S3/E4 Why Resilience is Important and How to Gain More of It

Join our snappy episode today as we chat about the importance of resilience from a behaviour change perspective and how to build it.   Together we explore:  

The definition of resilience and it's role in bouncing back from set backs. 
The impact of our upbringing and generational differences on resilience.  
Why we need to embrace discomfort and seeking out challenge.
What willpower is.
How to gain and strengthen your resilience.

This is a brilliant episode and we do hope you'll join us.

Serena’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serenapsychologist/
Website: https://thepsychologyschool.co/

Sally’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallygarozzomindmentor/
Website: https://www.sallygarozzo.com

Transcript

Sally (03:48)

So here we are, everyone. Welcome to episode four, season three. And today I'm here with Serena, obviously, my amazing wingwoman, and we're talking about the subject of resilience. resilience is something that I've...

I've had to dig into quite a bit recently with a flight that was cancelled coming back from Gran Canaria a couple of weeks ago and then having to deal with Dad's birthday and all of that stuff, family stuff always really makes me dig deep into resilience. But I thought it would be good just to start with a definition of resilience. So for me, and I'll come to you in a minute Serena, for

resilience is all around mental and emotional and physical capacity. The capacity that we have, our bandwidth that we have, it feels sometimes quite like an energetic thing, to bounce back, to bounce back from setbacks, to bounce back from plot twists, to bounce back from, you know, mini traumas, big traumas, little traumas. And I think

Disregulation in the face of plot twists or setbacks or whatever is normal, but how we bounce back from them is probably denotes our levels of resilience. Would you agree or would you have anything to add to that? What do you think?

Serena (05:32)

Well, first of hello, Sally. Thank you for a really thorough introduction there to today and another very important topic. Yeah, I mean, I, know, anyone as we've established over the course of the pod can go and Google a definition of what resilience is. And I looked at some of those definitions, if you like, just to see what my thoughts were about what I was reading. I think some of the key words that come up for me are recovery,

Sally (05:34)

Hello.

Serena (06:02)

adjustment and for me and I've said this so many times before is that sense of being agile. So to be able to recover from something that has maybe been difficult or challenging. Something to be said for how you adjust then around that so that recovery and that adjustment but for me that is very much based on your agility which is part of that resilience so there's some really kind of important themes coming into what it might mean to you to be resilient and again

something I'm always really passionate about when we're at defining something is that you're clear on what your definition of that might be. So we can talk about what resilience is. And so I would really encourage people as we're speaking and we're speaking to what resilience looks like, that people think and reflect about how that sits in their own body, how that resonates in their own life. So there is a definition and we...

kind of come to it slightly differently. So yeah, for people to

Sally (07:03)

Yeah, is, yeah, self -reflect on what it means to you. I think that is always so important because there are multiple definitions and there are many, many different ways that we can see the same thing. And it is really important how it is to you. have you, are there any events that you can call to mind where you have had to dig into any resilience?

Serena (07:09)

Yes.

I knew you were going ask me that and I haven't come to the, I haven't come with that question. It feels like it at the moment. I can't lie. It's interesting what you said about family. I think it's really important to acknowledge that because I think a lot of us and you know, people listening to us speak on the podcast, think just that word family in and of itself.

Sally (07:32)

Just your whole life, basically.

Serena (07:55)

feels like the word resilience is at the very forefront of our minds when we think about family. You know, there'll be some people that don't really have that reaction to the word. But so many of us, myself included, I do have to, that resilience is there and it's a part of my family dynamic is to have that resilience. I was raised to be resilient, number one. I was raised to problem solve.

very much like women of our time, I think. Are we Generation X? I never remember. Yeah. Yeah, we were a resilient generation. I mean, we could go down a complete rabbit hole with that one. You know, we were the kids, the generation that were told, kind of, go and play on the road. Yeah. You know, my parents didn't have a skimmy day what I was doing at school. I was just told to do well or else.

Sally (08:32)

We are, we are Generation X, yeah.

Right.

And we had to problem solve, didn't we? That was basically think for yourself. Get your own self out of a hole. Don't expect too much wrapping up in cotton wool or pandering to. It's like you think for yourself. And actually, think that stands us in good stead. I think you can definitely have too much coddling. It's not great for problem solving or creativity, for sure.

Serena (09:04)

Yeah, you can do stuff, isn't

the

Well, it goes back to how do you build resilience? I think, arguably, I mean, with all of these things, you could say that there's a sweet spot. I think possibly a lot of our generation, our families, were one end of the spectrum. It was like, literally don't know what you're up to. It just kind of enforced rules for the sake of them, you know, be back at this time. You can't do that or you can do that. Like I said,

you know, just being told to do well, but not being shown how necessarily. So you're forced to problem solve things on your own. And it, but it's a very hands off way of parenting. I can't speak for everyone. You know, there'll be people listening to this that don't have that experience of their family. And there'll be people now that have that experience of their family. I just think it's very resonant of our time and particularly, I think the women that I've worked with over the years are coming to mind. Women of our age seem

Sally (10:01)

Yeah.

Serena (10:20)

have that hard wiring to figure out everything on their own. It does come from that kind of parenting, which is very much a hands off. Whereas now you seem to see people go completely the other way, where, as you mentioned the word coddling, where all the problem solving, it's something we've talked about before, but all the problem solving seems to be taken away from a child. And that way you've gone completely the other end of the spectrum.

Going back to that idea of resilience, how do we build resilience? Well, we need some problems to deal with to be able to know how we adjust, how we adapt.

Sally (10:57)

Yeah, suffering is actually quite an essential thing in order to build certain fortitudes, a certain capacity within us. That's how we develop capacity, isn't it? That's how we develop that sense of strength, problem -solving ability. I mean, too much of it, and then you become traumatized and you go the other way. And then you just constantly, you know, having those PTSD moments or whatever. And that actually doesn't have

has a detrimental effect. So it's striking a balance and perhaps we've sort of bounced the other way now today and we've gone too much into the coddling and I think over the next few years what we might be seeing is more of a balance, hopefully anyway.

Serena (11:41)

There was a, I need to find, if anyone listening can remind me of the amazing academic that said this, but there was an academic, I think, I want to say she was an admissions tutor for Stanford, maybe. It was an American university and she was quite outspoken about leaving her role because what she was finding was she was having, she was having increasing.

difficulty dealing with the parents of the children coming into the university and it was the parents she said who and please tell me who this was if you're listening email us or message us because I don't want to not credit her because it's her story but she talked about just the increasing pressure from parents every year contacting admissions wanting to know the details

of the courses for their children that were entering the university. So they wanted the syllabuses, they wanted the reading lists, and there were even parents who were wanting to go out onto things like European field trips to do the field trip before their kids did it so they could almost risk assess the trip. And so she said that it was just becoming so unbearable dealing with that kind of level of pressure from parents.

Sally (12:55)

Wow, okay.

Serena (13:03)

And just what is that doing for our children? How is that building them to be strong, capable, resilient young adults in the world today? And the fact is it's not. Because you're taking all of that beautiful learning away from someone.

Sally (13:20)

I just think we've become so risk averse, haven't we, as a society? This is the problem. It's how can we avoid risk? We've almost got too good at problem solving, and that we're trying to avoid every single possible risk that there is. But actually, we need to take risks in order to develop. It's like I say, coming back from Gran Canaria.

A lot of people have travel anxiety and they don't risk travel because they don't want to risk being stranded and that's a risk that you take when you go on holidays. like a risk versus benefit kind of payoff. And when I came back last time, our flight was canceled. We flew on the day of the global IT outage and yeah, ended up, so think it was nine o 'clock at night and then all of a sudden the airport just emptied.

and all flights were cancelled and we were like, my God, what do we do? We were exhausted. know, we'd been in holiday mode for a week. Brain literally turns a mush. And then all of a sudden, both of us are having to be like, right, God, what do we do? And that agility, we had to go from brain mush to, right, let's switch on. Let's have conversations with people.

let's get on our phones, let's figure out what the hell we're going to do so we can get back home. And Kudos to our resilience, you know, we got back 24 hours later, we managed to stay in a hotel, we made a decision that we weren't going to wait for the Vueling flight, which was a week later, we had stuff to do, we needed to get home. And we were absolutely exhausted, trawling the internet, trying to look for flights, we found some flights, they were like 700 quid extra.

You know, just having the resilience to go, yeah, you know what, let's make the decision, let's get home, let's risk spending that money. We don't know if we're going to get that money back. We still don't know if we're going to get that money back, but we came home, we got home in the end. So I think everything that we're talking about today is kind of highlighted in that little moment of time really. And there were other people there that were just sort of like waiting to see what was going to happen.

And I just, that didn't sit right with me, didn't sit right with my value system. you know, my big value system of mine is productivity and just getting things done and moving forward and, know, having, it was an opportunity really to sort of almost like see what you're made of and.

Serena (16:01)

And where did that resilience come from for you, would you say? Where is that from for you?

Sally (16:09)

Well, definitely my upbringing, you like you, it was installed into me. My dad, incredibly resilient. I'm just writing a speech actually for them at the moment for their anniversary and just, you know, knock back after knock back after knock back. They would both actually, my parents just get back up, dust themselves off, that real sense of positivity and hope. Hope that things will change, sense of optimism that things are going to be okay.

And of course, in the face of adversity, you never really do know if something's going to be okay. You just have to trust that it will. And a lot of the time, think trust and faith is at the center of any moves that we make here. And I think it's that, you know, you're kind of going into the unknown. And for me, trust really pulls me forward. that's what I think, like trust in the universe, trust that everything

everything always works out in the end. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. So you still got more work to do to get to the end. know, looking back now, I can see how everything sort of resolved. And I remember in my mind thinking, pardon me, thinking, I don't know how this is going to end. I don't know if we're going to get home, but my future self does know how it all works out, how it's all worked out. So

Serena (17:33)

Okay.

Sally (17:35)

that sort of knowing that there was a finished story out there in the future kind of pulled me forward a bit, So let's talk, what I'd love to talk about with you is how, why is resilience important do you think, especially from a behavior change model? Why do we need resilience?

Serena (17:42)

Bye.

Well, you've just illustrated it with your story, your personal stories. Resilience serves us in our everyday life and arguably our everyday life involves change on both the micro and the macro scale. It's not just these big swooping changes that we might want to make in our lives like, you know, a big change in diet or stopping smoking or undertaking some kind of exercise regime or

a life change, a move in some way, a relationship shift. It's not always the big things, it's the small things. To be human is to evolve, hopefully, and evolution in and of itself is change. That's what evolution is. And actually, if you want to grow and grow while we're here and have self -growth, then you're going to have to embrace change and change

as I've said so many times on the podcast, it's not hardwired into us. It's not, because it's not easy. It's just not easy. And so knowing that we're undertaking something that might feel quite foreign to us at times. And as you've illustrated with your personal stories, when we're encountering, going back to what you said at the start of the podcast, when you encounter hardship or challenge, your ability to adjust to that challenge.

to recover from that challenge, find agility within the challenge that you're facing is very, important for not just that evolution and growth, but to give us a stable basis of mental health, to give us a stable, there's so much more around why resilience is important, because actually when you don't have that, what's the opposite of not having resilience?

Sally (19:35)

Yes!

anxiety, depression, mmm.

Serena (19:48)

So there's a really good reason to build that muscle of resilience and ironically, this is a bit meta, but in order to build it, you need to embrace change more and do things and seek things that actually challenge you. Because to build a muscle, you need to stress it. seek opportunity to stress us, even if it's just so going back to something that you and I both do.

Sally (20:01)

Yes!

So we need to seek stress, basically.

Serena (20:18)

Of course I'm going to wrangle it into the conversation, but cold water immersion, that is building resilience because you're stressing your system. And that's just an example. But essentially that's what you're doing within your body is you're building that resilience over time.

Sally (20:27)

Absolutely.

That's

Yeah, and you don't have to do it to the degree that an expert would do it, for example. Cold water can actually start at like 20 degrees. And a shower feels colder than going into a still body of water. So if you start with just a foot, or just immerse your hands in some cold water, that can be a nice sort of stressor for the body. And it's really, if we're thinking about a trauma -informed perspective, if you're

Serena (20:42)

Nice. Yeah, yeah.

Mmm.

Sally (21:05)

highly traumatized person or you've got CPTSD, know, the healing model for you will still be to stretch your window of tolerance, but you do it with a degree that feels just a little stretch. You don't want to go too far out, but it's still stretching, it's still exposure therapy, and for that you still need resilience.

Serena (21:29)

It's same with anything when it comes to behaviour change. You don't jump in at the deep end. You don't go and set yourself up for a marathon and run it on Saturday if you've never run before. Same with cold water. And just as a big disclaimer to anyone listening, obviously we're not promoting any particular thing that you should rush off and do. And if you do seek to do it, please get the help of someone who's expert in that area and we're not professing to be.

that in all of the areas that we're discussing, but we're giving examples of things that highlight that kind of building of tolerance and resilience over time to please seek the right help to do that. A bit of a bugbear of mine that there are lots of experts out there which we won't go into today. But yeah.

Sally (22:15)

Follow Serena on social media for

Serena (22:21)

from all the information and angry posts about that one. That's another funny house altogether. Well, let's just not go down that one because that's another story altogether. But yes, so to do it in small incremental steps that not necessarily feel easy for you, they feel doable but challenging.

Sally (22:27)

my god. That's where you need bit of resilience, love, isn't

Okay.

Serena (22:48)

because you still need to create the challenge. It shouldn't be so easy that it's, you're coasting it because that's not really building resilience either. So again, we can use the same analogy when you're looking at muscle up adaptation, which again, I'm not an expert in, but if you have any baseline understanding of building muscle and strength, you know that you have to lift a heavier weight than maybe feels entirely comfortable to start to build muscle.

You shouldn't be able to do that for an hour. if you're listening and you're not watching, you've just got a very light weight and you're just banding it around for 20 minutes. You need some weight there to start to cause that stress.

Sally (23:30)

I've got to a point actually where I quite like the feeling of discomfort sometimes. I mean, I've got to be in the right head space for it and sometimes I have to talk myself into it. But with any area of my life, know, physical, mental and emotional, that feeling of discomfort, even things like having difficult conversations with people, I'm like, I'm happier now that I sort of know myself better to have those slightly awkward, slightly more...

revealing emotional conversations that might, especially with someone like yourself or someone who's got a good level of psychology, it's harder with people that don't have because it can pick on your defenses. But yeah, I don't mind a bit of discomfort. How do you feel about discomfort?

Serena (24:20)

Yeah, in fact, we've talked about this before. I think, you know, I've said before that building that muscle, can quite, you can come to quite enjoy the feeling of that because actually you're growing. So what you realize is that from discomfort becomes, becomes, comes growth. You're growing, leaning into the growth. So it can become quite addictive. I think probably what we find as humans is as

realize that we're attaining some level of mastery, we start to embrace the feeling of discomfort. You're right. There's a mastery that we're building and we know that there's pleasure at the end of the pains. I've talked about that pleasure pain principle before. It doesn't mean it translates easily always to other areas of your life, because there'll be areas that sometimes we find easier than others, depending on what we struggle with personally. But typically what you find

Certainly I find this in my work and I always talk about this when it comes to change. It's why change should always be viewed holistically because typically what you find is if you start to change in one area of your life, it's very difficult for it not to have a knock -on effect if you undertake it properly. It's usually now across the board. You can't look at one area of your life and look at growing in that area. And if you're doing the work,

you're looking at yourself as a whole and complete person. So that's going to translate to all these other beautiful areas of your life. Like resilience, if you're finding that you're looking to build resilience in one area, it's likely it's going to start to translate into those other areas of your life. It's a really good reason to do

Sally (26:03)

Yeah, and when I was looking into all those sort of cold water therapy research, there's that cross adaptation that happens. And I think there's some science behind that. When we expose ourselves to cold water and we build and develop resilience for the cold, we get that cross adaptation that helps us to withstand stress in other areas of our lives as well. So it is quite interesting. you know, if you build and develop

resilience in one area it can map across. It's definitely worth doing.

Serena (26:36)

I mean, totally, and this is so anecdotal, there is no research to back this, but maybe someone wants to go and actually do some research on it. I definitely find that having done cold water swimming for, it's going on I guess, nearly three years now. So getting into cold water is bloody hard. I think when people do it, it looks easy.

I don't make it look good because I look really...

Sally (27:05)

Every fibre of your being is screaming no and you are doing something against every fibre of your being,

Serena (27:10)

Yeah, % so dipping under that icy cold water feels like utter utter madness and actually I'm lucky to share that experience with a friend and we go to my local lake and I often share a little video on social media of us. I've kind of stopped doing it lately. I've had a few people say are you still dipping? I'm like yeah I am, I just have stopped showing

Sally (27:18)

BLEH!

Serena (27:39)

because it's yeah maybe it's nothing really to do with what I do but it kind of is because it's actually linked to even what we're talking about now but it's usually a time -lapse thing what you can't hear is the swear

Sally (27:55)

I did wonder.

Serena (27:56)

You can't hear me effing and blinding before I dip under the water. It looks all lovely and serene. I put some lovely, tingly, tonky piano music on top. But I'm usually saying to Anna, what the hell are we doing? This is crazy. And you know, this is so cold. Is this as cold as it was last time? So all this stuff is going on. But here's what I've learned. Not only do I feel amazing after, so it's going back to that, there's pleasure at the end of it. And I'm building resilience, 100%.

There's so many little lessons that I've learned from doing that, that I have taken into my life. So there's something about having to get into the water anyway. And I don't want to get in, but I always get in and submerge before I feel ready. And I've definitely taken that little lesson very consciously into other areas where I don't, I'm very conscious of not waiting to feel ready to do the thing.

I'd do it anyway. So if I know I want to do something, I know this is still very uncomfortable for me, I do it before I feel ready. Because arguably that's going to help me back from making the change I want. And I know that's true.

Sally (29:08)

There's something that happens in the heat of the moment, in that moment right there where you have to do the thing that you don't want to do, whether that's talking on a podcast or doing some public speaking or whatever it is, throwing yourself into it and watching yourself evolve and adapt and overcome. I think that's the thing that really builds the resilience and the self -belief, the belief in ourselves. And it makes me think about willpower as well and the subject of willpower and the...

That conscious will, which I think is a higher force that we all have that makes us do the thing that we don't want to

Serena (29:47)

Yeah, I've always said I think willpower is overrated. Yeah. Because when you're looking at people making changes, willpower often comes into the conversation and people say, I don't know, he doesn't have any willpower or she doesn't have any willpower. It's like you're waiting for this thing.

Sally (29:51)

Do you? Tell me more.

Mm -hmm.

Serena (30:08)

I'm not saying it's not there. It's like, it's like, going back to the book that I recommended in a previous podcast, the war of art, waiting, you know, people waiting for inspiration to hit before they just do. Yeah. Sometimes you just need to get on with it. Like what's a waiting for it. I think that there are so many things that are contributing factors. And I think sometimes willpower becomes a bit of a red herring because

Sally (30:21)

or motivation.

Serena (30:37)

someone who maybe struggles to change and can't make the change that they're seeking, it's unhelpful for them to slip into the narrative that other people have this thing called willpower that I don't have. And so this thing of willpower is all elusive, because if you actually try and break it down, it becomes intangible. Like, what actually is it?

Sally (31:01)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's why it starts.

Serena (31:04)

you said it's more like a force. I don't think it's necessarily something that you should seek from the outset. It's something that you tend to feel that you had retrospectively. You go, I must have had really good willpower. And that's also like having grit and determination and all those words are a lot more tangible.

Sally (31:24)

Yes, that's so true. And you see it in retrospect. So Stutz calls it a higher power. It's a force that we have to generate it within ourselves. It's not something that we're given. It's not endowed on us. It's something that we have to, like love, for example, love we can feel is given to us, right?

Serena (31:30)

Bye.

Sally (31:51)

We feel love when we look at an animal or our child or something, someone does something nice for us. We feel love, it's endowed upon us. But willpower is something that we have to generate. And yeah, it's good, isn't it? I love his book.

Serena (32:01)

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Kind of feels very intuitive to me. I mean, I probably didn't describe it as eloquently, stuck. So didn't know you said that. But I love that. Yeah, I'm aligned with that way of thinking about it. It feels like something that arises out of action. It's not something that you can seek. It's like looking for the golden fleece. It's like, where like, where are you going to get this thing?

Sally (32:20)

Yeah.

Serena (32:25)

Actually the Golden Fleece still exists in Greek mythology but it's intangible, it's not there, it's something that comes out of action.

Sally (32:32)

Yeah, and it comes out of challenge too. So I actually wrote a quote from the book. can't overcome the tendency to quit by thinking about not quitting. You need a higher force. We call that force willpower. It's the one higher force you must create yourself. All the universe can do is provide a challenge that demands you generate it.

Serena (32:34)

rest.

Cool.

a bit perfect. Thank you for showing that, Sally.

Sally (33:02)

And that's from his book, The Tools, which I highly

Serena (33:05)

Which I have not fully read, but yeah

Sally (33:09)

Yeah, it's so, so, so good. And I love that, because we're always trying to avoid suffering, aren't we, in life? Like, try and coddle ourselves to not feel suffering. But actually, so much comes out of it. So much good comes out of it. So much will, so much resilience and fortitude and all of those lovely strong words come out of our challenge. Obviously, we don't want too much of it, but life is going to give us lemons.

Serena (33:35)

Well, I think if you're just engaging in life, it will feel challenging to be honest with you. Certainly feels like it now at this stage in my life. Yeah, it feels challenging. I think as you go through your life and chapters and seasons of your life, you are faced with different challenges based on where you're at. Just quite literally, think about just aging in general, parents aging, health.

Sally (34:01)

Yeah.

Serena (34:04)

what we do in terms of moving, family, all of those things that contribute to just being challenged. yeah, but also you're right that there are some challenges that we might want to seek as well. So you might want to set yourself actual challenges and there are things that we can do and maybe that's a lovely place to start wrapping up as well is to think about these little challenges that you can bring into your everyday life. If you're thinking about building resilience and what that looks like for you.

Sally (34:32)

Yeah, absolutely. So as we do wrap things up then, are there any kind of reflective practices, any kind of homework exercises that we could give our listeners to help them reflect on resilience, maybe build resilience in their life?

Serena (34:50)

Yeah, so one of the things I would say is, so thinking about just being you and what that looks like for you. So thinking about how you live your life day to day, what you probably notice is, like most humans, we live our life in a very routine way. So we live in that way that kind of shows that we live in that automatic bias. So we do things on autopilot a lot of the time.

And so sometimes, unless you seek it and actively seek it, much of our life is on repeat. It's that routine. So in building resilience, you're looking at, you create challenge for yourself? And that looks like a couple of things for me. It always looks like play, which I'm not going to mention here today, but definitely remember play. Play is a big one and it, it feeds into resilience as well. But I would just say to think about great embracing failure.

So what can you undertake where you are actively failing? And that will look like also breaking your routine. So going back to kind of noticing your life and how you live it, just being really mindful of what that looks like for you on a daily basis. Where in your day can you start to break your routine, to bring something new in, to bring something really small but maybe challenging for you? So it might even be just driving to work a different way.

or choosing to go to a different coffee shops. And you'll be surprised at how you'll start to build that micro resilience around just doing things differently. So they're those kind of small things on daily basis, but also you might want to think about undertaking some bigger things where breaking your routine and failure are potentially part of it. So you've talked about maybe doing 5 to K recently. What was it? 5 to K.

Sally (36:43)

Couch to 5k.

Serena (36:49)

So things like, so what challenge can you bring into your life where you're actively seeking failure and therefore building resilience as a part of that process?

Sally (37:02)

Yeah, I always remember you telling me about that coffee shop thing years and years ago, like I think it was like four five years ago, you came on and we did like a little video in my Facebook group. Yeah, the power hour. And because it was all about anxiety. And that was one of the things that you said is, and I actually started doing that. And I do remember that because if ever I feel anxious, I always look at my life and think, you know what? I think it's because I'm doing the same thing over and over again. And my window of tolerance has just shrunk.

Serena (37:11)

How you doing,

Sally (37:31)

you know, working from home and all of that. So, so just like getting out the house and going somewhere different, like it sounds stupid, but just driving the other way or exploring new roads. Like when I had Joey, I was always exploring new fields, new roads, new places to take him for a walk. And my God, it opened up so much, you know, space around where I lived. And suddenly I saw where I lived as not being this

tiny little flat but as somewhere that was right in the middle of all this like amazing stuff and it started to really open up my world. Go

Serena (38:04)

I love that you said that. No, thank you for bringing that to life because I think on face value it doesn't sound like it's part of the same conversation. It sounds really minor. What do you mean go drive a different way to work or get like get the bus instead of walk or vice versa or take a different route or go to a different place? But what tends to happen as we age is our worlds do become smaller.

that is building less resilience over time. We tend to, if we're not careful, do less and rerun those paths that we've always run. This is obviously linking to building that neuroplasticity as well, which is something that is really important that we do. you know, might, I certainly know people who are older, a lot older than us, but you know, they

They only drive to particular houses and places because they know how to get there, but if they had to drive anywhere else, they would completely flip out. And so you can see how just challenging yourself, there's no time like the present to get into the habit of doing things like that and bringing diversity into your life. Doing new things to keep building that resilience over time to be a resilient human. And it can look like those very small things.

Sally (39:26)

And if we think about resilience as adaptation to change, then if we practice in change, if we wire in being okay with change, that's how we become more resilient. Just wanted to kind of make that clear how those little changes actually serve resilience, yeah.

Serena (39:42)

Yeah, it's all part of being resilient as a way to change and to keep evolving.

Sally (39:48)

Yeah, evolution. Amazing. What a wonderful conversation. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you've loved this conversation, then do reach out to us. Let us know what else we can talk about and let us know what your biggest takeaways were.

Serena (40:02)

Thank you, Sally, as always. And yeah, please send us your questions. We love them. See you. Bye.

Sally (40:07)

Bye.