Bouncing Forward + Resiliency with Dr. Steven Sideroff

Unlock the secrets of resilience with insights from Dr. Steven Sideroff in our latest episode! Join us as we explore how to "bounce forward" from life's challenges by cultivating mental balance and mastery. Discover the nuances of developing a growth mindset versus maintaining a positive one, and learn practical strategies to avoid those unproductive mental loops that keep you stuck. Dr. Sideroff's fifth pillar of resilience will equip you with the tools to enhance your mental fortitude and navigate any situation with grace and strength.

In this engaging conversation, we delve into practical techniques to manage stressors across various aspects of life—be it personal relationships, career hurdles, or financial worries. Learn how self-awareness and resilience assessment tools can spotlight your strengths and weaknesses. Inspired by John Gottman's research, we underscore the significance of maintaining a healthy ratio of positive to negative interactions. From incorporating relaxation into your daily routines to practicing non-judgmental meditation, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you not just bounce back, but bounce forward with renewed purpose and resilience.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Reignite Resilience
• 5:08 Strategies for Resilience and Emotional Balance
• 25:21 Developing Resilience and Emotional Balance

Transcript

Pamela Cass: 0:06

In the grand theater of life. We all seek a comeback, a resurgence, a rekindling of our inner fire. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience. This is not just another podcast. This is a journey, a venture into the heart of human spirit, the power of resilience and the art of reigniting our passions.

Natalie Davis: 0:30

Welcome back to part two of our two-part interview with Dr Steven Sideroff. We're going to dive right back in where Dr Steven Sideroff is going to give us some of his techniques from his book the Nine Pillars of Resilience. We're going to have the ability to reflect on how we respond to stress and how we can continue to bounce forward. We hope you enjoy.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 0:52

Every time you engage in any kind of stressful behavior, any kind of challenge, any kind of process in which you are working hard to get over, get through, get ahead. You want to learn a lesson from that experience so that the next time you encounter a stress, you are actually better prepared, and that's why I refer to that as the ability to bounce forward. I like that. Instead of bouncing back, you want to learn and grow from every challenge in your life and you want to be looking after a challenge is over. What did I learn from that experience that will help me the next time?

Natalie Davis: 1:38

Wow, I think I would embrace that approach much more. How can we bounce forward from this right? And you have that learning opportunity that you take and hopefully grow from that.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 1:50

Yeah, my fifth pillar of resilience is mental balance and mastery and the two key components of that, or actually the three. One is having a growth mindset, meaning that if you find a shortcoming in yourself, you don't feel like you're stuck with it, you go okay. How do I grow along these lines and this ability? The second aspect of mental balance and mastery is having a positive mindset. So much of the time people approach a situation, they go oh, that's difficult, that's going to be hard, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. All of those messages send you down the wrong path, send you down a path that literally makes it more difficult because of those messages you're giving yourself. And finally, the third aspect of mental balance and mastery is being able to shift away from something and not sort of get caught in a loop trying to kind of deal with something that may have no solution.

Natalie Davis: 3:04

I love that Growth mindset, positive mindset, and the vision that I got was get off the hamster wheel, so get away from the loop.

Natalie Davis: 3:17

Just get off the hamster wheel, and I do want to clearly define it. And, Dr Stephen, if you want to dive in, when we talk about growth mindset, positive mindset, they're not one in the same. When you're thinking about growth mindset, it's a. You know, you can look at it from the approach of the potential of an opportunity. So do you play the piano? I don't know, I've never tried right. Growth mindset, it's possible Instead of a no, I don't play it Right. And a positive mindset is. I'm so excited to have this opportunity to, whatever it is, fill in the blank, to learn how to play the piano or what have you. So not one in the same. So three distinctly different things growth mindset, positive mindset. You say it more eloquently, shift away from the loop. But I'm going to tell you guys, get off the hamster wheel. When you talk about the mindset piece of it, is it a combination of the growth and positive mindset that helps in having greater resiliency, or is there a formula that you recommend that we should know?

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 4:20

Again, that's one of my nine pillars and they all integrate to create the greatest resilience. And really my definition of resilience is really optimal functioning and it's the notion that, no matter what your circumstances, there's always a best approach, there's always a best way forward, so that immediately when you face anything in your life, instead of thinking it's difficult, you're thinking what's my best way. So it helps orient us in that positive direction when we say there's the best way, let me find it best way.

Natalie Davis: 5:07

Let me find it Beautiful. I love that. Can we dive into strategies and techniques? Do you mind taking us down that path when we're looking at some of our everyday stressors? Because we've talked about stress, I think, from the broader sense, but what we want to make sure that everyone understands is that stress can appear in any of your key areas of life, right? So personal relationship, family, career, finances, health and wellness you fill in the blank. Our stressors can pop up in those spaces. What are some strategies and techniques that you would share with us today that would help individuals in developing their resiliency, or that optimal functionality, optimal functioning- Optimal functioning.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 5:45

Yes, yeah. Well, first off, it's always good to start off knowing where you're starting off, right? So in my book I have a questionnaire that people can take and self-score and it gives them their personal resilience profile. I also have a resilience assessment booklet that describes each of my pillars and gives the questionnaire, and if people want to email me, I will send them my resilience assessment booklet free. I will send them my resilience assessment booklet free and so they can get that starting point. It's always good to know where you're starting at. So that's number one.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 6:42

I've laid out my book as a way of literally stepping, step by step, through a program of mastering these nine pillars of resilience, program of mastering these nine pillars of resilience. But one of the keys is that and you've mentioned this earlier is about how people feel so overwhelmed and even approaching dealing with stress. Wow, where do I begin? It's so overwhelming. And so I've created this notion, and this is something that your audience can apply right away. And I've created this notion and this is something that your audience can apply right away. And I've created this notion of the path. Okay, so the path is something that's alongside us every day, every moment of every day. It's right here. It's right here and at any time. Anybody can take a few steps and get onto the path. Whatever you're doing that facilitates and helps you grow along, any of my nine pillars will put you on the path. And if you're on the path now, you know okay, I'm doing what I can be doing. You don't have to feel overwhelmed anymore. Even though there's stuff that is not getting done in the moment, I'm doing all I can do and I'm on the path. And so it's important for people to feel like today I can be on the path. I don't have to wait until I do a 100 things to improve my resilience all the way down the road before I can feel success. I can have success right here, right now, today and after. You do your assessment and you see your strengths and weaknesses. So one approach is if you have my book and you see I'm weak in pillar number four and a physical balance and mastery, you can go to chapter 10 and you can write this take the steps that I give you to get on the path to improve on that pillar.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 8:42

But I would say that one of the first steps for all of listeners is to start paying attention to how you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself. So this is something that's fundamental, because we carry that internal voice around with us 24-7. It's always there, because a lot of what that internal voice says is distilled from either the covert or overt lessons of childhood. If that voice is negative, then you're continually giving yourself negative messages. So one of the first steps is to start noticing how that voice speaks to you.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 9:42

And John Gottman I don't know if you've ever heard the name, but John Gottman is a psychologist at the University of Washington and he does a lot of work with couples and he actually has a little apartment that couples go there and they spend a few days there, and he has cameras in every room and he's videotaping them continually and then he's using that for his research. And one of his research findings was that if you looked at the behavior of healthy relationships, they had a ratio of positive to negative interactions of 20 to one. When the relationship was in trouble, that ratio dropped down to about five to one, and so I've referred to what I've kind of taken that and I referred to it as your Gottman ratio, and I ask people to actually notice and pay attention to how they talk to themselves how they treat themselves? Are they at 20 to one, or are they closer to five to one, or perhaps one, to where they're more likely to be giving negative messages? So that's the first step is to notice how you're treating yourself.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 11:09

And then I introduced the qualities of a healthy internal voice or a healthy internal parent, and those qualities are coming from a place of love, compassion, acceptance, support, self-care and joy. Okay, so now your audience has a model and a mechanism. Pay attention to how you're talking to yourself and now you're learning about your internal voice, your internal parent. That might be very hard on yourself and to recognize that that is not a healthy or resilient way to treat yourself. The way to treat yourself is coming from an internal voice, internal parent, that has the qualities that I just mentioned. So now you have a model. Now you can go through your day how am I treating myself?

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 12:23

And if you notice you're being very critical or judgmental, you have to go. No, this is no longer appropriate. This may be what I learned, maybe how my mother or father did it, but it's not serving me. Now I have to migrate over here to a model of a healthy voice and develop that voice, and that's what I want to be hearing in my conversations with myself. And so anytime you notice that you're upset, anytime you notice you're upset, I guarantee you, if you checked in with your old internal voice, it's giving you some message that's causing you to be upset. It's telling you that so-and-so is judging you. It's telling you that so-and-so may not like what you just did, or it may maybe saying you should have done it differently. Whatever it is, your discomfort, your feelings is generated by the messages you give yourself. And so this is my first pillar of resilience your relationship with yourself, and it's about recognizing the existing relationship and migrating into a positive, healthy relationship.

Pamela Cass: 14:41

And I think that this both of us being coaches this is probably one of the things that we see people really struggle with more than anything else. We'll see it when they get on a call with us and they just start one negative thing about themselves after the next, after the next, and you're just like wow.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 15:00

And one of the reasons why well, there are many reasons why people are resistant to changing it. One is because these messages have gone in so deeply as part of their survival learning and they feel like that voice is part of them, right. And so I really hammer home to people that that voice is not in your genetics, it's not in your genes, it's learned, and just as it's been learned, it can be unlearned.

Natalie Davis: 15:33

Pam and I have labeled that negative voice. Now we have a better framework for it, I believe, but previously it was Dr Evil Porkchop that lived there. That would tell us all of the negative things. So now we need to make sure that that voice, dr Evil Porkchop, doesn't make an appearance, but we have the love and the compassion and the understanding, the, the joy exactly all of that that shows up on a more consistent basis. Right, it's inevitable, though it pops up from time to time.

Pamela Cass: 16:01

Everybody yeah, yeah, and it can sneak back in too. You know, circumstance is positive. You think you are you, you kind of feel like you've changed that internal voice, and then something will happen and you'll find yourself right back in there because of some trigger or something about the event that happened, and so the awareness of it, so that you can say hold on a second here. This is, this is not my, my healthy voice right.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 16:27

I love that, and the interesting thing is that when we're the more stress we have in our lives, the more difficulty we have in connecting to our newest learning, our newest lessons. So as we're learning this, these new lessons, stress is going to challenge us even more.

Pamela Cass: 16:51

Because we'll go back to our default, like what it was before.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 16:54

We go back to our default, so in terms of tips and things that your audience can address right away. So that's one Growth. Positive mindset is something else.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 17:08

And then let's talk about emotions and emotional upsets because, this is another key and this is my sixth pillar of resilience, emotional balance and mastery that produces some feeling inside of us sadness, anger, that those feelings don't go away until they are properly addressed no-transcript when we are incapable of handling all the emotional stuff in our childhood. And so, as a child, to some degree it's healthy to not notice, to push it aside, right, but that develops again back to childhood lessons. That's. One of the lessons we learn is how to push down, push aside feelings that are uncomfortable. But feelings don't go away by themselves. They have to be addressed.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 18:26

And so, whether it's emotional upsets and unfinished business from childhood, or if it's from last week when we don't deal with it, we carry these emotions, and this is why, in relationships, if you don't address unfinished business with your partner, instead you push it under the rug. What's under the rug gets bigger and bigger, and then little things are going to trigger explosions because you're tapping into that pool of unfinished energy and emotion. Yeah, and so it's important, anytime we notice a feeling, that we find a way to address it. And the thing is that they need to be addressed even if the person you're upset with is no longer in your life. Perhaps they've passed already, they're not alive, but you could still be carrying unfinished emotional business. And so the way I like to have people address this is, first off, to recognize if I'm carrying anger towards somebody else, let's just say that anger is my responsibility, it's not their responsibility. And that's an important lesson, because sometimes we hold on to feelings needing, wanting that person to apologize, hear us, agree with us, whatever. But the important message here is that the only person we have power over is ourselves. Control over is ourselves. We can't make anybody else do anything, and as long as we hold on to that desire to get the other person to be different, we're going to stay stuck, we're going to stay frustrated and we can be able to let go. So, to finish unfinished emotional business. You have to approach it from that accepting perspective that this is about me getting out what I'm carrying around.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 20:37

And that brings up another important tip here we need to in dealing with our stress and stress reactions, we need to separate out the event from our reaction, the source of the stress from our stress response. Okay, because they're not automatically linked. There's an event and then we go inside and we make an interpretation of that event, and if we interpret it as a threat or dangerous, then we have a stress reaction, but it happens so fast we don't realize that that process is taking place. And so if you think about separating the two, that means that a situation can occur that may be stressful, but you still have control over how you respond to it, and that becomes a whole other goal in the process of becoming more resilient. How we respond professional, olympic and this is one of the things I teach them all the time is that we can literally re-engineer our stress response.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 22:03

Yeah, so there are parts of the stress response that are useful you know how it helps us focus, how it helps us be more motivated but there are other parts that may not be as appropriate, such as all the muscles tightening and tensing for fight or flight. So this takes us to pillar number four physical balance and mastery. And I've been saying that there's an imbalance in the stimuli in our day. Or think of all the stimuli in our day that trigger danger, threat and our stress reaction. Right, how many stimuli in your day trigger safety, relax?

Natalie Davis: 22:50

I would imagine, before we wake up, before we get up, as soon the alarm clock goes off. I was going to say, the alarm clock probably triggers you right away. That's the first trigger that you get.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 23:00

Right, right. And so we need to create opportunities to turn on the recovery branch of our nervous system, to practice the ability to deeply relax, because we've all lost some of that ability because of this dysregulation between the two branches of our nervous system. So the only way to restore? So you think of a continuum where this is the baseline and, as you're stressed, you activate the nervous system and if you engage the recovery branch, you take yourself down into the levels here, but over time this range shrinks and it shrinks. This way, we lose the ability to come down to the deep levels and our baseline creeps up.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 24:08

And our baseline creeps up. So there's no alternative to practicing some form of relaxation, meditation, biofeedback. I'm stressed throughout the day. What can a 10 to 15-minute relaxation process do? I'm going to finish it and I'm going to get stressed again, right. And so I say to them that when you practice a relaxation exercise, it's an investment, because it's not only helping you during the time that you're doing it, because it's not only helping you during the time that you're doing it, it's also retraining your nervous system to come down that continuum to the deeper levels of calm. The more you do that, the more you can go into that calm state when you need to throughout the day. The more you practice, the more a two to three minute pause can be effective, because you have a greater ability to maximize those two to three minutes. It will also help you get a more deeper and restorative sleep and restorative sleep. So there are many reasons to practice a 10 to 15 minute relaxation exercise on a daily basis.

Pamela Cass: 25:22

I love that. I have a journal that I just got, and you know most journals it's to do list, to do list goals for the day, blah, blah, blah. This one actually has a to relax list and I was like I absolutely love that, because now it's forcing me in the morning to say, okay, what are three things that I'm going to do today to just relax? And so it's interesting that that's yeah, I love it.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 25:44

And then back to complete the sixth pillar emotional balance and mastery. It's up to everybody to recognize they're carrying some emotional baggage right. So I invite people to just sit for a moment and to imagine the different people in their lives sitting next to them and notice what kind of feelings come up. And if you're going to be honest with yourself, you may notice, for example, your mother or father who you love. You might notice some resentment coming up which maybe you've put to the side because you know I'm a loyal son, I'm a loyal daughter. How can I feel any resentment toward my mother or father? But if it's there, it's.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 26:32

It's like feelings are not right or wrong. If they're there, they're. You can't deny them. So you notice the feeling, you notice who it's about and you give yourself the opportunity to express the feeling however it works for you. And then remember the notion of acceptance. This is who they are. With that acceptance in mind, you express the feeling with the intention of getting it off your chest, having the emotions which have energy, allowing them to move through your body so you could let go of them. If you don't go through that process, they get stuck in your body and that interferes with your ability to experience joy and vitality.

Natalie Davis: 27:19

That's significant, I think, when you are able to really embrace the concept that you've shared with us in terms of understanding that we control our stress response. I think there's such a moment of empowerment there for everyone and that's kind of that sweet reward of understanding that you's such a moment of empowerment there for everyone and that's kind of that sweet reward of understanding that you are in this moment of empowering yourself to choose. How am I going to respond? When you couple that with the physical balance pillar that you identify again, taking those moments to just settle in, I like to like to sit into that and go into that deeper space. I would imagine that line being a little bit buoyant, right? So the more that you can get deeper, the less likely it is for it to pop back up to the top, or maybe it slows it some. That comes with practice over time.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 28:09

Yes, and one of the keys in this process is no judgment. One of the ways that people get stuck practicing a meditation or mindfulness or relaxation is they're doing it. Am I doing it right? Am I doing it well enough? Am I getting results? And all of those thoughts interfere with the process. They not only interfere with the process, but when you keep judging how you're doing it, the process itself becomes more and more aversive. Yeah, now you've associated it with failure and I'm not doing it right and all those negatives. So he is taking the mental approach that if I sit and do it for 10, 15 minutes a day, I will make progress. I may not notice the progress right away, but simply doing this is going to make a difference, and then you have to have patience and wait, but you will notice the difference if you approach it from this place of acceptance.

Pamela Cass: 29:19

Yeah.

Natalie Davis: 29:19

Beautiful, Beautiful, oh my gosh. Well, I'm excited to dive into the book For the listeners again. It's the nine pillars of resilience. We will make sure that we tag the book in our show notes for you and then we'll also include your contact email and I believe on the book's website you can download the assessment that has an outline of the book, so folks can get that and then you're not inundated with a million emails. So we will make sure that we link all of those. Stephen, is there anything else that you would like to leave our listeners with today?

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 29:56

I think I wanted to simply highlight a few of the points that I've made, which is that if you commit and engage in this process, if you really work on developing those qualities of the healthy internal parent, you are going to have success. My book helps you get there, because my book is not just designed to give information, it's designed to get results, it's designed to help a person stay with the path, so, so to speak, so that at any one time, all you do is ask yourself one question am I on the path or off the path? And if you're off the path, you just reach for my book and and it'll give you a couple of steps to take. That puts you right back onto the path. Love it, yeah, and my website is drstephensitteroffcom Beautiful.

Natalie Davis: 31:02

Thank you so much, yeah, this is amazing. Yes, absolutely. I love that and thank you for recapping those key points. We often say like if there were just a playbook for life, you know, before we started it, we could just dive into the playbook and it would be much easier. You guys, this is the playbook here you go.

Natalie Davis: 31:23

Well, this is one of, so you can add this to your toolkit, but I think this has been absolutely wonderful. I have had so many ahas and just observations in my own personal life, just as we were talking about relationships that I've had and kind of those emotions that bubble up when I think about those individuals and how I'm choosing to respond, and even in day-to-day. So when we're talking about resiliency, we know that those opportunities to be resilient will pop up at any given moment, and so now we have additional tools to help us in navigating through that.

Dr. Steven Sideroff: 31:55

Right, yes, and remember, you're not bouncing back, you're bouncing forward, or bouncing forward?

Natalie Davis: 32:01

I love that. I'm wholeheartedly embracing that. Yes, beautiful, oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much, stephen. Thank you for taking the time out. Thank you for sharing your insight, your knowledge and these wonderful resources with our listeners. As I mentioned before, I will drop all of the contact information for the book and for Steven in the show notes and if you all are looking for additional information about Reignite Resilience, you can head over to reigniteresiliencecom or you can find us on Instagram or Facebook at Reignite Resilience Podcast. We'll see you all soon. Have a good one. Bye guys, podcast. We'll see you all soon. Have a good one. Bye guys. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of Reignite Resilience. We hope that you had amazing ahas and takeaways. Remember to subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like it and download the upcoming episodes, and if you know anyone in your life that is looking to continue to ignite their resilience, share it with them. We look forward to seeing you on our future episodes and until then, continue to reignite that fire within your hearts.