In this live recording for a large group of students I share some powerful insights into how anyone can increase the level of resilience in their lives. I explore a key definition of resilience and why it is a topic that is being talked about so frequently. I also share two major theoretical frameworks and a series of practical things you can start doing to increase the level of resilience in your life.
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Transcript
Well, hey there, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Thanks so much for taking a moment to check out this short presentation on this
Speaker:crucial and important topic of resilience.
Speaker:You are about to hear a live presentation that I gave to a large group of
Speaker:high school students on this really crucial issue that seems to be getting
Speaker:more and more coverage these days.
Speaker:In this presentation, I'm gonna define what resilience actually.
Speaker:. I'm gonna talk about why it's becoming so much more important
Speaker:in the last few decades, and then we're gonna do two things.
Speaker:They're gonna give you some theoretical frameworks about how you can think
Speaker:about resilience, that'll really help you grow in the whole area.
Speaker:And then we're gonna do some practical stuff.
Speaker:I'm gonna give you some practical things you can do to really grow and improve in.
Speaker:Of resilience.
Speaker:I don't know about you, but it is a complex, challenging,
Speaker:demanding time in human history.
Speaker:There is so much coming at us.
Speaker:So this presentation is about helping all of us grow in this
Speaker:crucial strength of resilience.
Speaker:How we can s.
Speaker:Bring back into shape when all the challenges of life hit us.
Speaker:Now, this presentation, as I said, was given to a large group of high
Speaker:school students, but you can apply this anywhere, whether you are eight
Speaker:or 80, there are principles here that you can use in family, in your
Speaker:personal life, in your business life.
Speaker:So make sure you stay to the very end.
Speaker:because that's where the real gold is.
Speaker:Wanna do the practical steps underneath here, Wherever you're watching,
Speaker:there's a whole bunch of links.
Speaker:Go and check out the link, uh, to find out how you can book me to speak live.
Speaker:I do this presentation live for groups all over the world,
Speaker:businesses, schools, students, uh, whatever organization you're with.
Speaker:Go and check out the links here.
Speaker:Find out how you can book me to come and do this presentation live.
Speaker:I think you can really agree with me that, um, there's always something special and
Speaker:we're in a live room with real humans.
Speaker:All right, that's it for me.
Speaker:We're gonna jump into the presentation.
Speaker:I'll catch up with you again at the end, but, uh, I really hope that this helps
Speaker:you to grow and helps you to flourish.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:I'll see you on the other end.
Speaker:I'm here to do a really simple sales job.
Speaker:I need to sell you on the concept of resilience in a very short space of time.
Speaker:Resilience.
Speaker:What is it and why would you want it?
Speaker:Is it possible?
Speaker:Maybe we don't want it.
Speaker:Maybe we want less resilience.
Speaker:So what I'm gonna do over the time I have with you is just bring your
Speaker:three, three pillars really simply.
Speaker:I always like people to know where we're going over the course
Speaker:of a short presentation step.
Speaker:What is resilience?
Speaker:We can't improve something without defining it, right?
Speaker:We want to know what it is.
Speaker:Then we need to decide if we want it, if it's useful to us, and
Speaker:then we need to decide how we go about actually getting more of it.
Speaker:Step two is why is it a bigger issue now than it ever has been before?
Speaker:For example, when I sat where you sit at your age, I, I could
Speaker:tell you I'd never heard of it.
Speaker:Like I went through the whole of my secondary schooling.
Speaker:I never heard it mentioned.
Speaker:. It's a relatively new phenomenon, only something we're talking
Speaker:about much more, more recently, and I think that's important.
Speaker:So we wanna know why we're talking about it more now because if you
Speaker:understand that, that can be helpful.
Speaker:Final stage is, um, what can we do to increase it?
Speaker:We're gonna define it, we're gonna decide why it's more important, and
Speaker:then I'm gonna give you two parameters by which you can increase it, right?
Speaker:I'm gonna give you some theoretical things you can think.
Speaker:Conceptual frameworks, then I'll give you practical things you can do.
Speaker:There is no point in sitting in a room for this long and simply walking away
Speaker:thinking, Well, that wasn't too terrible.
Speaker:I need to make sure we give you something you can actually put into practice.
Speaker:Yeah, something actually changes things.
Speaker:Otherwise, we're all amusing ourselves for no good purpose.
Speaker:So friends, we begin with this, the concept of what is resilience.
Speaker:Resilience does not come to us from psych.
Speaker:Many of you would automatically think, given these things, that it
Speaker:is a mental thing we gotta make.
Speaker:Did it come from psychology?
Speaker:Did it come from sociology?
Speaker:It actually comes to us from science, and I want you to
Speaker:see the scientific definition.
Speaker:Once you see that, we'll take it a step further.
Speaker:Scientific definition, the capability of a strained body object to recover
Speaker:its size and shape after deformation.
Speaker:Caused, especially by compressive stress, you're they going,
Speaker:How is that relevant to me?
Speaker:And why are we here?
Speaker:I picked this up in the office just for our left, there's a micro, a microphone
Speaker:cover for an SM seven B microphone.
Speaker:Now, if you look at this, this is a body, it's a physical object, right?
Speaker:If I add compressive stress to it, I'm gonna compress it.
Speaker:It's resilience in the scientific.
Speaker:Is whether or not it regains its original shape after deformation.
Speaker:Let's watch it.
Speaker:We're gonna deform it with compressive stress.
Speaker:Yeah, we let it go.
Speaker:It immediately returns to its original shape.
Speaker:That's resilience.
Speaker:That's where it comes to us from the ability of an object to experience
Speaker:pressure, compressive stress.
Speaker:And return to its original shape.
Speaker:So this thing, theoretically, we could say scientifically has a
Speaker:reasonable amount of resilience here.
Speaker:We could do this over and over and over and over again, and we would
Speaker:find that it's particularly resilient.
Speaker:You with me?
Speaker:All right, ju, do me a favor.
Speaker:Good man.
Speaker:Come up front here for me.
Speaker:This is another body, it's physical object.
Speaker:This is a box that Olivia and Karen took to Sydney with tea bags.
Speaker:Peppermint for Olivia English.
Speaker:Breakfast for Karen Jude.
Speaker:Um, I'm gonna place that there.
Speaker:Would you please provide downward compressive stress to
Speaker:that physical object for me?
Speaker:All right, grab a seat.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Well done.
Speaker:You know, you, you know what's gonna happen Jude.
Speaker:I'm gonna get home and Karen go, Have you seen that car box of my tea?
Speaker:I can't find it anywhere.
Speaker:Physical body compressive.
Speaker:Stress.
Speaker:See its resilience.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You with me?
Speaker:You getting principle?
Speaker:This one.
Speaker:This one.
Speaker:Different objects, different levels of compressive stress, different results.
Speaker:This is not retaining its shape.
Speaker:This is not going back to what it was.
Speaker:So let's take it to the way that we would understand it.
Speaker:It's our ability to recover from stress, suffering, rejection, or
Speaker:adversity to recover, to retain our.
Speaker:For each one of you in this room to go through difficult, possibly
Speaker:traumatic, painful experiences of suffering, rejection, who knows trauma.
Speaker:We're not going down that rabbit hole with anybody individually,
Speaker:but you live long enough.
Speaker:There is not a single one of you in this room.
Speaker:They're gonna put their hand up and say that you have not experienced something.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So the question becomes, what do you do with that?
Speaker:How do you recover from it?
Speaker:Is it simply genetics Does, you know?
Speaker:Is it Colleen?
Speaker:Do you just recover better than Arabella because of genetics?
Speaker:Is it environment?
Speaker:Is it all these different factors?
Speaker:Is it fair that some of us would just get really good at, Some of us wouldn't.
Speaker:So this is what I think resilience means.
Speaker:Some people recover.
Speaker:Some people don't.
Speaker:Let's make it practical.
Speaker:Girls, you're in a friendship group.
Speaker:Someone says something about you post something about
Speaker:you, does something to you.
Speaker:It is an experience of this.
Speaker:Do you recover shape?
Speaker:At what rate?
Speaker:At what speed?
Speaker:What do you tell yourself about it?
Speaker:Men, you have an experience of failure.
Speaker:Failure for us is kind of the parallel of rejection for women.
Speaker:These are big, broad ideas.
Speaker:Not every.
Speaker:. But when we experience failure, rejection, suffering, stress or
Speaker:adversity, do we regain shape?
Speaker:It is highly possible to have low resilience and never get better.
Speaker:So this isn't the Happy Seminar where I tell you everything's gonna work
Speaker:out for everybody cuz it just doesn't.
Speaker:It can't we, We know it doesn't.
Speaker:But there are definitely things we can do.
Speaker:So let me show you a picture here.
Speaker:Down the front there is my.
Speaker:And this is my grandfather.
Speaker:A man I never met, died 30 years before I was born.
Speaker:My father in that photograph's about 13 or 14, and my grandfather
Speaker:within about 18 months, died horribly in front of my father.
Speaker:My grandfather died at 44, I'm 48.
Speaker:They were a very wealthy family living in England and on a Sunday.
Speaker:My grandfather had a massive heart attack in his bathroom, and we only figured out
Speaker:the details many years later by joining a bunch of dots at my father, who was
Speaker:the oldest of five boys, ran outside the house, climbed up a drainpipe,
Speaker:got into the bathroom and dragged him away, but then he died in front of him.
Speaker:A few weeks later, they sent my father to boarding school where he
Speaker:was basically completely traumatized.
Speaker:and he never recovered.
Speaker:And this is the point of this story.
Speaker:He never recovered.
Speaker:He spent the rest of his life with huge issues with depression, eating problems.
Speaker:He never recovered.
Speaker:He's been dead a long time.
Speaker:So I don't say that's a bring the vibe down.
Speaker:I say it because this is what happens.
Speaker:This is what can happen, but it doesn't have to happen.
Speaker:So probably a very large part of the rest of my life, most of my professional.
Speaker:Has been trying to fix this problem.
Speaker:It's weird, right?
Speaker:Some people go, I wonder why he does this stuff, be because of that.
Speaker:Because I saw what it was like for somebody to go through
Speaker:adversity, suffering, setback, and trauma and never recover.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker:It really doesn't.
Speaker:So what we're gonna do is spend time on how we make sure it doesn't happen to you.
Speaker:Because I don't know you, I'm not gonna get to know you very well, so we could
Speaker:probably bring a whole bunch of brilliant psychologists in this room, interview
Speaker:all of you for a couple of days at a time, and we would be able to probably
Speaker:graph you in this room of who's had the worst and who's had the best life so far.
Speaker:But I'm not gonna know that.
Speaker:Second pillar.
Speaker:Second pillar.
Speaker:Why does it seem worse?
Speaker:This concept of resilience, why are we talking about it so much more now?
Speaker:Why didn't I go to a seminar like this in year 12?
Speaker:Here's what I think may be happening.
Speaker:We are all of us.
Speaker:What unites us in the room is homo sapien sapiens.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:It's what we are.
Speaker:We have been in this iteration, Think of it this way, Think
Speaker:of the first ever iPhone.
Speaker:It was about this big.
Speaker:It had a wind up handle on the side.
Speaker:We're now at iPhone 14, right?
Speaker:Just new versions.
Speaker:iPhone coming out.
Speaker:We are basically iPhone 14.
Speaker:As a species, we have been a species like this.
Speaker:Like what?
Speaker:The base of your brain is a limbic system.
Speaker:It's the fight or flight animal brain right here.
Speaker:Behind the bone at the front of your head is your prefrontal cortex where
Speaker:you think about complex issues.
Speaker:We have been like this for about 350,000 years, give or take.
Speaker:We have not changed a great deal in that time.
Speaker:How is this relevant to.
Speaker:Because for I think about 99.9% of those 350,000 years, everybody here
Speaker:lived almost exactly the same way.
Speaker:You lived in very small social groupings.
Speaker:Very rarely more than 200 people, usually somewhere between 10 to 50.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:You never lived with big groups of people.
Speaker:You never traveled more than about 10 kilometers from where you were born, ever.
Speaker:What you did for work if you were male, was whatever your father did for work.
Speaker:Whatever you did as a woman was just decided by the group
Speaker:or tribe that you lived with.
Speaker:All right?
Speaker:What this means is life had a great deal of predictability.
Speaker:Life had a great deal of simplicity.
Speaker:Something that I'm calling if you're taking notes and I won't spend too
Speaker:much time on it, is what I call neural.
Speaker:Neural is to do with neurology, was to do the function of your brain,
Speaker:relatively small neural load.
Speaker:You woke up each morning and it looked pretty much like it did the
Speaker:day before, and you knew that tomorrow was pretty much gonna look like today.
Speaker:The same sorts of people, the same sorts of tasks, the same sorts of
Speaker:expectations day in and day out.
Speaker:So here we are here and that's gone.
Speaker:I reckon it's, I, what I say to people is roundabout here, 18.
Speaker:1860s, we get the industrial revolution.
Speaker:Do not be afraid of, You're sitting there going, Is this a history lesson?
Speaker:No, it's almost finished.
Speaker:But round about 1860s, massive technological changes.
Speaker:We moved into much bigger groupings.
Speaker:There was vastly greater complexity.
Speaker:I think that's some of what's happening.
Speaker:You have been born at a moment where there is enormous complexity and
Speaker:unpredictability in your environment, so your brain is kind of going, I, I'm
Speaker:not, We haven't caught up as a species.
Speaker:We have not caught.
Speaker:To the sheer amount of stuff coming at us.
Speaker:I think that's driving a significant part of it.
Speaker:The social groups we once lived in have fractured, so a lot of those
Speaker:things that held us all together for a long period of time have vanished.
Speaker:All right, that's part two.
Speaker:Done.
Speaker:We're gonna, We're on the home stretch now.
Speaker:You're okay.
Speaker:Do me a favor, turn the person next to you.
Speaker:Look at them.
Speaker:Say, I think it's all gonna be okay.
Speaker:Do that for me please.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So what do we got?
Speaker:We got a definit.
Speaker:Which is what?
Speaker:Your ability to bounce back from rejection, adversity, setback problems.
Speaker:Why is it more of an issue?
Speaker:Because of massive social changes?
Speaker:You need to see this.
Speaker:So when you're under pressure and you're struggling, you can go.
Speaker:It's not because you're a bad person.
Speaker:It's not because you're stupid or you're not as good as someone else.
Speaker:It's because you got born at this moment and we gotta learn how
Speaker:to manage it cuz we are here.
Speaker:God doesn't make mistakes.
Speaker:He's put us here for a reason.
Speaker:What do we do?
Speaker:So what do we do?
Speaker:What can we do?
Speaker:I'm gonna give you two concepts.
Speaker:And then I'm gonna give you practical stuff to do.
Speaker:These two concepts are really powerful.
Speaker:I, I think if you get 'em, they can be really transformative.
Speaker:First one.
Speaker:This is a guy called Victor e Frankel.
Speaker:Anyone heard of Victor Frankel?
Speaker:Anybody in the room?
Speaker:We've got a couple.
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:Uh, been dead a very long time.
Speaker:Fascinating.
Speaker:Start of what we call the third V and e School of Psychotherapy.
Speaker:You've heard of people like Sigmund Freud.
Speaker:He started the first v and e school of psychotherapy.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Cuz they're all from Vienna v nese school psychotherapy.
Speaker:Second guy was Karl Yung.
Speaker:This is the third guy.
Speaker:This is the guy who's a brilliant psychotherapist.
Speaker:, brilliant man, but the backstory is very, very interesting.
Speaker:He was living the dream, highly respected, highly influential,
Speaker:doing amazing work on psychotherapy.
Speaker:Second World War breaks out.
Speaker:He has a Jewish background.
Speaker:He's arrested by the Nazis with his parents, his sisters, and he's
Speaker:taken to the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz in Poland.
Speaker:Arguably somewhere between six to 10 million people end up in this system of
Speaker:concentration camps, of which this is the.
Speaker:Uh, within 24 hours, you are usually gased to death and then put in
Speaker:a gas oven and burned till your ashes fall down like snowflakes.
Speaker:So Frankel is sent here along with vast numbers of other, It
Speaker:wasn't just Jewish people, it was, it was a mix, but predominantly.
Speaker:So why would I show you this?
Speaker:How is it relevant to you and getting better at resilience?
Speaker:So here's the important part of Frankel's.
Speaker:He arrives at Auschwitz and you're basically in one of the most horrific
Speaker:places in human history, right?
Speaker:Everything is stripped from you, usually physically.
Speaker:Uh, you have no power, you have no capacity.
Speaker:Everything's taken from you.
Speaker:You're seeing people die in front of you, are separated from family members.
Speaker:Uh, and then of course you realize that large numbers of the people you love and
Speaker:care about are probably already dead.
Speaker:Both his parents were gas to death and his.
Speaker:, but this is the point.
Speaker:He manages to survive four years in the extermination camps.
Speaker:Comes out the other side.
Speaker:10 days later he goes and sits in a little farmhouse and for two weeks
Speaker:solid, he writes a very important book.
Speaker:Called Man's Search for Meaning.
Speaker:I really recommend that every one of you reads it in this lifetime.
Speaker:If you go to your grave without having read it, that would be unfortunate.
Speaker:Man's search for meaning.
Speaker:Here's the point.
Speaker:Frankel teaches us that in Auschwitz, he observed two kinds of people, not three,
Speaker:not one, two, there were two groups of people who were gonna teach us a lot.
Speaker:He said the first group of people could find absolutely no meaning
Speaker:or purpose in their suffering.
Speaker:They just went, There is no meaning, there is no purpose.
Speaker:There's nothing I can do.
Speaker:I am completely powerless.
Speaker:And he said, those people often died within 24 to 48.
Speaker:He said, they just gave up.
Speaker:He said people sometimes would sit down in a corner and die.
Speaker:Of what?
Speaker:Death.
Speaker:They were just so psychologically traumatized.
Speaker:They would sit there and die at least 50 people a day, ran and
Speaker:threw themselves on the electric fences, 50 people a day rather than
Speaker:than spend another minute there.
Speaker:They're just checking out.
Speaker:We're done.
Speaker:Two groups of people, but he said there was a second.
Speaker:and he said that second group of people were able to do one significant thing,
Speaker:and that's the thing I'm gonna teach you.
Speaker:He said they developed the ability to find a meaning and a purpose in
Speaker:their situation and their suffering.
Speaker:Now, all of the, right now, looking at you, somebody going, What does that mean?
Speaker:That is abstract, right?
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:So here's what he did.
Speaker:He said to himself, I am.
Speaker:in this place.
Speaker:The meaning I am going to tell myself is that I am here in this
Speaker:place because I am going to survive.
Speaker:And when I survive, I am gonna spend the rest of my life telling the rest of the
Speaker:world what happened here and what I have learned, and that single meaning and
Speaker:purpose sustained him for four years.
Speaker:And also allowed him to go on to do the most phenomenal work.
Speaker:Stay with me.
Speaker:Same situation.
Speaker:You could have Victor and you could have someone else.
Speaker:They're in exactly the same circumstance.
Speaker:One is finding an empowering meaning.
Speaker:One is not, one is living, one is dead.
Speaker:So here's what he wrote, one of the quotes that he wrote in his book, and
Speaker:I really want you to concentrate now because very important he says, between
Speaker:stimulus and response, there is a space.
Speaker:in that space is our power to choose our response, and in our response
Speaker:lies our growth and our freedom.
Speaker:Look here.
Speaker:Stimulus and response.
Speaker:What's stimulus?
Speaker:Anything that happens to you that is a stimulus.
Speaker:You are accepted or you are rejected.
Speaker:You ace a test or you fail a test, you get cut off in traffic
Speaker:or you don't get off, cut off in.
Speaker:Everybody likes you or not many people like you.
Speaker:That is the stimulus and there is a space between whatever happens to
Speaker:you and how you respond, and it's usually about that big, and we're
Speaker:gonna talk about that in a minute.
Speaker:So this experience of resilience has a great deal to do with what we are telling
Speaker:ourselves about what happens to us.
Speaker:So you look at my father's.
Speaker:He just never had a, he never found a meaning.
Speaker:He never found a purpose and he never recovered.
Speaker:So girls, let me help you stimulus in response.
Speaker:I, I, These are just general examples, right?
Speaker:I know you are all different, but this is your peer group
Speaker:and you experience rejection.
Speaker:Someone says something does.
Speaker:post something you can all relate to that.
Speaker:Most of the girls in the room, men, I dunno exactly what the same thing
Speaker:would be probably for men at this age.
Speaker:It's usually around inadequacy, will be criticized and told or
Speaker:inadequate or failed in some way.
Speaker:Uh, that's just a guess.
Speaker:Whatever happens, there's this space and whatever you tell yourself in that
Speaker:space determines what happens here.
Speaker:Girls, you get something happen to you.
Speaker:You're like one answer, one, one.
Speaker:Well, it's cuz I'm ugly.
Speaker:It's because no one likes me.
Speaker:It's because I don't have the clothes she has.
Speaker:I don't look like her.
Speaker:I don't say what she says.
Speaker:I don't just, I just, That's the story you tell yourself.
Speaker:Is it true?
Speaker:Hell no.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:You can make it true because you can have the same stimulus and you
Speaker:can have a totally different story.
Speaker:You can just have this story.
Speaker:It has two words.
Speaker:Their loss.
Speaker:Their loss, which story is right.
Speaker:It's up to.
Speaker:It's very powerful.
Speaker:So this gets into areas which we won't touch on today.
Speaker:I'm happy to stay for questions afterwards, but
Speaker:people would like to say, Well, does nothing have an objective?
Speaker:Meaning?
Speaker:Well, yes it does, but Victor Frankel teaches us that we can live
Speaker:through the most terrible things, but find a better meaning if we.
Speaker:And for what it's worth, if I can help you with this, if you ask yourself
Speaker:the wrong question, your brain will serve you up some terrible answers.
Speaker:If something happens to you and you say something like, Why
Speaker:does this always happen to me?
Speaker:If you're not very careful, your brain will say something really unhelpful.
Speaker:Cuz one of the things I'm here to preach about just towards the end
Speaker:is I think a large amount of our time, our brain is not on our.
Speaker:and it took me 30 plus years to figure that part out.
Speaker:So you got a stimulus, you got a response, you got a gap, and you
Speaker:could say, No, this isn't true.
Speaker:Take it up with Victor Frankel because he proves at least
Speaker:that one person figured it was.
Speaker:Give you one more example, then we can do the practical stuff.
Speaker:Are, are you with me?
Speaker:Are you, are you Think about your own experiences, think about what hurts.
Speaker:. Think about what you tell yourself.
Speaker:What's the old saying?
Speaker:The mantra.
Speaker:There are no more important words that you will ever hear in your life than
Speaker:the words you say to yourself about yourself when you are by yourself.
Speaker:You heard that before.
Speaker:There are no more important words you'll hear in this life than the words you say
Speaker:to yourself when you are by yourself about yourself of, because you could get it.
Speaker:And it wouldn't be your fault because with all the tech, and I
Speaker:mean, look, you know I get on a sec.
Speaker:Here we go.
Speaker:Second quote, this is a lady called Amanda Ripley.
Speaker:She's American author and journalist, came across her quote yesterday, I
Speaker:did a podcast on resilience and I just found her a quote and it's great.
Speaker:I'm gonna read it to you once.
Speaker:There are three sections to it.
Speaker:I'll break 'em out really quickly and we'll teach 'em
Speaker:and then we're almost done.
Speaker:Resilience is a precious skill.
Speaker:People who have it tend to also have the underlying advantages of what Here we go.
Speaker:One.
Speaker:A belief that they can influence life events.
Speaker:Two.
Speaker:A tendency to find meaningful purpose in life's turmoil.
Speaker:Three.
Speaker:And a conviction that they can learn from both positive and negative experiences.
Speaker:Um, let me give 'em to you one by one.
Speaker:Here they are.
Speaker:Number one.
Speaker:You wanna be.
Speaker:, you have to have a belief that you can do something to influence your life.
Speaker:If you don't, you are in the realm of
Speaker:that is a rat , and I'm not making it up when I tell you I cannot draw a
Speaker:better one than that, shall I Of hands?
Speaker:Who's heard of the term learned helplessness?
Speaker:Learned helplessness.
Speaker:1, 2, 3.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Um, learned helplessness.
Speaker:Grab a seat.
Speaker:Learned helplessness comes from studies they did on rats years ago.
Speaker:They put all these rats in cages, two different groups.
Speaker:One group got electric shocks randomly.
Speaker:There's nothing they could could do.
Speaker:They just get a shock here.
Speaker:Shocked there.
Speaker:Shocked.
Speaker:15 seconds, shocked.
Speaker:12 seconds, shocked.
Speaker:30 seconds, just randomly shocked.
Speaker:The other group of rats were able to press a lever that
Speaker:could stop the shocks happening.
Speaker:Here's the point, the ones that couldn't do anything.
Speaker:They did all these brain scans and tests on all sorts of hormone
Speaker:levels in the rats, and the ones that couldn't do anything to change
Speaker:their circumstance just died.
Speaker:It's called learned helplessness.
Speaker:It's when a dog curls up in a ball to protect itself cuz it's being
Speaker:attacked and it can't do anything else.
Speaker:So you do not want be in learn helpless.
Speaker:You always want to be in a place that goes, no matter what
Speaker:happens, I can influence this.
Speaker:Even if you cannot change the circumstance, you can change the story
Speaker:you are telling yourself about the circumstance, and some of you all say,
Speaker:but you're just changing the story.
Speaker:That's not real.
Speaker:Judge it by its outcomes.
Speaker:Friends, judge it by whatever you wanna know how to, how to judge it.
Speaker:Judge it by whatever helps you to grow, Judge a boy of helps you to become
Speaker:more whole and to contribute more and to enjoy the journey of life more.
Speaker:Judge it by that second.
Speaker:a tendency to find meaningful purpose in life's turmoil.
Speaker:Some of you have been through difficult things.
Speaker:Find a meaning.
Speaker:If you've been through a difficult life, here's one meaning you
Speaker:deserved it, you're gonna repeat it.
Speaker:There's nothing you can do to change it.
Speaker:Different meaning this means I am stronger than people who
Speaker:have not lived through this.
Speaker:This means that I will never repeat these things in my own.
Speaker:Same situation, different meaning a conviction that you can learn from
Speaker:both positive and negative experiences.
Speaker:Example, you get a brilliant mark on a test.
Speaker:Arabella, that's a positive experience.
Speaker:Learn from it.
Speaker:Get it again.
Speaker:Do better.
Speaker:Get 5% more.
Speaker:Arabella, you fail a test.
Speaker:and it's terrible and you just got a D for the semester.
Speaker:You can either go, you failed because you're dumb and you don't do enough work.
Speaker:Or you can go, I failed and I'm gonna improve.
Speaker:I'm gonna work harder.
Speaker:I'm gonna learn the lesson from that.
Speaker:So the ability to go through the highs and the lows and take something from both.
Speaker:So how do we actually become more resilient?
Speaker:What have I just done?
Speaker:I've given you two theoretical frameworks, right?
Speaker:Man, Search for Leaning and Amanda Ripley.
Speaker:I've given you two conceptual things about the stories that you tell yourself.
Speaker:What do we do practic?
Speaker:All right, here we go.
Speaker:How do you become more resilient?
Speaker:Uh, question please.
Speaker:Caleb, you look trustworthy.
Speaker:You ready?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:How do you become a better runner?
Speaker:By running good, man.
Speaker:How do you become a better runner?
Speaker:Brilliant.
Speaker:You run more two and a half thousand years ago in the ancient world, the
Speaker:Greeks, which is kind of my post-graduate background, the Greeks were interested
Speaker:in a really important question.
Speaker:Please let me make this relevant for you.
Speaker:It's very important.
Speaker:It is not ab.
Speaker:. The Greeks wanted to know, were awesome people born that way,
Speaker:or did they become that way?
Speaker:Now you might think, Well, why is that a big question?
Speaker:It was a very big question for them.
Speaker:They were very interested in it.
Speaker:They wanted to know, were people just genetically born that way?
Speaker:Were you just born resilient, more resilient than me?
Speaker:Do you become more resilient than me?
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:The Greeks wanted to know.
Speaker:So Aristotle, one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers, was
Speaker:asked this really important question, which was just this Aris.
Speaker:. How does the courageous person become courageous?
Speaker:Because they were, They loved courage, they loved virtue.
Speaker:They wanted to know are our great courageous histories of Greek tragedy
Speaker:and history, Are they just courageous cuz they were born under a courageous star?
Speaker:Or did they do something?
Speaker:And Aristotle fam hear the question again?
Speaker:Aristotle, How to courageous people become courageous?
Speaker:And he said something really important that you need to hear.
Speaker:Two and a half thousand years later, he.
Speaker:They do courageous things.
Speaker:Simple life principle.
Speaker:Ready?
Speaker:Here it is.
Speaker:If you're taking notes, I'm gonna save you a whole bunch of time in your life.
Speaker:You should say thank you on the way out.
Speaker:Here it comes.
Speaker:Ready . You will become what you do.
Speaker:Madeline.
Speaker:Madeline was made.
Speaker:I was talking about.
Speaker:Yeah, it is you.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I want you to imagine you have a friend and she lies all the time.
Speaker:She just lies all the time, nonstop.
Speaker:Every time you discuss anything, you do, anything.
Speaker:You experience anything.
Speaker:She lies.
Speaker:What would you describe her as?
Speaker:A liar.
Speaker:A liar.
Speaker:So Madeline be, you'd introduce her.
Speaker:Let's call her.
Speaker:Um, gimme a name of girl's.
Speaker:Obsess with L.
Speaker:Somebody please.
Speaker:Lily Lilly.
Speaker:Madeline would go.
Speaker:This is my friend Lilly.
Speaker:Lilly.
Speaker:Lie because Lilly lies friends.
Speaker:If you want to become more resilient, do resilient things.
Speaker:If you want to become holier, do holy things.
Speaker:If you want to become more trustworthy, do trustworthy things.
Speaker:If you wanna become a faster runner, do more running, and you
Speaker:are sitting there going, That's it.
Speaker:That's all you got.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Because no one's getting it these days.
Speaker:It's like, do those things, do resilient things?
Speaker:Let's talk about the resilient things.
Speaker:In seven minutes, in six minutes and 50 seconds, I'm gonna give you a list
Speaker:of things that I think will help you.
Speaker:Things that I do, things that I do to become more resilient.
Speaker:Number one, do hard things.
Speaker:I am not your judge, but you got born in a moment in history
Speaker:that loves a couple of things.
Speaker:Comfort and con.
Speaker:Comfort and consumption.
Speaker:Uber Eats from Uber Eats to Netflix, friends, the entire system.
Speaker:We talked before about, you know, the, the mainstream media running on fear.
Speaker:We are in what's called late stage capitalism.
Speaker:This system runs on consumption.
Speaker:Well, it runs on debt, but the debt drives consumption.
Speaker:Now, the you please see it, it's like me.
Speaker:You ever seen who's seen the old Wizard of Oz, the original
Speaker:movie with the Scary Witch?
Speaker:How scary is she?
Speaker:You've seen her.
Speaker:The green one messed with me.
Speaker:Still messes with me.
Speaker:Seriously.
Speaker:I can't be on my own sometimes.
Speaker:Um, the end scene where they pull the curtain back and the wizard's there
Speaker:and you see 'em pulling all the.
Speaker:That is what we are in is called late stage capitalism,
Speaker:which is simply, um, consume.
Speaker:We need you to consume, consume, consume, consume, and your comfort is the priority.
Speaker:There's a reason the iPhone's called the iPhone.
Speaker:It's about comfort and consumption.
Speaker:It's not your fault.
Speaker:You didn't choose it.
Speaker:You just got born at this time.
Speaker:Friends, this is not a culture that constantly says to you, deny yourself,
Speaker:do difficult things, do hard, possibly painful, challenging, difficult things.
Speaker:You don't hear that very.
Speaker:So do hard things.
Speaker:What does that look like for you?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:It's gonna be diff few cashier from anyone else.
Speaker:It'll be different for you.
Speaker:You've got you's not even typed.
Speaker:I can't even read that.
Speaker:No Miam.
Speaker:Is it gonna be different for Miriam?
Speaker:Miriam's?
Speaker:Hard things will be different than cashiers.
Speaker:Be different to Olivia's.
Speaker:Different to Tommy's.
Speaker:You've gotta start doing hard things because hard things
Speaker:will teach you to endure.
Speaker:Remember back at the start when things are difficult.
Speaker:This is one of my favorite humans on the planet.
Speaker:This.
Speaker:The guy they call the hardest man alive.
Speaker:This is the one and only David Goggins.
Speaker:Long story short, brutal background.
Speaker:His father was into unspeakable things.
Speaker:He got guns pulled on him as a kid, just the worst you could possibly imagine.
Speaker:Hated himself.
Speaker:Ended up, um, 150 kilos.
Speaker:That's what he weighed, massively overweight.
Speaker:And his job was a cockroach.
Speaker:He got a job spraying cockroaches, restaurants after hours.
Speaker:His book, his Life story.
Speaker:He just happened to one day watch this video about the Navy and just went,
Speaker:He went on to join the US Navy Seals and just had this phenomenal career.
Speaker:And if you can find him on YouTube, he's just phenomenal.
Speaker:He's just, he's just into hard things, just do tons and tons of hard things.
Speaker:So, you know, here's the US Navy Seals training.
Speaker:This water is absolutely freezing.
Speaker:They do a six weeks course called Buds, and all they're trying to do is just
Speaker:weed out the ones here because they know when you watch the documentaries,
Speaker:all of these guys are super fit.
Speaker:All of these guys are super athletic.
Speaker:All of these guys are really great athletes their whole lives, but they
Speaker:drop and you watch the documentaries.
Speaker:They have to ring this bell when they quit and they're ringing it and they're
Speaker:ringing it, and they're ringing it.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:It's not fitness.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:, the story between the stimulus and the response is here and they give up.
Speaker:So you gotta start doing hard things.
Speaker:Do you have to join the Navy Seals?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Maybe it means you do the dishes more often.
Speaker:Maybe it means you do a little bit extra study.
Speaker:Maybe it means you help somebody when you don't down.
Speaker:Well feel like it.
Speaker:Maybe it means that you say no to something you've been
Speaker:saying yes to for way too long.
Speaker:Maybe it means you get fitter.
Speaker:Maybe it means you eat better.
Speaker:Maybe it means you work harder.
Speaker:Take one thing away from this.
Speaker:Do hard things.
Speaker:So I run ultra marathons.
Speaker:I do about 400 k a week on the bike.
Speaker:Um, I'm in the gym every day.
Speaker:Let's be honest.
Speaker:You can't look this good without working at it.
Speaker:Thank you for that weird pause of silence,
Speaker:Um, next one, I could, I've got a couple minutes.
Speaker:I've gotta finish, catch the internal dialogue over here.
Speaker:There is a voice in your head.
Speaker:We all have it.
Speaker:Most of the time it's not helpful.
Speaker:Mine has been particularly toxic over my much of my life, and I've
Speaker:had to work incredibly hard at it.
Speaker:You wanna be more resilient.
Speaker:You have to listen constantly to the eternal dialogue because
Speaker:it's mostly not on your side.
Speaker:Some of you'll have come from great families and you'll be a
Speaker:little bit better than some of the rest of us, but start to listen.
Speaker:You will hear it saying things like, It's because you're this, It's because of that.
Speaker:Or you will never, Whenever you hear, you will never, You cannot.
Speaker:You did it again.
Speaker:Whenever you hear accusation, wherever you hear this critical voice in this
Speaker:space, start noticing it and criti.
Speaker:For the girls, when the voice says, You are not like this.
Speaker:You don't look like that, you don't.
Speaker:You should be more like this.
Speaker:If only you were like that, just go, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker:Not helping.
Speaker:Push back.
Speaker:Get really good at it.
Speaker:Just go.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Nah.
Speaker:All of us have gotta get good at finding this internal dialogue.
Speaker:Stopping at no.
Speaker:Uh, for what it's worth, I won't spend too long on this cuz you're not gonna like it.
Speaker:I think this is true.
Speaker:Um, I'm not gonna tell you to stop cuz you wouldn't anyway.
Speaker:Look, basically the best I can tell from social media, I had big
Speaker:followings about five years ago.
Speaker:Deleted every account, everything.
Speaker:Thousands and thousands and thousands of followers deleted the lot.
Speaker:The only thing now I have is YouTube.
Speaker:Um, I, you're not gonna stop, but I'll just say to you, especially for the girls,
Speaker:it's like, let's invent something that is just what I call a comparison engine.
Speaker:It's just a comparison engine.
Speaker:It's like, I'm gonna use this thing so I can constantly remind.
Speaker:, why I might feel inadequate.
Speaker:That's just my opinion, but I'm a dad now, so , I, I, I'm just really disciplined.
Speaker:I, I've taken almost everything off my phone.
Speaker:No even email apps anymore.
Speaker:I just think that if you want to get more resilient, the studies are pretty
Speaker:clear, particularly for girls that you've gotta just ease up on this one.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:I know you can't stop, but just ease up because it can make a
Speaker:big difference in resilience.
Speaker:Personal favorite, Get around good people.
Speaker:You wanna be more resilient.
Speaker:Get around resilient.
Speaker:How do, what do courageous people do tend to spend a lot of
Speaker:time around courageous people.
Speaker:What our athletes do, spend a lot of time around athletes.
Speaker:What a resilient, mentally healthy people do.
Speaker:Try to spend a lot of time around people that, that are doing
Speaker:interesting things that are, that are pleasant and kind and generous.
Speaker:Please do not accept toxic friends.
Speaker:Just don't life short.
Speaker:7 billion people on the planet.
Speaker:There's plenty more out there.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:If you got people ruining your life, just yeah, just don't be rude.
Speaker:Don't be aggressive.
Speaker:I talk about time allocation, just allocate less time, just
Speaker:begin to allocate less time.
Speaker:There's some amazing people on the planet get around them.
Speaker:Seven seconds.
Speaker:Um, summary resilience means to bounce back from the adversities of
Speaker:life, and I don't think it's just about getting back to this shape.
Speaker:I think real resilience has gone beyond the shape.
Speaker:Real resilience is taking the hits and coming back even stronger, coming back.
Speaker:. There's a reason that Jesus, when he comes back from, uh, the resurrection,
Speaker:the wounds are still there.
Speaker:That's a really important detail.
Speaker:It's a resurrected body.
Speaker:He's Jesus.
Speaker:Why come back with the wounds?
Speaker:Because the wounds were glorified.
Speaker:The wounds were elevated into something else.
Speaker:The wounds still mattered.
Speaker:So as you go through the wounds, you'll, you can come back stronger.
Speaker:Last thing is to.
Speaker:To remind yourself of this, whether you wanna photograph it, you can always
Speaker:choose no matter what you lose, no matter how much you get hurt, no matter how
Speaker:much loss, betrayal, failure, rejection, you experience, you can always choose.
Speaker:And I promise your friends a very small number of people.
Speaker:, as much as it's a consumption society, it's a victim society.
Speaker:Blame, blame, blame, blame, blame, blame, blame.
Speaker:And when I teach people, I work with executives and we're talking about blame.
Speaker:And it's blame and blame.
Speaker:If you ever tell me a story of blame, if we ever have a conversation and
Speaker:you tell me about why you feel the way you do because somebody did
Speaker:something to you, I'll do two things.
Speaker:I will listen to you compassionately.
Speaker:I will listen to every detail of what happened to you and why you feel the way
Speaker:you do about what somebody did to you.
Speaker:And then I'm gonna say three words.
Speaker:And now what?
Speaker:Because if you're living your life, blaming somebody for the, I'm not
Speaker:saying you don't deal with difficult issues of abuse, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Of course you've gotta address that.
Speaker:I, I get that.
Speaker:But at some point in life, there comes a time where we have to go.
Speaker:And now what?
Speaker:You can't hold onto that story forever.
Speaker:Eventually we have to move through.
Speaker:Uh, last one, I'm never outta the fight comes from that Navy Seals.
Speaker:. The Navy Seals have this beautiful saying, I really like it when Karen and
Speaker:Olivia went to Sydney over the weekend.
Speaker:We're almost done for time.
Speaker:Aiden and I were at home on our own.
Speaker:We did two things.
Speaker:We ate steak for three meals a day and we watched war movies and I was watching
Speaker:Lone Survivor with him the other day.
Speaker:Four um, four US Navy seals get ambushed.
Speaker:There's two left towards the end and one of them famously.
Speaker:We're never out of the fight.
Speaker:And it's a real mantra for these special forces guys.
Speaker:They're like, no matter what happens, no matter how much attack, no
Speaker:matter how much, how desperate it looks, we're never out of the fight.
Speaker:So I want each one of you today to take away this, photograph it, write it down.
Speaker:No matter what happens to you, you can always choose.
Speaker:Cuz Frankel chose, you can always choose and you, you'll never out of the fight.
Speaker:Hey there, Jonathan, with you again.
Speaker:I really do hope you got a lot out of that presentation.
Speaker:The gap between stimulus and response, that's the magic, you know, and this,
Speaker:this whole idea about how we talk to ourselves, how we explain to ourselves
Speaker:what's actually happening in the circumstances that we face in life.
Speaker:By the way, please make sure you have subscribed.
Speaker:If you're watching this on YouTube or Rumble or somewhere, hit subscribe
Speaker:because I'm putting out content like this on a regular basis and I'd love
Speaker:to keep sharing it with you or of the, of you're hearing the podcast
Speaker:version, hit that link as well.
Speaker:Now, if you'd like me to come and do this presentation or similar content
Speaker:live, there's a link under here.
Speaker:To book me to speak live.
Speaker:I want you to go check that link out.
Speaker:We can just, uh, have a conversation about how we can start to bring some
Speaker:of these principles to your school, to your students, to your business.
Speaker:I'd love to come and do this live.
Speaker:Nothing makes me happy.
Speaker:Have them being honest stage in a room of people who want to change
Speaker:and want to grow, cuz that's, Pretty much what I'm still trying to do
Speaker:in life, and I know you are too.
Speaker:All right, that's it.
Speaker:Go check out those links.
Speaker:You and I are gonna be in touch again really soon, but I really do appreciate
Speaker:the fact that you stayed to the end.
Speaker:Um, I just love doing this stuff and I hope it's a blessing to you.
Speaker:Hopefully I get to see you live.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:You and I we're gonna talk again real soon.
