I had an oh crap moment. Yeah. The moment when we've declared that we're going to do something and yet we're like, oh, wait. So how am I gonna get from where I am today? That's it. When I was leaving Nike and I had all this business booked, I thought, This is so funny. Oh, good. I'm not gonna have to go through any of that entrepreneurial hardship. Thank goodness. That sounds hard.
And then within a couple months, I was like, so if they couldn't take my house because I can't pay the mortgage, Wolfe I visit my sons at their father's house, or would they come to, like, a shelter to see me? What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe gathering the king's podcast coming back to you here today with another queen on the stage today. Doctor Taryn Marie. How are you? I'm wonderful. How are you? Well, it's, it's Tuesday.
So how could I not be wonderful, well, amazing, you know, all of the things. Right? Yeah. Well, it it if it couldn't get better from here, then don't know if I'll be able to contain it all. And and it's funny how we we go back and forth like this with positivity, but I know that we're both serious about it. I love Tuesdays. I love Wednesdays. I love Thursdays. I love Fridays. I love them all. So I'm glad that you're here with me on this Tuesday.
Tell us, Doctor Taryn, what is it specifically inside of your business? You're the CEO of the Resilient Leadership Institute. You're the best selling author, of a Wall Street Journal, book. And I know I butchered that, but but tell us what you do because you have some fantastic work, and I cannot wait to get into the content of this of this podcast here. Thank you. Thank you so much.
We'll we'll start with the highlight reel, and then we'll we'll dive into the pieces that have hit the cutting room floor, so to we'll get the the inside on the resilience stories. Yeah. So I am the CEO and founder of the resilience leadership Institute, and last year, much to my incredible surprise, I also became a number 1 Wall Street Journal best selling author of the 5 practices of highly resilient people. And so I've been in corporate America for a decade and a half, almost 2 decades.
As a management consultant, I led a global leadership development at Cigna, which became a fortune 20 company where I looked after the development and growth and learning of all of our leaders inside of that organization.
And then I went out to Nike, and I headed up executive leadership development and talent strategy where I was aligned directly with the C suite, with our CEO, Mark Parker at the time, and I worked with our C suite on their communication, their cohesion, assessing their leadership skills and our top 400 vice presidents. And so my background is really in How do we lead effectively? How do we understand what our strengths are? Really know those deeply within ourselves?
Have a great degree of self awareness, how do we articulate our strengths and our opportunities for growth in a way that people can understand us, and we can be maximally effective. And my company, the resilience leadership Institute, is really about How do we effectively face challenge?
And so I'm sure everybody listening to the show, we have all been in a moment of what I call the big 3 c's, challenge, change, and complexity, where we have felt overwhelmed stressed out, exhausted, scared, uncertain about what the next step is, paralyzed by the decisions that we need to make. A sense of decision fatigue as the CEO of our organization. There's just so many decisions that we constantly need to make.
And so what I've done over the course of the last 20 years is interview people about actively face some of their greatest challenges, their greatest changes, their greatest moments of complexity. And what that has lent itself to is the 5 practices of highly resilient people or the 5 things that we can do in those moments. It is not going to make the challenge go away.
It's not going to you know, maybe make the burn feel any less necessarily, but what we do know in those moments of our greatest uncertainty is that we are actually putting in place effective behaviors for us as leaders, for us as individuals, for our organizations, to be able to weather those storms and to create the most positive and productive outcome for ourselves, for our families, and for our business I love that there's a formula, which there's a lot of people who like formula.
But I'm hearing that there's some ingredients here that we can apply in those moments, and you're a 100% right. Everybody listening here today is an entrepreneur and, has either experienced those moments of of sticky if or they Wolfe, for sure. We both know that. I I wanna dive into, obviously, the these these five elements that you've written about, but tell us tell us a little bit about your background first.
I mean, you you you shared just obviously the the corporate America piece and then if, you know, you've done your own thing in in the consulting world, but tell me why. Like, the the motivation behind the story. Not so much necessarily the piece of what you've done or the the resume. Give me the heart behind it. What? Why are you doing this? Yeah. Wolfe, so let's let's start with 3rd grade tear in. Shall we? I love that. Eight years old. Right?
Let's let's eight years old, let's re rewind a couple of decades. And I was sitting in my my little 3rd grade desk, my little 3rd grade classroom. And my teacher, Missus Robinson, was calling out the names of who was going to be in the, you know, the various reading groups. For that year. And for this what was it? The for the 3rd year, for the 30 in a row, I was in the lowest reading group. You know? And so I think we've all had moment where we believe that we are made or more.
Where we believe that there is something greater that we are meant to be doing than what we are doing today. And the first time that I experienced that feeling was sitting in my 3rd grade classroom with my reading group. Is it because I thought I am better than being in the lowest reading group. I can do more than this. And so I marched up to Missus Robinson, an ID Chaz by the end of the semester, I was gonna be in the highest reading group.
And she looked at me, and I looked her, and I pretended not to notice her skeptical look. And as I turned around to go back to my desk, I had You know, there's there's a technical term for this. I'm sure you've probably heard it. I had an oh crap moment. The moment when we've declared that we're going to do something and yet we're like, oh, wait. So how I'm gonna do. How am I gonna get from where I am today to Good day. You know? That's right.
And so I did what I knew how to do, which was basically just write down all of the words that I couldn't spell, and I couldn't pronounce, and then go home and practice You know what? My little desk in my bedroom at night and then come back to school and do it again. And I did that for the entire semester and sure enough. I kept my promise to Missus Robinson, and, more importantly, my promise to myself, and I ascended to the highest reading group at the end of 3rd grade.
Now that may not seem amazing. To you or to our listeners. It seemed like an incredible feat to me at the time. And 30 years later, I decided to get myself tested for a learning disability after I'd completed all of my formal schooling. And sure enough, we found that I was profoundly dyslexic information that would have been useful 3 decades earlier in Missus Robinson's classroom. And so, you know, your question, Chaz, was, what is the heart, you know, behind what I'm doing?
And the heart behind the behind what I'm doing is, you know, We've all had moments where we saw more for ourselves. We've all had moments where we sat alone in our kitchen or in our car or in our bedroom, trying to figure stuff out. And we felt like those challenges, those changes, and those complexities were bigger and more daunting Chaz we were formidable. And It is a profoundly, lonely, scary experience.
Yeah. You know, and we've even had friends who haven't made it through those moments who have had health crises because of the stress, who have taken their own lives, because of the hopelessness. And so The heart is, you know, knowing how difficult it is to go through these 3 c moments. Wouldn't it be great if we all had a framework? If we all had a coach if we all had someone speaking into our lives. And so that's really what this work is about.
It's the idea that None of us now has to go through anything alone because you now have a framework. You now have the 5 practices. You now have me as a coach. If there's nobody else in your life that you can lean on. And so we don't have to go through these things alone. We don't have to figure them out on our own. And in those moments, Wolfe face difficult things or simply believe we're meant for more. There's a road map for how we can get there. Yeah. I love that.
Isolation is such a, interesting topic for entrepreneurs because I think that we all feel it. When you've described that heavy moment and you look around and nobody's there, I think we can all, say, oh, yeah. Yeah. I've been there. Whether it was payroll, whether it was, you know, something even smaller, you kinda look around and you realize that there's no one else, carrying the weight with you.
It's a lot of times what we talk about in gathering the Kings as Wolfe, but, you know, the the the moment here, the isolation I don't find entrepreneurs that hear the word isolation or alone and, like, raise their hand like, oh, yeah. That's me. But once you describe the situation, they're like, Oh, that happened yesterday. And last week and the week before, what do you think the gap is in, like, the entrepreneur?
Cause it's almost like we're crazy enough to kinda keep doing it over and over and over. But isolation's real. And and there is a solution. There's their practical steps. There's communities obviously to be involved with. And and sometimes the power of that feels over there, and it's, like, not super practical. But you've tried to make it practical in your steps.
My question here is is what's the gap for the entrepreneur listening right now who's like, well, I'm not necessarily isolated or alone, But I relate to how you've described it. Yeah. I think that's a great point, which is why that's how I described it that way. Because I think when we say words like isolated or alone, you know, I would say you might say many people would say, well, I'm not isolated. I'm not on a Desert Island here. You know, I'm not I'm not alone. I've got a family.
I've got friends. You know, I've got people that I'm working with or connecting with virtually. And so that doesn't resonate, but when we talk about the sense of no one else being there, to figure it out. And this idea of, like, decision decision fatigue. Like, decision fatigue is so real for so many entrepreneurs because what do we do all day at the of our organization. It's like, well, do you want the social media post to be like this or like that?
You know, should we release this podcast or this podcast? You know, should we do this color or that color? You know, should we say this or that? Should we lead with this pro you know, and then so it's just like all day and, like, our people wanna make us happy and they wanna get buy in from us as the CEO, but that constantly needing to make a decision takes a real mental mental toll. And so what happens over time, I think, is is we start, you know, feeling worn down.
We start feeling like we have less energy. We start feeling, maybe even like a failure. You know, like, nothing we do is good enough. And no matter how hard we work, we're not gonna be able to get over that hill or kind of get to that pinnacle that we imagined. And so I think what's really critical for any of us that are service based businesses is to really understand the experience of the people that we want to serve and then use that language.
You know, like, just as an illustrative example, I was consulting with a health care company, and they were creating a a flyer, you know, for physicians because physicians are their primary client. And so I was going over the flyer with them, right, and and the and the flyer said, you know, we've got this medication and you know, we're here to solve the problems that you might have, to have a a safe, effective choice for your patients, and that you don't have to worry about supply chain. Right?
And and so I stepped up and I said, so I have a doctorate degree in neuropsychology. I've worked with a lot of physicians. I've worked with I've worked in health care for a long period of time, and I can tell you Chaz I've literally never had a physician say to me, I'm worried about supply chain. Right? They've said, I'm worried about consistency. I'm worried about sustainability.
I'm worried about the ability for my patient to continue to get the medications that they need to keep them healthy when they need it, but nobody's ever raised their hands that I'm worried about supply chain. Right. So being able to step into the shoes of the people that we want to serve and use the language as the bridge for us to be able to understand what we're talking about and to appreciate that, you know, we have or I have something that can dramatically improve our lives.
In order to do that, language is incredibly powerful in order for that to resonate. So good. What about the person who wants more? But hasn't come up against a challenge. I have this phrase, and I want you to I want you to dissect it from your very smart PhD neuropsychology level. And it it's O g. Grateful, but not done.
And so I almost see the, maybe, the opposite or maybe the congressional point, of what you've just described where I feel like, oh, I'm made for more than this reading group or this current level of business. I'm I'm made for more because I'm stuck. And I see myself as being better or or bigger or or, you know, more than. But what about the place where I'm like, I'm so grateful for where I am, and I'm not stuck, but I'm also saying that I want more. Describe that position.
Or is there a desert at a different place in the mind? What what's going on there? Yep. You know, I mean, I'm I'm sort of dropping into how you're describing this. Right? Because I think the way that you're characterizing is this grateful But not done is a person who's coming across to me who has a great deal of kind of energy and bandwidth and capacity that's yet untapped.
Sure. Yep. Has not pushed the envelope to a great extent where they've really come up against failure, come against come up against failure in a significant way. And then, you know, the person this person in my mind is also someone who's like, I want more. But yet the more is a bit undefined. It's a bit amorphous. It's, you know, we hear from lots of people. I wanna do more. I wanna be more. I wanna help people. Well, you know, I'm a people person, you know, okay.
Well, what do you wanna do with the people? You know, how do you wanna help help the people? And, you know, I would say would say this was me 4 years ago. You know, I I stepped out of my corporate executive role at Nike in February of 20 20. And I knew that I wanted more and that I had my company, the resilience leadership Institute. Now I was a single mom at the with my 2 sons. You know, I had a had a mortgage and expenses and things like that in the city of Philadelphia.
And so before I departed from Nike, I made sure that I had enough, you know, keynote speaking engagements, executive coaching engagements, workshops book to replace my income. And I did that with colleagues and people, you know, in leadership development and talent management in the corporate space, you know, through a handshake or you know, an email agreement, March of 2020 shipment. Just 30 And we all know what happened. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Hello.
And really within a span of, like, seemingly overnight, my 2 children who were 5 and 8 the time we're sent home from school to do, you know, online learning, which was, you know, suffice it to say an adventure air quotes for those of you that are not watching. All of that business that I had booked through a through a handshake and through a, you know, an a gentleman or a gentleman's agreement evaporated overnight. I now have no income.
And I'm not even sure if this business is sustainable or, you know, can add value in the current and environment that I'm in. And so when I was leaving Nike and I had all this business booked, I thought, this is so funny. Oh, good. I'm not gonna have to go through any of that entrepreneurial hardship that people to, like, thank goodness. I'm just gonna bypass all of I'll just whip Chaz sounds hard.
And then within a couple months, I was like, so if they can take my house because I can't pay the mortgage. Would I visit my sons at their father's house, or would they come to, like, a shelter to see me. How would that work? You know, like, these were some of the the, you know, topics that I was trying to work through in my mind. And I was on, you know, I was on a 30 day burn rate for 36 months. You know?
So we all know that's finding the cash to pay ourselves, to run our companies, and to pay the people who are working for us who are supporting their families. Every 30 days because I didn't take any outside investment. That's exhausting. What has happened? You know, what happens in moments of pain and difficulty is that our vision gets really clear. You know, when we can't breathe, Every cell of our body is looking for oxygen. When we're hungry, every threat of our body is looking for food.
And so I went from being that person that was like, you know, I think I'm meant for more and I wanna do more and contribute. With regard to resilience, to being somebody who can really tell you and crystallized way. Like, here's the framework. These are the types of things that you're experiencing. I know you're experiencing them because these are the people that I'm coaching all the time, and I've been there as an entrepreneur.
And, you know, I was watching a, a video on Instagram, that Ed Mylette put out. And I just love Ed, and I had that honor of being on his podcast last year. And he puts out all kinds of things, and I'm always real close to crying, but I don't. You know? And I I said, Ed, this one got me. This one got me. Because he talked about how when he and his wife were first married.
He said you can do a lot of when your cars repossessed, when your electricity's turned off, you know, when you're evicted from your apartment, he said, but when they turn the water off, That's when you're really up a creek when you don't have water. So he and his new wife, his new brides he called her, would go down and they would shower in the pool, the outdoor pool showers. And she would hold up a towel for him. And then he would hold up the towel for her, and they would shower.
And he said, I went through that hardship. So I could be here today and be present for yours. And that's how god works. Yeah. It's huge. And that's how pain works. You know, god doesn't waste a drop of pain in our formation. All of that pain gets used to crystallize, to cauterize, to form us into a clearer, more empathetic, wiser, more compassionate version of ourselves.
And if if you don't know if I don't know if we don't know where that pain is leading us, Well, welcome to the club because nobody does in the moment. Right. But on the other side, we come out and we're are are were were formed, were were changed because we're no longer somebody who Chaz an amore or kind of general idea about how we wanna show up in the world. We have a crystallized vision of just how strong we are.
And the unique strengths and talents that we bring to the table in service of humanity. Yeah. There there's a lot there. I would highly suggest that the listener just hit the repeat. Just hit that little back 30 second button and listen to that again. Yeah. Hit it a couple times. The the power there of your you number 1, you're telling your story, but it just resonating. Obviously, you know what you're doing here, but Chaz, really does transfer courage. To the listener.
So I appreciate you saying that. What what is resilience? I don't know if I wanna say what does it mean to you, but you had your company before you left corporate America. And so resilience was, you know, in your DNA from before, you jumping off and doing the thing in the COVID era. What what was the beginning, or what was the the the catapult of saying, no. No. No. I'm gonna create an institute around this.
This is Mhmm. Yeah. Well, you know, I think a lot of it started actually Chaz from, you know, despite being dyslexic, I I really like words, and I really like language. And I think you could describe me as a as a dork or a a nerd or, you know, something like that. And and so it started actually from hearing this word resilience. And thinking, wow. That seems like a really powerful concept. I wanna know about that.
And then going over to the dictionary and it's saying, you know, resilience to be resilient. And I was like, okay. Resilient. You know, resilient to demonstrate resilience. And I was like, okay. Chaz, I don't have much to go on here. And so, you know, we all have resilient stories.
Every single one of us, You know, today, you've gotten to hear a couple of, you know, you got to hear my story about learning that I was dyslexic and going through school as a person who's you know, neuro atypical Chaz we would say today. You got to hear my sort of entrepreneurial genesis, you know, oh Chaz, Am I gonna lose everything in this moment story? And there's more. There's more where that came from.
But I think the important thing to keep in mind here is that resilience is the essence of being human. So many of us are walking around with this idea Chaz it's something we've gotta go out and find. It's something we've gotta go cultivate. It's something that we may not have enough of. We might be Unworthy or lacking when it comes to resilience. And in fact, resilience is the essence of being human. It is fundamentally tied to our humanity. It exists within all of us.
And we can amplify our resilience through practice, through the practice of the 5 practices. And so for those of you that are listening right now, I think that is such an important key takeaway because people come to me and they come to my talks a little bit of what I like to call resilience dread. And what that means is I'm gonna be found out You know, maybe I don't have what it takes.
And in fact, when we know that it already exists inside of us, we sort of, you know, if you've seen that movie the wizard of Oz. We we show up like Dorothy at the end of the movie where she looks around and she says, You know, everything that I've been looking for was in my backyard all along. I don't know where home. Home. Oh, and I am. There's no place like home. All of the strengths and talents and skills that we need to survive in this life exist within us. And it's just about finding them.
It's about cultivating. And when we know that to be true, When we can look on the times when we faced challenge and know that you and me and every single person tuning in today, we have survived the things that we thought were unsurvivable. We've come through the greatest rejections and losses and disappointment and health crises, and and changes of job status and loss of identity and title and income.
And and in that moment, we literally said to ourselves, out loud or in our own minds, I do not know what I am going to do. And then we went on to figure out what we were going to do. And to me, there's no better case that exists for the fact that resilience exists within all of us, and it's not about whether or not you have it. It's about whether or not we know how to tap into it. Yeah. I love that.
You're a 100% spot on, and I think about my own journey of, like, the times where I've tapped into it. Something I didn't have it. I just had to, resource it. And and there's some practicals around this, so I wanna get to that. But before we get to your 5 practices, What is your definition now of resilience? Since Webster didn't didn't give you a very good one at that time, what's what's your definition? What's the doctor's, definition?
Yeah. So in order to come up with these 5 practices of highly resilient people, I didn't just sort of pull them out of thin air. I interviewed hundreds of people and I collected thousands of pieces of data. I looked at documentaries and listened to people's stories and memoirs, in order to solidify, like, what are these this is Chaz when we put them into play in moments of the 3 c's Chaz we're able to create a more positive and productive outcome.
And so This is really based on, you know, what we'd call an empirical body of research. Right? A lot of people providing a lot of information about how they've effectively face challenge. And what's come out of all of those interviews is also this definition. And the definition is our ability to affect actively face the inevitable moments of the 3 c's. We know those now. Same with me now. Challenge change and complexity.
Hey. And to ultimately emerge, typically, after some time, enhanced by those experiences not diminished. And that's the definition that I found for resilience. And what's positive, or sorry. What is what is powerful about that definition is also what's not part of it, you know, and sort of think about, like, negative space in architecture, right, in architecture and negative. You know, it's like, what is not present is as telling as what is present.
And and I think this is true in this definition. What is not present in this definition is quickly recover. In fact, we know now that the people that recover the quickest or the fastest, actually have more complications later on. You know, we live in a society where it's considered to be sort of heroic to have surgery on a Friday and be back in the office on a Monday.
And yet, when we rush that healing or that recovery process, it leaves us vulnerable to more complications later on down the road. And the second piece that's not in the definition is this idea bouncing back? When did bouncing back become synonymous with resilience? But it Chaz. Right? You know, the Wolfe year's so resilient. You bounce back. We don't bounce back. Nobody bounces back.
And I can tell you that as I've done keynotes across the globe and, you know, for hundreds and thousands of people, I've had people waiting for me on the edge of the stage. Saying, you know, I believe that I'm resilient. I believe what you say that resilience is the essence of being human and it lives within me and yet I have not gone back to the person that I was before this tragedy or before this, you know, catastrophe or this challenge. And I tell them, yeah.
Because that's not how resilience works. We don't go back to the way we were before. We bounce forward. We allow ourselves to be fundamentally and forever changed by those experiences. Good. So, I mean, even just your example of starting your business in the middle of COVID, you know, I there were so many people during that time across the country that was like, we just wanna get back to how life We just wanna get back. We wanna go back. And, that was just never gonna happen.
As a country, as as a as a family, as a business, we had to we had to figure things out and then move forward, with however we were gonna do them now, it wasn't gonna be, the exact same. And there, I think, some, you know, some industries or maybe some verticals that have kinda stayed the same or had have tried to go back. And I feel like they're whether they've realized it or not yet, they're probably gonna be obsolete pretty soon because it's kind of like a natural thing that happens.
Like like you're saying, these circumstances, And we what'd you say? We we we allow we it's almost like we allow it to change us, you know, and to move us into the next version, really, I guess, Wolfe you would you like to add anything more to that? I know I probably stirred that pot a little bit, but I think it was great. You know, I just I think there's a lot of people out there who still believe that resilience is about being unmoved about being Teflon Yeah.
About, being unchanged by our experiences. And in fact, being unchanged by our experiences is the worst thing. Chaz we can do. You know, when we ignore our environment, when we ignore our experiences, We become obsolete. We become obsolete in our ability to relate to ourselves and other people and our clients and customers. And over time, We will become extinct. You know, there's a concept, the concept of grit that many people are familiar with. Angela Duckworth also lives here in Philadelphia.
She coined, that concept of grit. Grit's an incredible an incredible, concept, right, the idea of, like, getting gritty, you know, when we when we face challenge and and keep going and and put your head down and What's the expression? Like, keep your nose to the grindstone. Right? And yet there are there are times. Where it is not helpful to be gritty. It is not helpful to persevere. You know? Blackbuster was super gritty. Man, they were gonna keep selling those VHS tapes. You know?
Yep. Until we die. But the market changed. People changed and and patterns of behavior changed. And unless we allow ourselves to be changed by our experiences. We will become obsolete. We will become extinct. Hey, kings and queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day.
And if you have been getting any sort of value or in site from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again. All of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify. We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible.
Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. How does, you know, what you just said is obviously, profound, and it makes resilience applicable, but let's bring this down to the listener level.
They're, you know, driving across town in between projects because they're a construction owner, or they're listening in their office and they're trying to, you know, service their next marketing client. What does this mean for them to be able to Either be resilient or to more more specifically, allow the things that are happening to us to change so that we don't become obsolete. Yeah. So, you know, there's 5 practices. Let's give you a quick overview of those.
So the first practice is the practice of vulnerability, and people are often surprised by because we often think that vulnerability is the opposite of resilience, especially if we believe that resilience means being unchanged or being un impacted. Vulnerability also doesn't mean what we think vulnerability is is not about being self deprecating.
It's not about discrediting cells, vulnerability is about allowing our inside self, our thoughts, feelings, and experiences to as closely as possible match the outside cell that we're sharing with the Wolfe. You know? And when those two things are as close as possible, you know, then we're being we're being vulnerable. We're allowing people to see us to know us to understand us. The second practice is the practice of of perseverance. So I talked about this a bit with grit.
It's the art and the science of the intelligent pursuit of a goal. It's knowing when to maintain the mission and the face of challenge to be gritty. And when to see that the market is shifting and changing and that in fact, pivoting or even quitting in the face of diminishing returns might be the best decision. The 3rd practice is the practice of connection. Connection is, you know, we always think about community. We think about masterminds.
We think about the people that work connected with externally, what we often tend to overlook is the connection that we have with ourselves, knowing ourselves deeply, understanding our strengths and talents, trusting our gut, listening to our intuition, valuing ourselves, being worthy enough, you know, all of those things. So connection is really 2 prongs. It's about the connection we have with ourselves and how we cultivate Chaz, and then the connections that we have with other people.
The 4th practice is the practice of gradosity. It's a word that I made up. It's gratitude plus generosity. So the first part gratitude, which, you know, none of us face a challenging time and and and say, This is gonna make me such a better person. I'm really building character. You know? I was talking to a to a dear friend of mine last night, And, you know, she was going through a difficult time, and and she was like, you know, people keep saying, you know, well, it's happening for you.
Not to you, you know, it's just sort of this, and and she wasn't ready. She wasn't ready to to hear that. You know, and so gratitude is typically after some time when we look back on that challenge, even if we wouldn't have chosen it and say, Alright. I can see the good I can see how I was formed by that experience changed in meaningful ways prepared for the next thing that was coming in my life. And then generosity is about generously sharing our resilient stories, in a way that uplifts others.
One of the things that I'm working on right now is a compilation book called triumphs of transformation. And this is the book where we where we brought together a community of 30 curated authors. To tell their resilient stories, to tell their, you know, dark night of the souls. It's sort of chicken soup for the soul meets stories of resilience. And what is so powerful about this? I mean, we all know about the power of story. I'm not telling anyone anything you don't already know.
What I've been really struck by is this human alchemy that occurs amidst the storytelling when we take our darkest times. And through our own process of healing and integration and reflection, we get to a point where we're ready to share those stories with others And when we do, we transmute that darkness into a light that we're able to shine on the paths of other people that are their own moment of difficulty. And so we can through our own healing and through our own storytelling.
In fact, translate that darkness, those darkness, darkest moments into a light that shines on the pet of other people, which is incredibly beautiful. And then the 5th practice is the practice of possibility. It's knowing that in every single challenge we get to focus on progress, not perfection. And it's about being able to recognize that there's both an opportunity and a risk, you know, with every with every challenge that we face. Okay. So I'm driving across town between construction sites.
And how do I do this practically? So I would say the number one opportunity that my coaching clients across the board is to have a greater awareness, how they talk to themselves, and the language that they use at any given moment. Right? And it's things like even shifting from I have to go to this construction site to I get to go to this construction site. You know?
You you had one construction site, and you and your partner Prayed on the fact that you wanted to have a cons a second construction site. You wanted to be able to grow. You wanted to be able to and now you've got it. And you've got it. We say, well, I gotta go there. I get to, you know, that that desire, that vision that I had for myself, and how how I would expand and grow. Now it's become a reality.
You know, there's great neuroscience research to demonstrate that You know, just when we smile, when we walk into a room and we smile, these nerve endings that connected with our mouths that are connected to our brain, signal to our brain. Hey, she's smiling. He's smiling. He must be happy. I feel happy. We're gonna release release some You know, some dopamine and some serotonin in here. And and so the language that we use determines how we think about our lives.
What we speak out loud is tremendously powerful. What we say about our lives, what we say about other people, what we say about ourselves. One of the things that I invite my clients to do is to do a self talk audit. You know? And I call it what follows I am follows you. And what that means is who we tell ourselves that we are in our own brains? That's actually the greatest determinant of our performance today at what level we're performing at and of who we will become of reaching our potential.
And every person that I work with is absolutely blown away and convicted by when they really spend 24 hours. Paying attention to what they're saying to themselves in the real estate of their own mind. They're blown away. Right? It's very simple. You take a piece of paper. You draw a line down the middle. You write what are the negative things that I'm saying on one side and the positive things that I'm hearing on the other?
And for the vast majority of people, myself included that list on the negative side. The print gets smaller and smaller as you get close to the bottom. You flip it over. You keep going. Right? People are astounded by the level of bullshit that they are saying to themselves in the real estate of their own minds. And this, like, We were in charge up here. You know? And so shifting that script first, you know, so do we do this practically?
First of all, being aware of the language that you use internally and externally, how do you talk to yourself in the real estate of your own mind. You know, the most important real estate that we own is not the house that we live in. It is the real estate of our own minds. It is what is going on up here and what we are telling ourselves about ourselves and our lives any given moment.
So cultivate an awareness of what it is that you're saying to yourself in your mind and cultivate an awareness of what you're saying out loud. Are you saying if the deal closes rather than when? You know, are you saying I I have to? Rather than I get to. You know, are you speaking out into the world? I'm so grateful for each day. Are you talking about the life that you've created? Like, it's, like, it's a slog and a burden?
Yeah. These are these are extremely powerful things and so practical too. I mean, I this is Chaz actually might be my dream come true to have this conversation right here with, PhD level neuro science, wonderful person because thinking of Rich is one of my favorite books. I couldn't hear anything after you I couldn't hear anything after dream come true. Yeah. This is this is a dream come true possibly. You know, because you're really smart. Let me say it again.
That's in loud so everybody can hear. We'll we'll make sure that that You gave me a compliment, and I just stopped with you. We're we're not gonna edit that out. Okay. But thinking Gorich Chaz is one of my favorite books, and a lot of the things Be true. This is amazing. Yes. I I read it every it's I'm rereading it right now. It's on my nightstand. It's the only book I reread every year, actually. So the and we know this, like entrepreneurs. They're listening right now. They're like, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Wolfe talk. I got it. Okay. Cool. Bingorich. Yeah. I've heard that that that's a good book. I've read it once. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good. But this is deep. This is, like, real, like, you're taking you're basically saying, hey. Look. All the stuff that's happening Chaz you're not calculating, you're not aware of, it's happening subconsciously. We wanna make it conscious so that way you can be aware of it so that you can change it.
Other than just creating a list, and maybe that's the easiest way. Because you're right. Self Talk is huge. Is there is there another formula or in addition to that you like to add knowing that maybe thinking Gorich is our favorite here, There's auto suggestion is what, you know, Napoleon Hill calls it from back in the day, but okay. I've made the list, and I'm now consciously aware of the negative piece. And I'm gonna try to get rid of or I am going to get rid of Chaz, what they would say.
Mhmm. What what can I do on the proactive side now? Yeah. Great question. So, okay, so you do your 24 hour self talk audit and you're, you know, blown away by all the stuff that you're saying yourself Chaz is, unproductive, unfair, mean, discrediting, unhelpful, all the things. You know, and you've got some stuff on the positive side. You know, you did say some nice things to yourself and and about your life as well.
I So I think it's really hard to change behaviors, like, to just get rid of stuff. Right? Like, when people stop smoking, You know, what do they do? They they start, carrying gum around with them. They start carrying carrot sticks around with them, right, because it's not just about the smoking cessation and getting rid of the cigarette, it's also about replacing that sort of void with a new healthier behavior.
And so The next step after you've done your your self talk audit is first of all, to really look at what you wrote down. You know, and to take that in. And what was convicting for me and what's been convicting for so many people about the exercise. Is that when you read those things that you're saying to yourself and the real estate of your own mind, It will come to you as it came to me. But if you were in a relationship with another person who was saying those things to you.
That relationship would have been over a long time. So why are we allowing ourselves to be in relationship with our selves and to propagate the stuff that is mean, hurtful, discrediting, untrue. That's the convicting moment to to to see the stuff that we're saying to ourselves Chaz we are actually so many of us are being abusive to ourselves in our own mind. You know, and oftentimes that's not even our own voice. That's right. If you really go and ask yourself, like, whose voice is that? Right?
It's it's the voice of someone else who was you know, who who hadn't done their own worst. Right. Let's just say who showed up who showed up in our lives. And so then the question is, How could I say more of the positive stuff? I'm a big fan of continuing to do the stuff that you're already doing. You know, if you're already saying, like, just keep saying that. If you make your bed in the morning, keep making your bed, you know, and then add something else onto that.
Keep doing the stuff that works. And then look at the look at the stuff that you're saying that's negative and say, okay. What am I gonna replace that with? When when I hear myself start talk to myself in that way. What am I gonna say that's different? How am I gonna challenge that thought? You know, what am I gonna say? And so I have a series of questions. That we can ask ourselves. Right?
And so one of those questions, just as an example, you know, because oftentimes we've been saying these negative things to ourselves for so long Chaz it's like, Okay. I know that's not right, but I'm at a loss for What do I replace it with? What else I would say? You know, it's just like that that, like, sort of trench is so deep, you know, we've been doing it for so for so long. And so we can say, well, What would I say to someone that I love or care about? How would I talk to that person?
What would I And then how can I do more of that, you know, for myself with myself? And so we start to change, you know, this pattern of behavior. And, you know Chaz, it's not once and for all. There's no silver bullet. There's no magic pill. Like, I catch myself doing it all the time. Right? Sometimes, you know, the negative thoughts turn into, you know, uh-uh, a sense of self rejection.
You know, if I think, oh, I wanna reach out to this person and see if can be on their podcast, or if they would endorse my book, if they would like to be a part of a project I'm doing. And the little voice in my head will say, they don't wanna be a part of your stupid book. You know? And catching Chaz. Saying hold on. Right? Like, I'm self rejecting. And what would it mean if I shifted that script Chaz imaginary voice in my head?
And I said, What if they're really excited when they get that, you know, when they get that email? When they've been thinking them to themselves that they would like to be part of just this project that I'm about to send them an invitation to be a part of. And so I think that's not, I think. I know that that is how we retrain ourselves. You know, Mark Twain said I've experienced a great many tragedies in my life. And almost none of them actually happened. You know?
Because we create the greatest tragedies, the greatest catastrophes, in the real estate of our own. And what if we could be more free, more loving? You know, we could expand the But sure then, of what we're doing with that churn and that energy, and we can give our Wolfe more resources, and we can give other people more resources. You know, we're seeing a lot of won't get political. I promise.
We're seeing a lot of, you know, really troubling, you know, wars and atrocities happening across the globe. And so many of us in the United States and other places that are not in the immediacy of a war zone is saying, How do we heal this? How do we create more love? How do we create more compassion? How do we stop this from happening? Well, you know where it starts?
It starts with how we talk to ourselves because then we have a greater capacity to love others when we're not constantly beating ourselves over the head. Yeah. You wanna be a great partner. You wanna be compassionate and empathetic with your family, with your children, with your employees. Our capacity to love others is limited only by our capacity to love our else. And we might say, yeah, but other people are easier to love. You know, the person living in the skin.
Like, she's a little gnarlier. He's a little gnarly. Yeah. We can say that until they do something wrong. You know? And then we're like, you're cut off. Nope. So by doing this work, we stop limiting our potential. We stop putting ourselves down. We stop feeling bad about the hundreds or even thousands of thoughts that are passing through our mind unconscious sleep and kind. And we start honing our energy and being conscious and intentional about how we speak to ourselves.
How we speak out loud, how we speak to others, and suddenly our capacity increases. Suddenly, we have more energy. Suddenly, we don't feel so crappy about ourselves when we wake up in the morning. Suddenly, we have less anxiety and depression. Why? Because there isn't someone in our head. Putting us down all the time.
Yeah. This is, this is a this is extremely great work, and you're talking about just the weight of carrying those things around, you know, just I imagine you know, having a backpack and all of those being a 5 or 10 or a forty pound weight and you're just stacking them up, just hey. Give me my this. Give me my anxiety, give me my overthinking, give him my negative thoughts. Like, just put him right here in my pack. I wanna carry him around.
And a lot of times, we dig in our heels on that because even though it's heavy, it's what's comfortable. And I'm sure there's It's also what a lot of people think is their leadership edge. Quote, unquote. It's a lot of a lot of people are hesitant to put down this right, to go with your sort of illusion here, because they think, oh, this is my edge. You know, this is fuel. If I'm kind to myself, if I let myself off the hook, I start getting soft. No? And it and it isn't.
You know, people who experience trauma, and then they have symptoms of trauma. They have hypervigilance. They're constantly scanning their environment. They have anxiety.
They're actually those symptoms are incredibly uncomfortable, and they don't often want to let go of them because then they believe that those symptoms trauma are keeping them safe, that those alarm bells Chaz keep them on edge, keep them from you know, experiencing a, you know, a sort of moment when they should have when they should have reacted.
And so a lot of the work that we get to do with leaders is to say, actually, you're constantly putting yourself down and never feeling like enough and being unworthy. That's not your secret sauce. That's not the fuel tank. That is the fumes that you've been breathing Chaz you believe are sustained. Imagine what your capacity could be when you free all of this energy to feel great about yourself and to be focused on the life that for you.
Yeah. I I wish we had a a 3 hour podcast set, maybe similar to Ed's. I I didn't think far enough in advance here to be able to pick your brain for that long, but There's so many more questions I have for you. But today's not the day. I do have one more question that I'm super curious to know your answer to. And I wanna know if you had the opportunity to roll back the clock and talk to the younger not doctor, Taryn, but the the little Terron. And maybe it's the eight year old.
Maybe she's a little older. I don't know. Why don't you tell us how old she is, but what do you what do you tell her? Mhmm. Yeah. I would I would tell myself something different that I'm gonna tell you. Well, I'll tell you what I would tell her. I would tell her that everything's gonna be alright. You know? Wouldn't wouldn't that be nice if a future version of ourselves could show up in our lives at 8 or 18 or 48 and say, hey. Just so you know, about payroll next week? It's gonna be alright.
Everything's gonna be alright. You're like, okay, future me. Let's go. Right? This is a podcast you and I talked about this, Chaz, about transferring courage. And I don't think we can talk about transferring courage. Without talking about fear. That was one of my things I wanted to bring up, but I didn't have time. We did. Next time. And we live in a society that is still telling us to be hashtag fearless. And I don't think that's possible. I don't think we wanna lose our fear all together.
I think what we get to do is we get to learn to fear less. To not allow fear to stop us. But if we become fearless, courage goes away. There wouldn't be no need for it. Bravery goes away. Because fear is a prerequisite for the transfer of courage. Yeah. We can't be courageous and brave without the presence of fear. And so living in this world, living in our lives, Chaz an entrepreneur. As a human, I think it is deeply important to acknowledge our fear.
And to not let that fear paralyze us, to not let that fear be the one that makes the decisions, to not let Chaz fear drive and to acknowledge that it's there because it serves a purpose that allows us to be brave. It allows was this to be courageous. And in fact, if I go back and I think about my life, the times that I was the most scared, When I was in 3rd grade trying to teach myself to read, and I'd thrown down the highest reading group gauntlet Right?
When I was in the midst of the pandemic trying to figure out if I was gonna keep my house and keep my kids in school, Those were Chaz some of the times when I was the most scared. And as someone who's profoundly dyslexic, I look very closely at words. To see if I'm reading it correctly. And what I found is the word scared and the word sacred They're the same word. Just with the c in a different place. And I think we get to recast our relationship.
With fear and say, what if the thing that I'm most scared of is not meant to be the thing that I'm supposed to run from? Or deny my fear around, but instead, I acknowledge the fear and then I walk toward it identifying that likely it is my most sacred opportunity for growth. Well said, Doctor Taryn, how how can the listener find you if they're if they've made it this far? In the depths of what we've been talking about. They have got to be mesmerized.
And they're wondering how can they find you They wanna listen to maybe your TED Talk. They wanna they wanna buy your book. Maybe they wanna work with you. How can they find you? I love it. Yeah. You know, you can hit me up on Instagram at doctor Taryn Marie I'd love to hear about your impressions of this podcast, what your key takeaways were. So go ahead and grab me there. Send me a send me a DM. I'd love to hear from you and We'll have all kinds of things in the show notes.
Of course, you can always hit me up on the website too at resiliencedashleadership.com. Perfect. And, of course, all of that will be in the show notes if you're listening right now and you wanna grab any of those resources, they're all gonna be right there. But, Doctor Taryn Marie, what an incredible opportunity. I have so many more questions. There might have to be a part 2.
But I can definitely feel an opportunity for, for there Wolfe be some further for further work to be done, between between you and us. And so thank you for being here. Blessings to you and your sons and all of the clients that you're impacting, through everything that you're doing this year in 2024. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. It's an honor. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today.
I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself, doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself, What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries and now interviewing to over 2 or 300, other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs.
In fact, we are putting together 1000 teams specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, communities, and here's what we believe, that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy.
So if that relates and and resonates with you and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.