Emotional Resilience in a World of Burnout

Starting the conversation:

Emotional resilience is made up of self-awareness, persistence, emotional control, and the ability to flex. These are elements of Dimensional Leadership: leading your company forward and being comfortable outside your comfort zone. Listen in to hear insights about building self-trust, using a moral compass, and getting uncomfortable.

Host: Jess Dewell
Guests: Ben Baker, Mark Carruthers, Andrew Hutton

What You Will Hear:

How we show up to each situation, and its relative stress on us, is the capacity we have for emotional resilience. A world with high stress and dramatic change lurking just beyond what we can see requires that we are able to flex in our actions, thinking, and feelings. Those pressure cooker situations also require a high level of self-awareness and the ability to trust yourself and lean into your moral compass. Jess Dewell welcomes guests Ben Baker, President and CEO Your Brand Marketing, Mark Carruthers, Principle, Senior Consultant, and Andrew Hutton, Founder & CEO Day One, to share their insights and experiences as they grow their emotional resilience.

Emotional resilience increases your ability to demonstrate Dimensional Leadership.

Burnout and work-a-holic are different.

We can change what is happening to better serve the situation, our teams, and ourselves.

Know the cues of when it is time to take a break, reflect, or act.

Check-in with yourself and your teams with the intention of increasing the awareness of what’s actually going on with the people in your organization.

Assess how much can you flex in your action, feeling, and thinking.

Attitude and your moral compass, your values, make getting out of your comfort zone less challenging.

Do you really trust yourself?

Live by your decisions.

When to get help and where to go for that support and guidance.

It is bold to build your own emotional resilience.

Notable and Quotable:

Transcript

Ben Baker 00:00 Glass isn’t half full or half empty, it’s refillable.

Mark Carruthers 00:03 Life is what, 10%?. What happens is 90% how you respond to it.

Andrew Hutton 00:07 Instagram will give you, like, the wrong images of what people should look like. Twitter is the place where you get the wrong image of what, like, how people work.

Announcer 00:18 Welcome, this is the Bold Business Podcast. Your Business has many directions that can travel, the one true direction of your company creates the journey for you to move toward a new, exciting level. We call this the Red Direction. In today’s program, we delve into one idea. The idea will support you as you work on ever-present situations, including how to stay competitive in a changing market, how to break through the business plateau, and how to anticipate the changing expectations of your stakeholders. Jess Dewell is your guide. Jess brings you a 20-year track record of Business Excellence, where strategy and operations overlap. Your Path comes from consistently working from the special place your unique true north. Now, here’s Jess.

Jess Dewell 01:08 I am looking forward to being with you today as we are talking about what it means to have emotional resilience in a world of burnout. There’s some things that came out of the interviews that I had with Mark, Andrew and Ben, that really spoke to me in a new and different way, the underlying basis burnout, what is it and how it’s different than stress, we go way beyond that here. And that’s so important to recognize is that yes, that information is always there. It’s how we show up and use the tension and the stress to still achieve our goals. And that’s what emotional resilience comes down to. And the things that we talk about on the Bold Business Podcast allow us to really dig in and be building our emotional resilience as we’re building our leadership. And as we’re building our ability to lead. There are some skills that are going to come out in this program today. The first is self-awareness, then persistence, a third one is emotional control. Another one is to flex and be flexible in our action, our feeling and are thinking you were to wrap all those up. One of the things that we’re talking about regularly is dimensional leadership. That is something that takes us to the next level above burnout because there’s always stress, there’s always other things. And our resilience allows us to build our dimensional leadership. Who so I have to tell you a look in is something that Mark Carruthers is setting us up for Mark is a change facilitator and has worked across nine industries including agriculture, construction, wholesale distribution, and high tech, both as an entrepreneur, a contractor, and thirdly, as an employee as part of medium-sized organizations. Here’s how he sets us up for this conversation.

Mark Carruthers 03:16 Well, certainly based on my own experience, or myself, or from those that I’ve worked with over several decades, and in several different businesses. I’m not surprised by the 80% number. The question is whether the stress is as a result of the job or self-induced because of pressure from the job pressures from home or from somewhere else. I’m just not entirely convinced that people who are dealing with burnout, it’s entirely the job is doing it. Some of them are bringing it upon themselves. And some certainly don’t even recognize it or acknowledge it or admit to it. And that’s part of the problem. So they’re not doing anything to circumvent and they don’t know what being burned out is a lot of people are called Workaholics. But workaholic is not necessarily a burnout, totally something different. They’re two different things. And that is part of the state of mind, which is the major point of burnout is not just physical exhaustion or mental exhaustion, or dissatisfaction with a job or frustration, its distress as leading to it and their state of mind.

Jess Dewell 04:20 Next, as we’re thinking about dimensional leadership, as we’re thinking about our own emotional resilience when burnout is around, which by the way, is continued stress, continued stress, that doesn’t change, nor do we have success or maybe sometimes we don’t even try to shift that stress. Alright next, setting up the conversation with us for our time together. Here is Andrew Hutton, who is the founder and CEO of day one. It is a community that helps founders level up and accelerate their businesses during their most formative stages. In just one year. Day. One has accelerated 175 founders and have built nearly 100 startups within this community. Here’s what Andrew shares.

Andrew Hutton 05:09 Most of the time, businesses don’t fail, founders give up. businesses don’t run out of money founders run out of money. The founders don’t have enough in them gas in the tank to take next shot in a more like tactical practical thing about burnout. One thing that I add founders, if you’re going to survive the game, and then truly see if the business can make it or not, is to set expectations that is going to take you longer than you think. Figure out the financial runway that you need. Don’t let your finances be the reason this thing falls, there’ll be a ton of stress. But ultimately, if you quit, because you need a day job, that’s why the business fails, figuring out how you can figure this out whether it’s because you have a side hustle, freelance job, whether you make the business a side hustle and keep your day job, you just need to stay in the game.

Jess Dewell 05:52 Staying in the game. And if you’re in a different stage of your business, it’s still about how do we step on the field and stay in the game. And that brings us to our next contributor today, Ben Baker, Ben believes that if companies understand live and build cultures around their purpose, that employees will engage, they will stay and they will want to grow with the organization. He is the president of your brand marketing. He’s also an employee engagement consultant. And he’s a two times author as well as host of your living brand dot live show. Here’s how he’s starting us off.

Ben Baker 06:31 Burnout is something that either we embrace, we realize that it’s part of our life is something that’s gonna happen, or we let it consume us. And that’s the challenge. The challenge is, do we let the burnout consume us? Or do we realize that Wait a second, here, I am done. I’m toast, I’m finished either for the day or for the week or for the month or whatever, I’ve just lived to the fullest of my intent. And I’ve got to just give something a break, or we just push through it. And it’s the people that deny the people that sit there go, I can go one more step I can push a little bit harder, I can just push through this that end up getting down that deep dark hole that some people never make it out of. And I think that we need to realize for ourselves that everybody has a breaking point. Everybody has this point in their life where they realize you know what, it’s not that I’m drowning, it’s not that I’m going to go under, it’s not the fact that I’m going to give up and I’m going to quit, it’s the fact that I need a break. But I did a post on this. And the quote that I put with it was treading water is not drowning. And it’s amazing how much that resonated with people that we sit there and go, Okay, I’m treading water, but I’m not drowning. And it’s a great visual for people to remember that you know what, sometimes we just need to stand still, sometimes we need to go backwards a few steps, sometimes we just need to rest a little bit and move forward. That doesn’t mean we’re quitting. It doesn’t mean we’re giving up. It just means that you know what, now is the time to give our head and our body and our brains a break.

Jess Dewell 08:08 I was searching for emotional resilience as part of the research to set up what this podcast was going to be about. There was so much great information that I narrowed it down to just a few things that you’ll find in the resources section of our show notes page. One thing I want to call out right now is from the New Yorker, it’s an article about burnout. And it’s called a modern affliction, or is it a human condition? By jela? pourrais. One of the things she talks about is that to Ben’s point about is it time to pause? Is it time to push a little bit harder comes down to Well, what’s showing up when we have experiences of guilt or self scolding, even shame. That’s the time to go pause. It doesn’t matter what else is going on that pause will allow you to go okay, how do I lean in to my strengths here? Because once that doubt shows up, there’s something about well, maybe we could be doing a different How come it seems easier for those other people? Why haven’t I achieved such and such this and blah, blah, blah, that the grass can always be greener on the other side. And that doubt can be the elephant in the room that prevents you from getting to your goal. I think that’s the key. Are you willing to do what it takes to recognize how green you are grasses?

Ben Baker 09:37 The problem is we’re all looking out the window. It’s the grass is always greener. On the other side. We look at Google and say I want to be just like Google. So I’m going to mimic Google. I’m going to make it Microsoft I’m going to mimic Tesla I’m going to mimic whoever you can’t. First of all, they’re multi-billion dollar businesses. You’re a 250 to $10 million business. Second of all, your circumstances, your clients, your vendors, your life, your expectations, your culture, your purpose are different from theirs. So you need to sit there and say, What are the KPIs? What are the key performance indicators that work for our organization? What are the policies and procedures that work for our organization? Forget about industry standards, forget about what other people are doing in your industry, you need to sit there and say, What works for us as an organization? What does your company need to be successful,

Jess Dewell 10:33 That actually makes me think of another article, one that was published in time, called 10 ways to boost emotional resilience that’s backed by research by Eric Barker, some of the things that came out of this article could be summed up into one statement, how you can survive harsh situations and still achieve your goals is actually truly possible. And three things that stuck out to me about how to do that include a moral compass, we talk about values all the time here. So pull out those values every day and use them to build your emotional resilience. How about social support, not only in your personal life, not only in your business life, but the people that you need for other things. Like if you get a flat tire, if you need a ride somewhere, the mindset, and Mark has something to say about the mindset piece.

Mark Carruthers 11:29 Businesses are being pressed more and more for productivity increases cost reductions, and just trying to make the almighty buck in the same respect. Individuals are looking to advance in their careers and are willing to put in extra time put in additional dress upon themselves to try to achieve more and to move up the corporate ladder. And they businesses are looking at it and rubbing their hands and saying this is wonderful, we can get all this productivity, perhaps more hours. So we’re getting it for free effectively, and they’re willing to let the individual who is perhaps an overachiever or trying to achieve do that. And who’s benefiting. Usually, immediately the business as opposed to the individual is a longer-term for the individual when it’ll finally catch up with them and harm them. And they just don’t realize that until it’s too late. Often,

Announcer 12:21 You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast. We will return to the show soon. But first, I want to take a moment and give you a peek into what additional services and solutions you could access to Fast Track Your Business. This program was created to develop your capacity on demand by sharing insights tips, as well as lessons learned by business leaders unedited and uncut. And we don’t just stop there, there are three additional benefits to help you reach your growth goals. You’ll also have unlimited access to one hearing tips and insights to develop yourself as a leader to get better results more often. Two, experiencing viewpoints from many different business leaders. Three, receiving frameworks to build core competencies and to more effectively focus on business growth and leadership. altogether. The Fast Track Your Business program will allow you to face uncertainty, anytime, anywhere, you can access what will become your most versatile tool in your toolkit by going to FastTrackYourBusinessToday.com. Now back to Jess.

Jess Dewell 13:32 So whether we’re talking about the elephants in the room and our self doubt whether we’re talking about the long game and mindset, dimensional leadership is a part of this. We’ve been talking a little bit about how do we look at our company? How do we look at ourselves? How do we look at our team, each one of those awarenesses comes from a different lens, and to be able to be objective, and subjective and nonjudgmental, takes all three from each of those viewpoints. It allows us to recognize and build our learning and to learn from our experiences and the experiences of others around us and the experiences of our team and our company collectively.

Ben Baker 14:14 You know, when I was 16 years old, I thought I knew everything. I do everything I could do everything. I was invincible I skied for Whistler Mountain, and I used to race other people through the trees and I was gonna live forever. And all of a sudden you start getting more and more injuries. And I got to a point where I couldn’t skate anymore. It was either to plastic knees or quit skiing. Well, guess what I quit ski. You know, I got into a big bike accident and tore the top tube off my bicycle in the middle of a race. Never mind what it did to my body. as I’ve gotten older. I’ve literally had things where I’ve pushed myself so hard, where my body is giving up. And realizing at that point, it says you know what, there’s only so much you can do it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t push yourself, it means that you should realize that sometimes you can do it by yourself. And sometimes you need other people to do it. And I guess it’s the maturity of getting older and realizing that I can beat my head against the wall as many times as I want, it’s not going to solve anything. If I can sit there and say, okay, there’s got to be another way of doing this and go look for somebody and say help and have the maturity to say help. I think it’s better off if the class is, you know, guy who never asked for directions, GPS was the best thing in the world, for guys driving around North America and around the world, because we don’t have to get out and ask for directions anymore. We just plugged into the GPS and let it go. But it’s enabled us to sit there and say, Okay, we’re going to use a different medium to help us get where we’re going without having to admit our own insecurities. And sometimes that’s the right way. Sometimes it’s the wrong way. But it’s an analogy that sits there goes, Okay, is there a different way of looking at this? Is there a different way of doing this, that’s going to allow me to move forward and be able to be satisfied with the direction that I got?

Jess Dewell 16:04 What Ben is talking about is the flexibility in action and thinking, and now Andrews going to share a little bit about flexing, in relationship to feeling and action.

Andrew Hutton 16:15 If you find yourself storing up your batteries a little bit because you procrastinate. Just let that be a positive Would that be okay? like beating yourself up for anything rarely helps. And so just be like, okay, I just did that. Sometimes I’ll find myself needing to get a project done on a weekend. And I’ll let myself procrastinate till like the evening, maybe it’s Saturday evening, and I just, you know, do some nice Saturday stuff. And I know I’m actually recharging my batteries by procrastinating. So it’s a little catch 22 almost that like I’ve learned procrastinating by doing good things, knowing that it’s probably wise in the long run, or in some turn, as long as I can get the thing done eventually. Maybe that’s just a little mind game. I play with myself to feel good about procrastinating.

Jess Dewell 16:57 All right, flexing, we’re talking about it, that action, that feeling that thinking. And it’s actually a really big part of dimensional leadership. So our persistence as well, and our emotional control as well come down to our attitude.

Ben Baker 17:14 A lot of it comes down to attitude, I always believe the glass is half full or half empty. It’s refillable, and that’s a real big mantra in my life is that no matter how dark things get, I may have to go looking for that answer. I may have to align myself with somebody who knows more a mentor, a coach, a friend, somebody that I don’t even know go out there and search out for somebody that’s actually had that experience and sit there and say, Hey, listen, what have you done, and be able to listen and gain experience and introspection based on sitting there going, I don’t know everything, I’m never going to know everything. Because of that, I need to go find somebody who’s much smarter at whatever it is that I am, who can give me hopefully, some pearls of wisdom, shed some light and give me a way to take a look at things a different way that it’s gonna allow me to move forward. So a lot of it comes down to the fact that the glass is half full or half empty, it’s refillable, and it’s a question of figuring out how do we refill this glass.

Jess Dewell 18:17 The way we show up to situation not only impacts ourselves, there is a ripple that goes out to those around us. So if we have low emotional resilience, that means that when stress comes along, it’s going to ripple out in negative ways to those relationships that are closest to us at work. And at home. And in our lives. It’s really important that we have the lookout on all the time, not only that look out to watch out for ourselves and our teams, but also to just be able to take stock and assess a situation. And sometimes it can be tough.

Andrew Hutton 18:54 And second-guessing your decisions, decision fatigue, kind of knowing you have to go to work even just to put yourself on the right path. And yeah, being a founder of a new business is then just falling decisions. Are you spending your time in the right places? Are you making the right calls, hiring the right people spending money in the right spots? It’s tough to kind of gear up every day to make good decisions. What experience founders do is they’ve learned some of the tricks, the gut feelings to make decisions a little quicker, a little easier to survive to the end of the day, so that they can keep doing it exactly. Do it again, keep doing it, get the things that aren’t decisions done really well. You need to be in the room negotiating to be writing that brief for that blog, like those are things that aren’t decisions, you just got to do it, but even show up to that moment really well. There’s one version of burnout that’s like the Wall Street person who like doesn’t sleep works 150 hours a week, and that’s a version of burnout. I’m not talking about that. Although Yeah, founder is gonna work a lot. It’s more of that. Yeah, I just can’t. I don’t know. It’s more of like an emotional burnout. I just can’t gear up to make this next decision and maybe be wrong and have to backtrack it and, and try again.

Jess Dewell 20:02 Something that Andrew talked about really hit home for me not only from thinking back and remembering what it was like to be a first-time founder, also thinking back to what it’s been like, as I’ve been moving through different plateaus within my own organization, different levels of business within my own organization. And you know what, and I bet you’ve got those two, and the interplay between them and how sometimes they’re the same thing. And sometimes they’re different things. This article that I recently read from Forbes by Brent Gleason is called the top five reasons resilience at work matters. And there’s all kinds of good reasons in there, I’m not going to share with you the reason, what I’m going to share with you are the three dimensions that build emotional resilience. The first is that resilient people view difficulty as a challenge. The second is that resilience people are committed to their life and goals, always. And the third, resilient people use time and energy where they can actually create an impact. With those things in mind, we have to learn that from experience. And so what Andrew was just talking about, is that fatigue that shows up, and by the way, every time we’re in a new situation, we can still experience fatigue, of decision after decision without a break. It’s important to be able to recognize that as a little thing to go, hey, let’s reframe How do I rely on all of the experience that I’ve built all of the resilience I’ve been practicing, so we don’t burn out and truly burning. And Ben shares his story about burnout?

Ben Baker 21:42 No, probably the most memorable was I was working for a company. And I can’t say who it was. But I was traveling 200 days a year, I was literally on a plane 200 days a year. And I was traveling around North America, I was super late on two different airlines. What does that mean? It means that when my great uncle died, my father calls me up and says, being Jewish, the funerals The next day, there is always within 24 hours. But we’re not gonna be able to make it to the funeral. He says, Why is this? Well, the only flight I can get is going to cost us about 30 $500 a person I said, pack a bag, meet me at the airport, your name will be on a ticket at the counter when you get there. Because what are you talking about? That I’m super lean on two different airlines just pack a bag and head for the airport. I’ll meet you there. Call it my special number. They booked not only my flights, but the car, the hotel. They take care of everything for me. And it all is on points. There’s not even any taxes at that point in time. And my dad says what do you do? He says, Dad, I’ve got so many miles, I’m never going to be able to use these things. There are days I woke up in hotel rooms, and had no idea what city I was in. If I wanted to know where I was going to be for the next two weeks, I called my secretary because she knew my schedule better than I did. My wife called my sector secretary to find out where I was going to be. And my wife and I looked at this and said, this is the divorce waiting to happen. And I walked into the Vice President’s office, I said, Look, you have two choices. You can either double my salary to pay for the divorce, or you can cut my travel days in half. He says we can’t do either. How about we buy you out, and it was done. They had me hire my replacement, fly them around for 45 days and paid me a six-month override. It was the only thing that kept me sane because I would have lost my marriage and we were only like less than a year into the marriage.

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Jess Dewell 24:34 We could have an entire show about mental health support around what it means to do work in a world of burnout and to live in a world of burnout. yet we’re not going there because our focus is on emotional resilience. And one way to build emotional resilience is to be aware of the dimensions of leadership and Red Direction we call that dimensional leadership Andrew Hutton, Mark Carruthers, and Ben Baker have been sharing so far fantastic information, personal stories and ways for us to be able to move through and assess where are we at with our dimensional leadership, and what could we do to build it. And by doing so, we’re building our own emotional resilience. We’re building the emotional resilience of our team, our organization. And by the way, that work that practice ripples out. Because what we learn at work, we get to take out into the rest of our lives. So we must look at what we need to do and what we can be aware of, to be able to rejuvenate or shift when we recognize certain patterns happening.

Andrew Hutton 25:46 Checking Twitter. It’s like a towel. It’s like, if I know I’m checking Twitter, it’s because I am avoiding doing the things I should be doing. And I know how I’m avoiding the thing I should be doing. Frankly, the things I like to do growing my business like being in the game, it means that I’m not like all the way ready to go get it, building a business is just hard. And it does require you to push through, you push through a lot. And it’s necessary, it’s necessary to push through to build a business to go out of your comfort zone to build the business. But when I find myself basically like shying away from getting out of my comfort zone from kind of staying locked in to do a hard thing, then I know that I’m just underperforming.

Mark Carruthers 26:32 I keep a watchful eye on staff, actually, right from the time of the interview. I asked them all the time, what do you do to relieve stress? Now, to me, stress is a function of an individual’s ability to handle potentially stressful situations. That’s what stresses their reaction life is what 10% what happens and 90% how you respond to it. This is what we’re talking about here. I agree that I have also seen teachers that have put in their 20 years or 15 years or whatever, and been really passionate about teaching, want to teach your kids and something whether it’s a principle, whether it’s part of the system, whether at the school level, or the board level, or the provincial level in Canada, at least that changes it, and they just give up they say, Well, fine, I’ve done my time. And I’ve had enough, this is ridiculous. There’s no point in me putting any effort anymore, they’re fed up, they will sit out the rest of their careers being mediocre. And they’ve lost that passion. I’ve seen that, and it’s sad.

Jess Dewell 27:33 The more you practice your own emotional resilience, the more you are able to build your dimensional leadership to help you improve your personal leadership and develop your ability to lead. And that means to trust yourself and still ask good questions.

Mark Carruthers 27:50 Two way street that’s essential to communication one person speaks, the other person understands. And they have to be able to feel free to speak what’s on their mind, be honest and open. Sometimes that’s difficult. Some people don’t have that issue. And they get ridiculed for being black and white, as opposed to somewhere in between. Sometimes brutal honesty is not appreciated. And sometimes it is necessary to get things done. It’s got to be feedback from both with an openness and willingness to still remain respectful, even if you disagree with the other person’s opinion. And unfortunately, as when I had my own business, I would tell people, I want to hear what you have to say. But just remember, this is my business. I’m a sole proprietor. And I do have the ultimate decision. I want your feedback. But there may be costs and maybe other factors, maybe things. I don’t know how many times I have had people come in to this business and say, we should do this, we should do that. And I say we’ve done it, we’ve tried it. And this is what happened. Oh, they still got to remember to be respectful. The owners, the managers have to be respectful of the people and allow them to be open and honest with it by saying we’ve tried and whatever you’ve at least considered it. We know what happened before we did try it and you explain to them not just sort of dismiss it. Otherwise, these people say what was the point in me, even bringing it up, at least tell them that you listen, you heard what they said, We have tried that very thing. And unfortunately, this isn’t this happened and it’s not viable in what we’re trying to do. So that communication, each has to be willing and respectful of the other in their comments, to make the comments and to take them without having your feelings hurt or become negative upon themselves.

Jess Dewell 29:33 Another part of dimensional leadership as well as building your own emotional resilience to face this world of burnout is to trust yourself and know yourself.

Ben Baker 29:44 A lot of it comes down to entrepreneurship is the fact that being able to make my own decisions and live by them. If I make a mistake, I fix it. It’s really that simple. The mantra is with my clients is I will mess up sometimes in the 1520 years or whatever. We’re going to work together, I am going to mess up, and I’m going to say I’m sorry. And I’m going to fix it. It’s really that simple. And sometimes it’s cost me money. And sometimes we’ve just laughed about it and fixed it and been done with it. Either way, if you make the mess, you clean it up. That’s always been my mantra. It allows me to be more flexible in my time, but also set boundaries. I can sit there and say, Okay, I’m not working on weekends. If I’m going to be out there doing keynote addresses, I’m not gone six weeks at a time, I may be gone a week, a week and a half at a time. So I build my own schedule in a way that makes sense for me, especially when my son was younger. I didn’t want to be away. You know, weeks and weeks and weeks at a time, I had no interested that there’s enough absentee parents out there that are out there traveling, I didn’t want to be another one of them.

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Jess Dewell 31:19 And let’s keep going with this concept of self trust. It is important to recognize that another part of dimensional leadership and building your emotional resilience comes down to how well you know your strengths and your weaknesses.

Andrew Hutton 31:34 I’m a person who does not let outside deadlines pass. I’m a people pleaser. I’m better motivated externally. So I guess on some side, maybe a better answer an actual helpful answer to a listener is figure out where your motivations lie and what gets your energy going. So for me, I’ve like literally never missed the deadline on like a paper on like a test just because I have too much fear of disappointing the teacher, the boss, whoever it is. So when I get to set my own deadlines, yes, I can procrastinate up to the 11th hour, but I get it done, I go where the energy is if I’m a little lethargic, if I’m into it, kind of knowing that the energy will pick up. And I’ll probably write that. And I’ll get the deliverable out at the right time. I’m just trusting my own energy flows, I’m trusting my own sense of desperation and urgency and all that stuff. I guess you should know that about yourself before you go where the energy is. I think it’s in there that a lot of founders find that burnout, because it’s really, really, really common to not know what to do next. Businesses aren’t usually swimmingly just like going to the moon, they have pivots to be made and customers to be found and 100 things that you need to do better next month and this month. And it’s really tough to dip into that well of reserve of energy. So I think that’s a different kind of thing than just like getting enough energy to go hit a deadline versus like getting enough willing yourself to come back and take another shot at what the next big thing needs to be.

Jess Dewell 32:58 So much has been happening. So far, we’ve set up the conversation, we’ve heard some external resources, we’ve been hearing from Andrew, Mark Carruthers, and Ben Baker. And we’re going to dig into the next part of awareness. It is the awareness that we have of the situations around us that can help us figure out how to navigate forward.

Mark Carruthers 33:22 You’ve got to be paying attention to what’s going on. I’ve had people were just watching them and hearing what other people have to say about them, gee, all of a sudden, so and so was grumpy today. And they, they really chewed me out for this. And I noticed the person isn’t taking vacations, or they’re gaining weight and not taking care of themselves, and that sort of thing. And they’re working astronomical hours and that sort of thing. You got to pay attention to that. And I will go to them. And I’ll say, oh, did you get away from the weekend? Are you gonna? What are you doing this weekend? Are you taking off some time this weekend, I’m concerned about you and expressing his management, concern about the individual and talking to them so that they will talk to you that I think helps to some point. And if you are attentive enough to a group of 10 and see that, geez, we lost one, that’s when you should be responding. Now, when you’ve lost three, three years, a third of the way there. basically.

Jess Dewell 34:14 The earlier the better always, always have awareness. And then we also have to focus that inside looking at ourselves and how we’re showing up to situations, how we’re interacting with others, and how we are showing up to the work that must be done.

Andrew Hutton 34:32 It’s just being aware, like I said, when I’m sort of avoiding those decisions, like when I leave an email on sort of draft for a week, and I’m like, I’m avoiding that. Just like if I know I’m just checking Twitter just recognizing when Yeah, where I’m avoiding decision. So maybe that’s the thing I’ll point out which is you’re probably not avoiding all decisions you’re probably avoiding a few and maybe they’re in like bigger places and uncertainty right man. I’m avoiding right now making a few calls on where to spend a few marketing bucks, right. Is it here, here? Right, and I’m just like punting on that for a second. To be fair, it’s useful to say it out loud, because I’m like, that’s not healthy. The thing to do almost like preach to myself here is to go get more information, it’s always good to pause and seek additional information. I did a little bit right today. So there’s this one call I have to make. And so I sent an email, I sent an email I should have sent a week ago, but I didn’t until today. And I was like, Oh, I know somebody who can help make this decision a lot easier, you can keep me from making a call in the dark, and then feeling the stress of making your call in the dark. At some point, you just maybe you make a call. But if it’s in the dark, you’re gonna feel some anxiety about it.

Jess Dewell 35:37 That pause, something else that can be included in part of dimensional leadership, in addition to having power all on its own. How can you take action? How can you feel about something? And how can you think through something to keep moving forward?

Andrew Hutton 35:55 Everything is a question, Is this the right customer? Am I talking to them the right way? Am I serving them the right way? Do I have the right product, you can get all in your head and just get some of what you don’t know. Or you can make the easy move to go figure it out. It’s simple, but not easy to go take action on framing a little bit of what we do in the day one fellowship in light of this, but it’s exactly why we do it, we try to make it clear what the simple, kind of hard not easy step is to go get information to make the next big decisions that much easier. And a lot of entrepreneurs see this wall of decisions, it freaks them out. It’s crazy, either make the right decision right or call in if they don’t have the tactic to get down the road to kind of get to a better vantage point to see more clearly, it will mess them up. They’ll either freeze or they’ll make the wrong call, the odds of them making the right call are really small. This isn’t like a self-care, like how to make a decision saying this is like when you’re facing a decision, go get more information, ship something, have a conversation, talk to the person reach out. And that might itself require you to gear up and send a bunch of cold emails and do something uncomfortable. But it’s actually in my mind is borderline different kind of uncomfortable. That’s exactly what you signed up for. If you can’t do that, then you should get out of the game as an entrepreneur.

Jess Dewell 37:14 And as a business owner. So what kind of uncomfortable? Do you find yourself in? Is it a whole lot of different kinds of uncomfortable all at once? Do you feel like you have the knowledge and information to be able to tackle all of the decisions that need to be made that are facing you right now without anxiety? If not take what Andrew is talking about to heart and stop pause. What can you do? Is there an order? can you leverage what you’ve already done to decide which next action can handle a few things or shed light in addition to Who else can I call to get that viewpoint? And this is true in the startup phase. This is true in the sustain phase. This is true in the growth phase. And this is even true at the innovation stage. What are some tips and tricks we can use? Ben has something to share with us.

Ben Baker 38:10 It’s looking at it going, Okay. We’re not designed to go 20 473 65 we’re not automatons you truly are an automaton. I go to bed early. I wake up early. I’m the first person out of bed in the morning by probably an hour, hour and a half. I use that time to quietly at breakfast. I read my LinkedIn feeds, I read my email, I prepare my day I make sure I look at my calendar. Who am I meeting with today? What are we talking about? What do I need to get ready for them? Have I done everything that I need to do? Okay, if the answer’s no to any of those things, I have an hour and a half or so before I start my day to get the little things done to make sure that I’m prepared for the day. And the last thing I do at night before I go to bed is to sit there and say I set alarms five minutes before each meeting. So I don’t miss them.

Jess Dewell 39:04 And in addition to the action, we can also remember our mindset. Here’s a tip from Andrew.

Andrew Hutton 39:11 I feel that most of our like those voices in our heads come from us comparing ourselves to these probably not real personas that people put out there have always on or being hyper-aware and wise about their breaks, like the people who make a very good point to make good points about Hey, take a weekend off everyone’s persona out there, whether they’re showing that they do it well, or they’re like hustling too hard, and they can tell they’re doing it wrong. It’s not even real. It’s just what’s sad. And so, you know, just like Instagram will give you like the wrong images of what people should look like. Twitter is the place where you get the wrong image of what like how people work, and that drives the voices. So I don’t know. I think maybe the thing you can just do is literally turn the voice off. And a lot of ways just do what you do the thing that got you Here is going to be the thing that carries you forward. And so be an approver be an optimizer, you know, find better habits, but also you got to go where your flow is and your energy is. And if it means you, however, you recharge, however, you procrastinate, I mean, that’s just a healthy place to be, which is to basically say, I’m going to work within my limits. My means, whether those are your willpower means or your like needs for recharging. Everyone needs to give themselves all the grace during this last year. And I’m like, Yeah, I look really good to some people, I can look really annoying to others, I just got to be me and just get through this season. And I guess the best place I can get to is recognize, am I letting my business down? Am I letting my people around me down? Am I letting my wife down? And if not, then just like, roll with it. Give yourself the grace.

Jess Dewell 40:48 Yeah, that. And more than that, that internal view, and truly understanding what we’re perceiving and receiving, it’s important for us to be compassionate, and considerate and aware of what others are perceiving and receiving from us.

Mark Carruthers 41:06 The issue often, though, is that those who are in the workplace in the trenches feel that those in management positions, have no clue what the real issues are, what the real solutions are, what the real processes are, when I was working for an accounting firm, and doing audits, we would go into a business. And we did what was called management advisory services. At that time, we would go to owners or managers and say, how is this? What’s the process to get this done? And they would explain it to us, then we would go to the people who were doing it. And they’d say, No, we haven’t done that for years, because it doesn’t work. The problem then is when you’ve got your evaluators who are evaluating based on management criteria, evaluating those who are doing it on what works, you run into a disjoint, and dissatisfaction and people are moving on because what difference does it make I can make this work more efficient? Because I do the job. And I know what needs to be done as opposed to management who’s sitting in their ivory tower and telling me and they don’t have a clue. I left on adjective.

Jess Dewell 42:09 On purpose. He sure did. Can you figure out what part of the last sentence that went and what it was? Now with that in mind, here’s the thing. This is important today, building, our emotional resilience in a world of burnout requires this skill of many skills called dimensional leadership. That’s self-awareness, that persistence, that emotional control, and the flex flexibility, flexing, whichever one you like, around action, around thinking and around feeling. This is the key for figuring out how to navigate the now and the next, and any chaos, uncertainty, or surprises that show up along the way. This matters so much, it matters because we can lean in to our values, we can lean in to flexing, we can get out of our comfort zone. And we can trust ourselves, we can know ourselves, and we can increase our awareness. That’s what emotional resilience is all about. And that’s building this ability for us to bounce to bounce forward to bounce high to bounce any way you want. Really, let’s hear from Andrew Hutton about why it is bold to build your emotional resilience,

Andrew Hutton 43:34 I think it’s that you’re ignoring what other people are putting on you. You’re ignoring the Instagram, you’re ignoring that the tweets, you’re ignoring what other people are saying and you’re just doing you, and if you stay true to you, whether that’s where your energy flows, and makes you most happy and productive, which is like the shots you’re gonna take and the goals you’re gonna achieve, the odds of you running out are really darn low because you’re just kind of in your zone of you excellence and comfort. And so I think that’s pretty bold, to to not sort of like be a sheep and go with what other people are doing.

Jess Dewell 44:07 Here is what Mark shares about why it is important to build your emotional resilience.

Mark Carruthers 44:16 Emotional resilience is a huge component of mental toughness. This resilience helps us adapt, endure, and or recover from stressful situations, crises and adversities that we all will face with no lasting difficulties or effects. I firmly believe that life is 20% what we are dealt and 80% how we deal with it, and that life’s road is filled with potholes and obstacles that will challenges the better we face these challenges, the better our lives will be as a whole, each stressful situation, challenge, crisis, or adversity that we face and overcome or recover from strengthens our Emotional resilience. But that takes being bold. And having the strength each and every time. we’re faced with these challenges. However, I also realize that we all have our breaking point. And it’s important to recognize this, except it, remove whatever is causing is these issues, or remove ourselves from it, and take the time to use our emotional resilience to recover. People who are able be strong enough bold enough to build their emotional resilience. We’ll find life much easier when future situations and adversities based them and hopefully have a happier and more successful life going forward.

Jess Dewell 45:51 Then Baker shares why it is bold to build your emotional resilience.

Ben Baker 45:57 You know what to build your own emotional resilience, you have to be comfortable in your own skin. You have to know your warts. You have to know your what you’re good at what you’re not good at. You can’t be good at everything. Focus on what you’re awesome at focus on the things that are your strengths. Its Strength Finders, 2.0, if anybody has never taken that, it’s a matter of looking at those types of things and going, Okay, how do we sit there and accentuate our strength? This is my superpower. This is where I’m wearing my cape, and I’m flying over tall buildings, the things that get in your way, you need to be humble enough to sit there and say, I’m not good at this. I should not be painting my own house. I should not be doing my own taxes. There are things that I just shouldn’t be doing. Do I know how to pay the house? Absolutely. No, I pay the house. You know, do I know how to do my taxes? Yeah, I know how to do it. But I do it lousy. You know, there are things that I’m going to miss. And there’s things that you know that I just don’t understand about tax code that, that’s why I pay an accountant because it’s his jam. He loves doing this all day long. God love him for that. But we need to understand who we are as people. And we need to understand ourselves. Because we can’t lead others we can’t be valuable to others, until we embrace our good and our bad and our ugly.

Jess Dewell 47:22 Emotional resilience is an outcome of strong dimensional leadership. And the skills that are wrapped up into dimensional leadership include self-awareness, persistence, emotional control, and to flex in our thinking, to flex in our feeling, and to flex in our thinking. And don’t forget your commitment to yourself, to trust in yourself. And to know that every action forward keeps moving forward. That every pause is just a way to say hey, here’s where things are so that you can see here or think what the next step should be to keep moving forward. So stay out of your comfort zone. And remember that you can always lean into emotional resilience in a world of burnout.

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