Hello and welcome to another fabulous edition of Resilient Entrepreneurs. Today's conversation is with Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier. Better known to her colleagues as MH, which she likes to point out is also a handy reference for mental health, and that's what we're talking about today. She has over 20 years experience as a practising psychologist and as a senior leader in the corporate, insurance, governance and healthcare sectors. Marie-Helene is a member of the Global Clinical Practice Network of the World Health Organisation. Her unique talent is bringing together the workplace with psychology. And today we're going to be talking about MH's new book, The Resilience Plan, a strategic approach to optimising your work performance and mental health. It's published by Macmillan and it's a perfect fit. Of course, this is Resilient Entrepreneurs, the podcast where we speak with business owners from all around the world and from all walks of life in the hopes that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. Our business, Two Four One Branding, supports new entrepreneurs as they launch their business and we offer you the tools you need to succeed, which is exactly why we invite experienced successful people like MH to share their wisdom with you on this podcast.
And we would love to ask you this one small thing. It's a small thing that has a big impact. If you love Resilient Entrepreneurs podcast and you find it helpful, please subscribe to the show on the platform you're listening or watching on now, it will really help us to get this on the playlist of so many more people. The bonus for you is that you'll be notified of the next great episode, and for others is that you are sharing the love for someone else to discover and strengthen the inner Resilient Entrepreneur within them. So MH, welcome. We've so been looking forward to this conversation.
Vicki, thank you it's an absolute pleasure to be here with you and with you Laura.
Thank you so much. We really appreciate it too. So tell us a little bit of your backstory. I'd like to know who you are and what you do and how you got to this place.
The short answer is I followed my nose, actually, just followed what I was interested in and it led to this fairly rare combination of psychology and business. I've always been interested in people and psychology was in the cards probably, and I was also always just naturally as a person a bit more on the, ‘let's create things that's organised, plan, make something happen’ side of things. And so as I was finishing some of my training as a psychologist, I ended up doing research 20 years ago on, at the time, what we would call telehealth, which was delivering psychological services via video conferencing, but it was prior to the internet being fast enough to deliver video and audio so I had to use six telephone lines to do it. But the point is doing this research, I needed a lot of funding because of the technology involved, and I needed to hire people I could not pay, but had to retain for a year to create stability in the research details, all this to say, I finished this thinking, ‘Oh my God, I love management’. So then I went and did the management training, and then together it led to a number of different things in my career. But in all these cases, it was, ‘Oh, this is interesting, I’m going to do this’. ‘Now this is interesting, I'm going to do this’. And at some point, I had to stop adding new pieces and use the toys I had but I'm very much enjoying playing with these toys now.
Yeah, and we're right in this tech revolution of everything being tech. We're all online. We're used to having video calls like this to do lots of great things. It's become part of our norm every day. So you've seen a lot of change over the years. You were one of the early pioneers. That's quite incredible.
I know it was not even considered viable as a business at the time. It was considered pre-embryonic, no one's going to buy it. So I moved on to other things until we had the pandemic thank you very much. But yeah, that's how it happened.
Yeah, interesting. MH, can we jump right into the mental health side? And when you talk about the pandemic, what impact do you believe the pandemic has had on global mental health? It's a big question, I know.
It's a big question. I'll give you some parts of that answer from my perspective. I mean, one that is on the positive side is that it has increased the amount of conversations we have about this aspect of our health. We were used to speaking significantly more about the physical side, even the financial side of our health, not as much the psychological side. And that's forced this angle in conversations much more, in the workplaces as well, much more. So that's very positive. One that I would say we want to keep in mind, even now as we're fairly on the tail end of everything, is the chronic demands that this represented for all of us, and that, as such, did not disappear just because we're not on lockdown every day. So we've had these years of various levels of lots of changes in our personal and professional lives and yes, of course we are naturally able to adapt, we're very agile, we're moving to other things and we're now hitting the AI in our professional and personal lives, other types of demands coming, but the reality is that most people have not fully recovered exactly to where they were prior to all this. Not the end of the world, but useful to keep in mind as we're asking ourselves to go through the next things - some exciting, some that may not be exciting, but we want to be realistic about where the demands on our overall mental health are. And that pandemic is still part of the recent history for all of us.
Yeah, absolutely. And so many people I speak to these days are feeling the same, still feeling very overwhelmed. Everything still feels like it's coming at us really fast. Demand seems more now than ever. I think there's this sort of bounce back, we've all got to get back to everything we lost, but it's causing a lot more stress and overwhelm. So are you seeing a lot of people dealing with that as well?
Yes, and particularly entrepreneurs, because part of what has led entrepreneurs to where they are now, to even pushing enough to make whatever they made happen happen, part of what needs to be in our mindset there is a lot of optimism, a lot of an ability to not make a bigger deal out of anything, really. So that we're able to push this aside and say, yeah, no, I can keep going. I can carry on, I'll figure it out, keep going. We've had to do this otherwise, of course, we would not ever have moved anything. So it has many advantages. At the same time, sometimes the more we do this, the more we get to a point where we almost get at risk of, in fact, minimising demand. So we're not making them bigger, that's good, but sometimes we're actually making them smaller or disregarding them entirely. ‘Oh, that's nothing’. ‘Oh, that's on the personal side. Of course it's fine. Oh, of course it's a family member. Of course I'll support them. That doesn't count because it's obviously obvious, I will do this’. The reality is, of course you will do this. That's someone in your family you care about, and of course you'll support that situation. It still represents a demand. And if we are more realistic about all the demands we're facing, then we can make much better plans on how to sustain what we have, nourish it further, and continue to keep going.
That makes so much sense because you hear people say life got in the way, right? Because best made plans, but life got in the way, so I didn't get to doing the important thing, what we considered to be the important thing. But that life that we're talking about is the things that you just described. It's the other important priority demands. It's not just life got in the way, it's all part of the whole picture and I really enjoy the way you articulated that because it paints a very different view of the situation.
Yes. And sometimes it is about shifting that narrative from ‘life got in the way’ to if we are taking a moment to create what I call our own Strategic Resilience Plan for each of us in the context we're in right now, then maybe a month ago, I was thinking I was going to launch this part of my business next month. Okay. Then, things happened in my overall personal and professional life that required me to change that timeline. Well, I just do what I would do in business. I adjust my strategic plan, I may need to scale down some of what I'm doing to get ready for that launch date, I may need to delay it, whatever. And what happened is life continued to happen, I adjusted my strategic plan as I'm moving forward and everything's still moving forward. Maybe just a different pace, different priorities right now, it's still there. And that in itself, for often, will feel more grounded, more exciting, more aligned with all the values we brought into planning for this, while taking into account the reality of our overall context.
Yeah, I think you said a really important word there, priorities. Because I think if we focus on the priorities and how we have to prioritise things differently as life happens and as things change, what do you think about that? How important is laying out and understanding one's priorities? Because I think sometimes we're not sure what we're supposed to prioritise and then we feel guilty when we've dropped a ball here or there.
So true, often guilt in general happens because our mind is telling us, ‘I should be doing these things and I'm not, so therefore, guilty’. The reality is if instead we're looking again at the reality of our context and therefore the fact that, you know what, I may have to reschedule this wonderful podcast, for example, I'm not feeling guilty that I have to move this podcast. I am looking at my overall values, the overall context I'm managing, I may need to move some things forward or overall in time, and that's what I'm doing. But in order to get to this, I had to be clear on what's my goal, what's my strategy to get there and knowing that yes, I will adapt and yes, at times I’ll shift priorities and you see, that removes the guilt aspect.
Here's a short thing that sometimes I suggest to people before they get to having their strategic plan, which is not that complicated, really, but a short thing that everyone can almost implement now. Because sometimes we know what would be good for us to do right now to actually keep things a bit more grounded or stable or sane, really, and there's a part of us that feels guilty because, oh, well, if I do this right now, that means I'm not doing the thing that I was planning, supposed, or other expected of me to do.
Here's the short thing, guilt over burnout.
You'll be able to figure out this guilt thing fairly fast. In fact, you'll probably see that once you've implemented that prioritisation or that self-care, no one is actually that worried about it. Nothing terrible happens. But then you're avoiding, you're mitigating your risk of burnout.
And burnout is highly uncomfortable, a tough place to be. You can recover from it, of course people do every day, that's part of what I do with people, but it's painful. It actually is. So compare this to feeling a bit guilty about protecting what you need to protect here. Pick that guilt over burnout.
I love that. So you're choosing your pain, so to speak. It's like, well, both of them are going to be uncomfortable. Which uncomfortable do you want? It sounds like the guilt, if that's your response to you changing things around. That's a lot less uncomfortable than a long period of burnout. And then all the other emotions that go with burnout, right? Because I'm sure there's a lot of guilt involved in burnout as well, because then you're off track, you're not hitting the target repeatedly, just on and on and on.
You've got that, but you've got many other things too. Your mood is lower, your energy is lower. You don't enjoy any of the things you used to enjoy. You're not feeling engaged. You're making mistakes, a number of things. And so yeah, that option A is better.
What's your definition of burnout? Explain it to me as if I don't understand it. And my other bigger question is, is there a different way that men and women experience burnout or understand burnout?
Okay, great points, great questions. And sometimes even like, how do we know if I'm on the burnout side, or am I just having a rough, just more demanding time, right? There's that too. And it's useful. Thank you for asking this because the more we have clarity on this, the more we can catch it earlier if we listen to the signs, which most entrepreneurs do not do. So we'll try to.
After this episode they will!
We can still work towards it. And I include myself in this, right? Often we, because again, of that almost like optimistic bias, right, we tend to not listen to small signs, we wait until they're really big. But first part of the question.
So the World Health Organisation has adopted a definition that is what most people work with. So it's an occupational phenomenon. So it's not a diagnosis in itself.
And it has three main characteristics. One is we're exhausted. That's the one most people think about. But also, we're cynical. So we don't have any hope that anything's going to get any better. And number three, it starts impacting our performance. So it's beyond, ‘Oh, yeah, I hate the whole thing, I'm feeling terrible about this entire thing, but I can still pull through’. No, it gets to a point where it's not even something you can control. You will have the wrong proposal to the wrong client. There will be things like this that really are very far from your usual self. So that's the official definition.
In terms of experience, different people experience it differently. Sometimes, just like mental health in general, we'll tend to at times see women report it more, talk about it more, talk about it sooner. In certain societies women are also dealing with an amount of demands, which is part of what creates that exhaustion, loss of hope and all this, and different roles that are adding to their overall workload, so yes, it's an occupational phenomenon, but my level of energy here and how exhausted I'm going to be is in part also influenced by other demands I'm looking to meet outside of this particular role. So, It depends, different contexts. And sometimes it is a men-women thing. Sometimes it will be different between different individuals based on other characteristics. The set of beliefs that I've developed over time versus you, Vicki, versus you, Laura, will get us there in a different way or not there because of different reasons. So a lot of individual variations as well.
All right, so we are clear on what this burnout is. Of course the next natural question is how do we prevent it?
So it's a big question. Because burnout is an occupational phenomenon, so it happens in the work context, the work context is a system. So there is us as individuals, and there are other forces around us. So if we are working within an employer's context, for example, some of your audience may be intrapreneurs, right? Creating things within an organisation. And so the burnout often happens in the conflict between us as individuals and our work context. It could be our own business, it could be the employer we're working with, it could be the team we're with. So it involves the individuals, the people around, and the overall organisation. In some cases, it's also the overall culture of the industry. Some industries will have certain cultures, tech, health care, different finance, different cultures will have different sets of internal beliefs that will also influence the risk. So all this to say it's important because I think we have an opportunity as individuals to do a number of things that will mitigate our risk, we would not want to think, that would be a bias to think that it's entirely in our hands. It's not, because we're within a system.
But all this disclaimer being said, what kinds of things can we do? First, we want to really, in general, look at the alignment between our values and what's happening here on the work front. The more the values are aligned, the better this relationship, the lesser risk. And all this will mean aligned on workload, aligned on the sense of community we have here, aligned on the amount of autonomy or involvement I have in this particular context and opportunity to influence, things like that. Then in terms of, “Okay, so we're working every day, we're working life”, given the three signs I mentioned earlier, burnout is not something that happens suddenly. It builds over time. Some things in psychology happen suddenly, like post-traumatic stress disorder. Very specific, happened in this moment, okay. But this builds over time. So the early signs of being exhausted is, we have much less energy than before. But again, we disregard this.
‘I'm just tired’, whatever. Before being cynical, we're less engaged. We're not feeling the love as much, but we can still do it so we carry on. And before we're having performance problems here that we see or others see, we're noticing that the amount of things falling through the cracks is not the same. We all have falling through the cracks moments, I mean it would be great if we didn't, but in reality, we do. And we know the type, right? So we catch it, continuous improvement, fix it up. But there is a moment where we're like, ‘Oh, that's unlike me’. Like, this is, ugh, we're out of, outside of my range or outside of my usual brand, if I even, because at some point that's part of what happens - it hits your brand. It's not just ‘Oh, I'll carry on. I'll push through’. No, it's going to hurt you. It's going to hurt the business. So these early signs can be there, but we tend to ignore them. And we tend to ignore them sometimes because we think that doing something about them would be big and complicated and we don't know what to do and we don't have time. So we keep going until we don't have a choice. But the more we can be proactive here, the better. And there are many things that can be done there. But I would say if you're listening right now and you're like, ‘Yes, I don't have time, but I do need to do this, it makes sense to me, I'm not doing it’, I think one of the shortest, fastest ways to do this is to work with someone, whether you have a peer or you can connect with on a regular basis, check in on each other. A mentor that you could check in with that will poke and ask you the right questions to make sure to keep you there. Some people work with executive coaches, but sometimes in an extremely busy phase, the only way you're going to do this is if you've got a person that's helping you do it and you help them if it's a peer, for example. There are many other things you can do on your own if you are right now have a bit more ability to plan ahead.
Thank you for that, and thank you for sharing the very specific things that we can look out for. And the other part of that question, I think, is what can we do to not get to those signs happening? What can we do to boost ourselves on an everyday basis and keep that vitality flowing?
I know exactly. And the funny thing with this, right, is that most of us at an earlier point in life, let's say the first 10 years of work, twenties, maybe whatever in our twenties, that's how we were. We had that. And often, we had that and did not even realise, we were not actively building to make sure we have this, it was there. I mean, yes, in part we were 20, yay for that. But also not just this, it's the stage of life where, again, I'm talking in general terms, it's not the exact same for each individual, of course, but in adult development this is a phase of life where we have naturally occurring around us protective factors. We've got lots of friends around, we are being active, we're outside, we're doing all these things. Our health is generally naturally even better than as it moves on in life, which is normal and so all of these protective factors are there. Okay, so where I'm going with this is, this time there's a few things. Number one, we're not in the same phase of adult development. Now we have more, larger demands, life is there, we've got life experiences too. Some that have helped, some that have been tougher, but made us who we are. And it's almost as if we're playing a sport that at times is different, at times is the same, but at a way more demanding level, we need equipment.
So in this context, what I'm saying is, we actually need to have our own strategy. And that strategy needs to be specific to each of us. So there are things we know from research, and we all know them, especially post-pandemic, things like exercising, cardio, strength training, meditative type activity. Yes, all of this is immensely backed up by research. It's not just sounding good, it's not just for our physical health, far from it. It's huge from a psychological perspective, our nutrition, massive imp-act on our psychological health - every single meal has an impact. The amount of sleep we make sure we get on a regular basis and spending time with people we enjoy spending time with. There are others, time in nature, volunteer activities, being involved in arts, if this is something you enjoy. There are many of these things. We could ask a hundred people on the street and they would tell us this list. The main challenge, you're both nodding, the main challenge is the implementation.
And then that's how I got to needing to be strategic. Because in business here, when we were launching new business, new product, new anything, we don't just have a great idea and then just go with the great idea. We have a great idea, and then we look - Who else is doing this? How much are they charging for this? Who is buying? What forces in the future could impact all these things? Of course. And then we build a plan, and we go. Same thing here. We need to step back. And it's not a long stepping back. This is not six months of therapy or coaching stepping back, it's probably a couple of hours, possibly doing some of the exercises I propose in the book, just creating more clarity on your current situation and building this plan, which then will have actions that are extremely realistic for you. So I can give you an example if you'd like, does that somehow give you a bit of a better picture?
Yeah, I was just going to ask you if you wouldn't mind sharing examples so we can understand.
Yes, I could. And I'm wondering, would one of you, I'll be very friendly, I'm not going to ask you questions you don't want to answer and I will help you. We won't do a full plan here. We don't have time but is one of you willing to do this for me? Laura?
Yeah, sure, I'd love to. Let's go, let's go.
Laura, you're on. Okay, so what I'm doing in the book is just extracting three of the things we would do in business, but doing it for ourselves here. So just for now, If we were doing the full exercise, we would be listing more like 10 plus values. But maybe tell us just a few, two or three of your values, both professional, personal, doesn't matter, but just things that are most important for you in life.
Family is a personal value that's super important. I'm very close with my family. I've got two kids and parents that need a lot of care and love so making time for them is super important. Communication is also very important to me, having clear communication with people with integrity because that's also important. And quality time, really making sure I have quality time for my business, the people I work with, as well as outside my business, my family and friends.
Okay, love it. Okay, really good. So if we were to do this, we would do an even longer list, but for right now, we'll work with this. And now, what we would also do in the second part of the work is look at the kinds of demands you have right now and the kinds of areas for supply. So what brings energy to you, that's the supply. What is demanding energy from you these days? Now, just for the sake of today, maybe give us one example of a demand you have. And keep in mind, demand could be personal or professional, it could be positive, like, ‘Oh, I just got this new massive client’, or it could be challenging. ‘Oh, I have this demand that I wish I didn't have, but I have to deal with’. So can you give us just one?
Yeah, a really easy one. I'm a single mom of two kids and I'm solely responsible for their everything. And they're 15 and almost 11. So they have a lot of needs, a lot of strong needs.
Okay, well, that's a perfect answer, one that many will relate to, so perfect. Okay, and then one source of supply. Is there something right now, and sometimes there isn't, and so that happens too, but something right now in your life that you're able to protect time for, or when it happens, it does actually bring you energy?
I make time, I've carved time out for yoga. So that is my main supply of when I can really get mindful, get into my body, out of my head, and really take time for me. So I do that about twice a week.
Ah, love it. Okay, and you go to a class or you do this at home? Yes, go out to a class. Yes, got to get out of the house.
You do. Yes, she's escaping. We like it. Okay, and now the third piece, we won't do it now, but we would be exploring together your overall context, the same way we would in business do a SWOT analysis. So here we would be looking, okay, in Laura's personal context, what are sources of strength? Just naturally around her. She lives in a place where It's easy for her to go out for a walk because she can just get out on the street, for example. Or a source of challenge. ‘Sometimes I need help, say with the kids, and the only true person that can do it is me’. There is no backup. Okay, so extra, and I'm inventing, everyone. I don't know any of these things, obviously. So on the external front, what's happening in your life, that really is a source of opportunity. Business is going great, things are coming your way, clients you want are coming. You're loving this. Source of challenge, for example, could be, there's a lot of work coming, and I don't have yet the resources internally to meet this. So we're at a transition phase that feels like it's sometimes glitching. So we would have all this information. And then we would do like we do in business, create that very brief, on the one page, strategic plan to increase Laura's resilience even further. And we would start say, with three pillars. So three general directions, and we would work on this together or she would do that in reflection on her own. You, Laura, you're here. It's as if I'm talking to people, our listeners. But for example, you may say, “Okay well, I really value family, that communication with integrity, that quality time, a lot of this requires me to feel grounded. And I have grounding moments when I go to my yoga class right now, but I need more.” So maybe one pillar is groundedness, for example. And then you would identify actions here that are so small, so doable that you could start tomorrow. And I'm saying it this way because sometimes people will say, ‘Okay, I'm gonna go book a yoga retreat. I'm gonna add meditation to my weekly practice’. Not real. Okay, so for example here, what could be real for Laura is to download a yoga app where she can add a four-minute yoga practice once a week from her home prior to dinner once a week. Totally doable, not too long, doesn't require much of anything, and it's something you already love that can go there. And we would build these other pillars. I usually go for three again because we're on the practical, realistically implementable side of things. I don't want a list of 20 things that sound great but we can't do. Much better to have one that we're actually able to implement. And that's it. That's how we can shift this. Because as you shift this, number one, now it's realistic. Truly, Laura could do this tomorrow if you wanted, yes?
100%, I love that yeah.
Great yoga app, by the way, Down Dog. There are others, but this one, seriously, Down Dog. So good.
Okay, I’m writing that down.
It has over 55,000 five-star reviews. It's out of Seattle. It's really good. And you can do four-minute yoga. I mean it. I do that sometimes. So the point is, it's very doable. But the thing is, as you do this, number one, yay, you're going to have an extra little moment of yoga. But number two, as you're adding this, it adds, it increases your sense of self-efficacy - like I can actually influence this. Which we've been there before, right? When we do things like this, we see ourselves doing it, that's what psychology would call it, that we're increasing our belief that we can influence this. And as we do this, we're increasing our belief we can influence things in the future, which is hope and agency. And of course, all that is wonderful as well. So that's a, sorry, long, a bit long example.
No, it's brilliant. Thank you. And I love the idea of just the small incremental things because I think we talk a lot on this podcast with a lot of amazing people. We always ask, what's your routines and what are the things you do? And people have all these amazing things and they get up at 5:30 and they journal and they meditate. And I'm like, I'm a single mom with two kids and they keep me up late and I can't, the thought of getting up at 5:30. As much as I love the idea of having that time for me and how amazing that would be. I got to prioritise sleep. So it goes back to what we were talking early about priorities. So for me, I got to prioritise sleep because not getting enough sleep means I'm a wreck in the afternoon and early evenings and I'm no good as a mom then. So it's this constant juggle of I want to do more for me because the grounded part, I really love what you're saying and I absolutely hear that. And that's what I do need more of in my life. And how do I just add something else into an already, busy, crazy, hectic life without feeling more stressful about it, right? Cause that defeats the whole purpose.
You said it. That's exactly what so many of us experience, really. And so that's why I got to this where, okay, it's got to be different. And using the business angle usually connects with entrepreneurs because we've all done it here so we get the logic, we've seen it in action. It's not scary. These tools are so naturally user friendly, really. And so that makes it possible.
That was powerful, ladies. That was fantastic. Thank you for being your vulnerable self, Laura, and sharing your personal insights. I think that really would have been incredibly helpful for everyone listening as well. And it was helpful for me and to think, actually when MH mentioned just the word grounded, I could see your shoulders relax. Just the word was right there for you. It was very cool, very cool to witness. Thank you. And what I'm hearing also is that it's about building these little things in as part of our habit. Is it something to do with creating healthy habits?
Yes, yes it is. It connects with habits, yes, because part of what a habit is, it is you've decided in advance of something that you would do on a regular basis, hence it becomes a habit. And so, one powerful aspect of it is you're removing the decision in the moment, because you've decided earlier. So there is an aspect of proactively deciding, planning, and all this. Part of what I'm saying is, it's almost like going a bit beyond this. It's adding the strategic aspect, meaning the choice of action that I will take is decided in advance. So in that sense, it sounds like a habit, and it is in some ways. It also has a bit more adaptability to it than sometimes what we associate with a habit. We've all heard how habits tend to do better if it's always the same thing, always the same time, that stability that allows it to stick in some ways. One of the things we know from research is that on one hand you want this, on the other hand, the habits we’ll maintain more over time are those that have flexibility built in. So for example, let's say Laura goes in and says, yes, I'm actually doing this piece where I have a pillar of grounded, I'm doing my four minutes yoga once a week, fine. But let's say for whatever reason, life is what it is, you start your four minutes and then the kids need something right at that moment, whether it's actually that urgent or not, but it will be presented that way and sometimes it's just easier, whatever. You end up doing just a two minute, not four, and you can't really get back to that, doing it, it's two minutes. Keep it as such, it's good. Keeping in mind in your overall plan that, yes, I'm aiming for fitting in a four minute sometime during the week, and maybe I'll figure out a way that increases my chance of having my actual full four, but sometimes it will be two, sometimes it will be one, and that will be good also. So now we're tying it to her context. It's not just, oh, it's a habit, you should do everything you can to maintain it, and again, that rigidity feels like it's heavy and not realistically sustainable in many of entrepreneurs' lives that can have so many demands in so many ways. So yes, element of habit and adaptability to it.
And sometimes after, it may be that Laura is going to, let's say, do this for right now, but it may be that in three months, life will be completely different and she'll be ready to design a different aspect of her plan. Maybe she keeps it grounded. Maybe she says, okay, now we're in summer, the schedule has changed for everyone. Yoga doesn't fit anymore, I'm gonna do something different. Or yoga fits more than ever I'm now building to 10 minutes twice a week on using my app. So there's an element of adapting.
Yeah, I like that. I think flexibility is so, so important in mindset and in body that really suits the yoga chat we just had. But I'd like to talk about when you're in the startup phase of business and as the leader of a startup, as the entrepreneur, and you're going so hardcore, right? You're fully in it. You built your strategy around your business. Now it's a startup phase, everything's at full tilt, you're building a small team, they're all going at full tilt, everyone is in that momentum, which is amazing time to be, it's exciting time to be, it's our, me and Vicki's favourite time to work with entrepreneurs because it is so exciting, especially when they're first launching. However, that is unsustainable over a very long period of time, we know that, because of the things we just talked about, the burnout and all that.
So how does a leader develop a culture of resilience for their team, their business over time? And how do we create the space where we can help our employees and partners to really work consistently, resiliently over a long period of time? How do we start that culturally?
Many good aspects, important critical aspects in your question. So first I would say, the best way to message anything here to yourself and others is modelling. So whatever you're hoping to convey to your team over here, we'll start with, are you doing it yourself and be seen as doing it? So for example, I would say ideally before even, you are in this phase as you're building it, or if you're in it, better now than later, so I would do it now, I would say build your resilience plan for now in this context. We're not saying given that it's so demanding, so busy, I'm gonna work on my resilience later. No, no, no, because you're gonna be pulling from that well through this entire phase and you will be at risk if you wait until it's finished. It's not just a nice to have that you can just put aside and say, I'll deal with it when I get there. Sometimes people think, oh, but I am resilient. Look at all the resilient things I've gone through in my life so far. Clearly, I don't need to do anything about it. Not true. It's not a personality trait.
So if we're entering in this much more highly demanding time, fabulous, exciting, normal part of building a business, love it, and the more in advance and or as soon as possible, you build your resilience plan for now. And I know we're not gonna say go do yoga for five hours a day, but we do not want to put it at zero and say I'll do it later. If it has to be one minute a week, it's better than nothing. But we need something. So I would say that. Then I would make sure I share this with people around me. Again, in the context so that you do and you're seen as doing. That's, you were talking about communication also earlier and that even integrity, right? Because you cannot just tell people to walk that talk if you're not walking it yourself. No one's gonna believe it. We know this, we haven't believed it when others have tried this with us. So yeah, same. So it's your business, part of what you want is you've thought about the culture you want, right? So call it, do it yourself and then share it with others. And over time, and at different levels, and especially in very busy times, it will be early on as well, but the sooner you can start thinking about, even if you're very forward with this, your mental health strategy for your team. So large, large corporations do this. They have corporate-wide mental health strategies. They have sub-strategies for different sub-teams that have different cultures and different events, blah, blah. Even us, two employees, three employees, small teams, you can do this on a much smaller scale. Fine, normal, obviously it will be a smaller scale. But having one, instead of just finding yourself doing it, sometimes people will say random acts of wellness, they will become a bit more organised in how we're building towards it. And then you're creating both the business that you've been planning to do, and it's very exciting, and starting to invest in the culture that you want to create along the business itself.
Yeah, you know, MH, a word that you used some time back in this conversation was values. And I noticed that you started the whole Resilience Plan with Laura, with her values. That was the first question, wasn't it? Asking about her values and so it's coming clear to me that whatever we put into our resilience plan, whatever that thing is that keeps us resilient and proactively resilient is all coming from our values. So this is not about what we should do or what we think is good for us, it's about what we love, what feeds us, what works for us, what's scary aligned with who we are and the way we navigate the world, yeah?
Yes, yes, because without this, we're not going to actually implement. It will not be meaningful, It will not connect. And we're already so busy that it's not like we had nothing to do, which none of us. But if we had absolutely nothing to do, even if we didn't feel massively connected, maybe we would try it, we've got nothing else to do anyway. But right now, most people's lives are fully committed slash overflowing. So for us to change something and we know how change is demanding, it's better to connect with our values. That's possibly the only way we're going to do it.
I've also noticed that when I'm doing things that are aligned with my values, time doesn't seem to be an issue. It’s an abundant resource that's just always there. Yeah, there's still 12, 24 hours in the day or whatever, but it just doesn't feel like there's conflicting pressures because you're in flow. You're doing what feels right, what is right. You're achieving, you're feeding yourself that success every time you achieve. Like the flow state is delightful.
Exactly. And isn't it beautiful? It's amazing. It's energising itself. Yes.
It is energising. It is exactly right. And I believe that for listening to what you've said about the resilience plan and all the incredible wisdom that is packed in your book, I think that would help us get to that flow state, yeah?
I also think there's a factor too that when something doesn't align with your values, it's a little bit easier to say no, and often when we start out, it's so scary to say no because maybe we don't have a lot of clients, so we don't have a lot of work in and saying no to that work. I said no to work once quite a few years ago and it was terrifying, but I was just not aligned with the client. I didn't like his ethos, I didn't like how he was running the business. And the work was easy, the work was paid on invoice, and it was the type of client where, I mean, he was an ideal client from that regard but I just could not align with their values and I had to say no. And it was so terrifying. And then, but guess what happened? All these other great clients came along that did align and I felt so much better about what I was doing and I was proud of what I was doing. Because I realised I was doing work that I didn't want to put in my portfolio. I did not want to share it. I didn't want to tell people I did. I said, why am I doing that work? That just does not make sense. But getting over the fear of saying no was challenging early on in my career. Now it's like, oh, absolutely. If it's a line, yes, if it's not, then it's just simply a no. And we move on and no offense taken. It's just what it is. So aligning with the right things, I think is so, so important for resilience. Is there anything we haven't asked about resilience and about the resilience plan that you think people really need to know?
You've asked really good questions. It's been a great conversation. I would say, something I would say I'd recommend in general, would be to stay curious. So to look for ways in which, so whether, you could be more planful with the overall process of taking a moment of reflection. And the book is made in a very concise way, quick questions, quick exercises. It is friendly. I know people don't have time. But if you don't even have time for this, then I would say, at least now, you can do that. Start being even more curious about where your energy is going and what brings it up. And any shift you can do to either change the demands a bit, change the supply a bit, will at least go in that positive direction. So let's stay curious is what I would say.
Any last question, Vicki? Or are we going to flip the script on MH?
Yep. Okay, MH, you're in the hot seat. You are tasked with the challenge, should you wish to accept, of asking us a question.
Yes. And it's going to be friendly. So, you'll decide who wants to respond first, but potentially if Laura responds first, it'll be easier. What will be your next action in the next three months? Oh, it's friendly. Small or big that you think you could do to increase your resilience in your own work.
Oh, I love that question. And I have been thinking about this a lot because I've been feeling very overwhelmed lately. Good overwhelmed in that there's lots of good things going on, but still overly, overly stretched. And I'll also say that social media used to be a good escape. I used to like going on social media, seeing what's going on in the world, getting some positive vibes from people that I love to follow. But lately, it's been really a lot of devastating things on social media. And of course, I believe that we create our own algorithms. So I do know it's what I've been liking and engaging in and sharing that has been showing me more and more of the same, but with ongoing wars and genocides and however you want to define any of it is up to you. But seeing some of that has really took me down a very negative path. And I just had my brain so full of that I couldn't function well doing my work and doing other important things. And I literally, I got a lovely journal for Christmas and I pulled it out and I just free wrote. I just massively free wrote. I don't think I could even read my handwriting because I didn't care. It was really just about getting it out of my head as fast as possible. Because it was just this overwhelming voices that was just too much, right? So I was just free writing and I wrote like six pages in probably 10 minutes. It was the most cathartic thing I've ever done. And I really changed how I felt since then. It made such a massive impact that I said, this is something I'm gonna incorporate and practise more and more often because I need to, because I'm a big thinker, deep thinker, lots always going on in there, and I need to get it out and release it so that I can think more clearly about things and be able to bring in more positive and end it on positive. So I'm gonna be doing much more of that over the next three months and I want to incorporate that. Like you said, I don't want to try to rigidly say I'm gonna do this every day or I'm gonna do this one day a week. I'm gonna do it when I need to do it, whenever I have that feeling of overwhelm, I'm gonna know that that's my tool and that's what I need and that it works for me. So I've had the experience that it works, now I just gonna need to use it more regularly.
Love it! And you Vicki?
When you asked me the question, I felt a knot in my stomach. And so I realised that there is some commitment matters that I am going to work through with a coach and that will be my very first step towards building resilience.
I love it. Oh, and I'm so glad you said this. I'm also glad Laura, what you shared as well. I mean, both actually, our research would back you up. Research does back up journal writing or just even expressing in writing so that's pretty good, but also connecting with resources. And I love Vicki, what you said too, because sometimes people sort of have this reaction and then they feel stuck and they're like, well, I don't know what to say because I'm stuck. Right? And when that happens, then yes, then the next step is to connect with a resource. And so that is your next step. I really mean this, this is so helpful. I can guarantee you, others listening, some have thought exactly that. So that's the thing. When we're feeling stuck, it's not, oh I’m stuck, I don't know what to do. It's stuck, Okay, what's the next step? Connect with the resource, and there you are. Well, thank you, ladies. Turning the table back to you since it's your podcast.
You're fantastic! That was a great question by the way, thank you. Laura, take us home.
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. It was fun and resourceful and interesting and important. We need to talk more about mental health and how we can improve it, especially as entrepreneurs, especially those out there doing it solo, so I feel it. I started my career a solo entrepreneurship, so I absolutely know what that wilderness feels like. There are resources. The Resilience Plan is an amazing one. I hope everybody gets the book. We'll put the link in the show notes so they can, and they can follow you as well and learn more about all the great things you have to share. MH, you're fantastic. This conversation was fantastic. And I really hope we can have another one. So let's stay in touch and hope to see you again on Resilient Entrepreneurs. Thank you so much for your time.
Thanks to you both Laura and Vicki, I was thinking the same. Loved it and would do it again anytime. Thank you.
Awesome. Thank you. Take care.
