of the pre-school meeting. And I said, well, is it okay, if I, if I bring my son, you know, he's first on the waitlist? And they said, Well, yeah, but like, what are you going to tell him if he doesn't get in, and I was like, I'm going to tell him that he's first on the waitlist, we're not 100% sure that he's going to get enrolled in this school, there's a good possibility. And we're going to go to the, you know, the kindergarten day and, you know, fingers crossed, and if not, we've got option B. And I think that's a really great example of how we can in an age appropriate way, allow our children to experience some kernels of uncertainty and not just protect them from what it means to engage with that level of, of ambiguity. And so when we think about that, we think about vulnerability, right, then, you know, through the lens of nonprofits, so, of the five practices of highly resilient people, we have vulnerability, which is the foundational practice, I'll come back to that in a moment. We've got productive perseverance, which is the intelligent pursuit of a goal, knowing when to maintain the mission in the face of challenge and when to pivot in a new direction in the face of diminishing returns. The third practice is connection. This is both the connection that we have with ourselves that guards against burnout, exhaustion, overwhelmed things, people in nonprofits and people who are of service are experiencing, and then the connection that we have with the with the world right with our friends, our family, our community, the people we serve. The fourth practice is the practice of gradiosity This is a word that I made up to demonstrate what I was hearing from people. And the first part is gratitude, being able to look on a challenge typically after some time, and to say, Okay, I didn't want that circumstance necessarily, and I can see the good in it. And then the second half of that is generosity, being able and willing to share our resilient stories generously so that others can learn vicariously through coaching through mentorship. And then the fifth practice is the practice of possibility, which is all about evaluating the dichotomy that exists between risk and opportunity, anytime we face challenge and look at a new possibility. Okay, so back to vulnerability. So vulnerability, like resilience, I think has been, in some ways, highly misunderstood. So vulnerability, the definition is allowing our inside self, our thoughts, our feelings, and our experience, to as closely as possible, match the outside self that we share with the world. Right? The bigger the gap between the inside self and the outside self, the more energy we're going to burn. Because we're essentially running two versions of ourselves. We're running two operating systems simultaneously, I feel like crap inside, but I'm pretending that everything's okay.
I feel very exposed right now.
The closer those things you are to each other, we call that in psychology congruence, right? The less energy we're going to burn. Also, when we face challenge, when we're able to be vulnerable, when we're able to allow our inside self to match the outside self to the greatest extent possible that we're sharing with the world, then people are like, Aha, I see some things going on the Jon, aha, see, something's going on with Becky, let me help you. And so when we, when we show that to people, we more effectively face challenge and therefore demonstrate greater resilience. Because we're getting more support, more information, right, people are coming around us with the things that we need and want to effectively address that challenge. So that's why vulnerability is really the foundational principle of resilience, it informs the other practices. And it also allows us to be one person or as close to one person in the world. And I'll say one more thing about that in a moment. But I want to take a pause because I've been talking for a long time.
And blowing our minds.
I know, there's a lot of things that I want to talk about. First, you created a word, and I want to use that word and everything you're saying, I'm just like, you know, the reason we literally clear our desk off to say, let's take a week, in October to talk really, specifically to nonprofit professionals is that what you're saying, like is our daily practice, you know, I think that there's a lot of roles that you have to play and maybe masks you have to wear to try to build these relationships that we think we have to do. And then you've got the element of the beneficiaries that we're working with, it's so heavy, and it just kind of all converging here, but you're the picture you're painting, I want to kind of toss it back to you with this to say, the power of vulnerability to me, comes alive in the power of community, right? Because that's where it all matters anyway. So building a community of people that see you and you're being authentic to feels like it's gotta be fundamental to be able to have this 2.0 to talk about when something's not right, you already have to have this community around you. Right?
Yes. And what you shared that there, Jon, is so powerful, in part, because I think so many people, not just those that are listening can relate to what you said. And what really jumped out for me was this idea of not quite the word you said. But this idea of like impression management, you know, we feel like we need to act and be a certain way and look like we've got our life like held together to a certain degree. And we have this belief that if we get vulnerable with people, if we allow our inside self to match the outside self that we share with the world, that somehow that's going to be a turnoff for people or somehow that's going to discredit us. And so as you know, as I've been doing this work for two decades, I started to think to myself, Okay, we're starting to talk about this idea of like vulnerability being good for us personally vulnerability, vulnerability being good for us professionally. You know, Brene Brown talks about vulnerability and living a wholehearted life. So I'm like, Okay, I mean, Brene Brown says so yeah, like, why aren't we running out our most fabulous vulnerable life like what what gives? You know. And so I dove into this. And what I found is a concept that I call the vulnerability bias. And here's how the vulnerability bias works. We think to ourselves, I'm going to share something authentic, right. And by the way, vulnerability is the precursor to authenticity, and, and empathy. We can't be authentic or empathetic without connecting with something vulnerable within ourselves. So we think to ourselves, I'm gonna be authentic, or I'm gonna be vulnerable. But then there's some hard wiring in our brain that lights up and says, That's a terrible idea. Do not do that. In fact, if you tell those people who you really are, if you allow them to see you and know you, the three L's will occur. And the three L's our people aren't going to like you. People aren't gonna love you. And they might leave. We're like, crap. Now, you'd have to go and throw the abandonment in there, too. Like that is too much. I am just going to stay put right here with this nice facade that everything's cool. Right? And so the vulnerability bias appears to be this hardwired? Thing, technical term, of course, in our brains, that keeps us from being vulnerable. And the only way to face this irrational fear is to face the irrational fear. And so it's, it's by doing and by cultivating, giving it a try, and maybe it goes well, or maybe it doesn't go well, and then saying, Okay, well, what did I learn in that moment, right. So very few people are just naturally vulnerable for everyone that I speak to, it's very difficult. And so it also has tremendous benefits, especially as we talk about the nonprofit sector. Because what vulnerability does is it allows us to have one operating system. And to get that information to get the resources to get the support that we need to fill ourselves up. And to keep going.
I aspire to have one operating system. And I'll I'll share just like this little nugget about my own story. And I bet there's hundreds, if not 1000s of people listening who will understand this. But when I was a gift officer in nonprofit, you know, I used to have a boss that would tell me make sure that the donor doesn't fall in too much in love with you specifically, because they need to fall in love with the mission. And you need to somehow separate yourself from being the thing of which you are selling, because the mission is the thing that you're selling. And that was such a disconnect for me. Because my passion was connected to the mission. And because I had story within the mission, and I am a very wear my heart on my sleeve, kind of an individual. And I felt like there was this attempt to, you know, have two operating systems to Jon's point, wear a mask and tone myself down. And the exhaustion, exhaustion of that, you know, led to your point earlier, there was no congruence, I mean, it divided me from the work more because I couldn't see myself in the work. And I just think what you're saying about and we we have also have a technical term for it, it's called trying stuff, like try something different. Like, if this is very hard for you to put yourself out there. One, I just want to like love you in that moment and say it's okay, because I'm married to someone who has a very hard time putting themselves out there vulnerable vulnerably. However, I feel like you're giving everybody permission, Taryn to not only just try it, but to feel and understand how good it feels, when you do get to that one place of one operating system. And you can be what my therapist calls true self, you're in true self all the time. And that feels good. And when we feel good, we have more energy and more spirit to dive into the work more we have more energy to dive into the things that bring us joy outside of work. So I just love this conversation so much and in the way that you're saying it is so human. You've given us a high level definition of these five practices of highly resilient people, but we want to dive into them. Because nonprofit professionals are frequently overworked, they're underpaid. They're juggling a lot of things all at once. We call it wearing many hats and for some reason we use that as a point of pride. But talk to us about these five practices and talk about it through the lens of leadership, if you would talk about that as well.
I love everything that you said about true self and congruence. You know, that's so powerful. And when I think about when I think about the five practices, right, I think it's important to mention right here, that and to remind ourselves that we're talking about resilience. And we're talking about in these inevitable moments, when challenge or change or complexity shows up in our life, it's when not if this is how we effectively face these inevitable moments, the sort of fabric of what it means to be human. And I think it's also important to mention the role that challenge change and complexity play in our lives. Because what I've also learned in this work, is that there's a pretty well embedded set of beliefs out there, that we think that we should always have to be careful about the word should, right that engenders a sense of sense of shame, right? We should cue the shame, be able to engineer challenge change and complexity out of our lives, right? So I was speaking with a CEO that I'm coaching, and he's going through a difficult time. And he said, I'm like, I'm a good person, and I've taken care of people. And I've made the right choices, and I've worked hard. So why am I facing all of this challenge? And I said, you know what, you're not wrong. And wouldn't it be lovely if life actually worked that way? But it doesn't, right. And it's this idea that like, if we do a good job, if we're strategic, if we're intelligent, if we donate to our nonprofits, if we give our life to service, shouldn't we like be relieved of this, like pesky, crappy experience? And the answer is no. And not only is the answer, no, we actually don't want to engineer challenge, change and complexity out of our lives. Because these are the catalytic moments that allow us to learn about ourselves, to learn about others, and to truly amplify and grow in ourselves, in our strength, in our wisdom, in our resilience, right. And so the five practices are very much about anytime we faced challenge, which we don't want to engineer out of our lives, what can we do to create a more positive and productive outcome? So I wanted to just frame that piece.
Beautiful, I want you to think about the nonprofit professional through the lens of these five practices and break them down for us talk about what can be learned from each of them and how we can start to implement them.
So I think I think we got a good sense of vulnerability,yeah?
Yeah. Feel good about that.
Totally.
Okay. So next one is productive perseverance. So this is the intelligent pursuit of a goal. Now, a lot of us have heard about this concept or this term called Grit. Yeah, get really gritty, and challenge shows up and we're gritty to keep going. Right? Which is wonderful. It's a wonderful concept. It's a wonderful term, it's been so meaningful for so many people. And grit is not the whole story. Right? So grit is not synonymous with resilience. It's, it's a component of resilience, and it's a component of this practice. So productive perseverance is about knowing when to maintain the mission, when to be gritty, if you will, in the face of challenge. And this works really well, when our environment isn't going to change dramatically. You want to become a Navy Seal, you're gonna get gritty, it's gonna get tough. You want to graduate from the Naval Academy, you want to become a surgeon. Those are moments where you're going to persevere in the face of challenge. However, what's happened for many of us recently is our environment continues to shift and change in really dynamic ways. And so if we simply put our head down toward our goal, and get gritty about it, we're going to miss the fact that things are really shifting and changing. So the other side of the coin of productive perseverance is knowing when to pivot, right. Knowing when to make small incremental changes or big sweeping changes because we realize what we're doing isn't working. You know, when we face diminishing returns, it's okay to change course or even stop doing something, you know, quitting, in quotes, has has such a bad name, right? It's okay to quit if we find that things aren't working. And so productive perseverance is about for the nonprofit, professional, the intelligent pursuit of your goals, you might try something and find this isn't working, or this isn't working in the way that we thought it was, or this piece is working, but this isn't. And so it's the incremental changes and shifts and evaluation in our strategy and our delivery, and our operating system and the way that we work and serve people, that allows us, you know, to find the best path forward and to align with our current environment.
I mean, I love that because we're challenging leaders all the time. A to have a growth mindset. But if you're trying stuff you got to celebrate when stuff fails, because you tried, again, like let's celebrate and we got out there, and went for it. But it allows us to get back up. And when we talk to the most like progressive organizations, we just had New Story on the podcast, like that's just baked into their DNA, because they're constantly innovating, which means they're gonna not always succeed. And so, I love I love that you lifted that.
Yeah, I like to say that failure is an answer. Successes and answer, not trying is a lifetime of not knowing. And a lot of times we get stuck in a cycle of I'm afraid I'm going to fail so I'm not going to try. Failure is an answer. Successes is an answer. Not trying is a lifetime of not knowing.
I want to pitch something to you, because it's become a recurring theme in our community. And I would love your insight on this, because I really want to compliment our community here. I mean, this is a growth mindset community. If you listen to podcasts, you're already, you know, a learner, you're already curious. And people who keep coming back and pouring in to We Are For Good or into themselves. They're actively working on trying to grow on trying to learn, I'm trying to innovate. One of the places we see people getting stuck, is they're saying, I want to progress. I want to try things, I want to be vulnerable. But I don't have a leader who supports that. Or I'm not working in a culture where that's encouraged. What message would you give to leaders in this sector who are trying to cultivate this as a practice, as a mindset? And really trying to shepherd cultures where resiliency, vulnerability, authenticity are wholly baked in to everything that we do?
Yeah, it's such a great question. You know, I think the first thing is really understanding what vulnerability is, and what aspects of vulnerability are going to be productive, and what aspects of vulnerability maybe aren't productive. So one of the things that I talk about in my book is this idea of genuine versus performance performative vulnerability. Now, if you turn on any, you know, just about any reality television show, you know, on Netflix, or wherever you get your, you know, your television, if you watch that, you're probably going to see some demonstration of like performative vulnerability, right? Which is like egoic. It's looking at me, it's, you know, impression management, this kind of thing. Whereas genuine vulnerability is about sharing an aspect of ourselves that deepens a tie or a connection between people, between a team, between an organization, between community, right? So if someone comes to me and says, my leader doesn't support vulnerability, right, then my next thought is like, okay, well, how are they thinking about vulnerability? Because we think about vulnerability in the sense that this is deepening a connection between people, teams, a community, is there someone who would really raise their hand and say, I don't? I don't support that? Probably. Right. But first, I think it's about the reframe. And then second, it's about what is vulnerability look like in practice that because people hear vulnerability, and they're like, not airing out my dirty laundry, it's not my thing, right? That's fine, right? Please, like do keep your dirty laundry at home. Like we don't, you know, we don't necessarily need to see it. Right. And it's about okay, so so what is this sort of like stance on vulnerability, so I coached a woman in the in the corporate sector, who was transitioning, and I think there's some applicability here, she'd grown up in marketing. She's a high potential leader. And so we did to her as an organization, what you do to leaders that you really value you pick them up and you put them in a new part of the organization, you say sink or swim, good luck to you. And we know you don't have any relationships, and let's just see what you can do here. So we picked her up at a marketing put her in operations. So she's like, I'm just gonna go to the team, and I'm gonna tell him like, I don't really know why I'm here. And like, I don't know, anything and, you know, hopefully make it through and, and that kind of thing. And I was like, Yeah, but like, what are you trying to accomplish? What's your goal with that? You know, and she's like, well, I want to lower expectations and being vulnerable. Okay, you're also discrediting yourself. So, what we decided was, you know, that she was gonna go to her team and say, I love this organization. I've been here for two decades, I have deep experience in marketing, I have a ton of transferable skills. Operations is brand new for me, I'm so excited to be here, I can't wait to learn from you, got an exciting agenda and strategy ahead, and to partner with each of you to really learn from you. And to, you know, to make this a very collaborative team, right. In both cases, she was being vulnerable, but one of them discredited her and one of them create a deeper connection and enhance that credibility. So when we talk about like, my leaders, not for a vulnerability, what is your thing? What is your leader think vulnerability is?
Oh hard stop.
Well, I think to my personality would be to like, be self deprecating, and like step away and go into this place of discrediting yourself when that's, that's taking away this power this, you know, either maybe it's your love your passion, or maybe it's this expertise that you had, like that's, that's not a good default, either. You know, and I think you coaching in that way, I think all of us can think of ways that that could really shape the way that we show up, it's so vulnerable, but it's not in a way that puts us down, and the thread of optimism and everything that you're saying to I think there's magic in that, you know, and that's been since the beginning of this conversation today. And just interacting with you offline, too, is like, I think there's power in that positive energy that you're putting out in the world, as well.
Yeah, I want to I want to underscore something that both of you said that, I think is incredibly powerful, which is disempowerment, discrediting ourselves or being self deprecating is not vulnerable. You know, that's the stuff that we've learned in middle school, when we were feeling insecure, where we're like, Hey, I'm going to point out this thing about myself before anybody else can.
Oh, my God, that is so true.
Okay, my mind's blown. Holy cow, I'm going to be re-listening to this, thank you for this therapy session that's tied up in this incredible talk today, let's go at activation, you know, because all of us are trying to apply this in real time to our situations, what are some tools and resources that you would start to, you know, connect us to as we're trying to lean into vulnerability and building resiliency in our lives?
You know, there's, there's so many ways that we can do this, it doesn't take a lot of time. Sometimes the pushback that I'll get from organizations is like, we're already so busy, we can't just like do an extra thing. And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not asking you to do an extra thing, right? I'll use a sports analogy here, because it's helpful. You know, if we're all baseball players or softball players, right, I'm not going to ask you to go swim a bunch of laps, right? What we're gonna do here is is batting practice, we're going to deepen our resilience in the context of the things that we're doing that are already meaningful, and already matter. And so one of the things that I talk about is opening up our meetings with a different way of connecting with one another. And a great way to do that is through this exercise called rose, bud, and thorn, right? And each of us go around the room. And we talk about for two minutes, right? And that in the leader, right, can can sort of role model and demonstrate this right, so two minutes, and we say rose, something that is a success in our life, or a celebration, thorn, something that is a failure, a challenge, you know, something we're working through. And the bud is something that's emerging in our life, that's blooming that we're excited about. Right? So rather than just going around the room and saying, like, Well, how was everybody's weekend, right, can go around and do rose, bud and thorn. And what we get is a deeper relationship, a deeper connection, greater vulnerability, because people are now talking from a human place. So these are some of the practical things that we can start to implement. Here's another one. So I developed this concept that's called the reverse bucket list. And this is a this is an experiential exercise that I do with teams to demonstrate how genuine vulnerability is powerful in being able to amplify our resilience and to create deeper connection amongst teams. So we all know what a bucket list is, right? The pleasurable things that we want to do on this planet while we're here, right? And yet, you know, and so much of this work is like looking within myself and being like, well, is resilience out there? Or like, is resilience actually like an essence of who we are? Right? So this is another one of those moments where I was like, hey, these bucket list things that I'm privileged to do are really nice. But it's actually the hard stuff, where I learned the most about myself where I got the greatest, you know, ROI, if you will. And so I thought, well, what if there's a thing like a reverse bucket list, and the reverse bucket list is like, all the stuff we hope to avoid to avoid, you know, job loss, bankruptcy, health, diagnosis, you know, rejection, disappointment, you know, all those, all that stuff. And so what we do as a team, is we have people think about a reverse bucket list item that happened in their life, what, what was that thing? And then to reflect on? How did that moment of challenge change or complexity, form them into the person that they are today? Right. And depending on how vulnerable the team feels, I say, like, Look, you don't necessarily have to share the thing, right? If you don't want to say that you got divorced, if you don't want to say that you lost your job, if you don't want to say that you don't have to right, you can simply talk about what this challenge taught you and how it's formed you into the person that you are today. And what this does is it gives us an opportunity to really understand experientially in the moment, the power of vulnerability and the power of challenge, because now we're looking at the thing that we hope to avoid, looking at what did we learn about ourselves, and how have I been expanded and amplified for the good as a result of having had this experience?
What a powerful exercise, and I just got to add, and I think you're saying this, when you do it in community, it's going to dispel some of the myths that you think you have about people's perceptions of you. Because people are going to support you, when you're vulnerable, most likely, you know, if they're a human being with a soul, you know, because that we've all been there, putting ourselves out. And I will just share that the feeling that I hate more than any other and life is regret. And if we're not practicing some of these things, and putting ourselves out there, again, to your earlier point, we're just living in the wonder of what would have happened, what could have happened, you know, and we're not even to the should, we're just to the could and you have all the power in your voice, do it and community, do it with people that you trust, if that's the way to sort of exercise yourself into this practice of vulnerability, find people you can trust to do this with. Because I honestly think it's going to be a social experiment for everybody where everybody gets to learn from your vulnerability, they might share back. And that in itself is extremely powerful. I'm extremely lucky that I have Jon and Julie here that do that for me all the time. And I can show up as myself. And they'll point out, you know, when I have broccoli in my teeth, but they're so loving with it, so find your people gather in community. If you don't have one hang out here DMS. We would love to be your community. So okay, Taryn, you've given us so much good information today. We want to transition into story and we believe story is one of the great connectors have humanity. Is there a story of philanthropy or of your work that you have felt changed by that you'd like to share with us today?
Yeah, absolutely. The story that I'd love to share with you. And the organization that I'd love to point to is organization called the African Community and Conservation Foundation. And I've been an ambassador with them for I want to say four or five years now. And what I love about I love so many things about their work. And a couple of the things that really stand out for me. One is, well, first, let me tell you what they do. So they work, unsurprisingly, in Africa. And they're focused on wildlife conservation, on the environment, and also on the communities of people that live and have their home there. And so what I love about this is so many organizations are simply focused on maybe one leg of the stool, right climate change or saving the rhinos, you know, and here there's this holistic community approach, which is is very much about how do we look at this in a way that's broad and inclusive, uplift the people that are living around the animals and these important ecosystems ensure that they're not just their basic needs, but that their their needs for health and education and living a beautiful life are being met. How do we think about climate? And then how do we also think about protecting this profoundly important and delicate ecosystem relative to the animals that live there? And to me, being able to think about this holistically in community of people, animals and environment just make so much darn sense.
You've given us so much today. And I just can feel your heart through that story. And I love whenever we find charities that just like line up with our personal values, like you're a rabid fan of that mission. And that's, I think, the end game for all of us that are running organizations are to find people that just clicked with it. And I think that's another example of just go find your people because you would do anything for them. So let's round out this episode, we always ask for a one good thing. This is could be a mantra or something you just want to leave with our community today as we kind of wrap up this conversation with one good thing.
You know, what's what's coming up for me organically in this moment, is the power of simple pleasures and presence. I think we remember Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now that was published, you know, many years ago. And I'm continually reminded about the power of now about the power of living in this moment, and the presence and the energetic signature, that I bring, with me, or sort of to all of my interactions. And so, you know, in this moment, I think the good thing or the, the place where I'm being reminded right in, in the event that this speaks to you or speaks to others is the power of presence and the power of the simple pleasures of this moment.
I mean, Taryn just loved on us right there at the end, you loved on yourself and you loved on us. I just think this has been such a helpful conversation on so many levels, and I know people are gonna want to connect with you. So please tell us you know, where they can find you online. Tell us about your book, Flourish or Fold: The Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People. Tell us where to get it and when it's going to drop?
Woo, I just I found a link yesterday on Barnes and Noble. And there the book was.
Congrats, congratulations.
Yay!
Congratulations, it's real.
Like my child was delivered and no one told me.
Barnes and Nobles. Where else, where else can they find you?
Yeah, so I just saw the presale link on on Barnes and Noble. And I can share that with you if you want to, you know, drop it in the show notes. We're so darn excited about this book. Because what it does is it brings two decades of research and interviews with hundreds of people and 1000s of pieces of data, books, interviews, research articles, and it brings it all together in a super accessible way that I'm so excited about. And we've got this amazing team at Hachette, which I'm just so honored to work with they're top three publisher and my executive editor actually worked with Brene Brown and helped her bring Daring Greatly into the world. And so I just am beyond honored and pumped that we get to work with her and just to tap into her big brain about how we can make this maximally meaningful and accessible for people. And you can find me on Instagram, Dr. Taryn Marie, we post lots of inspirational things there daily, also LinkedIn. My organization is called the Resilience Leadership Institute. And the organization that I spoke about earlier African Community and Conservation Foundation, @AfricanCCF on Instagram.
Thank you, Taryn so much. I just feel like you've been a little breath of fresh air for our community, and hope that everyone listening taps into those resources, which we'll add those also to our mental health resources page for the week.
Thank you so much. What an honor to be here with all of you. And here's to you and to everyone listening to your resilience movement, right? Here's the you know, here's the conversation and I'm so delighted to hear from those of you that listened in today, how this impacts your life, and what you're doing with this work and with this content that personalizes it for you and makes it your own, makes it your own resilience movement.
Thanks for joining us for these powerful discussions about mental health. If you'd like to dig deeper, we're continuing the conversation in the We Are For Good Community here we'll double click on some of the topics and support each other and community. Come join us. It's free at weareforgoodcommunity.com
