Resilience Unleashed: From Reacting to Responding in the November 2023 Surprise

In this solo episode, Jo shares a major surprise that nearly derailed her plans for her 3 month sabbatical and how activating her resilience changed how Jo responded (rather than reacted) to the situation with a healthier mindset and, as a result, in a healthier way.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Activating Resilience via Purple Co
• Future Proofing Health Professional Facebook group 

If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

Transcript

Well, hello and welcome to another solo episode with me, your host, Jo Muirhead. This is the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. Now, before you go, wait, what, Jo, it’s not March. You shouldn’t be here yet, aren’t you still on sabbatical? Please be assured that I am, I’m enjoying it. Well, I assume I’m enjoying it. I’m just gonna future post that for a moment and say that I’m enjoying it. ’cause I’m actually recording this back on the 30th of November, 2023 because I thought it was such a powerful thing for me to be talking about, especially as we are gearing up for the end of the year and into a new year, and especially with what I’m going to be doing in terms of taking a sabbatical. So two things are gonna emerge today. One is, you did what now, Jo?. And the second one is, oh my God, if that is how resilience works, then I want more. So please stay connected to this conversation that I’m gonna have with you through this platform. That is awesome.

As I explained to you the unexpectation that occurred as I was preparing <laugh> for my sabbatical. So we know that true resilience is not just gritting your teeth,grinning and bearing it. It’s not just sucking it up, princess. It’s not just getting on with it <laugh>. It’s not accusing people of being entitled. Some of those judgmental things we like to do when we are feeling pressured, but true resilience is those things, those attitudes, those qualities, those beliefs, those self-talks that turn into behaviours that form us. Allow our emotions and our embodiment to be able to deal more effectively with an adverse situation. So resilience doesn’t make a negative situation go away. It’s not curative. It allows us to cope with adverse and difficult situations.

And the more I practise my own resilience using the donut model of resilience, which I’m gonna talk into in a minute, the more I’m so grateful. So, so, so, so, so grateful that this came into my life. Thank you, Kylie Warry.

So as I was preparing for my sabbatical, in fact, the week before I was due to stop my practice manager gave notice unexpectedly and gave me four days notice. It was such a shock. There was screaming, there was gnashing of teeth. There was why? There was rejection and abandonment and all sorts of, oh my God, what are we gonna do now? There was medication, thank you Jesus, for medication. But I’ve been able to do things in the last four days that I actually didn’t know were possible for me. And the behaviours about me activating resilience are now so second nature since I’ve been working on this since 2020, that this could have been the most devastating thing to have occurred in me in 2023.

And yet it has not been that it’s not been pleasant. It’s something I didn’t wish would happen. And for me, the biggest loss is mourning and grieving, the loss of the relationship with the person that was my practice manager ’cause I really liked her and we haven’t left negatively. It was just a decision that she wanted to make about her business. It just happened to coincide with me taking this time of sabbatical. So she drops this information to us, to my husband and I, and we kind of look at each other and go, wait, what? Because we’ve been planning this sabbatical since August and it’s now November, and she’s been an integral part in making it happen and operationalising the business so that it could actually happen. We’ve been talking about it a lot and I was pretty convinced that she would be there for the duration.

But you know what? She’s not. And the decisions that she’s made are the decisions that she’s made. But as this occurred, the very next day I kind of went, I’ve got a multiple choice question here. You know, how we play these games with ourselves? Number one, burn it down. Close everything. Get rid of all the clients, make sure they’ve got somewhere to go to. I don’t wanna do this anymore. Wha wha wha poor me. The second option, point B, was I can’t take a sabbatical. I need to get back into my business and rescue it and everyone associated with it, and I will just have to put my self-care needs last and hope that it all works out in the end. At that time, I didn’t realise that there was an option C so I actually went to my mastermind community and went, is there a C? Is there a part C?

And there was a part C. It was activate my resilience and breath. So I went through, cancelled the sabbatical and superhero my way through this. It was to shut down the shop and hope for forgiveness from all the people that I was gonna abandon and hurt or activate my resilience and breathe and start to breathe. Now in my past, my lingering childhood attachment issues might have nudged me towards that I’m gonna rescue this thing. Don’t tell me I can’t. I’m superhero Jo. However, the last three years have seen some quite incredible personal growth, and I’ve only been able to see the levels of personal growth through this incident. I recognise that the best course for my team, my clients and my customers and for my future self is for me to take this sabbatical because this is a whole chance to reflect, recharge, and realign.

So in me choosing resilience over being reactive, I’m gonna be diving deeper into my family and my friends. Probably gonna be teaching Smudge a few new tricks. And that’s pretty cool that I’m in a position where my husband and I have been able to turn around this situation for good. So if you remember back to <laugh> episode 38 when I told you that I was going on sabbatical, I actually identified back then that I’m really good at reacting to need really good at it. And there was a big need right in front of me when I no longer had the operational practice manager in my business. So then I started witnessing myself in my model of the competence trap, which I talked about back in episode 38. And this is where we start becoming so overwhelmed and so overworked that we’re incredibly fatigued, and then we overwork and <laugh> overdeliver because we are feeling insecure.

And then we start to question our competence. And if we keep this vicious cycle, if we keep this trap of competence going, we will end up burning out. So back in episode 38, I could see that I was very competent in lots of things. And the whole reason that I wanted to take this sabbatical was to give me an opportunity to go, what do I want to do? What do I wanna be known for? What does the world need from me? Before I started entering into this overworking, trying to sabotage myself by pretending I’m not burnt out with this new incident occurring where I’m left without the practice manager, I could have very easily gone into, I can fix it, I will keep fixing it, but then my energy would’ve been depleted. My resentment, oh my goodness, I would’ve been resentful. I would’ve started believing I was incompetent because I would be making errors. I’ve got a high error rate anyway, I would’ve been making more errors. And because I’m working so hard to not make errors, I would’ve become exhausted. So fortunately for me, my resilience factors, so there’s seven of them that you’d learn about in the Activating Resilience Program, which is the program that I’ve been talking about on the ads in this podcast. And you’re gonna receive some more information about this if you’re on my email list. There are seven factors that have been shown to help us activate our resilience.

And this is using a resilience model called the donut model. And there’ll be a link to that in the show notes on the website, wherever you get your podcast information. And these seven factors are the partner, skill, family, education, friends, community and work. And because I have been practising resilience and learning how to activate my resilience now for a couple of years, I automatically stepped into some of these things to help me strengthen myself. Because resilience provides us with an opportunity to use our innate strengths to strengthen ourselves. My strengths allow me to practise resilience. And what I understood and what I saw myself doing well, the outcomes were amazing. I’m not as stressed as I could have been. I’m sleeping really well. I’m actually getting good quality sleep during the night. I’m not as resentful as I thought I could have been.

In fact, resentment hasn’t come up very much at all. I’m disappointed, yes, but resentful, no, I’m sad for the loss, yes, but I’m not resentful. Now my people pleasing has taken a bit of a turn on the volume for that has turned up high because I am now triggered for abandonment. But I know what that is and I know how to talk to the people who care about me really well about that and say, can you help me manage this and look after my behaviours and make sure that I’m not actually hurting myself during this process? I know how to strengthen myself using <laugh>, my resilience factors. So Kylie Worry, who you’ve heard me speak about a lot, she’s the one who’s taught me about this model of resilience and then gave me the assessment tool, which we give you and train you on how to use in the activating resilience program. And back in June of 2023, Kylie has a podcast episode on unveiling the true power of resilience. And at that time I probably was still like, yeah, I’m a big believer. I’m really an evangelical, but now I’ve gone even deeper into this practice of resilience.

I did the assessment back in 2020 and I found that the factors that I was using back then, ’cause out of the seven, you only need two or three to actually help you. You don’t need all seven working. So back in 2020, my innate strengths, the factors that I relied on according to the donut assessment tool was my partner, skills (which is not work) and community. And for me at the time, that was my church, my faith-based community. I started leaning into a sense of community. I started using my skills. I was doing a lot of craft, a lot of crochet. I was making blankets and I relied heavily on my husband and my husband and I went through my cancer journey together. So it’s really interesting for me to reassess and reflect back now in 2023 and go, well, my husband has been amazing. I mean, you’ve heard his podcast now. He’s just a wonderful human. But he and I are doing this together. I’m not alone, I’m not isolated. It’s a we, it’s not a me. My skills have still turned up. I am being more creative and the amount of food prep that’s going on for Christmas right now, my recipe creation. ’cause I create recipes too. And some of the gift ideas that I’ve been working on for Christmas this year have been bringing me so much joy. And they allow my brain and they allow my nervous system to just calm down. And this time I’m relying on some friends. I have reached out to friends that I know and trust. I’ve reached out to friends and I don’t need a hundred of them, but just go, Hey, this is happening for me right now. I could use some extra support. And you know, Kylie, in all her beauty, she sends me text messages going, how have you been grounding today? And I must admit, when we talked about that yesterday, I was actually out for a walk in the rain and it was very hot and steamy. So being in the rain was actually delightful. Nice grounding technique if you’re ever interested <laugh>.

So learning how to activate my resilience in the midst of something that could have really undid me and made me go, that’s it. I don’t wanna do anything anymore. I give up. It’s all too hard. Or conversely, I could have gone, I’m not allowed to think about myself. Every time I start thinking about looking after myself, something bad happens to stop me from thinking about myself, and therefore I cannot do it. <Laugh> That thinking has changed.

That whole process of mindset about what it means to take care of myself has genuinely changed, which is, this is a horrible situation and it’s unfortunate. Let’s go into stabilisation mode. What tools and resources can I bring in? And I’ve had the most incredible conversations this week from people who were able to help because I learned how to activate my resilience. So in learning how to activate my resilience, it didn’t change the situation. It changed how I’ve responded, not reacted, responded to the situation, and how this situation is not causing me further ill health now. Yeah, I’m more anxious and I’m more stressed. And yes, of course I’ve got a migraine ’cause you know, migraines and stress go hand in hand. I know that those things are going on. It’s to be expected, but resilience doesn’t take those things away. It gives us the opportunity to learn how to respond more effectively and with a healthier mindset and therefore in healthier behaviours.

So the great thing about this activating resilience program that I really want you to take a hold of is that it allows you, as a participant in the program to do this resilience donut test. And then you get to learn how to use the results for yourself. But while you’ve learned what your resilience factors are and how to go and work with them, you’re actually being encouraged and supported to go and do the work with a client so that you can actually come back into the program and share any concerns or issues or ask questions. So you’re learning while doing so. This is a very, very hands-on immersive process over an eight week period.

So if you are serious about learning how to care for yourself and teaching your clients how to care for themselves, like if you are really serious about doing that, then you are going to enrol in the next activating resilience program, which is starting late February, 2024. Now, I’m expecting that by the time this podcast goes to air, that there might not be too many places left. So please forgive the sense of urgency, but go and check it to see if there is a space for you to enrol in the program. It is incredibly cost effective. It is going to be worth eight weeks, once a week for eight weeks to totally revolutionise how you cope with <laugh> horrible situations. Just like I’ve described for you here, I cannot support this program enough to ask you as a community of people that I genuinely care about, who I want to fill you with the goodness of things so that we can continue to do this work. Please go check it out. You’ll see it in the show notes or you can go to purpleco.com au and you will see the tab for activating resilience purple co com au activating resilience.

I’m headed back outside now. I’m gonna go and teach Smudge a new trick or two, and I look forward to connecting with you in the next episode of the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast.