Resilience Unravelled

Keywords

Resilience - Philanthropy – Creating change – Compassion - Leadership

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, businessman turned charity founder Ali Horriyat, talks about the limitations of traditional philanthropy and the importance of compassion and community-driven solutions.

Ali is the founder of social activism non-profit Compassiviste, and he shares his personal journey from the profit driven world of finance to the realisation of the emptiness of his pursuit of wealth and power. He describes how he had a breakdown and decided to take a break from work to travel to Ecuador, where he experienced a different way of life that inspired him to shift his focus towards making a meaningful impact on the world.

Main topics

• The limitations and challenges of philanthropy and the inability of individuals to create significant global change
• The moral conflict and inequality within society and the importance of compassion towards those in need
• The concept of Compassiviste
• The importance of a unified system where the whole ecosystem works together
• The need for artists to connect with their audience and use their platform for a greater cause
• The concept of capacities which aims to bring communities together globally for the betterment of all
• The importance of political involvement and lobbying to enact change, with a focus on creating a critical mass to effect change
• The need for leadership in movements to effectively address issues
• The concept of leadership and its role in society
• Should a leader command ans control or guide and facilitate?
• The role of money in society and its potential to divide people due to differing beliefs and values
• The possibility of a future system where people trade based on their compassionate needs
• Community-driven solutions to address societal issues

Action items

You can find out more about Ali and Compassiviste at https://compassiviste.com/

Keywords

Resilience - Emotional Overdraft - Burnout - Emotional Reserves - Wellbeing - Invisible Costs

In this episode if Resilience Unravelled, Andy Brown, an award- winning adviser and coach for people-based businesses, talks about the concept of 'emotional overdraft'. He highlights its implications for burnout, the need to maintain healthy emotional reserves and the importance of acknowledging invisible personal and emotional costs in business finances, He also explores the idea of building a personal board of experts for support, the significance of prioritising well-being in highly stressed jobs, and the potential of writing a book to share experiences and insights.

Main topics

• The concept of 'emotional overdraft' and how it can be managed
• The dangers of misusing the term 'burnout' and the need to refresh the meaning of terms like 'stress' and 'resilience'
• Acknowledging and maintaining healthy emotional reserves for personal and professional success
• The concept of an "invisible line" in business finances, referring to the hidden personal and emotional costs of pursuing profitability
• Maintaining a healthy "emotional bank" balance to avoid excessive strain
• Building a personal board of experts to help overcome challenges.
• Discipline as a better approach to building habits and achieving goals
• The role of motivation in funding work
• Why leadership development needs more focus

Action items    

• Andy’s book is available at https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Overdraft-balancing-business-wellbeing/dp/1788605136/
• You can complete the free Emotional Overdraft Self-Assessment at https://emotionaloverdraft.com/self-assesment/or connect with him at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andybrownprofile/ 
• Follow Emotional Overdraft on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/andybrownauthor/or get all the latest Emotional Overdraft articles at https://emotionaloverdraft.com/

Keywords

Resilience - Mindfulness - Breathing - Breath work - Wellbeing

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Michael O’Brien, a qualified meditation teacher, executive coach and endurance athlete, talks about how to stop a bad moment becoming a bad day and accomplishing hard things through mindfulness. Michael shares his career journey in healthcare pharmaceuticals and his personal experience with a near-death cycling accident.

Michael discusses how his perspective on life changed after the accident, which occurred when a driver crossed over into his lane, causing a head-on collision. He shares his bleak prognosis from doctors and how he struggled with anger and uncertainty about his future roles as a father, husband, and employee. He also highlights how a mentor helped him adopt a more positive perspective by emphasising the importance of self-labeling, practicing gratitude, and mindfulness. This shift in perspective helped him overcome his challenges and gradually move forward in his recovery journey, which included both progress and setbacks.

Main topics

• The concept of mindfulness and its benefits
• Using breath work to manage stress and improve focus and decision-making
• The importance of creating space between stimulus and response
• Cultivating a more thoughtful and neutral approach to decision-making
• The importance of connecting with one's breath for overall health and well-being
• Different patterns of breathing
• Using shorter mindfulness practices to promote mindful living and improving overall health and wellbeing

Action items

You can find out more about Michael at https://www.michaelobrienshift.com/pause-breathe-reflect/

Keywords

Resilience - Hearing Loss - Isolation - Communication - Disability Awareness

In this episode of Unravelled Claudia Marseille talks about her personal experiences and struggles with hearing loss, and her journey to overcome this challenge and pursue a successful career in the arts. Claudia discusses the significant impact that hearing loss has on different aspects of life and the importance of social and cultural changes in increasing awareness and accommodation for people with disabilities. She also highlights the need for better communication skills in pacing for better understanding, especially for those with hearing disabilities.

Main topics

• Learning to lip-read and developing visual acuity.
• How Claudia's parent's instilled a belief in her that she could achieve anything professionally.
• Why a social nature and love of music helped Claudia cope with feelings of isolation.
• The challenge of hearing loss not just a volume issue but as a difficulty in distinguishing speech over background noise.
• The importance of pacing in communication especially for those with hearing disabilities.
• Developing resilience through personal connections and technological advancements, such as digital hearing aids and closed captioning.
• The significance of social and cultural changes brought about by legislation to increase awareness and accommodation for people with disabilities.
• The positive changes in attitudes towards accommodating people with hearing loss in modern society.

Action items

You can find out more about Claudia at her author site claudiamarseilleauthor.com or her painting website claudiamarseille.com

Claudia's memoir is But You Look So Normal: Lost and Found in a Hearing World

Keywords

Resilience - Mindset - Focus - Change - Goals - Control

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Paul Gencarella Jr., the founder of Mindset Mastery, talks about how shifting your mindset to focus on positive outcomes enables professionals to achieve remarkable personal growth.

Paul has experienced first-hand how hardships and challenging circumstances in life can take their toll. He spent time in a psychiatric hospital, lost the only job he knew and was on the verge of suicide. After a fall his 5-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer and one month later, Paul himself was diagnosed. From that point, Paul realised it was not what happens to you but how you respond that matters. 

Paul embraces the thinking that when you change your mindset, you change your life. Success in life is a matter of following a system and when you do, you will be in harmony with anything you desire in life.

Main topics

• Determining your goals and how to achieve them
• The similarities between resilience and the insurance business
• Changing your life by changing your thinking
• Why it’s not what happens to you it’s how you respond
• Controlling thoughts, feelings and actions
• The positivity of repetition
• Why willpower can work negatively -
• The importance of knowing why we want to do something 

Action items

You can find out more about Paul at Mindset Mastery or through LinkedIn

Keywords

Resilience - Mindset - Relationships - Toxic Behaviour - Emotional Intelligence - Coping Tools - Grief

Summary

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Naomi Riley a brain injury survivor turned influential motivational speaker, discusses the concept of resilience and shares her personal experiences with adversity, including being diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis as a child and a brain injury in a car accident in 2017. She emphasises the importance of maintaining a positive mindset, even during challenging times and also talks about the challenges of dealing with difficult relationships at work, particularly those involving toxic behaviour. She also discusses the need for self-defence and professionalism, her work on emotional intelligence and coping tools, and the importance of celebrating the positive aspects of life, even during times of grief.

Main topics

• The importance of maintaining a positive mindset
• How gratitude meditation helps focus on the good things in life and set a positive tone
• The importance of emotional intelligence and how it can help us navigate through life
• The significance of being aware of our emotions and how they are affected by others
• The necessity of letting go of individuals who are toxic or bring us down
• Dealing with difficult relationships at work, particularly when faced with toxic behaviour
• Maintaining professionalism and not letting personal feelings get in the way of work.
• The importance of emotional intelligence in creating a peaceful society, particularly for youth
• Coping mechanisms such as mindfulness and deep breathing

Action items

You can find out more about Naomi, her work and access resources at https://naomilriley.com/ or find our more about Text Pledge at https://textpledge.us/

Keywords

Resilience - Leadership - Wellness - Emotional Intelligence - Self-reflection - Communication - Expression

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Rikimah Glymph, a traveller, writer, author, health/wellness coach, advocate for social justice and Founding Partner of Glymph Consulting, LLC, talks about the challenges and opportunities in non-profit leadership. This includes the need for a new approach and the tensions that can arise when personal passions and organisational priorities conflict. She also highlights the importance of enhancing emotional intelligence among leaders, emphasising the need for self-reflection, understanding the communication styles of others' communication styles and creating a safe environment for expression. She also stresses the importance of self-care and wellness, including the social, emotional, and environmental factors needed for leaders to thrive.

Main topics

• The need for a new approach to leadership.
• The tensions that can arise when employees' personal passions and the organisations priorities diverge.
• The unique challenges of blending family businesses with non-profits.
• The inter-generational nature of business and the need for a flexible leadership structure.
• The differences and similarities between leadership in the non-profit and profit sectors.
• Why having a supportive network of like-minded individuals, who have undergone similar leadership experiences, can be beneficial for growth and feedback.
• Why self-care and wellness, including social, emotional, and environmental factors, are crucial for leaders to thrive.

Action items

You can find out more about Rikimah at BWell365 or through LinkedIn

Rikimah’s book is Total Wellness: A Millennial & Gen Z Guide to Living a More Balanced Life

Keywords

Resilience - Heritage - Personal Experience - China - America - Culture - Family History

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Richard Perkins Hsung discusses his mixed Chinese and American family history, including his grandparents who were medical missionaries in China. Richard was born in China in 1966 and was one of the first teens to leave China legally after Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Richard also talks about his personal experiences reconnecting with his heritage through visits to China and his mother's experiences during World War II. He also talks about the historical impact of the wars between China and America, the resilience of Chinese culture, and the significance of its history.

Main topics

• How Richard has reconnected with his heritage and learnt more about his family's history
• Richard’s mother's experience during the Chinese 1931 flood that killed millions
• Richard’s family's historical experiences during the Japanese and Korean wars
• The political dynamics between China and America
• The resilience of Chinese culture
• The importance of human connections within social contexts

Action items

You can find out more about Richard's familiy story at:

 Yangtze River by the Hudson Bay

Keywords

Resilience - Love - Relationships - Connection - Expectation

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Steffi Seefeld, a global speaker and facilitator, discusses her work in helping people find love and reconnect with life. She explores the concept of love and how it can be chosen and cultivated as well as the importance of maintaining curiosity, presence, and appreciation in relationships. She emphasises the need for conscious effort to sustain a relationship or professional connection and the importance of hiring well and becoming the person one wants to attract in order to have fulfilling relationships or professional partnerships.

Steffi also talks about the importance of effective management and leadership in hiring decisions, the need for realistic expectations in relationships and the challenges of finding a perfect partner or team member. The conversation touches on the idea of having multiple deep relationships in different areas of life without diminishing their value and of polyamory as a concept that goes beyond romantic relationships and extends to other meaningful connections.

Main topics

• Transmuting neurochemistry and creating mindful, choiceful practices
• The importance of being attentive and not rushing through relationships or work
• Why building teams requires measuring relationships in the real world and establishing boundaries
• The importance of hiring well and finding partners with clarity and understanding of each other's boundaries and trajectories in life
• Self-awareness and mental rehearsal in reinventing oneself

Timestamps

1: Introduction and Guest Introduction.  00:03-00:24

2: Steffi's Background and Work. Steffi explains that she helps lovers and leaders overcome feelings of stuckness and lost connection in relationships, allowing them to fall in love with life again. 00:34-01:25

3: Unpacking the Work. Russell and Steffi discuss the concept further, exploring how our upbringing and conditioning influence our relationships and how we can consciously change our patterns. 01:30-04:23

4: Importance of Hiring Well and Finding Clarity in Relationships. Steffi draws parallels between joining an organisation and entering a relationship, emphasising the need for clarity, boundaries, and understanding one's trajectory. 08:04-09:19

5: Endurance and Commitment in Relationships. The conversation shifts to the importance of endurance and commitment as partners face challenges together, and how this cannot be fully known until the first difficult phase is encountered. 16:49-17:24

6: Reinventing Oneself and Reprogramming the Brain. Steffi discusses the work she does in helping individuals become the creators of their own lives by becoming self-aware, letting go of old habits, and using mental rehearsal and brainwave patterns to reprogram the mind. 20:05-24:01

7: Connecting with Steffi and Recommended Resources. : Steffi shares her website and LinkedIn profile for those interested in learning more about her work. She also recommends Dr. Joe Dispenza's book, "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself," as a resource on the science behind creating our own lives. 24:32-26:38

8: Closing Remarks. 26:38-27:24

Action items

Find out more about Steffi at steffiseefeld.com

Keywords

Resilience – Grief – Identity – Loss - Image – Changing the narrative – Labels – Vulnerability – Connection – Purpose – Rebirth Day

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled J R Martinez shares his journey from the battlefields of Iraq to ABC’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’.  J R talks about how he joined the military and went to war at 19 but was injured after just one month, suffering 34% burns and inhaling so much smoke it was thought he might not survive. He was in a coma for 3 weeks and, when he came out of it the reality of the injuries and scars to his body left him thinking there was no way he could live in society. Eventually though he realised there were a lot of things that he could still do and he turned tragedy into purpose, sharing his story and expanding his career into acting, advocacy, non-profit work raising awareness for injured military personnel and writing his memoir.

Main topics

• Why resilience needs to be conditioned and exercised.
• How our early life conditions us for the difficulties we meet later
• Grieving for the loss of an old life so you can accept the reality of a new one
• Losing your sense of identity
• The difference between being alive and living
• How we can all have a ‘rebirth day’ when roles evolve and change
• Choosing to jettison parts of your old identity
• Creating a new image and changing the narrative
• Negative words and embracing the labels given to us by other people
• How society and culture conditions men to be tough and avoid talking about emotions
• Why vulnerability needs to be expressed in different ways
• Seeing the individual, not the injury
• How connecting as humans beings can change the narrative and the way you look at anyone else you come into contact with

Action items

You can find out more about J R at https://jrmartinez.com/ or through his Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn