Announcer (00:04):
Coming to you from Beaumont. This is your house call.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (00:15):
It's been a tough two years. I know I'm so tired and I'm sure you are too, but some folks are just thriving. They're bouncing back from setbacks. They're resilient against adversity. Resilience is shown to be protective against burnout, improved wellbeing, lower depression levels. There's even evidence that resilience can help protect against physical illness. But a misconception about resilience is that it's something that we find within ourselves. An internal grit that allows us to be strong and bounce back, but is there a secret to being resilient? You're about to find out.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (01:01):
Hello and welcome to the Beaumont house call podcast. I'm Dr. Asha Shajahan. We're here to help you and your families live smarter and healthier lives. As it's been rough with the pandemic, gun violence, political polarization, gas prices, people are really struggling. So today we're going to talk about how to get yourself through the tough times by building your resilient strategy and to help us do that, I have Dr. Darren Jones, chief of Behavioral Health at Beaumont Health. Dr. Jones, thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Darren Jones (01:33):
Thank you for having me.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (01:34):
So, Dr. Jones, what is the secret sauce? I mean, everyone's talking about the pandemic. It's been two years. I think it's become more than the pandemic now. And people are just really struggling. I know in my practice I've been seeing a lot more anxiety, a lot more depression, unfortunately and sadly suicidality, drug addiction. I mean, it's been really heavy and it's everyone. It's children, it's adults, it's the geriatric. What is different now than before? And yeah, we know it's the pandemic, but I just feel like there's a little bit more.
Dr. Darren Jones (02:07):
Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's two big issues. The first is the obvious one, which you already alluded to, which is all that we've went through here in the past two or two and a half years. Certainly the pandemic being the central feature of that. And we know that we've now amazingly, we now have lost over one million husbands and wives. That's crazy mothers and fathers, brothers, and sisters, friends, neighbors. And so the toll of that is really unfathomable really. Right? But even beyond that, we had some really troubling indicators, even prior to the pandemic that were letting us know that the mental health of our society was really in a dangerous place. What I think many of your listeners may not be aware of is that even prior to the pandemic, we were in the midst of a multi-year decline in life expectancy yeah.
Dr. Darren Jones (03:13):
In this country. And to give people a sense of the context of that, you would've had to go back 100 years to the Spanish flu pandemic. To the last time we had a multi-year decline in life expectancy in the United States and epidemiologists have pointed to two main reasons for that that are driving that decline in the first was drug overdoses. And the second was the increase in the death by suicide. So as you're already pointing out, we were already very concerned about these indicators and both what we're seeing in research, but also anecdotally like what you're seeing in your practice.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (03:56):
Yeah. It seems like people were just kind of treading water and now they seem to be having trouble. It's like you can only float for so long or you might end up drowning and people are just struggling with that. Something I wanted to bring up was I think, I don't know if I talked to you about Dr. Harry Barry or not, he's a British psychologist. And so he's pretty famous in terms of he has this antidote and you've probably heard it. I don't know if the listeners have it, but so basically this man's walking down along a river and he starts seeing bodies in the river. So people start running up and they're pulling people out of the water and some of the people survive and some of the people do not. So this gentleman's looking at all these people, chaotically pulling people out of the water and he's like, "Why are these people in the water?"
Dr. Asha Shajahan (04:41):
So he looks up and he sees that there's a barrier. That's broken. That's the top of a waterfall. And people are falling in. So naturally, his thought is let's fix the barrier and then people won't fall into the water. So as a family physician, I look at things from a very preventative standpoint and that makes the most sense. Okay, we got to fix the barrier. But when it comes to looking at things like resiliency, while you're fixing the barrier, there are still people falling, right? Because it takes time to build that protective barrier back. And as people are falling, we have to teach them how to swim. We have to teach them how to float. Otherwise, they'll drown. So I guess my question is can resiliency be taught?
Dr. Darren Jones (05:25):
The short answer is yes. And that's the part of, although there's a lot of heavy to what we're talking about today. My message is not one of doom and gloom, quite the opposite. It's a, really, it's a message of hope. And it's a message of what we can learn from behavioral science about resiliency and grit and how often the worst things we have to deal with in our society and in our lives often bring out the best of who we are and how can we maximize that?
Dr. Asha Shajahan (06:04):
It's interesting because so you hear like, "Okay, if a door closes, maybe it wasn't the right door and you wait for the right door to open and things happen," but it's kind of like there's people who are really optimistic and they look at that and other people are really pessimistic and if a door closes on them, they're just ruined. And so I guess my question is more looking at the fact of you keep hearing about people that are just kind of born with this resilience. They're just naturally more resilient. And then there's like a genetic component versus an environmental component. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Darren Jones (06:36):
Absolutely. So there is this nature nurture side that we can look at resilience. So all of us are born with certain personality and behavioral characteristics, including temperament. And so for your listeners, you might think about if you have brothers and sisters, you may think how interesting it is that siblings raised in the same household in the same situation can in some cases have very different personalities.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (07:09):
Yeah.
Dr. Darren Jones (07:09):
Right? I think most of us and-
Dr. Asha Shajahan (07:12):
Me and my sister are completely different.
Dr. Darren Jones (07:12):
Exactly. So I think most of us can relate to that in some way, shape or form. So that's an example of how that temperament and those personality characteristics. So we can look at resiliency as a trait, but we can also look at it as a skill that can be taught and it can be refined in the area. Really a behavioral science that's really focused on this over the past 20 or 30 years is the growing field of what's called positive psychology. Kind of sadly behavioral science really didn't spend a lot of time studying the more positive sides, like what we tended to focus more on what went wrong with people than what goes right with people.
Dr. Darren Jones (07:54):
And so really the epicenter of this research in theory is the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Martin Seligman, who is a psychologist there who actually is attracted a lot of attention in part because about 20 or so years ago, they began to partner with the US military because the military asked the same question you're asking, could we teach our soldiers prior to sending them off into conflicts around the world? Could we maybe teach them how to be more resilient? And so that began, they began to take a lot of the research findings and putting it in packaging it in a way where you could actually teach these skills.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (08:37):
Talking about teaching the skills. So I'm going to shift a little bit to kids just sure. So you've got, let's say you have children. And a lot of times parents don't know what to do in terms of if they're struggling and they're falling in some way, do we intervene right away and help them out or do we let them struggle? And how long do you let them struggle? Because there's this notion that if you never struggle, you're not building that resiliency muscle. Right? But then there's like, how much do you struggle before you intervene and get help. And so I guess I'm trying to understand how do you build this resiliency in a skillful way? So you're saying the military packaged it nicely and sent it off. But if you're a parent and you're like, "I want my kid to be resilient," how do you do that?
Dr. Darren Jones (09:23):
Sure. Well, the good news is the core competencies, the major components of resiliency that we've identified really apply to every age group. So that's the good news.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (09:37):
That's good.
Dr. Darren Jones (09:38):
And obviously what you're describing is some of the really challenging questions that parents have in terms of what matches their particular parenting style and their particular philosophy. I think the key thing, what we've seen from research is when we look at resiliency with kids, it seems to be the one indicator over and over that really best explains why some kids are more resilient than others appears to be having a warm, stable, supportive relationship with an adult. And that could be a mother or father, but it could be another member of the family. It could even be in some cases, people that have guardians, it could be that as well.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (10:21):
So you don't think it has as much to do with the adversity that they face, but more the supportive nature of their support system?
Dr. Darren Jones (10:28):
I mean, we could talk all day about the complexity of each case. So what I would say is certainly the type of adversity, the type of trauma that a person experiences is definitely a variable, but so are these nature nurture components of it? So the person's natural resiliency based on sort of their personality and the way that they respond to stress. And then also the way that their environment, their support system responds to it's a combination of those factors.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (11:06):
Okay. So let's talk about exactly. If you have a couple of tips or maybe like, what are some steps you can take to become more resilient because some people are the definition of resiliency is different for different people, I think too.
Dr. Darren Jones (11:20):
It is. So it might be helpful if I talk about the core competencies.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (11:22):
Sure.
Dr. Darren Jones (11:23):
Then we'll talk about the core competencies and then we'll talk about ways that people can package them in a way that maybe is-
Dr. Asha Shajahan (11:31):
Make me a package.
Dr. Darren Jones (11:32):
... user friendly. So the core competencies involve, and I'll explain these in more detail in a moment, self-awareness, self-regulation, mental agility, strength of character, optimism and connection.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (11:49):
Connection is a big one.
Dr. Darren Jones (11:51):
So self-awareness, many of us don't have a natural curiosity about our own psychology. Some people do, but many people don't. People that are highly resilient, they are curious. They're not only curious about their psychology, about their thinking patterns, their behavior patterns, areas that are challenging for them. They not only are curious about it, they seek out that knowledge.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (12:19):
So would self-awareness kind of be like taking your own temp, like how do I react to a situation? Or can you sure I dissect that a little bit?
Dr. Darren Jones (12:29):
I call it knowing and owning your own stuff.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (12:34):
Okay.
Dr. Darren Jones (12:35):
Okay. Who am I really? And-
Dr. Asha Shajahan (12:38):
That's a big question.
Dr. Darren Jones (12:40):
It's a big question. And it can be a scary question. And I don't in any mean in any attempt here to minimize how scary or anxiety provoking it can be to maybe face things about ourselves that are either unpleasant or awkward, it's hard, but again, highly resilient people, they're able to do that. And so having the ability to, as you pointed out, to get a sense of taking my temp getting a sense of where am I at emotionally right now and what might be contributing to that and how might I intervene. And that sort of takes us to that second one, which is self-regulation the ability to handle our emotions and our impulses and our physiology. That's a piece of it that we often don't talk enough about when it comes to resiliency. People that are highly resilient, they make sure that when, especially when they're under a lot of stress, they're attending to the basics, like the first aid, psychological and physiological first aid, like they're getting some sleep.
Dr. Darren Jones (13:48):
And they're eating and they're making sure they have water. I know that sounds incredibly simplistic, but often part of why I thought it might be helpful to talk about resiliency today, especially in a longer form context such as this is because I think sometimes resiliency is reduced to the idea of being tough or being cool and it's not. Resiliency is more than bouncing back. It's growing-
Dr. Asha Shajahan (14:17):
I like that.
Dr. Darren Jones (14:17):
... from the experience of adversity. And generally that doesn't happen magically, unfortunately. It generally comes with some processing of the experience and making meaning out of what happened. And I am in no means suggesting that when you take, especially really horrific, painful events, that we're somehow trying to turn them into something good or happy. It's not that at all. It's about what can I learn from the experience about myself and about life and about the world around me. And that's really a big part of people that are resilient.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (14:59):
Yeah. Growth is hard.
Dr. Darren Jones (15:01):
Yes. It is.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (15:02):
Growth can be painful.
Dr. Darren Jones (15:03):
Absolutely.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (15:04):
And even if you look at something like a plant, for example, to make it simple, it starts off underground right before it's ... you have to water it and you have to tend to it and fertilize it before it starts getting some of the light. And so I love that you said that it's more of a growth than a bounce back because actually when you think of bounce back, it sounds very temporary.
Dr. Darren Jones (15:25):
That's right.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (15:26):
I'm able to get through this and a lot of people can get through things, but then it's about almost looking at what is this here to teach me and how is this going to make me better in the future or help me handle things that might be tougher in my life, in the future. And I think that's what the pandemic has taught at. Almost everybody that naturally we are resilient as a human race because that's how we've evolved.
Dr. Darren Jones (15:51):
Yes.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (15:52):
But it's kind of I think people get lost in it sometimes. So keep going with the rest of you. So you're now talking of agility.
Dr. Darren Jones (15:59):
Well along those lines, the next is this idea of mental agility. So people that are highly resilient, they're able to problem solve. They're able to be creative. They don't get bogged down in just muscle memory of just doing things the same way. And that's easier said than done as one of the challenges we have when we go into our fight or flight, or sometimes what's called fight, flight or freeze response when our brain believes that we're under threat. We know that our frontal lobe where we do our executive planning and our executive functioning really essentially gets shut down for at least a short period of time. And so it's all the more important that you're able to think through situations and be able to take other perspectives and be able to think through it.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (16:52):
A lot of us sort of, kind of work with our limbic system, right? The prefrontal cortex sort of just that reactionary feeling that something bad happened. And you kind of sit in that emotion, which is okay, I think for some time, but when you say freeze, sometimes we get frozen in that. And you're unable to move beyond it. And I do this a lot where if I'm going through something bad, I have my moments of I let myself cry or I just give my pity party. But then if it's been more than two or three days, I start doing myself talk where I'm like, "Okay, Asha, we got to have a plan. We need to start moving forward. And we can't just sit in this." And so I guess for me, I don't know, I feel like it's some kind of internal motivation, some internal voice that I can't stay in this state, otherwise I won't move forward. But I guess for other people who might be frozen in that state, what are ways that they can get out of that?
Dr. Darren Jones (17:47):
Well, again, there's part of what you're talking about is what highly resilient people do, right? They're aware of this for you, what you're describing is basically a pattern or a style of engagement with stress that you have. And so people can, first of all, learn to identify those patterns and to be able to understand, okay, this is how I tend to deal with stressful situations, but by understanding that you can then be able to maybe incorporate some other skills, some other approaches to it. And it's just being mindful and creative for some people, they can do that on their own, maybe using good, because now there's tons of resilience apps, and books, and all sorts of things. But some people also do this in therapy as well as another avenue for some people therapy and counseling can be a good vehicle to be able to do that.
Dr. Darren Jones (18:46):
But the key thing here really, I think, is the self knowledge in being able to understand the way that these pieces fit together. So you have that mental agility, but then you also have optimism is a really important part of it. And I hear that as you're describing your process, I hear the role of optimism. You give yourself a certain period of time to sit with it and respect your emotional reactions to it. But then there's a period where you're ready to move on to something that feels more constructive and is moving on to the next thing, so to speak, to process it. And so when we study people who have been under tremendously difficult situations, whether they've been involved in a violent crime or a natural disaster, or some sort of horrible accident, part of what gets them through it is that sense of optimism that there's some anchor they have, that they hold onto that gets them through that and it could vary with different people, but people that have, that are able to be more resilient when they're facing that.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (19:57):
Yeah. So even if, I'm thinking of maybe people who might not have it so naturally is even just maybe mapping it out, do you think? What were the positives of this situation even though it seems like there may not? So for example, in the pandemic, I mean, it's still going on, but it's like the worst thing ever in terms of everyone was isolated and stuck at home and scared. But then there was a positive thing of people were with their families a lot more, the unit that they lived with, people were having family meals together. They weren't going out. So maybe sort of people could maybe list some of the things that are not going great, but then there's also, there's got to be something, some positive from a negative experience.
Dr. Darren Jones (20:40):
Well, and that's what we talk about with meaning making that process. And sometimes it's more of an unconscious process, but we can make it a more conscious process as well. I think part of what we are seeing now and what we will see over the next, maybe even the next decade or so is I think we'll see some significant shift in people's priorities in the way that they value different parts of their life. And so I think that's a process that you might think of that as an existential outcome of everything that we've been facing. But I definitely think that process of taking a look at where do we put our energy resilient, people are able to take the negative energy that comes about from dealing with diversity.
Dr. Darren Jones (21:30):
And they're able to channel that into something that works for them and something that is productive, either for both them and for the people around them and for their community. And that's really one of the hallmarks of that is the ability to do that, which really kind of speaks to the next category, which is strength of character, having a sense of what are my character strengths, what do I tend to do sort of naturally, and what is more of a challenge for me? And I'll just use myself as an example. I tend to be an action oriented person when confronted with some sort of a crisis. And I am not the greatest at more of the details of things. That's not so much my thing.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (22:16):
Same.
Dr. Darren Jones (22:18):
So, you can relate to that, but all of us have these strengths. And so you need to detail people. You need the people that can handle all of that while other people like you and I are just running in to kind of sort it out and deal with it. So I guess my point is that part of my hope is to talk not just about individual resilience, but community resilience, how do we build resilient communities, which I think should be such a national conversation. And so I think part of resilient communities is to understand that all of us, regardless of where our strengths lie and we all have them understanding what those strengths are and then being able to really maximize those.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (23:02):
Yeah. I mean, I think if we had more resilient communities, we would be better off altogether, because like you said, part of it is that connection and community. And if you don't have that, we're all kind of struggling. But if we have that, then you have something to fall back on.
Dr. Darren Jones (23:18):
Absolutely. And so I think moving forward, when we look at the daunting challenges ahead for our society and our communities, I think to really be able to focus on how we build that. And really I know in the work I do, I spend a lot of time thinking about, okay, what is the role of a health system in building a healthy community? I know you think a lot about that with the work you do, but also what are the role of other institutions, whether it's churches or schools or government or employers, and then of course individuals as well. But I think it's really one of the areas in our nation that needs to be an ongoing dialogue and we really need to put some resources toward it.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (24:01):
Yeah. And I think also when you say that, I think a lot of times people will see different problems going on in our society and say, that's not my problem or like, "It's a problem. It affects me, but I can't do anything about it."
Dr. Darren Jones (24:13):
Yeah, of course.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (24:13):
And I love that you said that we can all look at it from an individual lens or even from a individual community lens, like a nonprofit versus a for-profit versus an educational sector, whatever. And really look at what is the role that you play in this.
Dr. Darren Jones (24:27):
Absolutely.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (24:28):
And what are the little things that you can do because collectively, if everyone does their part and again, this sounds very optimistic, right? It is daunting. It's hard. We talked about growth being hard, but if we look at it from that perspective, then it doesn't look so hopeless. Because the lift is not just you. It's everyone together lifting to try to make a change.
Dr. Darren Jones (24:47):
It's a great point. And I think that without getting overly academic about it, we know this from behavioral science as well. Part of my message today is that these little thing, what may seem little, really does matter in our individual lives and in our communities, there's a theory from sociology called The Broken Windows theory, which is used a lot in criminology. But the idea is if you have a neighborhood where let's say there's an abandoned building, and one day somebody picks up a rock and throws a rock through the window and day goes by a week, goes by a month goes by, nobody fixes the window. People begin to see that window. And it becomes an example of, "Well, nobody really cares what happens in this community. I could pick up a rock and I could knock out another window," and the list goes on and on.
Dr. Darren Jones (25:41):
But part of the message here is that little things matter. It matters that you fix the window. The window in that abandoned building matters. And to understand also have empathy and understanding for the person that picked up the rock and through it as well. So understanding that these little things add up to a lot and I think the power of the individual and the power of the community, it is something that is, as you point out, as we become desensitized to a lot of what happens in our society. I think that's one of the main symptoms of that is that feeling of apathy.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (26:18):
Yeah. Apathy and helplessness.
Dr. Darren Jones (26:19):
That's right.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (26:20):
So I love the fact that part of your package plan includes connection and community.
Dr. Darren Jones (26:27):
Yeah. It's a huge part of it. And I often, part of the message I try to put across is that we are going, we get through these things over and over. We look back at all the adversity going back decades in this country and in societies around the world. At the end of the day, though, it might seem overly reductive and overly simplistic. We get through those things the same way, which is we get through them by taking care of each other and taking care of ourselves and much like on a plane when you've seen the safety video for a million the million time you've saw it on your recent trip. They always tell you how you need to put the oxygen mask on yourself first, before you go and you put it on somebody else. And so we need to know that we need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of the folks around us, but the sense of community and connection is really central to being able to do that.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (27:22):
So I love that you went over all of those different aspects and I think it helps us in terms of breaking it down for ourselves and really reevaluating ourselves and how we deal with adversity. And it might be a good exercise to look at the last time you had something that was really tough, whether it was losing a job or going through a divorce or tragically going through grief and how you went through each of these different steps and who helped you and what made it better? I think a lot of times we just kind of go through things, go through the motions and don't really break it down to see that in the future. How can I attack this in a better way? Do you have just like three short tips to boost emotional resilience?
Dr. Darren Jones (28:01):
Yeah, absolutely. So the first one is one I already mentioned, which is really having some curiosity about yourself, your psychology, your personality, your behavior. How do I tend to approach stress? How could I do it better? And to really do it as honest as you can, not in a way that's still self deceptive, but really try to have a transparent look at that. So that's the first thing.
Dr. Darren Jones (28:26):
The second thing is to be able to name your stress, give your stress a name. All stress is not equal. So you have to address stress in different ways. So get a sense of is my stress. Is it coming from my job or is it coming from a relationship? Is it coming from worrying about my finances? What is it? Because once you identify that, as you were pointing out earlier, you're able then to put together a strategy to address it, highly resilient people they're able to do that and address the challenges. The third one is being kind to yourself. We are so often not as kind to ourselves as we might be to other people in our life. And yes, maybe people come to us and they ask our advice and we tell them this very empathetic, compassionate answer. And so many of us never actually do that for ourselves.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (29:28):
Yeah. The inner dialogue is-
Dr. Darren Jones (29:31):
The inner dialogue-
Dr. Asha Shajahan (29:31):
Can be compassionate or can be very harsh.
Dr. Darren Jones (29:33):
And that's a great example of that knowing yourself, knowing your inner dialogue, do you have part of your dialogue that is not maybe in your best interest, maybe it's just a part of you. Sometimes in therapy, we call that the critic, which might be a nice way of putting it, but that person, that part of you that is negative or critical, but understand that about yourself. Once you understand it, you can then start to do something. Part of what I tell people when it comes to psychological issues is so much of this.
Dr. Darren Jones (30:09):
It's more daunting. It's more scary when it's still in your head. So what can you do to take it out of your head? And as you pointed out earlier, maybe put it even putting it on paper or having a conversation with somebody, but being able to get it out there. So being able to be kind to yourself also involves reaching out. There's that connection again, reaching out for the support that you need is really critical. A lot of us, we are happy. We are in heartbeat, we're there for other people, but we are really reticent to step and say, you know what? I really need some support here as well and it's resilient people do that.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (30:49):
And asking for it too. And not just assume, I think a people are like, "I'm struggling and I wish so and so would reach out to me," but you have to voice it. You have to let people know that you're struggling or that you need help.
Dr. Darren Jones (31:01):
You do. And you need to find a voice for yourself that works for you. Different people ask for help in different ways. And they're all valid as long as you're getting what you need.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (31:12):
Exactly. Well, I think we're getting close to time. So I'm just going to, do you have any last resources that people could look to help build their own? I know you gave tons of great ideas of how we can build our resilient strategy, but do you have like any websites or thoughts of what people can go?
Dr. Darren Jones (31:28):
What I would really recommend people to do? There's some really good resiliency, scales and measures. If you just Google them meet real easy-
Dr. Asha Shajahan (31:38):
Like resiliency scale?
Dr. Darren Jones (31:39):
Yeah, exactly. There's a number of them, but some of them are more like-
Dr. Asha Shajahan (31:44):
Is it a test? I hate tests.
Dr. Darren Jones (31:46):
No, it's not a test.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (31:46):
Am I going to get a zero?
Dr. Darren Jones (31:48):
No, but again, it's about that curiosity. So it might be interesting for people to do one of those measures.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (31:54):
Ask those questions.
Dr. Darren Jones (31:55):
Yeah. And just see, okay, here's what we talk about resiliency, this is what we mean. Also, there are so many, it's hard to pick them out, but there are some really good apps, user friendly apps. If you just look, go to your app store and put in resilience, and then there are some really great ... go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or what have you, wherever you buy books. And there are great books on resilience as well.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (32:17):
Local bookstore.
Dr. Darren Jones (32:18):
Yeah, exactly. Local bookstore. There are great opportunities to be able to take a look at. I would just encourage people to just open the door and be curious, and then find from there what works for them.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (32:30):
Wonderful. Well, Dr. Jones, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. This conversation was great. I feel like I need to go home and build my resiliency strategy so that I can power through the rest of this year and beyond.
Dr. Darren Jones (32:45):
Wonderful. It's great being here.
Dr. Asha Shajahan (32:48):
We leave you today with this healthy thought. Evidence shows that being resilient has many advantages in the workplace and your personal life, your physical and mental health, and believe it or not, history shows us humans, we are naturally resilient. The key is how to boost your resilience. In the time of adversity, we need to teach ourselves to name our stress, to be kind to ourselves and to have a curiosity about ourselves. Nelson Mandela once said, don't judge me by my success. Judge me by how many times I fell and got back up again. And that's the essence of resilience. The ability to not only bounce back from adversity, but to grow, not just once but multiple times. And the more we exercise that resilience muscle, the stronger we will be.
Announcer (33:40):
Continue your journey to living a smarter, healthier life. Visit beaumont.org/podcast to access information and resources related to today's podcast.