With the Heads Podcast Network.
Hello and welcome back to Slow It Down. I'm your host PJ Harding, and the podcast is all about finding peace and the chaos. How can we feel a little more granded in this wild world that we're living in. And I know it's incredibly ironic. I feel like I've never been busier and I'm hosting a podcast called Slow It Down. But that's why we're doing this, to have that weekly reminder of how we can slow down and
smell the roses in those mundane moments. This week, I'm joined by best selling author, international speaker she's got a top twenty TED talk, the incredible doctor Lucy Hone. She's the founder of Coping with Loss as well as director of the Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience. So when it comes to the topic of grief and resilience, Lucy.
Is in clued up.
And not only that, she had a harrowing, horrific firsthand experience with grief in twenty fourteen, when your twelve year old daughter Abby was probably taken in a road accident.
As a mother, Ah man, you're just hearing this.
It just hits so hard, and I think you often go what would I do in that situation, and honestly, I always think I would just be so weak. I don't know if I could continue on. And I think a lot of people think that what is the purpose of living after losing a child?
Well, Lucy is incredibly inspiring.
She doesn't sugarcoat her experience, but she sort of details how she got through slowly but surely, and what it was like eventually feeling joy again. There is so much value in this chat, and I really hope you enjoy my conversation with Lucy. I feel very privileged to have you on the podcast today because you are one busy woman. Can you talk through the last few months for you? Like, how does it look if we go through a week for doctor Lucy Heihan, what are we looking at?
Hi? So hello? It is quite a busy life.
I'm fortunate to have kind of created, oh professional live around doing the things I love. So lucky me and I have just flown in from Vancouver yesterday spent a week there, which is and I pretty much travel overseas every month and this year I have been to Hong Kong, Bangkok, New York, Washington, Vancouver and Sydney four times. See my husband doesn't leave the house to just counterbalance my terrible carbon footprint.
That is no joke that I'm not going anywhere? Could you do it for both of us?
So here's it. How long has it looked like that? For how many years?
Well, in COVID it was a lot simpler because I then got to do what I would like to do, which is do this work virtually, and then my carbon footprint would be much lower. So, as you can tell, that's something that bothers me. So how I mean, I yeah, I mean I pretty much do some kind of training or a keynote most weeks and have done so probably for the last four.
Years, I think, maybe since my TED talk came out. Yeah, and COVID definitely.
Done a light on my work for people here in Altata but globally, so that has given me that global yeah work.
And so when you are gotting to do these talks, it is mainly sent here around resilience in coping with grief?
Is that mainly and I've quite often I guess we all live in a culture of ongoing uncertainty, disruption, stress, challenges, changes and losses, and loss is probably the one people talk about least, but you know, most big corporates that I work for now want to be able to equip their staff to work through the ongoing change and challenges
that every business is seeing globally right now. And it's my job to try and get them to understand that there are ways of thinking, acting and being that those individuals in those workplaces can do, and that's the kind of individual resilience training. But it's also my job to say to them, you have to watch your work practices too, you know, as organizations, so to try and always encourage them to take a more responsible attitude to the work can traditions that they are accountable for.
And so that's a bit of a dance.
Nice.
Well, I'm sure that the conversation definitely became so much more important after COVID in what because it was there back in around two thousand and eight, the financial cush that you first of all really got interested in the word resilience and the importance of it.
Is that what got you on this path?
Yeah, totally. In fact, PJA, two things.
Now, when I look back on it, I realized two things were going on for me, In fact, three things in two thousand and eight. One was a really dear new friend of mine I was a relatively young mum explained to me that she had depression, and she was the first person I'd ever met who was very kind of outward and honest about their struggles with mental illness.
And that really brought to my attention how little I knew about what we could do to support a friend or family member who was struggling with their mental health. And then I remember there was definitely a time where I just got frustrated by the fact that I kept listening to I don't know, you know, kind of radio New Zealand, and I'd open up all the kind of newsweeklies,
anything from Time to the listener and everywhere. It seemed to me that we were being told that nations needed to be resilient, that economies needed to be resilient, that individuals did And that was the first time I ever thought, seriously, does anyone know what this word that is so overused means?
And that was back in two thousand and eight, and if we weren't sick of it then.
But the third thing that happened was I also happened to hear a probably the world's most famous living psychologist, a guy called Professor Martin Seligman, and I think he was probably visiting Arta at the time, and so I heard him on the rail and he said that if you knew your strengths, your kind of the things that were your values in action, the things that were absolutely core to you and how you want to be in life, if you knew your strengths and you use them every
day and work, love and play, then that led to greater well being. And he was the first person that made me realize that we could kind of know ourselves better to perform better, feel better, function better. And so I went and did his Masters in Resilience and Wellbeing psychology over at U Penn and Philadelphia. So I think all those things coming together, which is a little.
Bit how life plays out, isn't it.
With me, it's one thing, But actually you look around and go there were just these threads that came together. And for anyone listening, one of my where my encouragements to you would be to listen out for or the whisper, that little voice in your head that keeps coming back and saying, hey, maybe I'm the one who could do that, you know, and to listen out for that, because that
voice has taken me a long way. I think, you know, just trusting the process that you don't know the answers, that they will unravel as you go, and you might find yourself in some pretty cool places.
That's so beautiful. I love.
I often talk about them nudge and how that led me from literally doing this radio show in Melbourne, moving to the middle of nowhere with my husband literally no clue what was going to happen. But I've gone on to have a beautiful son, pregnant with a second, and I feel like life is more grounded. I don't feel like maybe I'm where I was.
I don't know. It's interesting.
I feel like you take pivots throughout life and you don't have to know exactly how it's going to end up. But if you keep following the nudge, you follow what feels good, then that's quite a good met to follow.
Yeah, I agree, And I don't know if you can still hear my accent, but I'm a Londoner and I'm married to London. You know, we met opposite the Blue Door in Portrabello and notting Hill, so we were real Londoners and and it's interesting, you know about the content and tone and purpose of your podcast because I think we we came here for six months and never went home, because I think we had the good sense to realize that life would be a little bit easier here to jump off the big treadmill.
And yeah, I mean it's still pretty busy.
Yeah, well that's in this podcast.
I don't want to shout away from the fact that life is busy and not you know, playing it down, but it's kind of acknowledging it and bracing it, but still finding ways to slow down, you know, day in day out, so you are smell the rises, which sounds really really cheesy, But I don't want to get too late in my life and realize that I was always too busy to really really enjoy the moment.
Yeah.
Do you know the Five Regrets of the Dying. I've just done some reels on this on the Instagram and really tell me and the last one okay, so I
just hope I can remember them. They are the five Regrets of the Dying, and they were identified by a palliative care nurse Australian woman called Bronnie ware In just before twenty eleven, and I first read about them in an article that came out in The Guardian in twenty and eleven, and she's written this book about the five regrets, and they are I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I had lived a life true to myself and not something that somebody else wanted for me.
I wish I'd kept in touch with.
My you know, my old friends. I wish I've made more efforts to stay in touch with people. I wish I can't remember the fourth one, but the fifth one is I wish I'd let myself be happier.
And it was that fifth reel that I looked so happen to look at my insta the other day and it's been watched by four hundred and fifty thousand people.
Wow, And I thought, you know that's so telling, isn't it that people that that's what resonates with people, This idea that we do have some choice over our lived experience, and that people get to the end of their lives thinking, oh, I.
Wish these are my regrets.
And I wish I'd let myself be happier, to do the things that I wanted to do, to plow the path that really interested me and not what someone else wanted for me, So you know that's yea.
Why do you think?
Why do is it we feel that kind of constraint going through life that we can't fully embody what truly what truly makes our hearts? Saying we kind of feel like we have to stay in line and just tip away.
I'm the wrong person to ask.
Bizarrely, come from a family where we were not taught that we were too completely opposite. You know, I've got my sister here in New Zealand, so she emigrated here first, my brother went to the West Indies to sail, and
when my mum died, we followed my sister here. And I think we've as a family always had a belief that life is short, life is for the living, and you really you've only got one stab at it, so you need to get out and do what you can and obviously juggle that with finding enough money and the home to live and eat.
But yeah, I think it's something I do.
Truly think that that is part of my family's Fucker, Papa, you can't call it back to we come from North London, but you know what I.
Mean, what you mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, you actually worked quite closely alongside the earthquake response back in the day. I was in christ Church in twenty ten. Vividly remember that early shake in the morning, And what did that teach you about resilience, because I'm sure you learned a lot through that time, that sort of constant state of anxiety.
It was a weird time. It was a weird time.
Everything was just flipped upside down and everything that we knew was so unstable. So what were the biggest takeaways you got from that time?
Yes, so living for two years through that earthquake period, when we had over ten thousand aftershocks and six individual massive events, definitely did give me a completely different understanding of what it was to live through ongoing, miserable disruption.
So the first thing it taught me was anxiety, because I've never lived with anxiety before, and just knowing, like we used to go to bed every night thinking please don't happen tonight, you know, I just I just want me and the kids to be able to sleep over the night. I don't want to get out there in the middle of the night in the pouring rain and have to stand outside the house because we're too scared to go in it.
But taught me about anxiety.
It taught me, though, also about the importance when you are navigating tough times to find to really lean into the certainty and the routines that you can.
Put around yourself.
And that has been an ongoing kind of part of my training for other people when they're coping with tough times. So you want to put a route, any kind of semblance of routine back into your life as quickly as is possible, and that can.
Be pretty sketchy routine.
We're not talking kind of perfection here, but just doing what you can. So for us, that's getting up in the morning, having a cup of coffee, going to walk the dogs on the beach, you know, doing a bit of work. At the end of the day, walking the dogs again, coming home, you know, playing some music, having dinner,
watching TV, going to bed, pretty routine things. And in that post quake environment, watching the kids go back to schools, even though the schools were really chaotic, it made you realize how important it was for them.
So it taught me about routines.
It taught me for the first time that you can grieve things other than non death losses, because I didn't know that and we did. We were the lucky ones. You know, we didn't lose anybody we loved in the earthquakes. We didn't lose our homes. My husband is a builder, so you know, actually we had lots of busy work post quakes, and yet we all felt our entire community experienced that sense of loss and grief that I now understand so much in my work can be associated.
With so many non death losses.
You don't have to lose someone to be grieving, And so that was my first experience. So that you know, I'm a hill runner and I always you know, live here and i can look out at the hills and I've always looked at them and thought, I'm so lucky to be able to see, you know, the neighboring tracks from our window. But then straight after the quakes, I would look at the mountains around us and think, I.
Don't like you.
Now, you scare me, and you're not my friend any longer. And then there's also just the lack of innocence that you just cannot believe that this kind of thing would happen to you. So certainly it did teach me a lot, and then professionally it taught me a lot about how you for me, how I could best translate the science that I was so familiar with, the resilient psychology into kind of palatable, do a relevant, practical tools that people might actually want to do in their everyday lives, because
that's science to practice translation thing. It really is what interests me most. And so I had an incredible kind of professional experience of really working out what worked for other people and listening to them.
So it was pretty amazing. From that point.
I remember that immediate sort of sense of unknown and just like, is anything ever going to feel like it's going to return to normal again? And I think eventually there was so much importance around trusting that you could build back, but like it took a while to get there to know that life would return. And I suppose that's a lesson from grief as well, Like for when you're actually grieving the loss of a person, isn't it
knowing that eventually eventually things will start to come back. Yes, they'll feel different, but you kind of just have to get through each day.
Yep, that's so true.
And just in case some of your listeners don't know why you and I are talking grief, a few years after the earthquakes, we lost our twelve year old daughter Abby and her best friend Ella, who was also twelve, and Ella's mum Sally, in a horrendous car accident on Queen's Birthday weekend. So yeah, so I've certainly done my time with grief, and I've done the research and exploration, you know, I've really gone taken a deep dive into healthy tools for healthy adaptation to grief in a field
that I call resilient grieving. And yeah, certainly you've completely nailed it.
PG.
That's what it taught me was personally that it is possible to live and grieve at the same time. And that doesn't mean that that's easy or what you wanted or fun or pretty downright bloody awful. But I was lucky and that I had all this great body of knowledge behind me when Abby died. That made me, gave me hope, and it kind of gave me some tools of things, ways.
Of thinking and acting that might help me.
But without doubt, it is such a slog and I remember that feeling. And I'm pretty sure that when you had Janelle on the podcast recently, she said the same kind of thing that you climb a mountain every day, and it's exhausting and you're just trying to put one step in front of the other. And I remember texting my sister one day just to say, I feel like I climb the same mountain every day.
You're not giving. In the morning, I wake up and.
I'm backed down at the bottom again. And so it was really exhausting. But I did know that we would get through it. I was determined. Well, I may know that's probably BS. Actually I didn't know, but I hoped and I was certainly determined that we would somehow get through and relearn to live.
In the world.
Is one of my favorite expressions, and it comes from a researcher who I know in love called Tom Attic. He's retired now, but he has this concept that grief is about relearning to live without your person here, and that's been really helpful to me.
I just I've heard you speak about the loss of your daughter, and I, first of all, I'm just so sorry for what you've been through. I cannot imagine a loss like that, and for you to continue doing the work that you do and sharing a knowledge with the world is just so special and powerful, and thank you so much. For all that you do when it comes
to grieving. Because as I chat it about the Janelle, like, I still think it's a conversation that yes, we kind of open an up the chat, but we still don't go super deep in the Eastern culture, and there's still this kind of taboo around speaking. And you know, yeah, I think so much healing can be done from people
having these deeper conversations. And what was that like having all of this knowledge around resilience behind you, Like the application of it must be so different when it's actually you in the driver's seat.
Yeah, I'm not sure it is.
I mean, I think because I was well trained and I knew that resilience is different for everybody. And I was trained by Karen riivich at U Penn who was training was responsible for training the entire US forces to be as mentally fit as they have traditionally been physically fit.
And she used to say to us in.
Our you know, in the classroom when I was studying my masters, she used to say that resilience is like a student.
You know, everybody has different ingredients.
It requires a whole load of different ingredients, and everyone has different recipes. So but you know, that was fifteen years ago now, So for fifteen years I've been telling people to find your own way and that resilience. What enables you to be resilient PJ is different to me.
You know, there are.
Kind of common characteristics that have been identified by science, but we know that it requires pretty ordinary internal processes, ways of thinking and acting, you know, ideally not falling into a complete negativity trap and being able to you can see my poster over my shoulder, see the good except the good I love it.
That's our kind of way of doing that.
So the sort of benefit, finding the note, the hunting the good stuff, noticing what's still good in your world, pulling on other people, being vulnerable, asking for help. You know, all of those things are pretty typical components of people's resilience stewes.
But you've got to make it. You've got to make it happen.
You've got to find the ways that will help you get through. So for me, I was on a mission to survive Abby's loss. We have two beautiful sons and my amazing husband that I was just adamant that, you know, I'd already lost so much, and I had this voice in my head saying, don't lose what you've got to what you've lost. So I was pretty mission focused, and funnily enough, that word mission. We often see this in the resilience literature, people saying, you know, I'm on a
survivor's mission. I'm determined too. You kind of hear this amongst people talking. It's like a response to the last Yeah, yeah, like absolutely determined too. And I noticed that about what Janelle said in your other podcast with her the other day.
She said, I.
Will not martyr myself to people saying, you know, you only have one love in your life and you'll never survive this. And just this last week when I was in Vancouver, I was talking to a woman who'd lost one of her sons and she said to me, people kept saying to me, oh, you must be heartbroken, and she said to me, I hated that term, and I've kept wanting to say to them, I will not be broken by this.
And in all of you know those my way.
Of saying it, Janelle's way of saying it, this lovely woman in Vancouver called Catherine saying it.
What we're all saying is we don't want to be victims.
We want to find our own way through this with other people's support, but we're there is a kind of an agency and determination in there that crops up a lot in the scientific literature.
Yes, because that VIC don't meant tell that it can be so self destructive. And I've heard you talk about rewiring it and rephrasing, and I suppose instead of saying why me, why not me, when you actually break it down and look at the number of people that will endure a traumatic events through their life. When you break it down, of course, you know it's actually a high answered it.
Is going to happen to you.
So instead of being like, oh, woe is me, it's reframing that.
Yeah.
So yeah, the research shows that seventy three percent of us will encounter some form a potentially traumatic event in our lifetime.
And yet we.
Also know that in terms of prolonged grief disorder complicated grief, the levels are normally if you take COVID out of the equation, normally around ten to fifteen percent of people really struggle with their grief. So most of us somehow get through using pretty ordinary processes. And I kind of think that's the untold story of resilience, you know, we can hate the word and I'm the first person that I'm the word really most vexing, terribly vexing.
It's like the word journey. I find it so.
Great actually, PJ.
This makes some really important point here that in my training that we deliver globally, people often talk to us about words that annoy them. So we said to them, find your own words. Don't get derailed and don't get stuck or don't miss out on some of these really potent tools and strategies just because you don't like the language around them. Because I hate the word gratitude. Honestly, if someone wanted me to do a random act of kindness, and more likely to slap them in the face.
But I did. I did do one the other day.
I must have done something because I was telling my husband about it and he just laughed at me and went, ooh go you with your ra k my random act.
I was like, oh, well, I've seen you do the stone trick, the riverstone trick with the gratitude.
Can you talk through that?
Is that?
Because so again it's really important to find your own kind of language.
Yeah, I do. I mean, actually I work in well being literacy.
My PhD was in you know, the ways of thinking and acting that are help you find.
Psychological well being.
And one of those one of the findings out of that those studies came that you've got to find your way. So I do have three riverstones, and I can't see them. I can see three shells, but that's not quite the same. But I often put them in my pocket, and particularly when times are tough and no I'm up against it and I need to feel a sense of grounding, then
I pop these little three stones in my pocket. And then of course I kind of bump into them throughout the day, and when I do, I just grab them and go, okay, what about now?
Try and make yourself think of.
What or who is still good in your world despite whatever is going on. And so that is my kind of own tailor made form of gratitude. And what I like about that is that word still is really important.
You know, it's not because we're not sugarcoating this.
We're still saying, you'll give my pl it sucks, right now, what is.
Still good in your world?
If I really made you think about it? Yeah, So, and that's very much at the core of my work. Is not diminishing the tough stuff, being really real about that, but also saying even in the worst of times, good stuff still happens. So I'm not wanting people to do the kind of happyology or toxic positivity here, but we're just talking about redressing the balance and broadening our outlooks so that we don't shut ourselves off to the good stuff that is occurring.
Because you need that when you're navigating tough times.
Yes, yes you do. And that's kind of what I want to talk about in this podcast each week and reiterate the importance of the small stuff, the stuff that seems like the mundane, the stuff that seems blend, but actually it's so important that we do pay attention to it. Is that what you are quite good at practicing when you're so busy, you're always on the.
Go and you're traveling in life is keep deck. How do you keep that sense of ground and the groundedness.
So I know, because life is busy, that I have got some pretty good strategies that work for me to keep me able to kind of keep a lid on everything. And it starts for me with number one is I'm really good at ruthless prioritization. So that phrase ruthless prioritization is at the core of many of our particularly kind of resilience training workshops we do, and basically it encourages you to start your week.
What I do is, we've got my book here. I've got my book and I do a kind of a brain dump into it.
You know, on a Monday morning, I just write down everything that's in my head and then I just pull a few things across to the right hand side and go, Okay, what are the things that I really need to focus on this week that if I get them sorted, I will feel effective. And actually, I noticed that this time of year, there's so many things that I had this long list that I had written on Friday that this morning I just pulled out five things and put them on my whiteboard where I.
Can see them. I'm in the office all week, and I thought, I need to keep that clarity.
Just speaking my language, this is good.
I am such a lust writer, but such an an effective lust writer, and so many of them get lost.
Lucy, I mean, you need to trust the companion. And we bought to me.
So I worked with she and I bought thirty of these in a box, we just literally work our way through them, and so but having the whiteboards are good for me as well.
So I really like to think.
The point of ruthless prioritization is that if you focus your attention on the things that will actually make you feel effective, you are less likely to experience burnout because one of of the key components of burnout is feeling ineffective. So do yourself a favor and really make sure that you're not wasting your time on the rats and mice or in the weeds, whatever phrase works for you, and that you give yourself time to focus on deep work
or important work. You know, and different people are better at different times of the day, So I think PJ, that's really important for everyone, for your listeners, for you to know when your kind of key focused times are and protect that, you know, like a demon.
So don't let anyone.
Don't be responding to your emails or deleting emails then, or checking your socials, you know, really make sure that you're prioritizing your peak hour so that you get important work done so that you feel effective less likely to burn out.
Like your high efficiency window.
Yeah, yeah, I love.
It because this time of year generally when most people burn out, Like, when do you find it is this sort of a pattern.
I've got no idea.
I don think it will be.
Maybe it's the beginning of January where people just crumble away.
But actually it depends on what kind of business you work in, doesn't it, Because for us October that kind of yeah, the end of the second quarter going into third quarter is sometimes the worst because we're already planning the following year while we're still in the existing year. That yeah, So I think it looks different for everyone. So Ruth's prioritization is my kind of work mantra. And then I also like to be able to focus on
the good stuff. I like to have a few things that are going to go on in my day that are either islands of certainty, you know that kind of like the routine things that help me feel a bit less chaotic, the dog walking, the coffee, the Trevor and I we sit on we've got a couch outside our house here that gets a lot of sun, and we call it the sauna or the spa because it's really hot. So we'll go and have coffee there together. And then
sometimes I don't do much mindfulness. But I have recently gone back into the Daily Calm app and sometimes after he and I've had coffee there, I just sit and do three minutes breathing or listen to a calm, you know.
One of those.
Those are a really good way for people who hate sitting with themselves to guide you through. They do seem to be quite like a good bridge between people who don't like mindfulness, people that can kind of devil.
Yeah.
But then the other thing I'd say on mindfulness is, please understand everyone, there's two forms of mindfulness. There's formal mindfulness and informal mindfulness. You know, So cooking you my food bag in the evening is informal mindfulness because you don't know the recipe so you have to put your attention on it fully. So that's just as good as meditation. And I think we don't shouldn't have a hierarchy around which is better, you know, do what works for you.
So the kind of the daily little rituals definitely help me. And that is very much around the dog walking and taking some time out during the day.
Quite good at going to do.
Sort of walking meetings as well, just getting away from my desk and Denise and I also have what we call a coffee catch up, so we run the Institute of Well Being and Resilience together, but we try not to do all of our meetings on Zoom, So if we are both in our homes she's based in Warnica, we will often just put our airbuds on and go and have a catch up, an informal kind of teamy, you know how you're doing kind of catch up while we're washing up, putting, washing out, doing whatever it is.
And that's worked really well for us as well, because.
It's heabit stacking, isn't it.
Yeah, yeah, do two Birds, one stone.
I love it, and.
It's great for us because otherwise we spend our entire lives looking at spreadsheets and doing things on Zoom. And I am learning to listen to my you know, my nervous system, and I need to spend less time on tech because if you're not sleeping at night very often, it's because you're wired all day long. So at least doing that and I am on tech, but you're not looking at a screen and you're doing other things, and I think that's probably seems to work quite well.
I found that.
So you talked to you about is that I love it's really important to me to have.
A big thing going on as well.
So I'm a I don't know why, but I'm a goal setter and a adventurer and I like to have something else in my life because that kind of makes me feel better that I've not just got the daily things, but I've got those kind of bigger projects that give me meaning and purpose and accomplishment. So whether it was you know, at one point it was going to America to study resilience and that was quite that shit crazy thing to do back in two thousand and nine when I.
Had three children at primary school, Oh my god.
And then my PhD and then the Coast to Coast that we did Trevor and I did in twenty and twenty three, so a couple of years ago now, and.
You know, Ted talk. I don't know what it is. I just like to throw myself in the team bend.
That is definitely part of my wellbeing is having something else that's the purpose.
There's purpose that that is proven, isn't it to you know, be so important to our overall sense of contentment?
Yeah, So actually two things.
One is I did my PhD on wellbeing models and looking at what well being is, so maybe helpful for your listeners to understand that one of the prevailing well being most of the prevailing wellbeing models have a sense of positive emotions in them, engagement, strong connections to family and friends, meaning and purpose or wider spirituality and accomplishments, so you know, all of those things are If you're doing all any of those things, then they probably are
contributing to your wellbeing. But the other thing I think is quite helpful for people to know is that the definition of wellbeing that actually came out of my PhD and have come from other places too, which is that well being psychological well being is feeling good and functioning well.
And if you think back to that list I just shared the feeling good, the happiness, the life satisfaction, the functioning well bit is you know your relationships, your relationship to the land, your autonomy, your resilience, your optimism, all of those things. Your your ability to get out of bed and get on.
And do stuff.
So that kind of helps me slow down just using that definition to go, am I feeling good?
Am I functioning well?
Or am I neglecting maybe my relationships because I'm working. I've become work obsessed, So sometimes those are helpful when.
It comes to resilience, and I guess preparing yourself for tough times. Do you think that's really important that we get ahead of the traumatic events with resilience? And how would you kind of advise to go about that building resilience?
How the hell do you build resilience?
Yeah, so it's great question.
And I was reading an article by one of my colleagues, Todd Cashton, the other day, and he was talking about prezillience, which I've never come across this term before, but that was exactly what it was about, about building it in the good time so that you've got yourself better and quip to cope with tough times when they come. And yes, you know, it's very true that that's what you need to do.
We need to be.
Just like you don't go to the gym once and then expect to be fit. You can't just do nothing and then expect yourself to be fully resourced when you find yourself in the kind of you know, dark soul of your night or in the middle of the night, so you've all going on so leaning on your friends, you can't lean on them until you've made them and prepared them and give them back to them and you know,
really strengthen those social relationships. So certainly being strongly connected to others is a fantastic way of shoring up your resilience. We talk about a lot about three am people knowing who those people are that you can call should an earthquake happen or any other event in the middle of the night. But also resilience requires us to be connected to not just people, but something more meaningful, you know,
having that kind of serving something bigger than yourself. And that was the purpose bit that you and I were just talking about.
Now.
So the things that prevent resilience are shonky thinking, you know, falling into negativity, particularly falling into thinking traps like unbridled pessimbism, catastrophizing black and white thinking, over personalizing. All of those will prevent you from they'll just.
Make being resilient harder.
So we often say to people, you know that humans experience all emotions. We're designed to experience all emotions, anger, sadness, jealousy, you know, all of them, joy, beauty, pain, the whole lot. But what they don't do is they don't get stuck into one emotion. So if that's you, then that is a pretty good litmus test that it's a good idea to go and get some kind of mental skills training.
And my recommendation is to go and get some kind of either self compassion therapy or ACT which is the acronym for acceptance and commitment therapy, because grinding it on being stuck in one particularly negative emotion is such hard work,
and life doesn't need to be that hard. You know, there are ways of thinking and acting that you can learn, and if you keep practicing them over time and you build those neural pathways, it makes it easier to cope with the everyday and the tough times and they come.
I like that kind of analogy of thinking of experiencing all the emotions, because sometimes you just think of to feel joy all the time. There's not a human you do need to feel the anger, You've got it. So actually aiming to get a bit of everything and is it actually really good?
Yeah, I'm a really big believer of all of it. Feel it all, you know the things I end up saying a lot because I'm often around grieving people and people who are coping with tough times. Are Life's a lot, isn't it, And all of it you have to walk right through all of it, and that is awful and exhausting. But the good thing is that you also see beauty and awe and compassion and unbelievable levels of kindness there
at the same time. So yeah, I think that that is something I'm really keen to get people to understand. Is all of these emotions, They're here for a purpose, you know. Don't try and quash any of them. The good, the bad, the ugly, all of them are information that you want to pay attention to.
Enjoy is such an important one, something that we should strive to try and find joy in, you know, the smallest things. I can imagine after coming through your grave, joy would have been a very foreign, foreign emotion. What was it like feeling that joy again? Eventually?
Yeah, I can remember two distinct moments. It was a long time, it was pretty barren lands without much joy for I don't I'm going to say I can't remember how long, but two or three years I reckon And the first time was I was running in the Port Hills with some pounding house music on, and I was on my own and running downhill quite fast, and I started singing along to the music and there was no one around, and I.
Was like, oh, you know, WTF, who cares? I'm just going to sing. And then I had that moment of going oh.
And I thought, oh, that's what that is. I've forgotten that feeling. That is joy, I mean, and joy is not even a word I really liked. But it was like, you cannot disregard that that was important.
So that was one of them.
And then oddly the other one was at Bruce Springsteen, that beautiful concert we had sometime postquakes, and I was with a bunch of friends and one of our sons and it was just one of those amazing moments.
So music's important for me to us.
You know, one of my sons is a DJ, the other ones at MC. When I met my husband, he owned a nightclub and a recording studio. So we're big music and every year we go to Electric hab together, you know, with the boys, and that's that is always our or joy, big love moment for us as a family.
And Bruce Bringston and it's first quakes, I'd say to given us was a mess effector in it too, that feeling of like, hah, I suppose you're a solidarity together, you know.
And he got it.
So I think that was also why it was such a beautiful evening.
It was a stunning christ Church evening.
And I'm not a massive Bruce fan, but he got it. And he said, you know, I always promised i'd come back. I couldn't come because I guess his concert was canceled because of the earthquakes, And yeah, he said, he just that's what it was about. And you know, when our stadium opens in twenty twenty five, that will be the same. The joy that that watching that stadium get built is giving people in this region is pretty amazing.
It felt because it's hope.
It just fills you with hope and belief for a better future one hundred percent.
And it was so important, as we've learned over the years.
Lucy, I like to usually rid up with some advice that you give to your younger self. I'm sure there's mini piece is a wisdom that you could offer. But if there was something you'd tell Lucy, who is hitting into her twenties with a whole world and life ahead of her, what would you impart?
Oh, you might make me cry, I would say.
Go and believe it's all possible, and follow your heart, marry that man. And I'm going to give the final word to my dear brother who died a couple of years ago and got FTD frontal temporal dementia in his forties,
which is so unfair. And he used to say to us, sometimes you sail with the wind, sometimes against it, but sail we will not drift nor lie at anchor and has become a kind of guiding mantra for my life about somehow, wherever life takes you just try and keep moving forward with what you've got and noticing what you've got, and yeah, noticing the good bits, because they're all there, even amongst all of the tough stuff.
Beautiful Lucy, thank you so so much for last minute coming on with me.
It was such a joy to talk to you.
Thank you for all the incredible work you do and I really really appreciate you coming on. Well, that was an episode with doctor Lucy Hohan and she is just the absolute embodiment of resilience after going through what she went through losing her twelve year old daughter in a car accident, and then to go on and share her knowledge with grief and resilience to the world. It's just so admirable and powerful. I you know, when she was talking about her experience, I could have talked about my dad.
I did lose Dad back in twenty nineteen to prostate cancer, but it almost felt in a way that the grief was incomparable.
And I think grief can look so differently.
And I say that because Dad was unwell for such a long time that it almost felt like it would have been a totally different kind of grief, you know. And I think sometimes we feel, oh, my grief is less than your grief. It's not necessarily that, but then hearing the sudden, tragic loss of your twelve year old daughter, it just almost felt like they were in two different categories. Because I'd had so many years to I guess expect
what was going to eventually happen. I'd love to know if anyone else's experience like I don't know if that's even a term, but I call it pre grieving. And I felt like I pre grieved for such a long time that when Dad actually finally passed, it was I mean, it was horrendous, and you know, there's nothing like I mean, losing a father is a very hard time, but at the same time you're kind of met with this relief that no longer and that pain and they're not suffering
and you know that they can return to well. I like to think that the soul is in a better place, you know. So that was my experience with grief. And I don't know if that's a thing where people sometimes feel like their grief is less than someone else's because of dot dot dot, But I did really enjoy her her message around what is still good in my life.
Because your life feels so flipped upside.
Down for a while, and just finding like that focal point, something that you can channel your energy into, going Okay, this is still good and I need to put my attention there and remember that slowly but surely things will come back to normal and you will find that joy eventually. In terms of how she finds a peace and chaos and staying sane, I loved the ruthless prioritization.
I feel like it's someone with a iotic brain. That really tickled me.
And I always write list and they go nowhere and I never end up taking stuff off and it just gets so overwhelming. So actually going and asking that question heading into the week, what is going to make me feel the best if I get this done this week? You're no negotiables of what you've got to take off, and maybe it's three or four things instead of twenty, and you just feel like you're always falling behind. I also really like to talking about the optimization of your
effective times of the day. You know, we all operate really differently and utilizing those windows, whether it's nighttime you're a little owl and you tap stuff out on the computer, or you get all that stuff that you need to get done done. Then I think that's really something good to think about. And I found it interesting when you talked about seventy three percent of us will experience some.
Kind of traumatic event in our life.
And when you're faced with that statistic, you do realize the importance of nurturing your resilience. Zillion, are you what are you doing to work up towards I mean, it's not like expecting something bad happening, but what can you do to make sure that you're better prepared.
For when something does?
And I loved also just quickly talking about find your own language.
You know, if.
Gratitude journal or random acts of kindness, just cringe you out. That's sweet as but find something else to describe it, or find your own technique that still has the same premise and like objective, but you've just kind of.
Given it your own a little touch.
So yeah, they were my big takeaways from Lucy this week. I'd love to know what you got out of the episodes, and don't be shy if you actually enjoy the podcast each week.
I'd love it if you shared it.
On your Instagram or your Facebook or wherever. And I'll be back next week for another episode of Slow It Down.