Ep. 122: Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal - Setbacks are a Feature, Not a Bug

Sucheta Kamath: Welcome back to Full PreFrontal where executive function and self-efficacy, learning and issues that help us become self-aware is what we tackle. I'm your host Sucheta Kamath. My hope today is that through these meaningful and thought-provoking conversations we can truly find way to guide ourselves and take charge of our life. And just to those who are new to this podcast, a gentle nudge if you haven't already done so please, please be sure to follow us on our social media and share the podcast with your friends and colleagues. So, help us spread the love. And now let's start with our conversation today about personal, interpersonal and interpersonal resilience. Each of us need to acquire skills to successfully build strong families and effective teams to lead a meaningful life. And that's why I'm excited to have our guest today. Her name is Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal. Welcome. Welcome to Full PreFrontal. How are you?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for the warm welcome. I'm very well. How are you?

Sucheta Kamath: Fabulous and it's so interesting. You're going to be my first bridge conversationalist who is going to help us connect, not just resilience in learners, but younger generation, but adults and even those with leadership positions. So, I'm very excited to talk to you. So, this podcast is about executive function, which entails strengthening your adaptive capacities to self-regulate and self-guide, particularly so that we can effectively communicate, take good decisions, collaborate, and create those environments around us during challenges and roadblocks. So, before I get into your expertise, I would like to know a little bit about your own executive function and your own self-regulation. As a child, what age did you become aware of it? And when did you come to realize that there's some changes you can make to your own approach to life?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yeah, that's, that's, I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before. So that's great. That's, that's super fun. Well, you know that I have a background in marriage and family therapy and in neuropsychology and so I'll use some of those psychological terms. But for anything that's not commonly used, I'll make sure I also define it, you know, for our audience as well. But I think for me as a child, I remember always having a high level of, you know, we would call in psychology like self-monitoring, right? Yeah. So, when we think about like, self-regulation, you know, this idea of like, how do we keep ourselves regulated right, emotionally, mentally, and, and sort of stay in balance? And what's our relative awareness about our own regulation? And then this idea for me that's coming up as you're asking me this question, like self-monitoring, right is this idea of monitoring ourselves internally, and projecting ourselves mentally into the shoes are into the experience of the other person and thinking about an acting one way How is that coming across right to the other person, this idea of self-monitoring? So, I would say I'm still very high on self-monitoring. And of course, there's costs and benefits to that as there are with anything but as it as a child, I remember very early on thinking about even at four or five, like preschool kindergarten, thinking about how is this person experiencing me? And what do I need to do differently in order to affect the outcome that I want to have or to make them like me or something, something of that nature. And you know, I think that's also consequent to the environment that I grew up in. You know, I grew up with parents who are very loving and you know, I think really desired to do the right thing for my brother and I and when my brother was born when I was three and a half, it was like he had, um, maybe more needs or more concerns that my parents felt like they had to attend to. And so, you know, my mom would say, like, Oh, I need to feed your brother, you know, like, breastfeed him when he was a baby, can you go over here and just like play by yourself or something like that. And so, I think that started with this idea of self-monitoring where I would think about, you know, am I playing quietly enough? Am I being disruptive and maybe being helpful to my mom, how is she experiencing this? So that's, you know, 

Sucheta Kamath: Well, she's very lucky because of course, sounds like to me quite advanced growth in awareness on your part as a child and she must have tremendously benefited to have such a mature child to take care of while she's taking care of a baby. So, I really appreciate that. I think it's so interesting. Your story just quickly reminded about my own And that I too was it had incredible social awareness and social understanding. And the way I was raised to have that at the forefront of my relationship with people, and that so that aspect of self-regulation where you have to somehow put your needs a little bit on the backburner so that there is a collective collaboration between you and the others, was a top priority as a culture and as a family. And that really created there are some disadvantages to that, as you know, but it does create a great sense of willingness to work with people and particularly difficult people. So that brings me to this great question. And I'm so excited to talk to you about and particularly the way you frame and your own journey to come into this through the work that you have done with people with traumatic brain injury, which is where I share your interest. I you say that, what you have a wonderful way of describing let's start with what resilience is not which is it not merely bouncing back and I hit that way of using elastic rubber band and saying, you know, bouncing back returning to former shape. It's a very, very superficial way to understand. So, would you help define for audience what is resilience? And another thing I was thinking about as you talk about this, does resilience look different in different stages or age group? So that can we bring these principles of resilience, as we talked to this adaptive adjustment that adults have to do versus children have to learn?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Mm hmm, absolutely. Yeah. You know, did you see that Rubbermaid Commercial? I'm trying to remember when this was Sucheta, do you remember the Rubbermaid Commercial is like a Rubbermaid trash can 

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah, 

Taryn Marie Stejskal: A car would drive in it would like dent the trash can and then the car would you know, reverse in the trash you know, the Rubbermaid trash it was like spring

Sucheta Kamath: Return to form Yes, I remember that. 

Taryn Marie Stejskal: I can't remember when those were on, but I want to say like the 90s right. 

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah. I do I have seen that,

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Okay, we're both dating ourselves, but we saw reruns

Sucheta Kamath: it's all reruns.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: So, you know, I think for a long time we, you know, there's so many words that we use in the English language and phrases, and they're very representative of how we think about the world. But when we really think about those phrases and start to pull them apart, we say like, Huh, like maybe that's actually not what's happening. You know, maybe I'm just using this call it as a cognitive shortcut, right to describe what's happening. And so, so often, I think we use this cognitive shortcut, right, which is this just kind of way of grabbing a phrase that we've heard without really thinking about it, you know, intentionally or deeply and, and I think that's what's happened with the phrase bounce back, right? Yeah. And bouncing back works great. If you're a Rubbermaid container and when we think about resilience, you know, one of my questions that I wanted to understand is not only what is resilience, but what is resilience? Not right. And so, if I just start with what is resilience, I have a very simple definition. Because when I first looked up resilience, the definition was really circular. You know, it was like to be resilient is to demonstrate resilience, right? and resilience is to be resilient. I was like, this doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And so, for me, as I've interviewed hundreds of people and collected thousands of pieces of data, what's come to the fore in terms of a definition for resilience is this idea that we, we engage, right, we effectively engage in challenge in change in complexity that comes our way and we allow ourselves to grow through that process to be enhanced rather than diminished. You know, Through those experiences, so that

Sucheta Kamath: I really like what you're seeing there is there's an active, it's a verb, it's an action. It's not something that's done to you, like the Rubbermaid containers sounded like it didn't do anything. There was no volition on the part of the container to come to form. And secondly, I think important thing you're distinguishing which speaks to my heart is this, that an adverse or any interaction with the world that provokes challenge leaves its mark, and we should be really, really acknowledged that we shouldn't be Mark free, because then we are trying to say, I am exactly the way I was, and nothing has affected me. That's not at all resilience. Right.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Exactly. I mean, I think your comment has really kind of teed up the second part in a really perfect way, which is this, you know, this idea that well, first of all, you know, kind of going back to how we think about language. intentionally use the word challenge, right? And the reason that I do that, so my research is based on asking a really simple, but really powerful question, which is, and we can do this You and I Sucheta, and we can also have our audience do this right, like in this moment. So, for those of you that are listening, and so the question is, you know, think of a time where you have faced a significant challenge, right, in that moment of significant challenge. And by the way, challenge is intentional, because a challenge can be good or a challenge can be adverse, and typically, spoiler alert, it's never just one or the other. Right? Yeah. The both right, a new baby is a challenge. A medical diagnosis is a challenge. You know, and there's parts of that that are incredibly adverse, and there are parts of that that you know, turn out to be incredibly positive as well. So anyways, we're thinking about a time where we've effectively faced a challenge a significant challenge, right? So, we think about the significant challenge, how did we effectively address that challenge? And then what I wanted to understand from people was what behaviors did they employ? Right? So, our nervous system, you know, when we're in a moment of challenge, or change or complexity, right? We have this neurological we have a physiological response. And our nervous system says your three options are to fight are to, you know, fly or kind of run away, right? Or to freeze, right? Those are those are typically the three options that our brain gives us. And I wanted to say, what are the other options? Right? Because those three options, they might promote resilience, right. But in this day and age, there's opportunity, I think, for us to think about what are the other There are behaviors that we can use to effectively address those moments of challenge, whether that's someone losing a job, or figuring out how to work their current job, and, you know, kind of homeschool their children in the midst of a pandemic. Or, you know, when we when we receive challenging information and, you know, a difficult health diagnosis, new information. And so, I asked this question of hundreds of people and I collected thousands of pieces of data. And from that, you know, it gave us the five practices of particularly resilient people, which I'll talk about, but first, you know, it also helped me define what resilience is, and also what resilience isn't. And so, what came out of that was the three the three myths of resilience right, accompanied by the three truths. And so, the three myths are just what we're talking about, which is the first myth is we bounce back Right. That's the myth. So, the truth is we bounce forward. 

Sucheta Kamath: I love that. Yes.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Right. And because to your point earlier, I love how you said this. We are fundamentally and forever changed by every experience we have. And that's supported also from a neurological basis, right? every experience we have, right, this moment of doing this interview for those of you that are tuning in as listeners, we are literally changing your lives. You're welcome, right. But as a result, hopefully in a great way, right, but as a result, some part of our brain, some neural connections that exist, are firing and rewiring in different ways as a result of having the experience of listening to this podcast, right? So, we're fundamentally and forever changed by every experience, we have let alone, you know, the challenges the changes in the complexity, right? And so, this idea of going back to basics, state doesn't exist.

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah. And he doesn't even make sense. Because what are we going to do by going back to be ignorant bit going back to not having a baby? I mean, it's literally a fantasy at that point it is moving forward. And for better, yeah, completely makes sense to me.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Often, you know, I think one of the things that's come up in the midst of the pandemic, and I think it's important to speak to this is this idea. You know, so many people are saying, and I'm sure you've heard this Sucheta and for many of you listening so many people are saying, When are we going to get back to normal? Right, like so many people, right, want to go back? Right. And there are absolutely things about my old life that I missed to right like I miss, you know, the movie theater and I miss, you know, being able to travel without restriction and go on vacation. And, you know, there's things that we miss about our prior life. But the idea is, from a resilience standpoint, it's like, you know, let's not go right. Back to normal, right until we know what we're going back for. Right. So, to your point, how do we create this new future? This new existence? Right? That's, that's better than what we had before? Because by the way, I think we would also acknowledge, there were a lot of things that weren't working, you know, before the, before the pandemic, right? There were a lot of things that were not working. So, you know, but when we think about dispelling this myth of not bouncing back of not going back to the way we were before, there's also an opportunity for us to then mark, right, what we've lost to grieve what we've lost to acknowledge what we've lost, you know, and I think that's a really important part of the process. You know, on the one hand with this sort of bouncing forward versus back, like so many people have come to me and they've said, Taryn, you know, I'm not resilient, because I didn't go back to the way I was before the challenge, right. And so, then I can dispel that myth. And people feel better about themselves because they expect they're not meant to be changed by challenge; we know where change. But when we talk about then bouncing forward, then the opportunity is to grieve, to mark to acknowledge to appreciate that as we do bounce forward in those moments of challenge change and complexity. There are also things that we leave behind.

Sucheta Kamath: And Taryn, I really appreciate your compassion in the way you have thought about it. Because I think there's a clinical and sterile way of understanding concepts of changes in the brain changes in human behavior. But we have to ultimately think about what happens to people when they're in the midst of it, what happens to them when people are prodded and prompted to think about it and reflect on it. And one thing that stands out about this pandemic, for example, to your point, going back will be, first of all, you have to come to terms with somewhere that this is not going to happen. But secondly, if you think about the struggles and universality of it cannot be more evident than any other thing people have experienced before. So, let's say if your group of 10 friends and one person lost a job, nine people could not relate to losing a job because their job was not lost. But now, you and I can talk about our children having to go to school virtually hybrid, or in person with a mask on. There is such a strong universality and I feel that can really help us bridge that bridge towards that healing or acceptance through compassion and recognize that you are not alone suffering, so let's not make it about you. But also, don't panic, because you're not alone. There are so many people suffering the same way. Yeah, and that can also give a lot of sense of courage, I think.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: I agree. You know, one of the things that people tell me when I speak to, you know, organizations or to teams on leadership, one of the exercises that we do and this is this is adapted from an exercise that I don't know if you're familiar with Rachel Hollis. But she wrote, you know, Girl, Stop Apologizing, and Girl Wash Your Face. And so, this is one of an exercise that I was inspired by her work to create in my work. And so, it's an exercise where she does it at her conference. Where, for me, when I'm working with my clients, I write down like 10 or 12 questions professionally, right. So, and they're just yes or no questions, right? Things like, Have you missed important events? Right, because you've had, you know, because you've needed to focus on work, right? Or do you take work home with you in the evenings Do you work on the weekend? Right. Have you had a change in manager? Right? And then also personal questions, right? Like, have you become a caregiver this year? Have you or someone that you know struggled with addiction, right? Or have you lost a family member or friend that was close to you in the last year? Right? Like these kinds of questions, right? And so, what happens is, we collect all the papers right from everybody, we say, Don't put your name on it. We collect all the papers. And then we smoosh You know, this is a this is a technical I don't know if you guys are familiar to people, neuro psychological leadership, to smoosh right? means like to, you know, what's right, so, so we smoosh the papers together, we mix them all up, you know, so nobody knows where their paper is, and you know, whose paper they have and we pass them back out. And then they unfold it. And then I read the questions. And then you know, you're standing up for your colleague or you're, you know, you're standing up and loving For someone on your team, so you don't know who you're standing up for, but you can see in the room the visual representation, right, and there's, and there's not one of those questions that just one person stands up for. Right? And not and one person doesn't just stand up one time, you know. And so, the key takeaway is, one, we're all more alike than we are different to your point, like, yes, there's unique things about all of us. And in the midst of this pandemic, and even before, you know, whether we realize it or not, there's more universalities amongst us and amongst our experience and what we're facing if we, if we go to that level, and to we're not alone. We're not alone. You know, it's so easy as human beings to think like no one else is facing this. No one else has ever faced this. You know, by the way, in psychology, we call this the adolescent stable, right? You know, when we're at you know, when we Take ourselves to a level of maturation, you know, where we're very adolescent, you know, oh, like no one else has ever had to deal with home school right? Now everyone's dealing with home school. And so, the opportunity is for us to remember, in this moment, and to your point earlier, it's more evident than it ever has been before. And not just within the United States, but like across the globe, that we have this universal shared experience and connection as humans.

Sucheta Kamath: This reminds me of an exercise I do with children or when I do my workshops with teachers, and it's a foxes and rabbits. So, the idea is that you and these are not more complicated questions that you posed, but asking children giving children two choices, that let's say, has anybody taken your pencil or you know, have you kind of misplaced your homework? So, you answer is yes or no. But then you foxes are if that has happened to you in rabbits if it hasn't, so when you think Then you take these questions and asked the students in the class to raise your Fox or rabbit. Now you begin to see a Whoa, Well, apparently, I was thinking I was the only one. And you will begin to recognize the again that that wreck that awareness that it is to have these experiences to be human, and then only then you can take the step forward. So, tell us a little bit about now, your five-step principle, and I love the title of your book. And I love this idea of flourish or for the five practices are particularly resilient people. And please start, tell us all the five stages and steps and enriches.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you everything may tell you everything I know. Yeah. Before I tell you everything, I know about the five practices of particularly resilient people. I'm just going to take us back for one moment to the myths and truths of resilience because For those of you that are really paying attention, you know, I said there were three myths and truths. And you know, I only talked about one. So, I don't want to be sheisty. And, you know, try to get something past you.

Sucheta Kamath: Please. I'm so sorry. I missed that you did not get to the two. Yes. Share with us. Thank you for keeping me on track. 

Taryn Marie Stejskal: So, the first, you know, the first myth is that we bounce back and, and the truth of resilience is that we bounce forward, right? The second myth is that resilience is fixed or finite, right? That we're only given a certain amount of resilience. Or it's a dichotomy, right? Like I'm either resilient or I'm not resilient, right. And so that's the myth that it's fixed or finite. And the truth of resilience is that it is dynamic and can be grown and changed and enhanced over time. Just like we might increase our cardiovascular capacity or muscle tone by going to the gym, right. So, by way of facing challenge/change in complexity, that's the best way to train our resilience. We don't have to face adverse circumstances in order to become more resilient. But that's sort of like the, you know, the accelerator, you know, for resilience. And then the third, the third myth is that a lot of times we think or speak about resilience as though it's passive. Right? Yeah. And so, as you think about, you know, just think about how people often say, again, without questioning it, the cognitive shortcut of, you know, Sucheta, you know, Time heals all wounds. Right, how we say that, and, and so what that suggests is that all we need to do is to sit back and to wait for time to pass and everything's going to get better and feel better. And certainly, time does soften things. There's truth in that. And I think it's, you know, it's more akin to what Andy Warhol said, which is, time changes things, but you have to change them yourself. So, the myth of resilience is that it's passive and the truth of resilience is that it's active.

Sucheta Kamath: I love that. And thank you for adding that clarity. Because just as this, I wish in schools, we have a class on executive function and class that talks about resilience as a process. So, which is process is to learn to learn, it requires intentionality. And also, once you learn to how to learn, you can learn anything. But learning how to learn is can be individualized, it can be personalized. And that's exactly what I have been doing in my work. And the parallelizing. The, the way, you're framing this idea that, that it also goes with the other framework that we are very familiar with, is that fixed and growth mindset. So if your approach to adversity is that, shoot, now I'm fired from my job that that's it well, people get fired, people get hired, but your goal is to maintain that you have a job Then getting fired and getting hired is part of that process. So, I feel often and speak to that, if you can, that there is some sense of big picture that one needs to activate the sense of Gestalt. And those who see the bigger picture tend to demonstrate greater resilience. Is that what you have seen in your work?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yeah, you know, there's a model for anyone who's read Option B, by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg. There's another well-known model of resilience that exists that they speak to in their book. And they talk about the extent to which people think how people think about what happens to them, right. And so, it's this idea of see if I can remember all the P's, personal, right? Pervasive and permanent Right. And so those are the those are the three P's, just in case you're not clear, those are not the resilient that's not the resilient side of the model. Right? And so, you know, when we make it personal, we say like, oh, there's a fault in me, there's something wrong with me, you know, bad things keep happening to me. Well, it's just because I'm, you know, whatever, right? The negative things that we say to ourselves. So that's how we make it personal. These are the things not to do. pervasive, right? Which means it's, we're globalizing it right like to use your example of a you know, a job, right? Like I've lost my job. And you know, no one else is going to want to hire me This is pervasive, right, like the entire job market.

Sucheta Kamath: Is now saying no to me.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yes, is against me, right. And then the last one is, is permanent, right. So, to the extent to which we say, and I will never get another job again. I will We'll never have another opportunity again. Right? And, and the point is, you know, when we go through challenge change and complexity, especially in those like acute moments, right, those moments like right when the event is happening, it's easy to jump into a personal attribution and pervasive attribution, a permanent attribution, right. And that happens, but the point is not if it happens, right. But the point is to not stay there, right to not allow yourself to stay there in terms of your call it your cognition, the way that you think that your mindset, it's okay if it happens at the beginning. And then, you know, the opportunity, the resilient opportunity is to choose more resilient mindsets and behaviors to then be able to move forward.

Sucheta Kamath: So now that you have helped us understand the myths about resilience, and those who do fold because of these attitudes. And I had David Burns on my podcast a couple of episodes ago. And he talks about cognitive distortions and the 10 cognitive distortions, which is why we may be misleading ourselves. So. So talk to us about your five principles, and how do you think we, our audience can understand this? And how can we, because one thing I love, love the way you have structured your research and understanding is, Everything you say is so one, very easy to understand why that makes sense or other. It makes so much sense to me. And second, it's so easy to adapt. It's so easy to live by the principles you're talking about. So that's why I'm very excited. So, walk us through that. Thank you. Yeah. And I'll just I'll give a shout out. You know, I had a mentor relatively early on at the at Virginia Commonwealth Medical University when I was just starting my fellowship in neuropsychology and you know, I came in like the first couple of days, and I was meeting with people that had had brain injuries and their family members. And after those meetings, he pulled me aside and he was like, Look, these people have had brain injuries. I don't know if you noticed, and I was like, yeah. And he and he was like, you know, and their family members, like some of them have a high degree of educational attainment. But many people, you know, have a fourth-grade reading level, right? Or maybe didn't graduate from high school, right? It's, it's all kind of walks of life, you know, when you're working in a clinical or a hospital setting. And so, he said, Look, you've got to figure out how to explain whatever's happening as though you're explaining it, you know, to like an eight-year-old, right? And, and not in a condescending way, not in a pedantic way, you know, but you can't use words like pedantic. Yes. And so, you know, I really credit that experience where I went And I said like, Okay, how do I break this down? How do I explain it? And, you know, I think we tend to make things more complicated sometimes than they really are. I tend to use big words and like not even realize it. And so that's an opportunity for me to keep growing to, you know, to choose to choose words that engage the broadest audience of I suffer from that possible, the great, but it was learning, you know, is like, how do we take what we know and then explain it, you know, to an eight year old and I, I still believe that if we can't explain something in simple terms that anyone can understand. We probably don't understand it well enough yet. Yes. Right. Yes, yes. So, the first one is

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Vulnerability. 

Sucheta Kamath: Yes. Brene Brown probably has now made that a common space word, which as you know, you and I know being in this field or in this space, that is One of the simplest and most important rite of passage to come to terms with what you're dealing with, but I don't think that's, I have recently I was in a meeting and talking to this white male in his 50s. I used the word to with him, please be vulnerable. And he understood me. I've got to never imagine that before. No, yeah. stereotype. So, tell us how vulnerability plays a such a critical role?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yeah, well, you know, what I would say is, even if we understand the concept of vulnerability, and I would say that I don't think the concept of vulnerability is like, widely, widely understood. But even if we understand the concept of vulnerability, I think it's very difficult for us for most humans to be vulnerable in practice, right? And so, um, you know, just what happened for those of you that are listening Tracking along right? I just wanted to understand resilience. I wanted to understand the key behaviors that would make us more resilient in these moments of challenge change and complexity. So, I asked this question, right, think of a time when you faced a significant challenge. How did you effectively address that challenge? And then after interviewing hundreds of people and collecting thousands of pieces of data around those elements, when I looked at that qualitatively and coded the data, what emerged were these organizing concepts are the five practices of particularly resilient people, the five things we can do? And so, the first one, you know, is vulnerability as we've discussed, but what does that mean in this context, right? And it means that we allow our inside self-right, like our sort of internal self, to match our external self, right? So, we allow our thoughts and our feelings and our experience what's happening for us on the inside. side to match, right? The version of ourselves that we're showing to the world, right now there are certain times when maybe it's not effective or advantageous to do this, right. But for the most part, being able to be in environments where, you know, what I say is we just run one operating system, right? We're not thinking and feeling and experiencing one thing, right? And then, you know, going to another, and so, um, you know, that's what vulnerability is, but, you know, according to Brene Brown, and given that that came out of my research, the idea is like, Well, why are we not all living these like fabulously vulnerable lives, right, if we know vulnerabilities important? And so, what came up there was this idea of the shame, shame bias, right? Which is the belief that you know, Sucheta, if you tell you know, your resilient story, if you share about something that you faced in your life, right? Typically, we'll think more of you, right? Because we'll think, Wow, Sucheta, she's so accomplished. She's got this podcast, all the things. And wow, look at the story, look at what she's overcome, you know, look at what she's faced. And but then, for me, when I think about engaging my own vulnerability, or for many of us, right, the shame bias comes up, right, which is this kind of cognitive process that I claimed, which is the fear of around showing people who we really are, you know, because we often imagine that if people know or knew who we truly are, you know, the three hours would happen, right? They won't like us, people won't like us, they won't love us. And they might leave. Right? And so, and that's the shame bias. And so, you know, I'm a, call it I'll call it a thriver, right after Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I would like to rename that post-traumatic stress response. But that's a whole nother podcast. You know, after having a stalker in high school and developing two decades of, you know, symptoms of PTSD at the diagnoseable level. And, um, you know, I didn't, I didn't want to tell people about that, you know, I thought that that would threaten my credibility as an executive if people knew I had a mental health diagnosis that I was, you know, actively grappling with, right or had symptoms at the diagnoseable level. And so, I hid that for a long time, and that and the shame bias is what told me to hide that, you know, tearing if people knew that, they wouldn't like you, they wouldn't love you. And you'll probably get fired or they're going to leave, somebody's going to leave. And so, as part of this work, I started telling people the truth about myself and about this experience, and I don't think there's anyone who didn't like me because of it. I don't think there's anyone who didn't love me because of it, there's probably a couple people who left but, you know, they might have needed to leave anyway, right? We get to, you know, realign the people in our lives and, and that's the power of vulnerability, right and facing the inherent sort of fear or cognitive bias that we're going to be shamed or left or not loved or not liked or not accepted for who we are. And so, it's the foundation of resilience, it's tremendously powerful. And when we think about leadership, you know, we talk a lot about empathetic leadership, we talk about authentic leadership, and authenticity and vulnerability are sorry, authenticity and empathy, right? They grow in the soil of vulnerability.

Sucheta Kamath: Love that. And I think, again, to me, if you don't talk about your vulnerability, you're also kind of signaling that life has been easy for you. And to me, I'm never trusting those people for home life has been easy. Because the hardest work that life has made you do is the reason why you are willing to do more hard work. And I talk I'm talking about the inside work, the work that makes us want to grow from inside out, not achieve and dominate and control. So, people who receive this training of becoming humble to me, they tend to do better anyway. So, I love the way you're, you're explaining to us. So how about the second component, that productive, productive perseverance? Again, you have very cool ways of describing this, I have to tell you, it's just such a powerful and simple way to grab people's attention to important matter. So how do you explain that?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Thank you so much for that. And yeah, it's on vulnerability is often something that I talk about more just because you know, really defining what that is and then the shame bias associated with it. The other ones are a little simpler, or at least the descriptions a little shorter. So productive perseverance is the second practice of particularly resilient people. And this is the intelligent pursuit of a goal. And this idea that it's as much of an art as it is a science at times it's knowing when we maintain the mission, despite challenge despite facing adversity. And when you know, in the face of recognizing there's diminishing returns, we pivot in a new direction. And so a question that I often get about resilience is how our resilience and grit right Angela Duckworth work how are those like are different and I think grit is you know, the staying the course part of productive perseverance, right the like, continuing right on our life's mission, like no matter what come hell or high water, right and grit works really well, when the landscape doesn't change, right when everything stays the same. So, I want to be a Navy SEAL. Well, there's a certain series of objectives to become a navy seal, it's going to be hard, but I'm going to be gritty about it. And I'm going to become a Navy SEAL or graduate from the Naval Academy, right, Angela Duckworth collected some of her data from the Naval Academy. But right being gritty doesn't always work when the environment or the market is changing substantially as it is right now. Right. And so, we have this opportunity relative to the second practice of particularly resilient people productive perseverance to take a step back and say is are these still the right objectives? Are these still the right goals? Is this still the right strategy? Is this still the right plan? If yes, all right. And if no, then like let's pivot in a new direction, right. So, the sort of the converse right of being greedy and staying the course is not turning the ship Right. And there's great examples of that too, right like Kodak, Blockbuster. You know, they were super, super gritty, but they didn't realize right that the that the landscape had changed. And I think something else that's important just to recognize here around productive perseverance in the intelligent pursuit of a goal of something that's really meaningful for people is oftentimes, especially as we get older, we're afraid that we missed our chance. Hmm. You know, we're afraid that it's too late to do something that we've always dreamed about doing. And you know, what I loved when I turned 40, I saw this, you know, meme on Instagram or something like that. And it said, you know, when they were 40, right. You know, Julia Child was still working in advertising.

Sucheta Kamath: Yes. Yeah. I love that.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Have you seen this? And, you know, um, you know, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Right, like he didn't found Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was in his, you know, 60s I think. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Stan Lee, right, the author of like Marvel Comics and things like that, right. Like he just published his first comic when he was 40. You know, and Malcolm Gladwell has a great article about this, that I always go back to that was in the New Yorker A long time ago. And basically, it's this idea that we equate precocity, right? That was a new word when I read Malcolm Gladwell article for kids like to be precocious, right to be driven. we equate precocity you know to be ambitious and driven with youthfulness right and with genius, right? Like if you figure it you know, if you're Doogie Howser, again, dating myself, right? Physician, right, who be you know, get through medical school at 16 that then you know, we think of that as like, we equate that with genius, right? as often, you know, we find is that we come into our zone of genius or we come into a new zone of genius later on in our life. Right. And so, one of the takeaways from productive perseverance is this idea to not allow ourselves to believe that solely based on age that we've missed our chance.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, several thoughts come to my mind, but I'll share one idea that Malcolm Gladwell talks about this. This cultivated curiosity. In order he says, I always do my work by going to the New York Public Library. And when I am looking at a book, so he said, I don't like this going to the internet, because there's something called next to the book that I'm looking at. There are two books to the right and two books on the left, that he always likes to look at and see what are those books about? And so that exactly speaking to that, in order to that productive perseverance, That identifying the goal. And people who are really good at that recognition of that situational intelligence to shift the goal based on the context and a newly defined norm for yourself, whatever, you have changed, and your goal is no longer the one goal that you're pursuing. And so, kind of having that openness to it is a great sign of resilience. I love that. So how about the next three? Walk us through, I'm being very mindful of your time. So, walk us through what the next three ideas are.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yeah, we'll do the next three at like sort of lightning pace, but I know that all of you are going to be able to follow along. So, the third practice of particularly resilient people is the practice of connection, right and when We think about connection. A lot of times people go right to like external connection. And it's important for us to realize that connection is really twofold. And the first part is the connection with ourselves. Right? So, learning to listen to ourselves, learning to trust ourselves, learning to listen to that still small voice within learning to not abandon ourselves is incredibly important that connection with ourselves and right, you know, that's one-fold internal. The second fold is the connection that we have externally, right with our neighbors, our friends, our family, our colleagues, and being able to draw strength and support and positivity from those connections.

Sucheta Kamath: Another thing about connections to me it's time and again, every part of research has talked about that the importance of connection and to me, we are humans and we are, cannot survive without that social connectivity and connections propel us to become better But also achieve more. So that can be a source of energy to adjust ourselves and so that we can forge forward, I guess. So that's great. How about the next one?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: I'll just say quickly, you know, I think it's about not simply whether we have connection or not. But it's also about the quality of the connection. Yes, that we have, right? And so, there's this idea, this is not my own, that we become the average of the five people that we spend the most time with. And so, it's about the quality of people that we also surround ourselves with. Because if you, you know, I like to say like, show me your friends, and I'll show you your future. You're going to become the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.

Sucheta Kamath: Yes, I love that. And so, the next one, you say, gratiosity, am I saying, that right?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yeah, gratiosity. So, this was a word that I made up, I love it. Apparently, you can do that when you conduct qualitative research and It was meant to really encompass this idea of what I was hearing from people, and one about gratitude that they would look on the challenge that they had experienced. And even if, you know, the challenge was thought of as adverse, right, like some kind of health diagnosis or a job loss, that they would be able to look on that challenge over time, right, like not in the moment, but over time and just say, you know, what, I can see the good in that I can feel gratitude for having had that experience and how is shaped by that. And then the second part is this idea of generosity, right? So, then we share our resilient stories, we share our lessons generously with others, so that they have the opportunity to learn vicariously through our experience.

Sucheta Kamath: And I think the I love that word, because its kind of in a way, grand generosity, you know, it's like has that grandiose over the top indulgence in being generous and in my work Talk about the concept of generosity of spirit. So, generosity, I think people also have a very limited sense of how it applies to. And often people think that we are being generous with our time or treasure or talent. But I feel how about becoming generous with our spirit, which is accommodating all variations in human folly? And with great respect and love becoming a better tolerant community, I guess? How about the last one? How about the possibility? What do you mean by that?

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Yeah. So, if you kind of think of these practices on a continuum, right, like vulnerability I'm learning is really about that's a foundational element to resilience. It's foundational to connection. It's foundational to the generous aspect of like sharing those stories. We have to be vulnerable on some level. And then possibility you know, if you kind of think about it on a continuum is really one of the highest order practices of being resilient and It's being able to navigate this polarity that exists when we face challenge. And so, the Chinese character for crisis is the character for you know, it's the combination or combination of the crisis for danger, and the character for opportunity. And so, possibility is about being able to navigate the inherent polarity that exists in any challenge, where there's an element of danger. And there's an element of possibility and how do we both acknowledge the danger and also harness and engage with the opportunity or the possibility that exists in any moment?

Sucheta Kamath: Well Taryn, I'm so happy that you found time for us to be on this podcast. Those who are listening, please know Dr. Stejskal's work is available to you not just in the form of a book but she is taking a new direction which is she's offering a course. I highly encourage you to follow her on her social media. We will be linking information about her work and possibility of taking this course in our website in the show notes so please follow up with that. And once again, this is Sucheta Kamath. Thank you for being with us on this podcast Full PreFrontal exposing the mysteries of executive function. Thank you so much Taryn for being with us.

Taryn Marie Stejskal: Thank you so much. My pleasure. Great to be here. Thank you.