The Flourish Feed Podcast
A series of curiosity driven deep dives into the nature of flourishing through wealth.
The Flourish Feed Podcast
#25 - The Resilience Episode: It’s a Team Sport
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This episode explores the true nature of grit and resilience, emphasizing their trainability and importance in team dynamics, leadership, and personal growth with Mark Gasparotto, a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, resilience trainer, and founder of immersive field-based programs that help individuals and teams build capacity under pressure.
Drawing on decades of military experience, expedition leadership, and entrepreneurial work, Mark specializes in teaching grit as a trainable skill - not a personality trait.
Mark shares insights from military experience, practical programs like Outside the Wire, a 1,000km experiment in the Canadian wilderness, and the science behind overcoming adversity individually and in teams.
Takeaways
🪖Resilience as a trainable skill, not innate
💪The importance of shared challenge and trust
🪖The role of friction and struggle in growth
💪Psychological safety and vulnerability in teams
🪖The 'Outside the Wire' program for experiential learning
💪The four pillars of resilience: body, mind, heart, and soul
🪖The cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis and its applications
💪The significance of recovery, sleep, and gratitude
Quotes
“There is no growth in comfort. There is only growth in struggle.”
“Resilience is not an innate trait - it can be learned, practiced, and forged in adversity.”
“The number one factor for resilience, longevity, and happiness is the quality of our relationships.”
“Nothing builds trust like chewing the same dirt together.”
“You can’t click your way to resilience - you have to do hard things.”
“Recovery isn’t the reward for hard work - it’s what allows you to do hard things again.”
“If you don’t train all parts of your humanity, stress will expose the weakest leg.”
“Psychological safety is built through vulnerability, and trust is built on top of that.”
“Discipline equals freedom - because systems take over when pressure hits.”
Chapters
00:00 Understanding Grit and Resilience
04:13 The Military Perspective on Resilience
08:59 The Importance of Struggle for Growth
13:58 Navigating Psychological Safety Under Pressure
18:39 Building Trust Through Vulnerability
21:35 Chewing the Same Dirt: Shared Experiences
23:14 The Paddle for Resilience Experiment
26:02 Phases of Resilience: Preparation, Performance, and Recovery
32:41 The Importance of Community in Resilience
37:35 Outside the Wire: Stepping Out of Comfort Zones
43:25 Moments of Bliss and Daily Gratitude
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The Flourish Feed Podcast, a series of curiosity-driven deep dives into the nature of flourishing through wealth. I'm your host, Gillian Stoville Rivers, M A C F P C E A, Senior Wealth Advisor at CIA Zante Wealth Management.
SPEAKER_01And so if if you're going to become resilient, you have to do hard things. That's that's my number one rule, right? You can't click your way to resilience in an online course or however there's an important caveat. Before doing whatever hard thing, it really is beneficial to get the skills and knowledge first. So to gain, to go through that information and then apply it in a very contextual manner. Because if you jump into the deep end, you know, odds are you're gonna get some optimal results or perhaps even catastrophic failure. So there is a theoretical portion, a conceptual portion to resilience. And then you got to apply it and you gotta do hard things. You gotta do the hard things physically. And most people start there.
SPEAKER_00Grit isn't about toughness for toughness's sake. It's about learning how to stay regulated, connected, and effective when things get hard together. On this episode of the Flourish Feed Podcast, I'm joined by Mark Gasparado to explore what grit really is, why shared struggle forces trust faster than comfort ever could, and how resilience can be trained at every chapter of life. From eating the same dirt to solving problems under pressure, this conversation reveals why together, under stress, is where our greatest human capacity can be unlocked. But first, let's get to know Mark a little bit. Mark Esperado is a Canadian Armed Forces veteran, resilience trainer, and founder of immersive field-based programs that help individuals and teams build capacity under pressure. Drawing on decades of military experience, expedition leadership, and entrepreneurial work, Mark specializes in teaching grit as a trainable skill, not a personality trait. He is the creator of Outside the Wire, a program designed to place people in controlled, high-stress environments where cognitive clarity, physical effort, breath control, and team regulation have to work together to solve real-world problems. Mark is also deeply involved with Wounded Warriors Canada, supporting veterans and first responders in rebuilding resilience, trust, and identity after trauma. Mark's work is grounded in a simple truth. Resilience is forged through shared challenge. When teams eat the same dirt, regulate together, and stay connected under stress, they discover that they are capable of far more together than they ever imagined alone. Mark Asperato, welcome to the Flir Speed Podcast. Fantastic. Well, I'll send you this the story that I wrote for us together today, and you're welcome to it. Now, you've said, as I mentioned in the intro, struggle is not something to avoid, it's something to practice. What does grit mean to you beyond the nature of the word as a buzzword? What does it actually mean?
SPEAKER_01So I don't often use the word grit uh because I think it's it's got a connotation that and and it always requires um an explanation. So I really just talk about um resilience. And if people want to use um you know resilience and grit interchangeably, you know, that's probably fine. There's some myths to dispel, uh, without a doubt. While we are born with certain personality traits that can be helpful um for resilience, so if you're more naturally optimistic, if you more naturally practice gratitude uh and are curious, like those those things are helpful, but they can be trained as well. Curiosity perhaps less so, but the other ones, um you know, you can fake it if you really want to. So resilience, not an innate skill, can be learned, practiced, and then you know, really forged in adversity. And if you can do it within a team context, even better. So, yes, there is individual resilience and there is team resilience, and those are actually different things, but they are connected. And so much of our resilience, and in fact, studies will show this. The number one factor for people's resilience, and in fact, longevity and in fact happiness, uh, really comes down to the quality of those people's relationships. So if you can um chew the same dirt, it really does forge the bonds of human connection, community. And I don't think anything builds trust like it. And what we know from other studies and you know, the work that Stephen Covey's done, uh and even my own experiences in the Army, uh, trust is the number one factor for team um resilience. So I've thrown a lot of things together there. Perfect. And hopefully I've answered the uh You definitely did.
SPEAKER_00Now, when you're in the military, I imagine, especially as you move up into positions of leadership, you see all types coming. They're not coming in on a standard format. They're coming in from different parts of the country, they're coming in with different backgrounds. How did your military career shape your understanding of resilience and personal capacity and and how many different kinds of forms can you work with in order to build the resilience of others? Because you're talking about it at a personal level, but you're also talking about it in life or death situations as a team. So tell us a little bit more about that military definition and and what that looks like as far as developing humans around you.
SPEAKER_01Well, perhaps what I'll do is I'll just start with a definition then. And this is largely drawn from how the Canadian forces, the Canadian Armed Forces defines it, I think with just some wordsmithing. So the definition that I use is it's the ability to withstand, adapt to, recover from, and even get stronger in the face of adversity. So when you so there's four verbs in there withstand, adapt, recover, stronger. Those require increasing levels of effort to achieve, but they really are all achievable. And you know, getting stronger in the face of adversity really links to the work that Nassim Taleb did when he wrote his book, Anti-Fragile. So think gained from disorder. I guess by the the knowing smile, you you know, you're familiar with his work. He also wrote The Black Swan. You know, he's a super interesting guy. Some of his stuff um I don't exactly understand, but you know, the the the key message, because he does get um quite esoteric um at times, but you can you can become stronger um as a result of adversity. If I think of my own experiences, certainly um coming home from war, you know, ultimately you can own the experience, so it can own you. And that will take some time. Um, it may even take some professional help, but suffering is a choice. And so if you're familiar with Victor Frankel's work, um Man's Search for Meaning, which was probably the most impactful book I read, certainly my recovery from my wartime experiences. And I was just recently introduced to um the Buddhist concept of dukkha, which is all about suffering as a choice. And it's when you're experiencing something, but you want to be somewhere else. You have a yearning or desire to either not feel um detach yourself from reality or be somewhere else. So I've really learned to be present in the moment, I've really learned to own the experience, and then ultimately to become a better person for it. So, you know, that that's quite spiritual and and you know, metaphysical, if you will, but that's that's for me been tremendously helpful in terms of resilience. I think, okay, so getting back to um earlier on when you said, you know, from a military perspective, we bring people in from all walks of life, from all parts of the country. Um and those demographics have changed over time. It used to be mostly white, European background, or maybe East Coast because of socioeconomic reasons, and people joined the military. Um, and there was a rural aspect. So people were farmers and hunters and were used to being outdoors. That's um that's really not the case anymore. We still get a few of those folks, but you know, by and large, Canada is an urban, an urban nation. And so we're getting folks in who probably don't have the same life experiences that that soldiers once upon a time um join with. And it does play out in terms of the need to train them to operate in the field, um, but also to undergo some some hardship.
SPEAKER_00I agree with you. We seem to live, I think, too, in a moment when I don't know if it's what technology has done or if it was COVID or parenting style, but there's been this perception that uh that that that friction and growth being painful is something to be avoided, that that things should be easy and things should be uh let's make life easier for our kids, like let's make things uh so that they don't have to struggle as much. And yet we know, like at the level of biology, the only reason a muscle gets bigger is because you tear it down a bit and it rebuilds itself back. So I know there's an absolutely biological foundation to what it is that you're talking about. But when you look around in the world that is, you know, contributing people to the military from all of these various backgrounds, but also at a time when friction is seen as something to be avoided, you know, why friction and and why not comfort? What's the what's the on the ground reason? You know, boots on the ground reason why friction is more important than comfort in order to not just function in the military, but also function in the world. You probably see a lot of overlap in the in the consulting work you do now, too.
SPEAKER_01There is no growth in comfort. There is only growth in struggle. So I mentioned Victor Frankel earlier, and really he talked about suffering, but he also was able to survive um four different Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. So I, you know, I don't advocate for suffering, and actually neither did Frankel. He said unnecessary suffering is is foolish. It's only when you have no choice in the matter. And when you have no choice in the matter, then you know you just need to be highly realistic about um the situation you're in. He said if you can't change the situation, then you're forced to change yourself. Okay, so if we dial that back a bit between you know comfort and struggle, it's in struggle, life struggle, that you know, that that's where the growth lies. And and so friction is important. And when we remove all friction, well, just like if bones aren't under pressure, they don't grow. All right, so that's the anti-you know the Steam Taleb talks about that as an analogy um or metaphor for for things that gain from stress.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And so if if you're going to become resilient, you have to do hard things. That's that's my number one rule, right? You can't click your way to resilience in an online course. Or however, there's an important caveat before doing whatever hard thing, it really is beneficial to get the skills and knowledge first. So to gain, to go through that information and then apply it in a very contextual manner. Because if you jump into the deep end, you know, odds are you're gonna get some optimal results or perhaps even catastrophic failure. So there is a theoretical portion, a conceptual portion to resilience. And then you got to apply it and you got to do hard things. You gotta do the hard things physically. And most people start there, and there's something called the cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis, which just says if you do something hard in one area of your life, it allows you to do something hard in another, right? So there's some transfer.
SPEAKER_00I'm so glad there's a term for that. I feel like I've been doing that intuitively for so long. What was the term again?
SPEAKER_01Cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis. So they haven't proven it, but there's there's there's a theory, there's a correlation between doing that. So you go to the gym, um, you work out physically, and you know, that that hypothesis will say that, well, that gives you a little bit of resilience, perhaps emotionally at home with the kids or mentally at work, uh, you know, within a professional setting. So now I'm just talking about different legs of the table. So the analogy I use for resilience is a four-legged table, where the legs are body, mind, heart, and soul, or the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. And spiritual can be religion. I'm not a religious man. Um, so for me, it's more about purpose. Uh, and I probably gravitate more towards the Eastern, you know, the Buddhist um concepts uh there. Uh and the tabletop are your relationships or your social network. And I alluded to that before, um, and how important chewing the same dirt with people you care about and how that's all linked. So those are all elements of your humanity, and they all play a part in how resilient you are. So if you were to load up a table with a lot of weight, right, put it under stress, it would need four strong legs and a top. Well, your personal resilience is no different. You you really need to work on all elements of your humanity, and some may be stronger than others, and that's okay up to a point, but you get put in up put under enough stress if you haven't worked on all of those things, then uh you you will stumble.
SPEAKER_00One of those legs is gonna bust out, right? I want to come back to the two things that you've been talking about. The first is a Victor Frankel reference, and the second one has to do with what I'm gonna come back to and tag for myself as psychological safety under pressure. But the Victor Frankel thing, you said, why would you put I mean it was uh misquoting, I'm kind of paraphrasing here about you you don't put yourself unnecessarily under struggle or stress. It's only that it needs to be there, you know, when when is absolutely necessary. And yet here we are, 21st century, totally different time than when Victor lived. And I feel like maybe even hidden underneath the surface, we are living amongst certain factors or features of the universe, right? Technology probably being one of the most powerful, where if we're not training every day, we're up against a machine that is operating so fast and so a massive tidal force in our face all the time. I wonder if exposing ourselves to struggle intentionally has become more important because of the world that we live in. Have you given any thought to the maybe the Frankel quote needing to be updated in the sense that today's world's a little different than his world was?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Well, he talked about suffering.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And I do make a distinction between struggle and suffering.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Good point.
SPEAKER_01Now that said, you know, a little bit of suffering is also, you know, not a not a bad thing. And so this is where I guess the nuance. So we know from many studies that to build up resilience, it's all about inoculation to stress. And that starts with manageable stressors. So right, you don't want to kill the client, you don't want to kill the patient. And so, and just like in the gym, yes, sometimes you want to go to failure, but you don't want to go until you know you you need surgery, right? And so there's there's a point at which a training scar is not helpful because it actually weakens you. So, how do you build up just like a vaccine work?
SPEAKER_00Right. I I literally use the word dosing, right? How do you use the right dose?
SPEAKER_01Correct. Because that allows you to do something harder and then harder and harder, but just like endurance uh you know athletes, they will not ramp up their volume by more than you know five or ten percent in any given year. It really does need to be, you know, a gradual inculcation if you want to perform at at optimal levels.
SPEAKER_00And if you're trying, you're aiming for struggle, struggle, you're not aiming for suffering. You're not aiming for suffering. You're aiming for struggle so that you could endure suffering if it was thrown at you. Is that kind of a better way of saying it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I think I think that's reasonable nuance.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Excellent. Now that the next question I had when you were talking about working together in groups and as a team, knowing that you've all dosed, struggled to get to that place where you're now hopefully on the same page and maybe a level playing field with each other. But now you're you're facing some kind of influence or or challenge where psychological safety might be in question. How do you operate as a team when the psychological safety is no longer there? Because I think that's that's you said trust earlier, right? That's that's another way of saying trust. How do you create that trust and psychological safety in a moment or in a circumstance when the external forces are no longer psychologically safe for you? How do you do that?
SPEAKER_01So there's a few parts to your question uh there. So how you work internally with psychological safety may be different than how you how that team then operates externally within the market where there could be some very some vicious competition. I'll give you an example. I commanded uh a combat engineer squadron in Kandahar, uh and we were there during a particularly violent phase of um of the war. And and I just by a sheer luck of timing, I was there um and part of a larger Canadian battle group, and uh we had to face a massive Taliban force. So it was the largest combat operation in the Canadian Army since Korea. And in fact, it was the largest combat operation in NATO's history up until that point. And I certainly like to think that within the squadron, because we were exceedingly entrepreneurial, we were problem solvers. We didn't have all the equipment we needed, so we ended up renting some and you know, welding on armor, like steel to the cabs of rented dozers. So we were taking we were taking great risks. And we were doing that because we had entrepreneurial spirit, and that requires psychological safety to bring up crazy ideas and also to fail. And certainly if things failed, not because someone was lazy and didn't put in the reps, didn't do their homework, um, didn't do all the preparations, I mean that's that's a that's a disciplinary issue in my mind. It's a performance issue. But if you're innovation requires trial and error, and so sometimes error means you're gonna fail. So I think within my squadron, we had the psychological safety to do those things. Okay, so internally we operated in a very progressive manner. Okay. You know, I've been called the fuck you version of Brene Brown. Nice, if you will. Okay. So, you know, if that's a good reference point for um for me for your audience, but that's how we operated it internally. But externally, in the marketplace, in on the battlefield, which is really a marketplace of violence, we prosecuted combat operations with extreme violence against the enemy. So there was a duality there. So I think hopefully without going down too deep a rabbit hole in terms of Kandahar. This is a good rabbit hole.
SPEAKER_00You keep going.
SPEAKER_01That answers the question around how do you have psychological safety on a team when the environment doesn't allow for it necessarily. Well, not that it doesn't allow for it, but it, you know, it's it's exceedingly chaotic and vicious. Okay, so that's that. Psychological safety is not the exact same as trust, but it's connected. And, you know, interestingly, Google uh did a study, I think called Project Aristotle. They wanted to know what was a key factor for high performance within their teams. And you know, Google's got the data, right? They've got it on all of us, and certainly they had it on their um on their employees. And what they found was that the number one factor was psychological safety that that that allowed for those teams to be high performance. So that is an element of trust. And yeah, I think it was Brene Brown's work around vulnerability. Vulnerability precedes trust, right? It's the foundation. And so when you can demonstrate some vulnerability, and for me, vulnerability, like I'm an army guy, right? So it's not about leaking your emotions, right? I only cry in the shower and no one can see. Safe, yeah. It takes care of itself. So to me, vulnerability is just being human, saying stuff like, I don't know, I need your help, that's a better idea, we're gonna go with it, or I got that wrong, and I'm sorry. Like that to me, that's just what it is. And when you when you demonstrate some vulnerability, especially as a leader, and that's another leadership myth that you know, we for whatever reason would have all the answers, like that's just crazy. So when when you demonstrate vulnerability and then someone reciprocates it, so they they see it, they acknowledge it, they reciprocate it, then there's a vulnerability loop. I didn't come up with that term, I can't remember who did. Um, and then trust gets built on top of that.
SPEAKER_00Very nice. And that's what can happen in that entrepreneurial moment when you're putting metal on the side of the tractor or whatever it is you used, but that vulnerability has to disappear once you enter the market, once you enter the field. Is that safe to say that that's that's where the trust is built, is here and then it's used.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So hopefully that links together the various aspects of the question.
SPEAKER_00I like that. And I like that you're breaking down now how resilience at a team level is a connection of various people who've done struggle work to prepare for suffering, but they've also done vulnerability, trust work as a group in the face of adversity to be creative and entrepreneurial in their inventions to make it out the other side in order to operate as a resilient team. And I love that you use the terms like reps and field and chaos and vicious because those terms are relevant in every place. They're not just relevant in the gym or on the battlefield or in the office or in the boardroom. They're relevant everywhere. I love how one of the terms you talked about when we first met, and you mentioned it again earlier, as did I in the intro, was eating the same dirt. I think that's a big part of the creation of that unit before we enter the battlefield. Talk to us where that term came from. Is it yours? Is it ancient? What do you mean by it?
SPEAKER_01So to chew the same dirt, uh, which for a soldier, uh, there's a literal aspect to it, right? You're in a trench with your fire team partner, you know, it is everywhere. In the corporate world, it's really metaphorical. I heard it, um, it was a Clint Eastwood movie, uh Heartbreak Ridge, where he plays uh a Marine Corps um gunnery sergeant uh just before the invasion of Grenada. And he talks about it. I'm pretty sure he's referencing his you know Vietnam comrades where they where they chewed the same dirt. So you know, I picked that up and Actually, the the title of my team resilience um keynote and workshop. So when a group has a common experience, the more uncommon and harder the better, as long as that struggle is somewhat equitable, that really does forge the bonds of human connection.
SPEAKER_00I love it. It's so brilliant. And it's it's so contrary to taking it easy and making, you know, making life simple. And uh there's definitely a time for that. And there and then and I think it's the recovery time that is for that. But for growth to be possible, especially in the face of so many incredible changes taking place in our world, we gotta hunker down, do some reps and be prepared for struggle together. So now when you work with, I mean, you work with people that range from veterans to homemakers to doctors and business leaders. What happens to people from different skills and different backgrounds when they endure challenge together? What are some of the transformations you've seen and how is that useful right now in this moment in history?
SPEAKER_01Well, in fact, uh this past summer I ran an experiment. I mean, I called that the paddle for resilience. So it was a thousand kilometers, five weeks, three of us did it all. My business partner, Sean, he was the eldest at 63, and his 18-year-old son Will, who is the youngest. And frankly, Will was the hero of the story. But we were joined, typically for a week um at a time, um, by different paddlers from all walks of life. And it really was meant to demonstrate that resilience, both personally and from a team perspective, can be taught, practiced, and then forged in adversity. And um, you know, it was that paddle took a physical and um, I would say, cognitive toll on me. Not so much emotional, but I was in quite a bit of pain, and I had some nerve pain going on. And so I had to fight through um day after day because we were on that, we were on the water 10 to 12 hours a day, um, you know, day after day for five weeks. We did take um, you know, every seventh day we would take typically um take a break because recovery is important. Something I want to come back to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'll make sure we come back to it.
SPEAKER_01But we purposely picked folks who we knew could do it, but who weren't, not everyone was an army vet, right? Not everyone was uh was a super athlete. And so we we wanted to ensure we could tell the story that if we deliberately apply the concepts and principles of resilience at both the individual and team um level, and again, those are some of it scales, but some of it's um unique, that we can do hard things together. And and we finished. In fact, I said we'd be at the finish line between 11 and 11.30 on a Saturday, and we were there at 11:15 because we planned it, we planned it extensively. There was tremendous preparations that went into it, and we ensured that the training was there and that everyone, um, although we were not equal paddlers, we were not equal backcountry, you know, adventurers, um, but you within the team use the strengths and weaknesses. And some people will just be stronger overall, and you know what? They just need to pull a bit more weight, and that's okay because in the end, we we we we finish together.
SPEAKER_00And everybody probably moved the needle in their own way at their own level of what they thought they were capable of because of that. Now they're all starting from a higher foundation for the next thing that they face. That's remarkable work. That is awesome. Traditional wealth management focuses on a few key moments: your first house, sending your kids to university, when you retire, and when you die. Will you have enough? Will you die with too much or too little? These are questions of a very finite nature. Our approach goes above and beyond with the belief that wealth is not just money, but comes in at least four forms: time, money, energy, and attention. And that wealth is a wave that you can learn to ride to a life well lived, a life where you flourished, where you surpassed the finite game of having enough, to experiencing the infinite game of playing forever. Instead of just focusing on a few of life's moments, we focus on all of the moments between the 1440 minutes of each day, the energy to be harnessed from each and every sunrise, every meal, and every great night's sleep, the power of connection and meaning that all four forms of wealth, time, energy, money, and attention can access. This is what it means to flourish. So the question is, which wealth advisor is right for you? An advisor who helps you open the door to a few of life's moments or to all of them? Consider this. In the next 24 hours, you have 1440 minutes, and it takes just a few of them to contact me at grivers at asante.com. Doing so could be one of the best investment decisions you ever make. What are some of the core components? Recovery might be one of them. Let's make sure that gets into this section. Uh, what are some of the core components that you teach to help people struggle well and move the needle so that we we avoid suffering? Like we actually we do the rep without blowing the muscle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. I break it down into three phases. So what you would do before, during, and after, you know, an adverse event or a crisis or periods of prolonged stress. Because not everything is a a you know, the the building is burning, right? Sometimes adversity is is is longer term. So the preparation is about doing hard things, so it's that inoculation. And then it's the higher the risk of what you're doing, the more you need to prepare for it.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Makes sense.
SPEAKER_01You know, some things you can wing, but some things require five rehearsals. So when I do a keynote, I rehearse five times before I get on that stage and speak for an hour, as an example. On the paddle, that was all about hydration, nutrition. Did we have redundancy in our navigation systems and our communications? So a lot of it is also building the systems so they are in place. So routines can take over. You can do the easy things easily, which frees up awareness and resources to deal with the variables, to deal with the crisis, to deal with what we say the alligators closest to the boat. That's preparation, which really involves putting in the reps, doing all the boring stuff to ensure that you're prepared and having those plans.
SPEAKER_00And thinking it all through in advance, like to detail, to I'm sure an insane level of detail.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we approach the paddle like a military operation. Um, but we were teaching a bunch of civilians how to do that as well, because it was high risk um based on how rugged certainly the first 400 kilometers were the you know, extraction uh in most of that would have required um a search and rescue helicopter.
SPEAKER_00Wow, yeah. No, you have to you gotta be prepared for something like that. It's big time.
SPEAKER_01You gotta be prepared for that. Yeah. Okay, so preparation moves you into performance. And so how do you deal with things in the moment? And you know, crisis could be, you know, you your baby is crying, right? Crisis could, you know, it's not always the building is on fire, right? Or the there's a cyber attack. Um, you know, that that can be very personal in terms of you know what makes you anxious. And and so here, controlled breathing, which is all linked, you know, physiologically to the limbic system, so the emotional part of the brain. And so if you can get through that emotional response, and if you know, Frankel talks about if you can pause between stimulus and response to allow that to ebb and then flow, and then the intellectual uh the prefrontal cortex can take over and you can think through it. But this is where emotional intelligence is more important than you know, IQ from a resilience perspective, because that's what gets you through the the the shock of whatever that crisis is.
SPEAKER_00Big or small, we still have an emotional response that if we can put the pause there and let the bright, not the right brain, the the effective part of the brain come online, then we can we can face that. So and that that was performance. And then we have recovery. Here we go. It's gonna be easy for us to talk about because I think it's so critical, and uh you've probably got a lot to share on that piece. It's I mean, you've done some of the hardest kinds of recovery in what you've done. So talk to us about that phase.
SPEAKER_01So recovery is one third of the resilience equation, and yet many people don't give it the same level of intentionality or effort uh and to their detriment. You know, I I've heard it said recovery is not the reward for hard work, it's what allows you to do hard and even harder things over and over again. Or, you know, amateurs treat recovery as just something you're going to sleep into.
SPEAKER_00It's a nice two, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Nice to, um, as opposed to professionals who program it. So I it's so I'm a I take my recovery very seriously. Um, and it really does start with sleep. And there's a science to sleep in getting your seven to nine hours. You know, there's that expression you can sleep when you're dead. Well, it should actually be if you skip your sleep, you'll die young. The science is very clear. And it's not just because it it leads to negative long-term health outcomes, but it is fundamentally tied to emotional well-being, um, but also performance.
SPEAKER_00Cognitive and physical performance, 100%.
SPEAKER_01Um, all of that. So the top tip really for all things resilience is sleeping. Sleep.
SPEAKER_00I love that because we we talked very frequently on this podcast, both to sleep experts, but also performance experts, that sleep is really the highest form of recovery. It is the thing that checks all of the boxes, whether it's the eight hours or nine hours you get at night, or sometimes even the nap that you can pick up during the day as a reset for yourself. Other than sleep, what's another form of recovery that you guys relied on in the paddle?
SPEAKER_01Uh, gratitude. And you can be grateful. So some people are naturally grateful, but it also can be um practiced. And so that's helpful for yourself, but also within certainly within the team context is just saying thank you. Now, typically, you know, we would do that not only at the end of the day, or someone filled up the water or got the fire started, or you know, helped you out with with whatever, but also we would want to do debriefs and after-action reviews. And I would say gratitude needs to be you know woven into that um practice as well. So you are learning, you're learning the technical stuff, um, the tactical stuff. And then from a human perspective, you're learning about each other and you're just really appreciating each other for what they bring to the team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no kidding. And just as important in the field, I would say that's something that gets dropped pretty quickly in an office these days. And I'm I'm not saying that I feel that on my team, but I know that the pace of demands and what it is you want to do to please people can often mean that those closest to you don't necessarily get that feedback that could give them recovery as well as you. So I love the idea of intentionally weaving it into the day or weaving it into the after action review, as you call it. That could be a very powerful way to offer recovery in in the office world, in the corporate world, and even in the home, right? Even in the even in the family network. I want to talk a little bit about adults versus young people. And and adults, you can call that whatever age group you like. Maybe it's the working person or it's the family, uh, the family person or the couple. But why do you think adults need controlled adversity just as much or maybe even more than young people? I think there's a there's like there's chapters of life where adversity is playing a different role. Um, it's certainly doing something to create that young person's framework, but what's it doing for the mature person who already has a framework?
SPEAKER_01Well, do they?
SPEAKER_00Ah, touche.
SPEAKER_01Or, you know, or or uh you know, I think many people just sort of stumble into um various aspects of their life. I've been blessed in the sense that my military experience has taught me many things, certainly around preparation, certainly around goal setting, and then because of that preparation, how we can actually achieve that goal and and what it takes to get there. And I am a much more or I have more endurance now, as you know, in my 50s than I did in my 20s.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that cool? That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_01Well, because it's it's what's going on here, but I'd say um but emotionally as well. So I think resilience is needed uh across the board from a from a generational or an age perspective, controlled environments. Like this is where it's hard to it's hard to have a controlled environment unless you purposely design it as such. Uh, and this is where I think you know, military backgrounds or backcountry backgrounds or even you know athletics where you you have a game to play. And so you know there's certain rules, and you're gonna go and you're gonna test yourself within that. It's still a you know, it's an environment, but it's not the real world, right? So it's so it's a controlled environment, you know, as you put in the question. I think more people need to do it. More people just need to go out, set a goal for themselves, whatever that is. You have to do hard things, but start wherever you're at, and then you know, slowly build up to it. The best thing to do is to find a community.
SPEAKER_00And I think gyms are some of the most fantastic places for community. Tell us a little bit about that workshop and tell us about that community and what's possible there.
SPEAKER_01So it's in the neighborhood. Um I live in Ottawa, it's called Powerhouse, uh, and it's run by a wonderful woman um named Sylvia, and she's created um uh a great community there. And so we've collaborated a couple of times, and she's brought other um experts in to speak to well to the community at the gym. And we talked about resilience, and I didn't focus on physical resilience because you know we were at a gym and you know people are are looking at it.
SPEAKER_00Presumably they've got that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean to a reasonable extent. So it was more about the the mental, emotional, um, spiritual legs. Uh, and then there was a lot interwoven um with the social network or relationship part of so the the tabletop in my in my analogy. And I would I told them some stories from my time in Kandahar. I really used the paddle for resilience because that was a purpose-built experiment around resilience, and so that was the story element to it. And then many of the things we talked about were were the conceptual pillars, right, or the theory. Uh, and then people had a chance to workshop that and to break out into small groups and talk about what their what their struggles are. And you know, for many folks, it's they've got young kids. Um, and I think about, you know, my certainly my greatest leadership challenge were were my two daughters. And you know, there were days where I you know yearned for the simplicity of a gunfight as opposed to you know the emotional you know chaos of of raising teenage kids, although most of that fell to my wife because I was often deployed. And so, you know, resilience will look different for each and every one of us. We all have our own baggage, background, context, you know, realities. But after listening to the check-in when everyone talked about what they want to get out of the workshop, you also realize that many of us have similar issues and similar struggles. And you know, if if if we're kind to ourselves and kind to each other and and and we're willing to help out as a community does, then then you know, really you can learn to struggle well together. You know, there's incredible things happen when that occurs.
SPEAKER_00You're 100% right. And I think the answer to my question about adults finding an opportunity to challenge themselves and face adversity is get out of your house, find that place in your community where you can have those conversations and be coached because it is such a lighter lift when you're doing it with other people. All of a sudden, all of the barriers drop away, and you have great amounts of support, but also intelligent ideas on how you can solve some of these things. You also run another program that fascinates me, and I have to get a group together to come and take you up on it one day. And I started talking to people last week about this program, and I'm trying to get this group together to say yes, that we're gonna come up and visit you to do outside the wire. Talk to us about outside the wire. Where did the concept come from and what kinds of things you how does it work and what do you witness with it?
SPEAKER_01Okay. So outside the wire is a military term when you leave the safety of a base, which is typically surrounded by barbed wire. Okay, so you've got inside the wire and then you go outside the wire into the wild west. No controlled environment. Or Taliban, enemy territory. Okay. So it's really a metaphor for taking yourself out of out of your comfort zone. Although we take those people out of their comfort zones because, and this links back to I think your first question, because that's where the growth is. And now we do it in a controlled environment. Um, so we don't take uh risks, too many risks um physically, although you could be riding around in an armored vehicle or a tank. Maybe you're doing live fire shooting uh instructed by some special forces folks.
SPEAKER_00That sounds outside the box for a lot of people, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01It would be, or you're sleeping in a tent, right? We've we've as some of these programs will go overnight. Um, some of them are just uh you know a half day, but it's all about taking people out of their comfort zone into a military-inspired classroom. We're not turning anyone into a soldier in a day or two or three.
SPEAKER_00But there's a bit of theater to it that's some feature, pulls you outside your normal, right? That's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Well, even walking around in the dark without um white light or any light, you know, for many civilians is uncomfortable. And so we do that. And this is where my team, mostly combat veterans, sometimes we will, you know, on one side we will just observe, or we may mentor, we may coach, or we may take control and and give instruction. Uh either a more complicated part, or if there's a if there's some physical danger involved, right? Like riding around in an armored vehicle, for example, or if people are doing live fire shooting. Like we have very tight control when that is occurring. So it's really about leadership and uh and teams within a military-inspired environment. You would learn both through osmosis, seeing how we operate, but also um very explicitly, we would teach you how we solve problems in the army, which is highly structured. And it's highly structured, not because we're robots, but it's so we don't have to think about the structure, and we can put all of our efforts into the content that goes into the vessel. Yes, whatever that heading is.
SPEAKER_00Yes, right.
SPEAKER_01So that discipline equals freedom, I think to quote Jocko Willing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, the best, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So there's a planning and execution element to it. There's certainly a leadership element to it, and really the physicality is is doable for the average corporate demographic, right? We just need to get you to 80% max heart rate, whatever that looks like for you, right? So then you can then practice some breathing, calm the mind and the body, so then you could focus on a cognitive puzzle to solve. Marvelous. All the while the emotions are playing out within the team dynamic, and that's usually where the greatest benefits and advancements are. And people have told me, you know, you've seen us for a day now and a night in the field. You have nailed our team dynamics because uh just a little bit of stress, it comes out. So that's the outside the wire program. And if you're a defense company, you get the added bonus of developing some empathy for the end user of your product or service. And we even allow you to deploy the gear that you build and we'll integrate it into the exercise. So, you know, very interesting. You've gotten great feedback. You know, where it becomes difficult is some people are are scared. Um, they don't want either the risk or the perceived risk of of doing something like that. And then there's time, because if you can spend more time with me, the better, because we can really get deep on some things. But I understand that some folks only have half a day. And then obviously, if we're gonna roll tanks and do live fire shooting and all the logistics of a tented camp, you know, there's there's a financial aspect.
SPEAKER_00Rightly so. And I like what I hear too, in that I believe you're an engineer. Yes, this is your professional background. As an engineer, you have a protocol for problem solving that takes away the need for the team to negotiate how to solve the problem because you prescribe that. And that allows the focus to be on the solving of the problem and the revelation of how the team actually functions. I think that's genius. I think that's like a really incredible recipe for giving people clarity on how to work together. Marvelous stuff that you're working on. I have one closing question that's maybe on the lighter side of things, but heck, we might find ourselves back in the field the way you answer this question. It's what I call the moment of bliss question. So when you look at your day, having been through everything that you've been through, which is remarkable, and I it it might be a moment that you miss, maybe you don't even see it anymore, but this is the moment that in your day you either look for or you notice that just causes everything to be very clear and maybe even is a little bit like that breathing exercise that gives you nervous system regulation. Mark Gasparado, what's your moment of bliss?
SPEAKER_01So I was nearly killed six times in Kandahar. And so now my act of daily gratitude is to say good morning to the sun. And so when I see that sunrise, um, like it's it's the most beautiful thing. Uh, because you have another day.
SPEAKER_00You have another day.
SPEAKER_01To make the most of. And um, that's my moment of blessing.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, keep making the most of those days. We need people like you to help people like us be better people, handle struggle, be able to work together. We have a lot of problems in this world we all need to solve, and a lot of things coming at us all the time. Thank you so much for showing us that shared hardship is the ultimate bonding agent. I hope you have the most wonderful day, and I look forward to working with you again. Thank you so much, Mark.
SPEAKER_01Gillian, my pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Join me next week on the Flourish Feed Podcast to keep exploring the infinite game. In the meantime, remember to stay curious, turn your passions into purpose, and play hard. I'm rooting for you. This program was prepared by Gillian Stovell Rivers, who was a senior wealth advisor with CI Asante Wealth Management. This is not an official program of CI Asante Wealth Management, and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of CI Asante Wealth Management. This show is intended for general information only and may not apply to all listeners or investors. Please obtain professional financial advice or contact Gillian to discuss your particular circumstances prior to acting on the information presented.