Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Mojo Mondays Mindset Tool #3: The Power of Reappraisal And Finding Silver Linings

Transcript

Mojo Mondays Mindset Tool #3: The Power of Reappraisal And Finding Silver Linings · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Mondays with Myself
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and Culture.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Hey everybody, So we're on our third episode about mind rules,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: and we're going to talk today about reappraisal, and we'll
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: go into that in a minute, but just to start off,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: it's really easy for us to get stuck in our
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: own narrative, Like I.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Know the times if.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I look back, where I was just stuck in my
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: own head and in my own story, especially when things
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: go wrong. And I was thinking about this term that
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: we often would say to ourselves, like life's unfair or
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: that's unfair. And if it's like we think that life
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: o's or something okay, if you really think about it, oh,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: that's just unfair or life's unfair. If you look think
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: about the definition of what's unfair, it's like this shouldn't
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: be happening to me.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: But in our lives stuff goes wrong all the time,
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: like life.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: If you're going to talk with that narrative, yes, life
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: is unfair, but it's almost like, well is that right?
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Like is it I'm very that just shit just happens,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: you know, in the way and in the worst case scenario,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: we can play this victim and when we go into victimville,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: we can get very, very stuck, and it can paralyze us.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: It can stop us from from.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Living the life that we actually want to want to
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: live and focusing on the things that are important to us.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: No, you've opened a door for me to have a right.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, I was going to say to you
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: at the start, can you just like tone down the rant?
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: That's my narrative.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Gods, it's as you said. The word you said, the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: victimhood work right. And so the way that I like
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to position this and the way that I like to
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: think about it anytime i'm feeling a little bit sorry
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: for myself is I'll never forget watching an episode of
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: David Attenborough, right, and it was they were studying ant colonies.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: So there was this big field and there was an
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: ants nest on one side and another ants nest on
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the other side, and what happened was the ants bumped
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: into each other, right, And then they're such good communicators.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I love watching ants in the way they communicate. So
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: these messages, these chemical messages go back to the nest
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: super super quick. And then all the soldier ants came
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: out and they went to war. Basically and there was
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: this one little series our sequence were they actually filmed this.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know how they did it, but it was us.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: The soldier ants of one side actually captured an ant
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and three or four of the soldier ants were holding
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: it down and another one of the soldier ants came
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: out and it cut it with its pincer right down
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: the abdomen, right so cut, so imagine this right cut,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: its stomach opened completely, and then injected acid into it,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and the acid just to et that ant from the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: inside out. And that's fucking life. That has been life
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: for the four and a half billion years that there's
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: been life on this planet, not all of it. It
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: was only when we you know, you started having animals
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: that you know, bad shit happens all the time, has
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: throughout history.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: The Lord, you're not an ant.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: You're not an I know exactly, that's the thing. But
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: it's just like you know, for more of the history
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of our species, we've been preyed upon by all sorts
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: of bad shit. And you know, still in lots of
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: places in the world there is war right now. I
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: mean everybody knows about Ukraine and Israel, but I mean
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's the ship that's happening in Sudan right now, where
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: little kids are being executed and stuff like that. Like,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: there's just all sorts of shit going on all around
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the world and always has been. And this expectation that
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: lights should be good is just a creation. It's a
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: narrative that that we just create. But anyway, there's my
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: there's my little rant that don't expect life to be good.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Do not expect life to be rosy. You need to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: expect that, as the Buddha said, life is suffering and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: you better be fucking ready to roll your sleeves up
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: on occasion. Now, luckily in this country and most of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: our listeners probably live in pretty safe environments, and probably
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: maybe not all of them, but there will be times
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: that you need to freakin scrap and rule your sleeves up,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: maybe even fight for your survival. But sitting around and
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: playing the victim and going that's not for that person
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: offended me. It's really not for you.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And it's not that we shouldn't feel bad, because of course,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: when things happen to us on any sort of level,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: we all have different responses to that that quite often
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: we feel an emotion about it.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: And it's not about you shouldn't.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Feel this way, But it's really how you then respond
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: to that emotion or you respond to those thoughts that
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: come up, because if you stay in victimville, it's really
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: not helpful. It's not helpful to you, and it's not
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: helpful to anyone. So this is where I love at
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: acceptance commitment therapy, because we accept the emotion that comes up,
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: we accept the thoughts that we come up that come up,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: but we don't stay in that. We don't stay what
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: we call fused with those if we and this is
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: where there's tools come in because if we can take
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: that step back, and part of what we're going to
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: talk today is a tool around reappraising a situation, because
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: when we get stuck in our narratives, stuck in our story,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: then it's like there's no space for any other perspective.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: And I love that analogy of the camera. When it's
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: just on one lens, that's all we can see. But
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: when we put it on panoramic, then all of a sudden,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: we can see there's other perspectives, there's other options, and
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: we're not just stuck in this one kind of space,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: which can often be when we're a victim so yeah,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: so reappraisal, do you want to go into to what
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: reappraisal is?
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So GM's gross has done a lot of work
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: on reappraisal and I was very fortunate to have him
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: as one of my lecturers when I was doing my
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: pulshgrad in neuroscience, and he presented a per that he's
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: done research. And then actually we've discussed the paper were
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: it actually showed reappraisal versus acceptance. And you know, we're
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: both big fans of acceptance, but reappraisal was even more
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: powerful than acceptance. But this one study I wanted to
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: talk about in two thousand and five was he took
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people who had really bad experiences in
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: their life and some of them, you know, just he
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: just let them do their normal thing, which was they
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: tended to suppress it. And many people will relate to
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: this that, you know, a really bad thing, when it
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: pops up in your memory, you just kind of shut
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: it down, right, And that can come from being extremely
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: embarrassed about something or feeling shame or something really really
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: bad that happened. And so what he did was he
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: took half of these people who'd been through capital T Trauma,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: not Little tea Capital T Trauma, and taught half of
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: them the art of reappraisal, which I interpret as finding
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: the silver lining. So basically he got them to say, Okay,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: so what happened, what was the event? What were the results? Nah,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I want you to think about the silver lining. I
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: want you to think about the good thing that came
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: from that bad event sometime down the track. That is
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: pretty key. That sometime down the track, right. So it
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: can be that you lose a job and then you
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: end up getting another job that ends up being better
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: than that, but at the time that you lost a job,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: it was pretty horrible. But let's take a real extreme
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: version of that, is that somebody died and people would
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: often say to me in workshops, well, where's the silver lining?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I said, Well, how often do you hear people say
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that when someone died they leant into someone else and
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: they developed a really strong relationship with them, or they
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: were feuding with a partner or a sibling and they thought,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: you know what, life's too short, let's bury the hatchet.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Or they realized their own mortality and they thought, actually,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I need to do something different with my life, and
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I've got a real clear example, which was, and you
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: remember this, there was a period when I was in
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the forces, and there was about six months period where
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: quite a number of friends of mine died. So Dave Cole,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: who you remember, well, great guy, killed in helicopter christ
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: that was an accident. And then friends of mine were
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: killed out in the Gulf. Well I wasn't friends with
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: all of them, but I knew them all. And it
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: was two helicopters collided, but two really good met to
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: mine were in that helicopter, Andy Wilson and Phil And
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that kind of shook me up because there was a
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: reasonable scenario that I could have been in one of
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: those helicopters. But the silver lining of that was that
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I started thinking about what I wanted to do with
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: my life. And I, if you remember, that was the
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: point of I was short career commission, which is eight
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: years for our crew, and I had a big decision
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: to make whether I went full career or left. And
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: just because of the circumstances that surrounded up, which I
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: won't go into, but that didn't have to happen, that
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: helicopter crash, and I thought, I don't want anybody to
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: be in control of my destiny. So I decided to leave.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And I had been if you remember, doing a master's
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: in nutrition anyway, and I remember my secondary role at
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the time was sports officer, and I started writing a
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: well being newsletter and I already had my master's in
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: next Fiz And I remember one day walking across the
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: period ground at hits Amas Gannett int Preswick, and a chief,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: an old chief, came up to me and he said,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that newsletter you wrote was frigging awesome. It not only
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: impacted me, but it impacted my family, and I just
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: want to thank you for it. And that's where I went,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: this is what I want to do. And I remember
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: shortly after that creating a tombstone statement which has been
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: refined a little bit, but it was essentially similar time.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: And my tombstone statement was military man turned educator to
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: help others become better versions of themselves. So if those
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: guys Phil and Andy hadn't been killed in that helicopter crash,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't have happened and wouldn't have set me on
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the path to where I am right now. And you
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: know you've got similar story with Oscar. Why don't you
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: tell that quickly?
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, when Oscar had Cushing's disease, and it was
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: a really really hard time and just so much uncertainty
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: and a lot of pretty serious risks for the surgery that.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: He was doing.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: So it was really hard and stressful. The silver lining
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: now looking back on that for me is Oscar, as
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: a result of sort of the decline in his mental health,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: spent a lot of time at home and a lot
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: of time with us, And I remember that time just
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: this bond that we really developed that you know, you've
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: always got a bond well, I would hope with your kids,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: but this was at another level. And so we are
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: now very very close. And also for him because it
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: was stressful for him as a twelve year old, and
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: now he can now look back on it and go, well,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I actually know what stress feels like, and so other
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: things that possibly other kids are finding stressful, he kind
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: of looks at those and puts that in perspective and goes, actually,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: that's not stressful because I know what stress feels like.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: So you know, it's not to say that, you know,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: if I could change things, you know, and I'm sure
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: you're the same. Of course, you don't want your friends
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: killed and I would don't want my son having a
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: tumor on.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: His pitiritary gland.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: But that was the situation, and so it's widening that
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: perspective and going with this, with this situation that was
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: really really hard, something good did come of it.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: And I think that's the critical part of reappraisal, is
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: that you don't dismiss the situation. You go, you know what,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: that was a really hard time, but here's the good
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: that came out of that. Down the track, right, And
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: sometimes it's a long time down the track, but it's
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: you acknowledge that it was really difficult, but you then
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: focus on the silver lining. And it's I guess it's
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: very strongly linked to the old stoic concept of that
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: we are all actors in play and that sometimes you
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: don't control the part that you're given. But Epicteta says
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that you need to play your given roles well and
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: that that you know, one of his given rules was
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: to be a cripple. That he was beaten by his
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Roman master, became a cripple, and he said, well, the fact,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: if it is my role to be a crippled, then
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be the best damn crippled that I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: can be. So I think the question is, you know,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: bad shit happens to good people all the time, and
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: it's how you're going to use it, Like, how are
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you're going to take that energy and do something with it?
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: And that's where that reappraisal comes in. And James Gross
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: has done further research where it's actually shown that when
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: bad stuff happens in and of the moment, if you
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: actually sit back and go, yeah, this is really bad,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: but what might the silver lining be in the future,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: and that really reduces the amount of stress that you feel.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: So it's just that psychological shift, right, It's a bit
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: of psychological flexibility to change the lens that you're looking
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: at the situation.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: I love that because that links in with our future
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: self stuff that we were talking about episodes ago.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: Things intertwined with this stuff.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it links him with future self, at links him
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: of the article that I wrote and the podcast I
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: did on optimism. It links him with hope as well.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: And it is really just about choosing how you react
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to your circumstances. You know, Victor Frankel, the last of
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: human freedoms, the ability to choose how you react to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: your circumstances. And he wasn't somebody who just come up
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: with this stuff in an office. He survived doce fits,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: you know, really really difficult stuff. But there's a consistency
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: amongst philosophers and psychiatrists that actually realized that we can
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: actually choose how we react. And I think reappraising a
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: situation to try and find the silver lining is very,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: very powerful. And I think the the op shot of
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: all of this is, you know, there's a couple of
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: phrases in our house that we talk about all the time.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: You know, get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and be a
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: silver lining hunter because sometimes you've got to hunt for
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the silver lining. And I think the other one that
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the reappraisals added in was, you know, we have that
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: old scenario that we say in our house, if something
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: bad happens, is anyone dead? And is anyone pregnant? Right?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: And when you have a fifty five year old wife
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: and an eighteen year old daughter, that second one is
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: really important, yes something?
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we add the third one is anyone dead,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: it's anyone pregnant?
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: Has anyone got cushings disease?
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. A little bit of reappraisal. So that's
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: it for this week, folks. So your homework is to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: actually look back on a bad time in your life
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: or a bad event and find the silver lining. And
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes the silver lining is so hard
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: to find with this, it's maybe the silver lining is
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that you've survived it and it's actually made you tougher
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: and then it's enhanced your character. And to get the
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: back to the ancient Greeks and the Stoics. You know,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the word character comes from the ancient Greek of a
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: mark of a chisel. So it's actually looking back on
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: those tough times that people have been through and go,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: you know what, that's a mark of a chisel, And
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I need to word that like a badge of honor
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: because I got through this and that's helping.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: My resilience very powerful.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: That's it for this week, folks. Catch you next time.