A Call To Leadership

EP252: Emotional Resilience with Kim Ades, MBA

• Dr. Nate Salah

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Are you feeling the weight of leadership pressure? Take the first step toward ease and fulfillment in this episode with Kim Ades as we explore the importance of emotional resilience plus practical strategies to navigate overwhelming responsibilities. Tune in now to hear more!



 Key Takeaways To Listen For

  • How self-imposed pressures often outweigh external demands and why understanding this is the key to thriving under pressure
  • Ways to turn setbacks into stepping stones and leverage adversity to fuel personal and professional growth
  • A simple, four-step formula to make confident, value-driven decisions that align with your goals
  • The thinking habits of top leaders and their benefits
  • How to find harmony between your values and actions for maximum impact


Resources Mentioned In This Episode



About Kim Ades, MBA
Kim is a serial entrepreneur who, after a decade of running a simulation-based assessment firm, sold her company and briefly worked for a local coaching company. She left after 8 months, believing she could offer better coaching. Kim felt the prevailing coaching model was flawed, intuitively realizing that driven leaders needed to understand the link between their thoughts and outcomes rather than being “held accountable.”


In 2004, Kim founded Frame of Mind Coaching®, focusing on helping leaders maximize their potential and live fulfilling lives. She also created the Frame of Mind Coaching® Certification program to teach leaders effective coaching techniques.



Connect With Kim



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[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
No leader goes without pressure. It's not good enough. Did I achieve? Where did I make a mistake? How did I let this happen? What we put in our minds, what we say, what we think, how we approach our day from a emotional resilience perspective, will make us or break us as leaders. Have we developed a model for being resilient, not just saying, I'm gonna fight it out, I'm gonna tough it out, but a true tool belt strategy. If you haven't done that, I can't wait for you to meet Kim Adams, the President and Founder of frame of mind coaching and journal engine. She is a pioneer in aspects of leadership, coaching, thought mastery and her unique perspective is going to give you the tools and resources to act with the kind of emotional resilience that takes you from misery to mastery, takes you from burnout to engagement that takes you from victim to Victor. Can't wait for you to listen in. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership. Kim, welcome to the show. 


[01:26] Kim Ades
Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here and to be talking to you. 


[01:30] Dr. Nate Salah
Oh my goodness, yes, we're gonna have such a good time. And in the space that someone listening is Yes, that's me. Leadership involves pressure. We know that you can't get away from it. Oftentimes it's high pressure. And whether you're an entrepreneur, you're in business, and not just business, family life, pressures are all around us. I've got a teenager now, that's pressure. I'm married, that's pressure. I've got business, that's pressure. There's pressure everywhere we know it, but do we know how to navigate through it, especially when we've got what's going on our head, saying it's not good enough. I'm not good enough. What's happening here you speak to this area, and I'm can't I can't wait to have a conversation around it with you.


[02:14] Kim Ades
That's my topic.


[02:15] Dr. Nate Salah
That's exactly it. That's your jam. Let's do it. Unpack some of this for me, unpack for our listener, unpack this scenario or this space right now that someone is in what we're talking about, high pressure leadership. 


[02:27] Kim Ades
You're exactly right. We have people who are leading organizations, whether it's their own company, whether it's in a corporation. We have people who are in charge of things, and they do have pressures that relate to the things they're in charge of, but then they have pressures that are related to life could be related to their families, their spouses, their children, as you mentioned, their aging parents. Cost of living has increased, etc. There's just a lot of moving parts lately and with COVID and the state of the world these days and elections and all these things. They're mounting and mounting and mounting, and what we see is these leaders who have so much coming at them, they don't know how to sort through it. They don't often know where to put their attention.
 
 [00:03:13]
And certainly, what we see is sometimes their focus is off point, right? And so what we see it is that their performance sometimes gets a hit, or they over perform because they're trying to compensate for all of these pressures that they're experiencing. And when they do that, they let some other things fall through the cracks. And so what we see is these human beings who are wired. They are so high strung, and we see that it affects them very deeply. So those are the people that we coach. We work with closely. They're typically very high achievers, but still they're not happy. 


[03:50] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, it's interesting, this relationship between high achievement and dissatisfaction, it's an interesting it's an interesting relationship I've always been wired to. I don't want to say overachieve, because high achievers don't consider it over achievement. We just consider it achievement. And at the same time, we put so much pressure on ourselves to continue to do what in we call, in triathlon, in racing, the racing world, PR, which is a personal record, like, it's constantly okay, what's my next personal record? What's my next personal record? What's my next personal record? You're putting pressure on yourself. Pressure on yourself. However, at the same time you are, you're navigating new territory, because with each iteration of pressure, it's not much pressure, necessarily. It can be but if you do the same routine daily, and it's very predictable. 


[00:04:42]
Say, for example, you work in an assembly line and it's the same screw every single day, right? There's not much. And I want to complicate this, because somebody might say, no, no, you haven't worked in a factory. There's pressure. I'm not talking about all the new ones. So just over generalize. Okay, God, correct. However, on the flip side, when we're facing. New context, new circumstances, unknowns. It adds another element of pressure. Say, for example, you're a home builder, and you're starting a new subdivision in an area, and all you've been doing was this kind of subdivision, and then you take a turn, you start doing a different kind altogether. There's a whole new set of pressures that are coming in right there. Yes, and you're gonna have some blind spots.


[05:23] Kim Ades
Yeah, but you're also talking about two kinds of pressure. One is like, tactical pressures, and there's another kind of pressure, which is human pressure, like the pressure we feel to perform, the pressure we feel to interact appropriately, the pressure we feel when other people aren't performing the way we want them to. So there's, like, all kinds of different ways that we can look at pressure. We can look at pressure in terms of workload. We can look at pressure in terms of just tense, uncomfortable conflict. So all of this is happening simultaneously, and then we're expecting these leaders to just thrive, and it's a challenge.


[05:57] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, no doubt, yeah. I'm glad you made that distinction, because there's internal pressure, there's external pressure, there's always different levers and mechanisms every day which affect us, both internally and externally, in terms of how we are pressure, and there's problems also with too much pressure, can burst, right? Yes, and they do. They do burst. I had a rental property with but there was, it was a frozen pipes Kim, and it was, there was too much pressure. And guess what happened? The pipes bust. They burst. And it really created a massive issue in the unit. There's an aftermath.


[06:36] Kim Ades
It's Yes, yes, exactly. It's the same thing with leaders, but you're talking about the pipe bursting from all the pressure. What we see is leaders try really hard to pull it together, and what we see is their scenes, if you look at it, their scenes start to crack open, start to rip open, and things start to spill out of those seams that create an environment and a life that isn't ideal for themselves, and it starts to affect their relationships, it starts to affect their health, starts to affect their performance, it starts to affect their leadership and their teams. And we need to help reduce the pressure, but not just temporarily. We need to give them the tools and the approach and the thinking strategies to help them live a life where, when the pressure comes up, because it does, that's the way life works, but they have a way to manage it and handle it effectively.


[07:33] Dr. Nate Salah
You're speaking words of life. Kim, this is words of life, words of life, because the someone listening is in that space right now where all of the different aspects become overwhelming, however, it just becomes such a burden in all these different areas. And like you said, all these different aspects of the life are being affected to the point where you wonder if it's Is this all worth it, because.


[08:01] Kim Ades
Exactly that, yeah, exactly that. How many people I work with say, wait a minute, I've done all this stuff. I've put in all this time, and I'm killing myself. And is this what life is all about? Like, hold on a minute. I'm not able to breathe. I spoke to someone just the other day who said, I'm not sleeping at all, not sleeping at all, and I coach very high performers. He's an extraordinary performer, still not sleeping.


[08:28] Dr. Nate Salah
Let that settle in for just a moment when someone says they're NAS. And I had this conversation recently with with a colleague as well. If I don't get six hours, I'm crabby, and I try not to be like Nate's a pretty jovial and very like upbeat guy. I know I need a certain and not that I'm totally crabby. A little coffee will help, but a few days of five to six hours, and then it's not sleeping at all. You're talking about just and the insomnia related to these pressures that someone is facing, you don't have enough peace to have rest when you need it desperately. Yeah.


[09:03] Kim Ades
But can you imagine, like a leader who has a very important responsibility, who is not sleeping now, what we see as an organization at risk.


[09:15] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, yeah, organization at risk, individual at risk, all of these pieces at risk, and the same individual who perhaps six months ago, if you would have asked, Hey, how's your life? I love my life. My life is fantastic. And just I wake up every morning and I'm like, What a great life. I actually feel guilty for having such a wonderful life. And then fast forward six months, when all of these additional pressures come in, you're like, oh my goodness, it's not that anymore. It's not the ideal joyful life. I can't fake that. So this is inevitable for so many of us to face these guys. Then sometimes, Kim, you can't predict it. You can't predict when the pressure. Pressures coming like this. You take on a project that perhaps had all the merit of completing it on time, or you had the resources lined up and things started falling through, or perhaps it was a project or something that you committed to that you reluctantly did it, but you said, we're going to do it anyway, because I am a high achiever. And then you realize halfway through, oh my goodness, what did I say? Yes to a life change. So many things in this journey of our day to day are far beyond our purview, our foresight, our control. 


[10:34] Kim Ades
That's exactly it. So when we look at pressure, what I find is that the bulk of the pressure is self imposed. And so when we see that, and we realize that, and we categorize that, we say, okay, here is the pressure that you're creating for yourself, and here's the real pressure. The real pressure is manageable. There are things we can do to take care of this pressure, but this pressure is the one that's actually in your control, and you're not taking control of it, the one that is self imposed. And so let's look at how we can increase our emotional resilience to handle this pressure.


[11:16] Dr. Nate Salah
I love that terminology, emotional resilience. Let's talk about that.


[11:23] Kim Ades
But first, it's important for us to define emotional resilience. So what is emotional resilience? It's the ability to bounce back from adversity with speed and agility. And I have discovered there's one more piece to it. It's bouncing back and then leveraging the adversity somehow, not only taking a lesson from it, but turning it into something that's useful. It becomes part of your when someone takes something out of their back pocket, like that extra the secret sauce, it becomes part of their secret sauce.


[11:55] Dr. Nate Salah
I wrote about this extensively when I was working on my dissertation and I studied Milton, Hershey, Walt, Disney and Steve Jobs and their trajectory as babies born all the way till the end of their journeys, and all the different aspects of shared vision formation and actualization. One piece that kept popping up was this resilience they had, not only from the perspective, to bounce back, but also to take what they had experienced and endured and magnify it, to improve and increase the possibilities, to impact the human condition in a much more formidable way.


[12:35] Kim Ades
Exactly, do something with it. Do something good with it. So I'll give you a perfect example. I was married for 15 years, went through pretty rough divorce, and every single day I journaled. And why did I journal I journaled so that I could figure out how to handle divorce in a way that was the most graceful, elegant divorce is not graceful, but I wanted to try to keep it together, and sometimes I managed, sometimes I didn't, but journaling helped me manage my emotions, and it helped me put down those emotions and redirect myself towards what I wanted. But journaling became a really important tool in the recovery the aftermath of divorce, and today I realized how powerful that experience was. For the past 20 years, as I coach leaders, I asked them to journal in a private and secure online journal with me every single day. So that experience, I took it with me and I leveraged it.


[13:35] Dr. Nate Salah
And it's so important, especially from a transparent perspective, life's messy, right? None of us. I don't care who you are, rich, poor, famous, unknown, celebrity, not life's messy. We're human beings. It's a messy journey. The one aspect of our trajectory that will either provide us misery or mastery, that will either cause us to look at life as a victim or a victor. Is this aspect of resilience from an emotion perspective, it is what helps us to adapt and overcome to our obstacles so that we can continue to progress. I found people ask me in entrepreneurial space, and I'm sure you as well. Hey, what makes a successful leader, our entrepreneur or executive or whatnot, lots of different factors, but there's one that's non negotiable. 


[14:26] Kim Ades
It's emotional resilience. It is emotional resilience non negotiable, and that's what we see, is that when people handle failure with strength, and they get good at handling failure, they become much more agile, and then they perceive oncoming failures as not so terrible, horrible and awful. They fall. They don't stay down too long.


[14:49] Dr. Nate Salah
Yes, and it's the perception. I'm glad you brought that up. It's the perception of our experiences that creates an irritant. Life. It tells the story, and our perspective will then identify whether or not we approach this as, hey, you know what? This is part of the playbook. Yeah, it sucks right now. It's horrible. It's a bit this is rough. However, this is the story that I'm helping to co author in the journey of my life. It's a pretty crazy story. It's a good story at the end of the day.


[15:23] Kim Ades
That's exactly it. The stories we tell are the stories we live. And going back to this whole journaling thing, which seems out of left field, but when someone's journaling, they're telling their story, and we're able to see what is the story you're living, and is this the story you want to be living? If not, let's write a news story.


[15:42] Dr. Nate Salah
This is why I love the REO Speedwagon song. You gotta turn the pages when, when you're tired of the same old story. That's how the song goes. It's time to turn some pages. I absolutely love that, because it's a reminder that we have a choice. We can choose because I think that's also part of the framework of emotional resilience is first identifying I have a choice. I'm not on the sidelines. I'm an active player in this. I can make a change if I'm tired of the same old story exactly turns on pages. Kim, and what that does is it gives me more power, if you will, over the decisions that I'm making. Because if I'm in a state right now that is not ideal. Okay, what are the steps that I need to take?


[16:26] Kim Ades
You're talking about decisions, and that's a really interesting topic in and of itself. And what we do when we work with clients is we give them a formula for looking at the options in front of them and deciding whether or not these are options that are even worth considering, or whether or not these options are viable for them, right? So what do we do? I can share this now, and I'll share it as well after, but it's a formula we use. It's called heal, H, E, A, l. Number one, is this option healthy? Is it good for me? Number two, is it engaging? Am I interested in this? Will this light me up? Does this feel good? Is this something that will draw me in, or am I going to be bored to death doing this? And number three, is it aligned with my values? 


[00:17:12]
Is it something that I feel good about doing? Well, I feel proud of this. Does it line up with what I want and where I'm going and my morals, to be honest, is it aligned with my values? And the last one is L does it lead to an outcome or a desire that I want? So that's your decision making criteria. And when you line up every single decision against those four kind of checkpoints, and what we notice is it's even one checkpoint is not checked off. It's not the best decision.


[17:43] Dr. Nate Salah
Good. Let's go, yeah. We'll make sure to keep those. Put that in the show notes. I can share that if you want. Yeah, and here's what I love about that, is it's taking the bite, if you will, out of the circumstance, because it's giving me action items. It's giving me an action steps to move forward. And I think that's also part of emotional resilience, is what are the tools? What tools do I have? Because we're emotional creatures, and unless we're provided with the tools to build this emotional resilience, we're likely going to continue to have very difficult situations that we find ourselves very equipped, really, to get out of. What


[18:28] Kim Ades
I find is that leaders who are in high pressured environments and who do feel that internal pressure get to have decision overwhelm, right? There's so much coming at them. And so what did they do? They procrastinate. They put their decisions on hold because they can't adequately evaluate the decisions, and they can't take action on those decisions. And so what you have is all these things that aren't getting done, all these things that are hanging in the air, and then what ends up happening organizationally is a lack of clarity. People don't know, like, where are we going? Weren't we working on that? What happened to that thing? And so there's this cloudiness that takes over in environments, and very much the cloudiness that exists at a leadership level starts to permeate through the organization.


[19:21] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, yeah, because clarity is power, and when we have a lack of clarity, we have too much ambiguity. We were clouded in our judgment. That is a sign that we don't know where we're going. And of course, basic leadership is, do we know where we're going, and do we have pathway to get there? Exactly so we need to regain that navigation. Is what you're saying, right? Because our basically, our GPS is off.


[19:47] Kim Ades
Our GPS is off. So what I've also discovered is that leaders who are extremely successful tend to think in a specific way. And I call them thinking strategies. They have typically. Three strategies that they use very consistently, regardless of the circumstance or situation, they always press on these three strategies. So the first one is they're always challenging their own beliefs. So they're always asking themselves, what do I believe to be true about this problem, this person, this situation, and are those beliefs actually true, or did I invent them? And do those beliefs allow us, me, but us, meaning the organization, to reach the goals that we want to be reaching? So number one, what are the beliefs? And then they say, can it be possible that I can look at this differently, because if it is possible, maybe some other beliefs are true. Maybe there are other true facts that exists here that we're not considering and not looking at. So that's thing number one. Thing Number two is that they are extraordinarily resourceful. And you might think that's nothing new. That's old news. But they think about resources differently. They think very in terms of abundance. And so what I mean by that is they don't believe in shortages. There's no shortage of money, there's no shortage of talent, there's no shortage of help, there's not even a shortage of time. 


[00:21:15]
There's an abundance of all of this, if used appropriately. And so with that frame of mind or that frame of reference, they think, what resource do we need? And let's go find it, as opposed to that's too expensive, we can't do it. So they think about resources in a way where anything is accessible to them, and it's just a matter of figuring out exactly what they need. And the third thing is that they are really clear, and they are reminded repeatedly. In other words, they keep front and center what it is that they want, so they're focused on what they want. They don't forget what they want. They know, like the end goal. They keep it they don't push it aside for now. They don't say forget about that. They keep it in mind, and they know what they're going for, and they're relentless about what they want, and they make sure they get it.


[22:06] Dr. Nate Salah
Wow, yeah, you've nailed it. Those are clearly three essential aspects of this type of individual.


[22:12] Kim Ades
Yeah, they think differently. They look at things differently, and they're very like, their brains are a little bit stronger. I would say their mind muscle is more advanced because they don't let negative circumstances throw them off course. They say, Okay, this happened. Let's get back. Let's focus on why we're here. Let's just like, focus on the goal, the task. Let's keep on track.


[22:36] Dr. Nate Salah
Absolutely. And that's all part of the emotional resilience played exactly. Yeah, yeah. Focusing on that and focusing on problems, we're always going to have problems. The point of a problem is to find a solution, right? Not to dwell on the problem or live in a space of worry in the problem. What's necessary? 


[22:55] Kim Ades
Yeah. I would also say that a lot of times people believe the problem is different than what it is actually. So part of strong leadership is being able to define the problem accurately. And people get very distracted by what they perceive the problem to be, and they go really hard at trying to solve something that isn't the core issue.


[23:17] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, I'm trying to think of an example of that. They blame others they.


[23:21] Kim Ades
They're just like consumed by things that are out of their control, and therefore they also give away their ability to solve the problem. 


[23:32] Dr. Nate Salah
That's right, yeah, more distractions than anything, more peripheral than the central aspect of.


[23:37] Kim Ades
The basically, exactly.


[23:39] Dr. Nate Salah
So we've got a leader who is facing high pressure and says, Okay, I'm gonna go through your heel model, and I'm going to experience emotional resilience. I think just identifying it too, just taking a couple suspects, taking identifying that emotional resilience is a primary factor. Elevates the mind to say, Okay, what is missing from my repertoire of internal resources?


[24:09] Kim Ades
So here's what we do, and I think it's very important we all live. And there's when we live. We have used the term before, blind spots. We live with an unconsciousness. There's a part of us that is unconscious. We're unconscious about the relationship between the way we think and the outcomes we're getting. Why? Because we're busy doing all the things right. We're just busy living. And in order for us to be conscious, we have to stop and actually think about our thinking. And most of us don't think about our thinking. We're just thinking, right? So what do we do when we coach individuals is we capture their thinking and show them their patterns of behavior, their themes, their patterns of thought, and we pull out the. Way that they think their belief systems and how their beliefs influence what they do and what they don't do, and how they do everything they do, and show them the relationship between their thoughts. 


[00:25:13]
And when they start to see that straight line between their thinking and their results, they start to understand because usually what happens when you're not getting the results that you want? Usually you say, okay, man, different. Got to do something differently. We've got to do a different strategy. And what I'm here to say is, before you do anything, start to examine your thinking, because if you keep doing the same thing or keep doing other things with the same thinking in mind, you're not going to get the results you want. So first we need to change our thinking, and then the doing will follow. And most people don't look at their thinking for even a split second to understand that their thinking is where the problem lies, where it originates.


[25:58] Dr. Nate Salah
Yes and sometimes we're asking the wrong questions. I've been meditating on this idea of asking the right questions, and even in my own mind, as you're talking about, what is my mental state? What is my emotional state? What kind of questions am I asking myself in terms of how I'm thinking in my discovery piece? And so when I define leadership, of course, leadership is influence, and we know that. And there's lots of many definitions leadership. When I define leadership, I define it really in three categories. Leadership is the discovery of influence toward an achievement of at least effective leadership, achievement of shared purpose. Because we share a purpose, we share a place to go, if you will, and we lead. And we're talking about this second domain, and influence and achievement.
 
 [00:26:44]
So when we're not able to achieve, we were applying influence in a lot of different areas, as we're talking about, let's try different ways. This is different influence. But part of the problem is, and this is where your model is succinct. With this, we have to go back to discovery. If we can't influence and ultimately achieve, we have to go back to discovery. And the discovery process is, what am I thinking? How am I perceiving this situation? What are the variables? How do I feel? What are my con Am I sleeping? Basic stuff, right, right? 


[27:13] Kim Ades
Kim, how is my thinking impacting what I'm doing, what I'm not doing, and ultimately, the results I'm getting absolutely.


[27:21] Dr. Nate Salah
So if we're having trouble with influence and achievement, we've got to go back to discovery. We've got to go back to this, stepping back and examining, as you had mentioned, rightly examining the context as a whole. And really the context starts with leaders with their own minds.


[27:37] Kim Ades
Exactly like I'll use a different example, something a little simpler. Okay, so imagine there's a salesperson, and their task is, I don't know to hit a certain target, or they have certain goals that they need to reach, but they're like, but I don't want to make a phone call, because if I make a phone call, I'm just bugging people, and nobody makes phone calls anymore, and I feel like a slimy salesman, and I don't want to do that. But what is underneath that, it's a belief system that says my job isn't super high profile. I'm a little ashamed to be doing this. So imagine that's the belief system, and this is the goal. They don't line up, right? So what we see is that the way a person thinks about what they're here to do completely clashes with the goals that they have. And if that's the case, we have a real big impasse that we need to address.


[28:32] Dr. Nate Salah
That can be extremely high pressure for an individual who's misaligned.


[28:37] Kim Ades
Yes. And so the question is, how do we create alignment? We can create alignment in a number of ways. One is by addressing their thinking, and the other is by moving them to somewhere else, right? So there are many ways to to approach alignment, but what we know for sure is if we just brow beat them into just make the calls, we will not achieve our goals. So it's not about forcing action. It's about really looking closely at the belief systems and how the beliefs impact action. 


[29:09] Dr. Nate Salah
Yes, and even looking at, I'm sure, you use different instruments to identify, we use the predictive index and other instruments to identify where your drives align. So someone who may not have a high level of extroversion, so to speak, they don't want to be making that phone call necessarily. It's not that they couldn't, but it takes a much more significant effort to do that, and it's unsustainable, because it's not their real genius, if you will. 


[29:35] Kim Ades
It's not their so we definitely want to leverage people's natural strengths. I'm not a huge fan of looking at introversion versus extroversion, because I feel like the minute you label yourself is the minute you box yourself in. And it's not super useful. Tell me one good use of calling yourself introverted? I don't know. I find it's not an overwhelmingly positive label to place on oneself. Right? So I'm not a huge fan of that, but I do think that there's interesting information to be gleaned from assessments to help us understand a person's tendencies, correct,


[30:10] Dr. Nate Salah
Yes, and their drives and tendencies. For example, you know, I love conversation, right? And so a podcast is a perfect way to engage in that conversation, where someone else may say, You know what? Conversations drain me. I would rather not have conversations with all these different people. You go have the conversations, I'm gonna be right. And so what we're doing is we're setting people up for success in their journey based on, again, their tendencies and their drives. And yeah, and I agree. I don't like introvert versus extrovert. That's why we tend to use language in terms of their desire for more extroversion, and we don't get use introverts anymore, right? So there's a scale of how much people want to have these kind of conversations in their daily grind. That's one piece. And then you mentioned the other piece is this, like you said, sometimes it's a framing of the situation, for example, that call you may have a higher level of you said, You know what?
 
 [00:31:05]
I do love to talk with people, but I haven't really put it together that I'm liberating people by making this phone call from some kind of challenge that they're facing. And as a leader, I know that one of my responsibilities that I signed up for is to be a liberator, a freedom fire. I'm here to take the captives and and give them and give them a new way. And I do that through making that phone call. It completely shifts the perspective of picking up that phone. 


[31:36] Kim Ades
Exactly. I'll give you another example. I'm coaching someone currently who what we discovered is he's not great at maintenance. He's not the guy who's going to do the same thing day in, day out. He checks out when it's mundane, regular, repeatable activity. But where he really shines is in moments of performance, whether it's a TV spot or a podcast or a big event that he so what we're doing in terms of being able to increase his maintenance, or his sustainable performance, is creating many of these performance moments, right? So he's just going from one to the next, and therefore He's shining more often than not.


[32:17] Dr. Nate Salah
I love it. I love it. And this is back to the alignment piece, right? We're aligning your best self, if you will. I know it's a cliche, but really your best self in terms of where you thrive, in the highest capacity, with different situations. And so this is important to bring it back around to our high pressure and our emotional resilience. Sometimes the overwhelming pressure we're feeling is because we're not in that space. We're not in a flow state, if you will. And we need others, like coaches, like yourself and your teams to help us to find where's that flow state. Because if it's not where I am right now, and granted, pressure is great. I love I own an accounting and advisory firm, and coming off of april 15 or October 15 or September, for these 15th dates of high pressure, of getting things done, I love that. I love April 16. It's like my favorite day of the year. Why? Because it's like the victory. It's like stepping off of the battlefield and victory.
 
[00:33:16]
And I Now granted, after nearly 30 years, it's a predictable victory, right? We've been battle tested warriors here. However, there's still that pressure for me. I enjoy it now, if there were other pieces in that that were unknowns, that were beyond my control, that might create a different experience for me as well. So I limit those other pieces in my life. Yeah, that cause more dissonance. And I think it's important as leaders to identify what might be a pebble in your shoe as you're trying to do a 26 mile run through a marathon, exactly that Pebble is going to inhibit you. It's so small, but you may not finish. That's where I was to get rid of that pebble, and it could hurt.


[34:04] Kim Ades
Yes, yeah. It ends up creating a lot of pain, yeah? And you help people with that, yeah, exactly. That's actually a great analogy. I love that.


[34:14] Dr. Nate Salah
Thank you. Can have it. I used to be a marathon back in the days, and I remember those days where I'm like, Oh, I gotta stop. I gotta stop, because if I don't stop, my foot's gonna be torn up. Yeah, and I won't be able to run. 


[34:26] Kim Ades
The issue is, I can't tell you how many people don't stop, and they do tear up their shoes, and they do use anything at their disposal to manage the pain of their so they're drinking, they're overeating, they're taking drugs, they're doing all kinds of things, right going on these drug retreats, they're doing all kinds of things to reduce the pain instead of taking the pebble up exactly.


[34:52] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, that's profound. Jim, so sometimes the pressure is just, let's just stop and. Find out what pebble in what shoe is causing that pressure. And sometimes it's not a pebble in the shoe, sometimes it's a commitment I made that perhaps I need to regroup and say, hey, look, I'm not a failure. If I say I over committed or the team couldn't do.


[35:18] Kim Ades
It was good for a while, and now this commitment no longer makes any sense. For me, 100%.


[35:24] Dr. Nate Salah
It's okay, and I tend to look less on the word failure as final, and more as its feedback. Failure is not final feedback. It's only final when you give up, and unless you give up on life. This is all part of the playbook, exactly that, yeah, yeah, which is a reframing of and also the emotional resilience piece is reframing even the language that I'm telling myself.


[35:44] Kim Ades
Exactly because the language you tell yourself, it's exactly that. It's the story we live. Language determines how we feel about everything. The same event can happen to both of us. And for you, it could be a big relief. For me, it could be, oh, my god, like the biggest stressor known to man, same event, two different reactions. They're based on how we perceive them and the language we use to describe them.


[36:11] Dr. Nate Salah
And that greater and the greater vision. I'm so glad you brought up about high performing leaders who always keep the vision, what they're doing, what they're going after, in place. I think of Elon Musk came to mind, for example, and the I know he's in a lot of the news, but he's an easy conversation piece, because he's so well known in the news. He said something several years ago that really stuck to me, that unless it's catastrophic, we're gonna keep moving forward. And I'm like, true. And what's catastrophic, like total incapacitation. Unless that happens, we can keep moving forward. For example, for him, it was rockets. Three rockets down. Okay? Fourth one's gotta make it, otherwise we're gonna have to regroup. It wasn't catastrophic. Many people would say, oh, that's gonna bankrupt us. Okay, so what? It bankrupts us. We're not dead. That's We're not dead. But you know what? That's a massive emotional resilience. Yeah, that's massive because you've reframed your entire existence less around that the failures are going to define you, but the fact that you are defined, that you can breathe, and that you can breathe means that you are not done yet.


[37:27] Kim Ades
Yeah, and you're gonna be okay and okay, and even if everything goes away, I'll figure my way back up in there, done that I can handle this. Yeah. So one of the things that we do when we work with leaders. People think, oh, leaders are internally optimistic, and they always they believe in themselves. And what I say is that what leaders are are strategic, and when they have a goal, they set out that goal, but they also imagine failure, and one very important thing is they imagine recovering from failure, and if they are able to recover in their brains from failure, then they're able to go on fully, wholeheartedly towards their goals. 


[38:11] Dr. Nate Salah
Let that one just settle in just a little bit. Yeah, it's that imagination piece. We don't give that enough time to imagine the journey with its ups and downs and its challenges and all the pieces to it, and walking through it mentally and then the emotional aspect of it. It's preparation.


[38:32] Kim Ades
Yeah, yeah. Imagine recovery.


[38:36] Dr. Nate Salah
That's a great book title, yeah, yeah, and it reminds me of sporting teams, who the coach will have the team. Imagine the victory, imagine the playoffs, imagine missing or losing a game, and what do you do? And how do you move forward? And that way, when it comes it's not a surprise. How do you get back up? Yeah, what's your next move?


[39:03] Kim Ades
Yeah, you've already played it out in your brain. Yeah, you're ready for it.


[39:07] Dr. Nate Salah
Tim, you're such a great coach.


[39:08] Kim Ades
Thanks to see me in actual action. Come on. 


[39:12] Dr. Nate Salah
I know this is that's an experience. Well, make sure to keep all your contact. If me trying to find you in the show notes I geared will be wanting to connect and be a part of your coaching so important and so impactful, so needed and relevant. Right now, be happy to talk to anyone who wants to talk. They will be blessed. I'm blessed. I know someone, many are blessed today, who have heard you now before, before we take off. I every once in a while have a And lately, I've actually been able to do this consistently. Have a question for you sure one day, Kim will be at the end of the coaching journey, she'll be at the end of you'll be on your great summit of and you'll be able to see everything that you've done, all the people you've been able to impact through the journey. If you could see all those people who you got to have the blessing of being a part of. Their lives and helping them. What is one thing? One thing that you would have liked those people to have said about camp?


[40:10] Kim Ades
I think that I want them to say, she helped me get to a place of ease, peace, exhilaration, fulfillment and joy. That's my mission. That's what I want them to say. I know it's not one thing, but it goes together. It's one


[40:24] Dr. Nate Salah
sentence. Yeah, one sentence. Kim, you're on your way. We are so thankful for you and your mission, and now it's helping people, and can't wait to continue to be a part of that journey for you. Thank you for being here.


[40:36] Kim Ades
Thank you for having me on your podcast. 


[40:38] Dr. Nate Salah
Well, my friend, we did it. I'm so honored you were able to join me on this episode of A Call to Leadership. Now this might not be for everyone, because you really have to be in a certain place in order to take the kind of steps to level up your leadership, and I want you to be taking steps. And for those of you who feel like you're ready for something like this, there's a place you can go. You can go to our website, great summit.com, I'll make sure that's in the show notes. But here's the cool thing that we have. We've got a master class. We have all different kinds of events. We even have our Leadership Club, where you can meet other people just like you to go deeper in your leadership journey. You and I all get to spend some time together and really focus on aiming for greatness. I can't wait to see you there. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership.

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