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Lessons - How She Transformed Trauma into Strength | Niyc Pidgeon - Founder of Unstoppable Success · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, delve into practical evidence-based tools rooted in positive psychology
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  to navigate adversity and heal from trauma. Learn how to build resilience, manage stress,
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  and find clarity even in the face of life's toughest challenges. Discover how cultivating
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  positivity and meaning can help you overcome obstacles, set impactful goals, and unlock your full potential.
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  And when you're actually, when somebody comes to you, and I want to highlight that you are an
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  exceptionally positive person, at least we're talking right now, you seem exceptionally positive,
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  but the topics and not the topics of things that have happened to you over the course of your life
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  are not light things. So I have notes here and please correct me if I'm wrong here, but
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  you've obviously been bullied, you attempted at one point to take your own life,
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  you lost three friends to suicide and you were a victim of sexual assault or
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  end or rape. Is that correct? These are all correct. So when you adopt a positive psychology mindset,
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  these are horrendous things that you're still functioning, you're still excelling and obviously
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  operating at an exceptional level. So what are the tools? What are some of the tool kits,
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  the tool sets that you use to overcome some of these things? And I want to highlight the things
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  that have happened to you and occurred in your life because if you think about what somebody in
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  the business goes through, the large not everybody, but the large majority of people have not had
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  these many horrible things happen to them. So if somebody is struggling because they lost an RFP
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  or they didn't raise around a funding, it almost seems trivial now compared to the stuff
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  that has happened in your life that you're still very capable of overcoming.
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  So if I can apply the tool set to somebody who's struggling in their business and stressed,
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  because a silly reason like maybe they shipped the wrong product or something like that,
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  obviously when you look at how you've applied it to your life, it's very useful and very practical
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  and obviously very much works skill set that you should take on and understand. So what are the
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  tools that you've included in your life and what you teach over? Well, I feel like I could literally
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  sit and talk about this all day. It feels like very fulfilling for me to be able to both share the
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  science, but also share it from a perspective of not just being a person that's used to go from
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  good to great, but to use it from going from really being very, very stuck and scared and uncertain,
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  and being able to go on and perform better than ever before. And I always say it's not in spite of
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  challenge, but it's because of them. And I think something that's important to recognise is that
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  everybody experiences challenge and adversity in a different way. So the bias that we have in our
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  brains means that some people really do feel things more and some people experience small things,
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  and there's really, really big things. And what positive side it feels like it's choking,
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  even if it to someone else, it doesn't seem like a big thing. It could feel like maybe that
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  raise was actually something that kept you up and caused you to get stressed out and anxiety
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  and lack of appetite and all the horrible things that come with massive amount of stress.
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  Yeah, exactly. And I think it's one of the things that positive psychology teaches is that
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  you can build resilience and you can build your status psychological resources
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  so that you can weather the storm and you don't just have to feel like you get beaten up by life
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  all of the time, but you feel like you really do have a higher level of capability.
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  So to get super specific and super granular, I'll tell you about that theory,
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  first of all, and then I'll go into some of the tools. So the theory or one of them that I'm
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  talking about is the theory of positive emotions and the ability that positive emotions have
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  to broaden and build. So when we experience the tactile end of emotions like joy, like excitement,
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  enthusiasm, gratitude, love, we open up our thinking. So let's say someone's doing a raise
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  and they're super stressed out, what happens is your cognition shuts down. So it's like very,
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  very hard for you to come up with creative solutions or for you to see the bigger picture.
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  So what would benefit is actually practicing a positive psychology intervention
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  and they're super simple, really easy to do, reaching for a tool so that you can create a
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  shift and you can feel that at first so that it opens up your mind ready for the intake of
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  information. You build relationships more quickly and you reach your goals faster as well.
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  So that is the broadening, the building area of positive emotions. It says that when you
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  experience more positivity or positive emotions, you're then able to almost like put those
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  the effects of positive emotions into a bank. So let's say you experience more humor or more laughter,
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  you're able to put those resources into a bank. So your psychological toolkit, when you need it,
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  your bank account, you can actually reach into it and you can make a withdrawal, which is the
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  resiliency that actually gets you through the hard times. So some of the things that I've reached for
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  when I've been really struggling. So let's say I'm having a, I'll give you a few examples.
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  So let's say I'm having a really, really bad day because positive psychologists still have bad days,
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  okay? I used to feel like I had to be like 100% on all of the time and I recognised through my
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  personal challenges that no one can be 100% happy all of the time and it's actually not about that.
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  So what I might do, let's say I'm feeling overwhelmed or I'm feeling like I don't have motivation
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  to do my work, I might pull a tool out which is like the gravestone exercise. So it's a couple
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  of minutes, you can do it as a meditation, you can do it as a written exercise, both ways are super
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  powerful and it asks you to consider a time where you're at the end of your life and you're looking
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  back on everything that you have done. You are at your own funeral, you see your own headstone on
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  your grave and you're seeing and witnessing what people are saying about you and what you're
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  being remembered for. So the intervention asks you to consciously create what it is you want to be
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  remembered for your legacy and to really connect with that and write it down and it's such a powerful
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  exercise. We deliver it within some of our coaching sessions and it's the real tear jerker. It's the
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  one where people remember the meaning and the purpose or they connect with it for the first time
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  and when you connect with that meaning and purpose, it really energises you. So if you feel
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  and like you're lacking in motivation, that's a really good tool to go to. If you feel and like you
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  are overwhelmed and you don't have solutions and you feel and like you don't know the way through,
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  you might pull a tool like the hope map. So the hope map gives you a six step process to follow
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  when you want to reach your goals and the good thing about positive psychology is even though
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  it sounds like it's a soft science and it's like an adaptation or something that is like light or
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  fluffy, it's all grounded in evident and research. So positive psychologists are literally
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  tried and tested these tools in various different ways to figure out which order thing to work in
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  and what you must do in order to create the result. So the hope map has got six steps. They tested it
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  with four, they tested it with five, they looked at what it is that makes people reach their goals
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  and it's actually the last two steps in the process. So step number one of the hope map is to
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  decide on what the goal is that you want to focus on. Step number two is to apply something called
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  divergent thinking theory which asks you not to come up with the number one solution,
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  the goal, but instead to come up with five or ten and get creative and play with the pathways
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  that could be possible to help you get to that goal. Step number three is to identify any obstacles
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  that might get in your way. So what happens when we set goals is we get into optimism, we get into
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  excitement and that can actually prevent us from reaching our goals because if we get thrown off
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  track and we're not prepared for it then we can get disheartened or we might give up. So if you can
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  identify the obstacles and then consider what the pathways might be through those obstacles
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  that can actually help you reach your goals faster. But you then need to lock it in with the final
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  two steps. So step number five is to consider what the why is behind the goal in the first place.
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  And step number six is to consider who you need to shower or who you need to ask for support from
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  in order to reach the goal. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.