Developing Your Resilience Recipe with Lizette Warner, PhD

Learn to Develop Your Own Resilience Recipe

Hi everyone, it’s Jenn DeWall and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast, we are talking all about resiliency, which is a perfect topic for this time of year when many of us who have set new goals or intentions or resolutions have a tendency to quit. I hope today’s conversation will motivate you to keep going. But before I get into the conversation with Lizette Warner, I just want to remind you about Crestcom’s monthly webinar. Every single month we offer a complimentary webinar that’s open and available to the public. And in February we’ll be talking all about how you can create resiliency and self-love in the workplace. That webinar is on Tuesday, February 14th, 8:00 AM Mountain and 10:00 AM Eastern. We would love to see you there and you can register by going to Crestcom.com’s Resources page. Now let’s get on with the show. Let me tell you a little bit more about today’s guest, Lizette Warner.

Full Transcript Below

Jenn DeWall:  Lizette is the senior director of MR Oncology Collaborations for Phillips. Lizette is an author, a speaker, and a leadership coach who turned her hand to writing after discovering a passion for helping struggling professionals through leadership crisis and renewal. Power, Poise and Presence is her debut non-fiction book and her mission. Want to know a little bit more personal things about Lizette? Lizette shows leaders how to embrace that perfect poise isn’t perfect. Let’s say that one more time. Perfect poise isn’t perfect. Lizette lives in Texas with her husband, a spastic Irish Wolfhound, a narcoleptic Mastweiler, goes tactical thrifting with her daughter and always hits the gym with her son. When he visits between semesters at Oklahoma University, you’ll find her swimming with her team or screeching in her church choir when she isn’t advising, coaching, speaking, or reading. Talk about someone that’s likely had to develop some resilience, coping or strategies just to manage everything that she has going on. Alright, so now it’s time to start that conversation! Enjoy as Lizette and I discuss how to develop your resilience recipe. Enjoy.

Meet Lizette Warner, PhD

Jenn DeWall:  Oh my gosh, I am so excited to be talking about the resilience recipe. I mean, let’s be honest, many people are probably quitting their New Year’s resolutions right now, may be uncertain about their goals. There’s no better time than start talking about what we can do to build our resilience recipe. And Lizette, I am just so glad that you were on the show today. Could you go ahead and introduce yourself to your or to our audience? I know that you’ve got a book that I would love for them to hear about, but tell us how you came to be.

Lizette Warner:  Oh my goodness. What a question. Hello. Hello. It’s so glad and thank you for having me on on the show. So I am a healthcare executive and an executive coach. So both of those things sort of flow together. Grew up youngest of four in Chicago. We’re now like in in Dallas Fort Worth. And through that I, my whole discovery growing up, growing up sort of the, the Oopsy I was the Oopsy-baby <laugh> growing up <laugh>.

Jenn DeWall:  Yeah. What a way to feel about your presence. I’m the Oopsy <laugh>.

Lizette Warner:  I’m the Oopsy. Right. And, and was made fun of because everyone was, oh my gosh, my, my siblings weren’t high school, graduating high school when I was born, so I got picked on. And somehow through that I, I ended up, because I only spoke Spanish when I was growing up and as they were picking on me, because I couldn’t pronounce the words right in Spanish, I ditched Spanish. I mean, I still speak Spanish, but I, I ditched Spanish and just started speaking English best English speaker in the family right here.

Jenn DeWall: I love it. I love it. It might be the oopsie, but I’ve got this <laugh>

Poise, Presence and A Resilience Recipe

Lizette Warner:  <Laugh>, right? So I dunno, maybe my resiliency started from then. And and went through school, was really, really bright and ended up going into technology and pursued my, my PhD and in all of that, like I kept running into getting just sort of flipped over, just, just sort of being, falling into sort of the Oopsy category again of like, who quits their job to go pursue their PhD with a husband and two little kids. Like who, it didn’t even occur to me that, oh, maybe I shouldn’t do that. So anyway, so I did that and, and so I ended up as in healthcare as an executive coach because I ended up coaching a number of people. And through all of that, those adventures, I bring my, my stories to the forefront, but I help my clients through things like resiliency, which is man, what a great topic for, for the day.

Jenn DeWall:  Yeah. Well, and I feel like even within your opening introduction, you of course talked about resiliency in the form of learning a new language of resiliency in being the youngest one in a large sibling set. And of course resiliency in going against the grain. What might be untraditional to quit your job to pursue a PhD? I mean, it feels like you’ve got a lot of strong examples of resiliency built in <laugh>. Now, before we dive into the content, I would love to just talk about your book for a little bit. How are poise and presence? What was the inspiration in writing that?

Lizette Warner:  It was probably the fifth woman who came to me with the same exact problem of, hey Lizette, I, I really wanna get into the director role, but a couple years ago I got myself set up, got the promotion, and then our company had a reorg and my boss went out the, the door. So in comes my new boss, and here I start all over again ready to, to get into my promotion. Worked really hard and guess what? The reorg happened again. And so now I’m in the position lizette that I’m doing the job of the director, but I don’t have the promotion and my company’s just had another reorg, what do I do? So I kept having these same problems and it didn’t matter the industry, it didn’t actually even matter where in the hierarchy she was in the organization that they were coming with the same exact problems.

And then I was finding, finding my male clients were having somewhat similar problems not, not to that extent, but similar problems in terms of, you know, showing up and being, being confident in certain situations where they just didn’t feel confident and not knowing what to do. What do I do with all these emotions and, and sort of trying to bluff their way through things. And because of all of that and all of the conversations I was having, I decided, you know what? I fix problems. How can I help the people who are having these problems, who I’m never gonna get to, to coach who I’m nev who are, they’re never gonna come to me. How can I help you at scale? And so I thought, let me take all of these stories and let me write them down in a book.

Jenn DeWall:  Yes. And I love that. Oh my gosh, I love the reason that you drew to write your book to make it more accessible to more people. And at the heart of all of that, to be able to show up with confidence is our own resiliency. So your book is a perfect segue into how we can get that and what is our, or how can we create a resilience recipe, but maybe we should, again, level set and not that we don’t all know this, but let’s think about the operating definition. What is resilience at the most basic level?

What is Resilience?

Lizette Warner:  Wow, that is a wonderful question because resiliency is, is that ability in, in mechanical terms, it’s that ability to be able to bounce back, right? It, it’s being elastic, but then being able to bounce back from that. And so I think of that it’s funny, it’s sort of the mechanical term, but I kind of think of that a as resiliency, your ability to bounce back from the crap that life throws at you. The, the events that happen, the unfortunate things, the mishaps, the unexpected that pops up, and your ability to bounce back from that.

Jenn DeWall:  It’s so interesting and I taught a webinar for Crestcom today on how to create a growth mindset. And one of the things that we talked about is the fact that when we’re setting goals, when we’re trying to create new habits, we almost create them in a vacuum as if a setback won’t occur, an obstacle won’t pop up. And I think all of us get a little bit, I don’t know if it’s more inspired to focus on the goal and then almost, oh, I don’t wanna think about the stuff that won’t go right because I know that I’ve got it all figured out. And I noticed that within a lot of achieving people and perfectionists we do that we kind of plan our goals in a vacuum and just assume still that everything is gonna be fine. Even though we know in our head that life is a series of ups and downs. I mean, I don’t Do you do that? I know I do it

Lizette Warner:   <Laugh>. Oh heck yeah. I think that’s, that’s sort of human nature. because you think of, you think your goal, you think your, your outcome. Like, oh, I’m gonna run the marathon, right? I’m gonna run the marathon, it’s gonna be great. And then you get to like mile– I don’t run marathons, but I don’t even know, you get to– I’ve heard you get to like mile, I don’t know, 13 and it’s just, what did, who thought of this? Who said this was gonna be a great idea, right? And you’re on like mile 15 and I’m like, I’m ready to stop. But we, we, I think that is human nature. You sort of envision the best, right? And then when the worst happens, it can be, it can be a real setback and a real downer to, to quite a few people, right? And, and it’s not that people with resiliency don’t recognize the, the awful because awful happens, right? It’s not that that we don’t, we don’t look at it or we don’t appreciate it. It’s just we don’t let the awful get us down long enough to stop us. Right? So you get to mile 13, if you’re a marathon runner, right? You get to mile 13 and you know it’s gonna get better. I’ve already run 13, so I’ve only got 13 ish more to go like I’m at the midway point, I can do this, right? That, that’s how I think of it.

Jenn DeWall:  I love that it’s the ability to look at, I might be at my mile 13 halfway through the marathon, but hey, instead of saying, oh my gosh, I have 13 more miles to go, I’ve actually already finished half of them. And maybe that then dovetails into that fixed versus the growth mindset. How we look at the problem in front of us is really going to frame up our actions, our behaviors and emotions around the setbacks when they occur. So I love this, you work with your clients, you’ve seen these setbacks many times before because hey, anytime we’re achieving or trying to achieve big things, there’re going to be bumps in the road. And so from your experience, what does resilience look like in action?

Lizette Warner:  Oh my gosh. I, in in action it, it, it’s not glamorous or rosy in here. I’ll, I’ll give you an example. When, when we lived in, this was in Minnesota and it snowed. My husband took the kids grocery shopping because even forever, I have never liked grocery shopping, so he’s always done that. But he’d take the kids grocery shopping and they were five, six, some, somewhere around that age. And when he’d get home, you know, the invariably we gotta carry all the groceries into the house. So my son had these grocery, I don’t know what my husband was buying, but the bags apparently were pretty heavy. And so he, he yells at my husband, you know, while they’re tracking all the, the groceries from in the snow, like, help me. And my husband looked at him and gave him help, but not really the help that he was expecting.

Lizette Warner:  So my husband told him grow stronger. And in that moment, that was a resiliency moment. In that moment my son could have chosen to like, I’m gonna drop the bags and I’m done. I’m gonna take one bag and leave the rest here. Or I’m gonna heave them up on my shoulders and I’m gonna keep my grocery delivery route. Right? And that was what resiliency was. He grabbed those bags and he continued his grocery delivery route, right? And he had the choice. He had the choice. And that I think exemplifies kind of what it looks like in action for you.

Where Do People Lack Resiliency?

Jenn DeWall: Oh wait, I, I love that because it brings forward the power of intention that actually every single day we all have the opportunity to make a different choice. We all do. And so where do you see that lacking in leaders? Where do you see that they’re not leaning into resiliency and that they’re actually shrinking or giving up or maybe just hiding and running away from the situation? Yeah. What do you see resilience lacking?

Lizette Warner:  I, I love that question because I think it goes back to what you said earlier where we, we sometimes set our goals in a vacuum. And I think leaders are no different than that. You set your goals and, and that’s what I see is they set their goals in the vacuum and then come like whatever may come, they’re gonna keep that and not move from it, not adapt to, to, let’s say the changing circumstances. The covid happened, right? Everyone had to pivot and there were some that did not pivot and didn’t pivot very well, and they’re no longer here as businesses. So I think that, that I see as sort of the biggest challenge in, in leadership is this resiliency, this, this adaptability to sort of the, the circumstances around you and how are you gonna now pivot using the resources, the strength of your team, and to raise them up while you’re doing that, to see this, this new challenge as an opportunity for your organization to then rise to meet that challenge.

Jenn DeWall:  Oh my gosh. And again, adaptability, I think there’s no <laugh>, there’s no such thing as constant, right? That quote, you know, the only thing constant, constant is change. And I think we’re even seeing the friction points, whether it’s in, I think there’s the friction between the two schools of thought of leadership, that traditional leadership of what they think the workforce looks like, and then the new future of work of what people want, whether it’s younger generations or just what people want out of work now in a post pandemic world. And then I think you see that friction in the leader of being like, well, it’s just unfair that that promotion didn’t happen. Why did they pick them? I worked hard. Instead of saying, okay, I got rejected. Now what? I mean it’s again just a different choice. It’s your reaction versus your response was that, why do you think it’s so important?

Why is Developing Resiliency Important?

Jenn DeWall:  I mean, I know that <laugh> obviously at the base level, we’re not gonna get where we want to be if we don’t adapt. But why do people really need to start to take this seriously? Because I think even today on that webinar, I asked at the jump of it, Hey, on a scale of one to 10, how comfortable are you, you know, dealing with change? And of course everyone, you know, 10 being very comfortable, one being that, and many people were like 8, 9, 8, 9, 8, 9. And sometimes I think that we all have a more inflated sense of our own resiliency than what we actually have. So let’s, let’s get, like we can either talk about that or even just addressing why do we need to build our own resilience? Because right there, that example is we actually probably need to think a little bit more about how we’re showing up that maybe we need to start to take some responsibility for that. We’re actually not as resilient as what we think we are.

Lizette Warner:  You know, it is a great question because there, there’s this in, in the communications field, there, there was a, a study that was done, you know, were, you asked people, you know, how, how good of a communicator are you? And resoundingly everyone was like, oh yeah, I communicate way better than my colleagues or anyone around me. And so what that convinced me of is, okay hello everyone, we all think we communicate poorly at best. It because we all think we could do it better than our neighbors. And so we can’t all be communicating a hundred percent or better than our neighbors, right? And I think it’s sort of the same as you point out with resiliency. We all sort of think, oh, we do it really well. But then when you’re handed, when life hands you sort of COVID and everyone’s like, oh my gosh, I’ve gained, you know, however many pounds or extra clothes sizes that you you gained during covid, we, we don’t necessarily handle it very well.

And I think therein lies the challenge for us to accept of if we’re able to handle and adapt with resiliency, it only benefits us in our mental health in the bottom line of the company as well. Because let’s face it, if you can adapt to the situation, if you can be resilient in that sort of sense, then you’re able to make it past those tough times. And in that you’re growing new skills to be able to handle your next challenge, right? Because things aren’t static and something else is going to happen. I mean, that is the certainty. We don’t know necessarily what it is when it will happen, but you can be guaranteed it’s gonna happen.

Jenn DeWall:  Yes. Yep. Yeah. Life is gonna happen. Things are not going to go as planned. If I could predict certainty, I would definitely go get a lottery ticket and I would presumably know the winning numbers. We don’t have that predictability. But, you know, in reality, I’m curious what your take on this is because I think some of the reasons that we don’t step up and take our responsibility as it relates to our own resiliency is the fear of owning it. Because owning it can feel like shame, oh, I did gain all that extra weight over the pandemic, which I did. So if that’s you don’t worry, you’re in solidarity with me. But, you know, understanding that, I guess my logic is always, if I can’t own my missteps, my mistakes, my deficits, the ways that I got it wrong, or my opportunities to do something different, if I can’t own one that is, I don’t, I can’t control it. And that’s different than pretend that’s, you know, that’s the important piece because a lot of us will pretend it doesn’t exist and then you can’t find any solutions. And I’m curious where you or what you notice from your perspective about the rule or correlation between shame and resiliency and if you have any thoughts on how people pull back in or what they could maybe do in that moment.

What Lead You to Developing Your Resilience Recipe?

Lizette Warner:  Oh my gosh, I absolutely do have thoughts around this because the, the whole process of of gaining, you know, weight, let’s say in, in, in whatever challenge that you have, like at, at COVID where everyone gained, gained weight, that is telling you something, right? And, and I think that’s the, that’s the key part of it is that you learn something from that. So I’ll give you an example of myself. I noticed, I I I tended to work be from home before COVID, but so it, it wasn’t that much of an impact for me in, in terms of, okay, this is a huge shift because I was already sort of used to working from home. But here’s what I noticed in myself. When I, when I doubt myself when I’m not very confident and I don’t know where to go with things, I discovered that I would end up at the refrigerator door, open the refrigerator door, or I’d go to the, the pantry open and look at the food and invariably I’d eat something.

And I tracked this. And I tracked it for quite a while and I, I got to the point where I understood why I was going to the refrigerator or why I was looking for food because I, at the time when I was tracking it, I realized I’m not hungry. Okay, what else? What’s going on? If I’m not hungry, why am I here? Because I’d find myself like standing there, I’m like, oh yeah, that looks nice. I’m not hungry. And then I’d eat something. And I, as I tracked it and I started to understand what was going on, I realized in the moment when I’m opening the refrigerator door, it’s because I’m doubting and I don’t know what to do. So I figured out that my trigger, one of my one of my things that I look for is I’m going to the refrigerator door.

I’m putting something in my mouth when I’m not hungry and it’s because I don’t know what to do. And so then I asked myself, okay, Lizette, if you don’t know what to do, what do you know? And then I’m like, oh, I can answer that question. And so I’d start writing it down, okay, now that you know that, what, what’s the next step? And then I’d start writing that down. And then before you knew it, I had snowballed into, I got out of, I wasn’t anywhere near the refrigerator, I was working, I was doing my greatest work. And now when that happens to me, because I’ve been through this whole exercise, when that happens to me, I get really excited because I know something great’s about to happen. This is my great zone. And now I don’t go to the refrigerator, I go to my desk and I start asking myself those questions. But I had to go through the process. And so to answer your question, I think there’s so much information there. I think as you said, it’s a huge opportunity. And a lot of times we miss it because we’re like, oh, I gotta go buy new clothes because now these don’t fit me. Instead of seeing it as a, whoa, this is a huge learning ground for me.

Jenn DeWall:  Oh my gosh, I love that so much. And the other piece that I really love about what you just shared is that not only right self-awareness, I think that’s still one of the hardest things for people to build because ignorance is bliss land and there’s a lot of stuff that we wanna pretend we don’t have. But you really demonstrated a strong example of your self-awareness, but then doing the next piece of your emotional literacy, what am I feeling right now? I’m feeling doubt, I’m feeling triggered, I’m feeling discouraged, I’m feeling blank. And I think a lot of people don’t check in. What is the emotion that I’m having right now? And I love that reframe that you had of, okay, I’m aware of this when I am triggered and I feel doubt come in. That’s when I, that’s kind of your cue where then you go to that behavior. But recognizing now I can reframe that when I have that cue now it’s the opportunity to start writing, to start to find that next discovery. What a beautiful example of resiliency in action.

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Recognizing Biomarkers to Develop Resilience

Jenn DeWall:  I am so excited to get into your resilience recipe and to talk about biomarkers, which is a concept I’ve never heard of. And so I’m so excited to just to hear about that. So here we are, audience, we are ready. We’re gonna be talking about now, now that we know what resilience is, where we, where and why we need to develop it, we’re gonna dive into how you can create your own resilience recipe. And it starts with biomarkers. Am I understanding that right? Okay. That’s

Lizette Warner:  Right.

Jenn DeWall:  What is a biomarker for those that might be like me? This is new, this is a new way of looking at it. What is a biomarker?

Lizette Warner:  So we’ve been talking about biomarkers as as we’ve been going along. So it’s, it’s gonna be really simple now for you to understand it, but biomarkers are biological, right? So bio and they mark something, they tell something. So for example your temperature, when you take your temperature with a thermometer, you’re marking your biological function like, am I healthy? Am I not healthy? By taking by that temperature. So that temperature itself is a biomarker of health or disease. There are tons of biomarkers. So your blood pressure, that’s a biomarker. When you go take images at at the healthcare provider, like you go take your MR imaging or x-ray, all of those are, those are biomarkers and they’re telling something, right? There’s telling if the bones broken or not. But biomarkers, as I was telling you right now, in my whole resilience of going to the refrigerator, that’s a biomarker.

That was my biomarker of, ooh, I’m in doubt. I’m noticing something’s happening. So for me, that was a biomarker of, okay, I don’t know what to do. And there were tons of other associated biomarkers around, I don’t know what to do. My stomach gets in knots my shoulders get tight. I I tend to get tense and maybe I’ll, I’ll start talking a lot and I just don’t, I don’t feel comfortable. So all of those things go in around my biomarker, my recipe for my doubt. When I doubt myself, I may, for lack of a better word, like word salad all over the place and just words and words and words instead of being intentional about what I say. And so once I started to unpack, okay, that’s what my, that’s what my doubt looks like. I’m at the refrigerator, I’m maybe talking a lot and I don’t really know what I’m saying, my shoulders are tight.

How Biomarkers Can Help You Develop a Resilience Recipe

Lizette Warner:  But then I started looking at, okay, what, what’s on the other side of that? When I have been resilient, what does that look like for me? And if you wanna form your resilience recipe, what I’ll invite you to do is to look back at a time at something you got through or your someone in your, in your vicinity got through. And by vicinity I mean like your, your family, your friends, something that you witnessed that somebody did, and you’re like, wow, that, that was awesome, that they were able to make it past a certain hurdle. And for me, when I was studying for my PhD at the Mayo Clinic, so we moved across country to go to the clinic for me to study. I quit my job with two little kids. My husband worked and I went to school halfway through my degree, my husband lost his job, and there we were no income.

I quit my job and I don’t have a degree. And in that moment I met doubt and sadness and I was doubting, why did you even leave work? Right? I’m looking at myself. And, and the worst of the worst in me came out. And in that same moment, I remembered my parents. And remember I told you I was an oopsie baby. I remembered my parents who my mother graduated third grade and somehow they had the four of us kids, they put us through school and they managed when my dad had gotten injured. So my dad was our main earner in the home when he got injured because of a fire actually that I talk about in the book. He couldn’t work. And somehow we made it through. And that memory of my parents making it through and traveling the globe, putting us all through school, let me know in that moment that my husband lost his job, that we could do it. I didn’t know how, I didn’t have the answers, but I knew we could. I just knew we could. And that is how your, you can form your resiliency recipe is thinking back to those things that you’ve, you’ve accomplished, you’ve gotten through. Sometimes I’ll even have people go as an exercise, look back two or three years ago, what have you overcome in that time? And that can even be sort of the anchoring into your recipe for resiliency.

Things You Overcome Will Develop Your Resilience Recipe

Jenn DeWall:  Oh my gosh, I love that. So does it start with thinking about, you know, checking in with your biomarkers and understanding what’s the information or the emotions or the mindset that you have towards a particular challenge or setback that you’re facing? And then next part is understanding where can I draw that inspiration from my understanding that first, so biomarker is that check-in and that self-awareness piece. And now once we built that, then it’s thinking about where do I want to go and who can I draw inspiration from? Am I getting that right?

Lizette Warner:  Yeah, definitely. It’s, it, it’s t tuning into sort of your thoughts, your feelings around the successes that you have overcome and what can you draw upon from within yourself in your history or in the vicinity around you that you’ve experienced that, you know, and then leaning into those kind of like, as a recipe. So, so for me, my recipe in, in, just to give you an example with when my husband lost his job, was to remember that that situation that happened in our family, like they did it, they made it, and they, they didn’t have an education. Look, I have an education, we’ve got resources. I maybe it makes me uncomfortable to ask for help, but you know what, there’s so many people around me that I can ask for help right now. And it was building those things, kind of like my, my recipe of what, who do I go to?

Who do I go to next? And bringing those around me as if I was gonna create a new, a new dish. And I was kind of creating a new dish. I was, I was creating my, my new future with this resiliency recipe of people to go to memories that I had and then what I knew about myself and what I knew that I could overcome. And all of that came to the table and it, it’s almost like surrounding myself with a team, but they weren’t really there. It wa it was, it was characters that I knew who were supporting me. And it’s weird, it’s sort of weird to think about it, but it, it was like thinking of my parents back years ago who, you know, they’re older now or they were at the time when I was there, but thinking of them as my inspiration moving forward, thinking of my kids and what, what they were gonna learn through us, going through this tough time that we were going through. And all of those things came to my aid. And I think they can come to your aid too, if you think about those in terms of what can you bring around you to create your, your own re resiliency recipe.

Jenn DeWall:  And so that’s not even, or it sounds like it’s going to be incredibly personal that it’s, or is it safe to say that like your resilience recipe is unique to who you are as an individual, what experiences that you’ve had and what challenges you’ve been through and what ones you’re going through or you think you might go through. Yeah, so it’s incredibly personal.

Lizette Warner:  Very much so. Yeah.

How a Resilience Recipe Helps You Recover From Setbacks

Jenn DeWall:  And then it starts, so starting with that self-awareness, then going around and looking for that inspiration. What do we do then to take, because it almost feels really meta. Okay, I can draw the inspiration, I can do all of those things. I wrote about, yes, I know that that person’s really good. Then what can I do? Let’s say I’m a skeptical person and I’m like, okay, but I’m still not them, so I can’t do that. What would be your advice or what would be your recommendations for next steps if someone is facing that setback or challenge?

Lizette Warner:  Yeah, so if someone’s facing that setback or a challenge, my, my call to action to you would be to look back two, three years ago and say, okay, two, three years ago I was X years old. I was celebrating X what was it? Like, name it, write it down, remember it. Like really anchor yourself. Where were you two or three years ago? And think back, what were some of the challenges that you’ve overcome? What’s happened in that timeframe? Hello Covid. What, what were you doing? How did you manage through that? And maybe some of that’s good, maybe it’s bad, but what is for sure is that you’re someplace totally different now than you were back then. And for many people when they go through this exercise, they’re like, wow, I totally forgot that we went through a death in the family and I was able to bring the whole family together.

We, I helped somebody get a job. I talked to, you know, certain, I talked to college kids, I help mentor this kid. And I say kid, but you know, I help mentor this young adult into a growing, a growing member of society. What are the things that you’ve done? And honestly, it really astounds people because one of the things that we don’t do, same things, to go back to what you had said earlier sometimes we think in a vacuum, not just for the future, but we don’t even take a moment to look in our rear view mirror to see where we’ve been and what we’ve done. And when we do that, we realize we’re we’re pretty awesome people.

Recognize Your Own Magic

Jenn DeWall:  Yes. Oh my gosh, I love that you said that. I, when I used to do more career coaching, I would talk about that even in the moment of how we’re talking about our worth, our values, our strengths, our experiences. And when we don’t take that time to actually look at where we’ve been and we think that, well, I was just blank title or I was blank title and we don’t look back. It’s like showing up to the interview with half of your resume in your head, <laugh>, like they’re not going to see it because you can’t see it. But I love that you hit that because, and, and I know that we see it from different sides, but too often we’re going way too fast. We are going way too fast. And you know what, the first person that we’re gonna throw out the car is ourselves. That’s fine. I’m gonna take care of you. You get in here. I don’t need to see what I did. It’s fine. I’m not magic. I just did this. You are magic. You actually are magic.

Lizette Warner:  Totally. You are Amazing. And we have, each of us have done such amazing things in our lives and we discount it, we forget it. We, we do exactly what you just said. No, no, no. You, you and you and you and you and oh, no, no, no. I didn’t do anything phenomenal. You know, I didn’t, I didn’t cure cancer and maybe you didn’t. Well, you did some other amazing things like we’re not all meant to be on this earth to cure cancer. We’re here to do something phenomenal. And that is your role to figure out what is the phenomenal that you do. And if you’re a stay-at-home mom, you do something phenomenal. If you are a leader of an organization, you do something phenomenal. If you’re a project manager, you do something phenomenal.

Recognize Small Wins

Jenn DeWall:  Oh my gosh, I love that so much. And I feel like it really goes into the importance of why we need to celebrate small wins. They don’t have to be the grandiose cancer curing esearch. It could be, you know what? I stopped and read it. I was able to take the time to read my child a bedtime story and that will help with their development. Or I was able to stop and help my neighbor with something that they were struggling with. We can still tick stock in those things as points of celebration. Don’t, don’t diminish or discredit yourself in your worth by thinking that you’re not adding value every single day that you’re, maybe it’s not every day, right? Maybe we’re isolating, but you, you do matter. You have value and you need to at least stop and look at the small ones. Otherwise, yeah, it’s easy to look back in your life and be like, haven’t done anything cool, <laugh>.

Lizette Warner:  I know. I think that, I think of that all the time. Like even even when I go to sleep and I sort of wake up the next morning, I, I’ve got all these wear, everybody has wearables, right? And I’m, I’m checking out my, my sleep score, like my sleep statistics or whatever, and I’m like, Ooh, I slept, slept an extra 10 minutes. Yay. Go me. Like that’s an accomplishment, right? I, I ate a balance. I cooked a balanced meal for myself today. That believe me, that is a huge accomplishment and amazing

Jenn DeWall:  For me. Yeah, <laugh>. No, I love that. And it is, anytime that we do these things, they are big moments. And I guess maybe that begs the question of maybe a reason that we struggle with resiliency starts with the own expectations that we have on ourselves. Do you expect yourself to be, and actually, here’s one that I love, like even as it comes down to people pleasing, like, do you actually think that you can do all of the things right to make everyone love you? Because you can’t. And one of my favorite questions to ask people is tell me one person in the entire world that every single person loves <laugh>,

Lizette Warner:  Good luck.

Jenn DeWall:  You can’t right? The natural answer that always comes in those moments. Oh, oh, it’s naturally Mother Teresa. Well, believe it or not, there are actually people that do not love her. Yeah. And it, so if you look at that at a high level, there’s actually no one that’s achieved being loved all the time. <Laugh>. And the one thing that you can control is loving yourself. And the other thing that made that, that made me think of too is understanding that our best every single day is going to look different. Like my, and I think about this because on Monday, I, I, you know, was speaking and teaching a class, and I can tell you it was not my best work. I felt like my brain wasn’t operating well. I felt like my thoughts couldn’t come together. And as a perfectionist, I was really actually frustrated. You know, insert the opening for all of the genuinely are awful at this. Why do you think you keep trying? Until I decided to lean into the fact that every single day my best is going to look different, it will just look differently. I can’t be perfect every day. That’s actually an unrealistic expectation. And I don’t even necessarily think I did bad on Monday, but I just didn’t do. And that perfect expectation that I had for myself. I mean, any thoughts on that?

Be a Better Friend To Yourself

Lizette Warner:  Yeah, I, I think if we, if we spoke to, or if our best friends spoke to us the way that we speak to ourselves, we would no longer be friends with them, right? <Laugh>. We would, we would, who would, we wouldn’t let those people in our lives, right? You don’t let people in your lives that tell you, Jenn, you’re ugly, Jenn, you just don’t know what you’re doing. You just, you’re what gives you the right to, to host a podcast, to talk about leadership, to coach anyone, right? You would, you would distance yourself from that person as quickly as possible. But sometimes we let ourselves tell us those horrible stories. And then worst of all, we believe those horrible stories.

Jenn DeWall:  <Laugh> Yes we do. Oh my gosh. Now I actually love talking about this because I think this is again, that point where we don’t want to own that we might fall into that category. And I, I’ve asked that question in events before too. Like, who here struggles with self-doubt or who, who actually, who here actually never struggles with it? And then it doesn’t always happen, but there’s always one or two people that are like, I don’t struggle with it. And in my head I’m like, give me five minutes, give me five minutes with you one-on-one because you’re human, which means that you’ve had to overcome some adversity in your life, which means that you likely have some bad programming in there and it doesn’t make you a bad person. Like stop, stop pretending that you have to prove that. Oh my, well I just, I got everything figured out. I don’t know, but I don’t know what you’re struggling was that like, look at me over here.

Lizette Warner:  Yeah, I got it all. Yeah. <Laugh>, totally agree with you. because those are the ones who, who Yeah, you’re totally right. Let, let, let’s have five, let’s sit for five minutes. because I’m not quite sure I believe that

Jenn DeWall:  Yes, it’s, and, but it’s, I t  ink we need to remember that and we need to keep talking about it because resiliency, you know, what deprives you of your ability to live re to be resilient, it’s your own shame. Mm-Hmm. It’s your own shame about it. And you don’t deserve to shame yourself. You are perfectly perfect as you are. Oh my gosh, Lizette, I have really enjoyed our conversation. Any final thoughts before I kind of ask you how the audience can get in touch with you that any final thoughts as it relates to resiliency or your book and any tips that they can get from that?

Develop Your Resilience Recipe to Control Your Outcomes

Lizette Warner:  Wow. In, in the last few seconds? I think, I think what I, I’d love for your, for everyone to know is that you are in control of your outcome. Now, you may not be in control of exactly how it plays out, but you’re in control of how you can handle it and address it and how you’ll come out of it on the other side. That’s, it’s all in your control. So if, if that’s the only thing they take away from today, take that. And I talk about more, more of that in, in the book. But if that’s the only thing you take away today, it’s been a, it’s been a home run for you.

Where to Find More from Lizette Warner, PhD

Jenn DeWall:  I love that. Develop your own resilience recipe. Pay attention to the areas where you’re not showing up. Draw inspiration from those that are, are resilient. Challenge your expectations, we talked about so much. And then of course, know that you get to put yourself in that driver’s seat. Lizette, thank you so much for coming on The Leadership Habit podcast. Where can our audience get in touch with you?

Lizette Warner:  So I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Instagram, Lizette Warner, and you can also find me on my website, lizettewarner.com. Super easy, one Z two Ts

Jenn DeWall:  <Laugh>. Where do they get the book?

Lizette Warner:  In the book? So the book, it’s on my website so you can find it from the website. It’s on Amazon, it’s on Cobo. Anywhere you get anywhere you can buy books. You can buy my book.

Jenn DeWall:  Perfect. Lizzette, thank you so much for coming in on such a timely reminder of stepping into the power of our own resilience. Thank you for giving us the gift of your time and expertise. I really enjoyed our conversation and I know that our leaders or our listeners will too.

Lizette Warner:  Thank you so much for having me. It was a blast.

Jenn DeWall:  Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of a Leadership Habit podcast. I hope that you enjoyed today’s conversation and if you did or if you know someone that did share this with them, it’s available on all podcast streaming platforms. So please spread the love. The world needs more resilient leaders and if you want to get more in touch with Lizette, do yourself a favor and invest in one thing certain to quadruple your investment. You. You can go to lizette’s website LizetteWarner.com and you can buy her book Power, Poise and Presence: A New Approach to Authentic Leadership. And in closing, if you are a leader and you are looking to develop your team, know that we have you here at kras com. That is actually our specialty. And if you are interested in a leadership development program that is designed to give you the right tools to lead for the future of work, head on over to Crestcom.com to learn more and even request a two hour complimentary skills workshop. We would love to come into your organization, in person or virtually to help develop your leaders. Until next time, everyone.