By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

Times are certainly complicated! My guest, Amy Kosh, and I discuss developing resilience and positive psychology in an effort to cope and bounce back.

Hi, this is Jeff Altman, the Big Game Hunter, and you are either watching or listening to No BS Coaching Advice. On YouTube, it’s No BS Coaching Advice; as a podcast, it’s the No BS Coaching Advice Podcast. Periodically, I like to bring on a guest to talk with you about some element of life, the universe, and everything! And today, I’ve got a friend of mine on, Amy Kohut. And she works a practice that I think is fabulous. She works with people who are too smart for their own good. Too smart for their own good. And frankly, they stand out in so many different ways, but they’re so smart and overcommitted, they can’t see their blind spots.

So, we’re going to talk about a variety of things, and I think we’re going to have a good time despite the fact that we’re doing this in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic in March 2020. Amy, welcome. Thanks for making time today.

Hey Jeff, it’s great to talk with you. And I’m—I’m so glad we’re actually talking about this because resilience couldn’t be—come at a better time, really.

You betcha. And that brings up the subject of resilience and positive psychology, which are key parts of your practice. And folks, by the way, she’s got more certifications than a lot of people I know. If you go to her website, anunstoppablelife.com—could you spell that, because I think some people might misspell it?

Sure. I wish I had a shorter email sometimes. It’s an—A-N—unstoppable—U-N-S-T-O-P-P-A-B-L-E—life—L-I-F-E—all one word, anunstoppablelife.com.

Thank you, I’m exhausted. So, resilience, positive psychology…

Yeah.

I have an understanding of what resilience is, my definition of it, but that doesn’t make it right. What is resilience as you see it?

So, resilience is, very broadly, it’s the ability to bounce back when things happen. And it’s the—not only the ability to bounce back, but it’s also the ability to grow when things happen like that as well. So, that’s a—a really broad definition of resilience, but that’s the way it comes into play in what I do in my coaching work.

Gotcha. So, when I think of resilience by that definition, things don’t go the way we want them to.

Right.

And we’ve got to bounce back. Welcome to the world of coronavirus right now. Everyone I talk to is marginally or majorly depressed, and they’re frustrated with cabin fever. So, there’s that part of this, and then, of course, there’s the positive psychology, which I somehow suspect is not just, “I’m going to think positive thoughts. Everything is going to be wonderful. I’m going to chew on this grape, and the world will be fabulous.”

So, I wish it were that easy.

I wish it were, too.

So, positive psychology is data-based, and it’s the scientific study of what makes life most worth living. Um, there’s a really great writer in positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who talks about flourishing. And so, flourishing is not only living, but feeling amazing while you’re doing it. And that wraps into having a growth mindset. And growth mindset is part of what comes out of being resilient, because when things happen that, you know, like the coronavirus and all the craziness that we’re living with in the world right now, we not only need to be able to bounce back from it, but we need to be able to be creative with the circumstances that we’re now looking in. So, that’s really where positive psychology and resilience meet.

So, the—the world I find myself living in right now is the world of worry.

Yes.

And in the world of worry, everyone is frozen in place. Nothing goes on. Now, we understand that there’s a physical reason for us to be static, but the emotional and mental place is completely different, right?

It is. And, I would argue that there’s not even—you can limit how far away from your house you go right now given coronavirus, but it also—there is a benefit to actually physically being active. So, if you have a backyard, getting outside in your backyard and being outside in the fresh air and the sunshine, that also helps build physical resilience. And when your body feels better and more active, you’re—you’re actually telling your mind that you have a capacity to move forward and to grow. And so, when the mind gets that message, it makes it much easier to do all kinds of things like be creative, think of new ways to tackle a problem, and worry less. So, the physical activity actually helps us combat worry, depression, and anxiety.

Oh, the Holy Trinity.

So, yeah.

My version of that is shoulda, woulda, coulda, but worry, anxiety, and what was the third one?

Worry, anxiety, depression, and stress.

Oh, four! Four.

Right.

Ah, you fooled me there.

Yes. So, the old school version of this would be drop and give me ten. Because if you do ten push-ups, you’re actually increasing the oxygen in your body, you’re giving your brain a better place to work from, and you’re also starting to feel like you’ve accomplished—even something small, that can trigger a whole bunch of other positive effects.

Now, you’ve spoken about physicality as part of this and not just simply the mind. So, when you work with people, do you tend to start with the body or the mind? Or they—of course, they’re linked together.

Right. Well, so the mind sits in the body. So, they’re all…

Oh, is it? Not necessarily.

And we tend to forget that. So, we have, you know, we forget that our mind is part of our body, it’s an integral part. And when I’m working with people, whether I’m working with teams or I’m working on an individual basis, it really depends on what’s showing up and where they are in terms of how we start. But there’s always three places we can hack the system, and the system is us.

Number one!

Number one is we can hack it by changing our thoughts. Not the easiest way to do it because you’re trying to change the thoughts with the same mind that had the thoughts. So, not my favorite place to start.

And it’s sitting on your shoulder whispering in your ear, telling you, “Shut up! Don’t listen to them.”

Yeah, or worst case scenario of two sitting on one on either shoulder arguing with each other, and then you go, “I don’t know what to do,” right?

And that’s the world of worry.

Yes, that is the world of worry. It’s also the world of living in the past because the more we live in the past, the less we can see about what’s possible right now. So, number two…

Number two!

Number two is physical. We can change the way we are experiencing the world emotionally and the way we’re thinking about the world by changing our physical behavior. So, in the case of where we all are now, kind of housebound or on an actual lockdown depending upon where in the world we are, we can still do things like stick your head outside the window and wave your arms around and sing something, or do some push-ups on the floor, or do sit-ups with your kids, or do yoga, or walk around your backyard, or practice handstands if you’ve never done it. Any physical movement whatsoever is going to help you change your emotional—what you’re experiencing—and lower your stress level, lower your cortisol level, and that’s going to change your thinking. The more outside activity you can get, the better off you’re going to be. But even if you’re stuck in an apartment in your house, just keep moving. Clean your house. Do the things that are going to get you physically active. So, those will really help change your system.

Guess what we’re up to. Number three!

So, number three is you can change the way you’re dealing with the experience of your emotions. And this brings me to one of my favorite words, which is response-ability. And I will give credit because I stole this directly from a really smart guy named Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. And the description makes a whole lot of sense for where we are right now in the world as a whole, as humans. So, response-ability means we have 100% ability to respond to everything all the time. We’re doing it when we’re breathing, we’re doing it when we have emotions come up, we’re doing it when we’re chilly, we’re still—we’re responding all the time. And it’s not always conscious, right? Because you don’t think about breathing. But our ability to take action is where we often get—get kind of tripped up. So, we have the ability to take action not 100% of the time. We can choose what action we want to take. Sometimes we can’t take an action because, literally, there’s—there’s nothing we can do, right? So, in—in this case, we can’t do anything about wishing that the virus hadn’t arrived because there’s nothing we can do about that. But we can take action based on it being here now and what are our choices. Action doesn’t mean doing something. Sometimes choosing to take action means actually sitting on your hands and not doing anything, but that’s what you’ve chosen as your response to what’s going on. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because sometimes in that choosing to not act, what you’re doing, in effect, is acceptance.

Right.

These are the conditions I’m in right now. And that’s the way it’s going to be for a period of time. You can argue with it…

Right.

…but it’s—it’s really not going to do anything for you. This weekend, someone shared a section from Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, where he talks about the Stockdale Paradox. And Admiral Stockdale was the longest-held officer in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. And the Admiral, he was beaten brutally. And he said that the people who were optimists failed. Often they were the people who committed suicide because they believed they’d be out by Christmas, and when that didn’t happen, and the Christmas after that, and the Christmas after that, they gave up hope. But for those who brutally could see what their circumstances were, could believe that this is the way it’s going to be and accept it, they survived and thrived under those horrible conditions. And hopefully, none of us have to go through the horrible conditions that exist now for—for too many. But it’s the acceptance of where you are now in the inaction…

Right.

…that—that seems to be what you’re talking about. Am I interpreting correctly?

Oh, absolutely. There’s also another key piece. So, humans like to create action because we think it means that we’re changing something, but sometimes it just digs us into a deeper hole. So, part of giving some space between the response you’re experiencing and the action you choose is—if you give it, you know, somebody once said to me, “Just give anything 72 hours. It could resolve itself. And if it doesn’t resolve itself, you’ll have a better view on what action you really need to take in 72 hours versus just going for it the minute you hear the news.” So, again, we want to create a pause between the response and the action we choose to take. And that’s a big part of being resilient.

Patience. Patience. Just pausing for a second. You know, when—when the virus caused us all to pause a week ago, I wrote up an article called “Sabbath” because it really felt like we’re about to step into a Sabbath where nothing could happen, we would choose that nothing could happen. And, of course, now I’m seeing the little glimmers a week later of people trying to elbow a little bit to try and create some room because they’re experiencing cabin fever. And we know, as humans, we hate the feeling of being uncomfortable.

Right, right.

So, it’s fascinating stuff. And—and I wonder, you know, what’s the process where you can kind of dissect where you are right now? And how do you respond—and that includes non-respond, too?

Well, that is a response.

Of course it is, I wanted you to say that officially.

Whether you choose to do something, let’s use physical because it’s an easy example. Whether you choose to do something physical or not do something is a choice. And really the question in terms of building resilience for ourselves is, which one is going to get us more of what we actually want as an outcome? And so usually, when we can pay attention to what’s going on around us first, so there’s the mindfulness piece that often comes in, right? Look at what’s happening, stop, pay attention, and then choose the action that is—is going to get you what you want next. So, we want to build resilience. So, one way to do that that’s really simple is to start to pay attention to, what’s the question that comes up right now for you, no matter what, around this whole situation? So, a lot of people are concerned about, well, how am I going to handle my business if I can’t run my business from my house? Or how am I going to work with—get my employees so that they’re not all losing their jobs? Or how am I going to make ends meet while I’m, you know, my boss is trying to figure all this out online? And the first great question that you can ask yourself in any of those situations is, what do you want as the outcome? So, instead of asking all the questions first, which usually induces panic in people…

Right.

…stop for a minute and figure out what specific thing do you want to have be different at the end of that day. So, we’re talking—you and I are talking on a Monday. So, I might ask you, “So, Jeff, what would you like to have be different at the end of today?” And you might come up with something like…

14 new coaching clients! 4,000 people discovering the next video I upload!

Excellent. So, those are, you know, those are responses that—you know, who—you don’t have to limit it to what’s rational, right? And that’s part that I think people forget is they feel like, “Well, because of everything that’s going on, I should really limit what I want to create.” And that’s the worst thing you can do right now. The best thing you can do is think big, as you like to say, play big, right? So, think big, and then look at what’s the first action step you need to take in order to do that. So, I have a great example: I coached a business owner this morning. And he said, “Well, the thing I want to create is I want to continue the growth of my company through this whole thing.” And we talked about, what did that look like? And he came up with three areas: one was supporting his staff, one was supporting his clients, and one was continuing to grow his business. And what he started to recognize as we brainstormed through, how do you support your staff? Well, communication is—is a big one. And also asking them how do they want to create—like, what’s it going to look best for them as support, because people have different ideas. What would support his clients is also one of the same things: communicate, and let his clients know that all of his staff members can work through—with agility, and they can work online. So, they’ve already gone completely online as a whole team. And letting his clients know that supports his clients so they’re not panicking, because we also happen to be in the middle of tax season…

Right.

…right? Which is…

Like, two bad things, right? The virus and tax season all at once.

…like, two bad things, right? The virus and tax season all at once.

And we’re not sure which one is worse, by the way, but that’s a different conversation.

At least one—right, at least one’s windowed. And then the third piece is, how do you continue to grow? And the thing that he came up with again was communication, because the way—the best way he can grow his company is to communicate what his team is able to do, how they’re supporting their clients, and to get that information out to people who might feel like, “Oh my gosh, my person who does this for me isn’t online, I can’t get ahold of them, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.” So, finding the one thing, like your big goal, and then what’s the first step you need to take to move toward the goal. Don’t worry about the other 20, just do the first one first.

Small, incremental steps build on one another.

Yes. You know the old adage about the elephant? How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time, boss, one bite at a time!

Yes, one bite at a time.

And—and the journey of a thousand miles begins with…

One step.

Exactly right. We—we each have our quotes.

Yes, many of them.

Mine was Maoist, but that’s a different conversation. But, no matter.

Folks, in times like this, this is great advice because whether it’s during this time where we feel crisis and our—I know for me, when this first hit home was seizing up in my body, that caused me to start to breathe more shallow. So now, I’m getting a beaming smile from Amy…

Yeah.

…the recognition of mind and body being connected.

I have a great question for people for this one.

We’ll—we’ll get to that one second. But the notion that my body was seizing up in some way, and I was breathing more shallow, recognizing the fear there. Well, getting rid of the fear isn’t—is always as easy as taking three deep breaths. It sometimes requires, for me anyway, slowing down a little bit and seeing, okay, what’s possible now? And taking that first step in that direction. Now, I didn’t let you speak up at that point, I was a bad host. Bad host.

No, it was a good point to make, so it was actually a great host.

Thank you. So, what were you trying to say then?

Well, no, but you—what you reminded me of was, so one of the second ways that we can deal with, asking great questions, right, is asking great questions about what are we experiencing physically right now. So, that question of when fear comes up, when you feel anxious, when you’re feeling worried or concerned or downright panicked, the best question you can ask yourself in that moment is, what is my body feeling right now? The moment you tune into what your body is feeling, you’re going to pay attention to your breath. And when you pay attention to your breath, you can ask the question, can I take a deeper breath? Right? So, it’s a little directive, but taking a deep breath does something, and it’s a biohack that I really love. And you talked about, you know, sometimes that’s not going to always cut it. However, if you start by taking a couple of deep breaths, what you’re doing is you’re providing more oxygen to your brain. When you provide more oxygen to your brain, you can think more clearly. And when you’re breathing more deeply, you’re not actually strangling yourself. So, you’re going to feel a little bit calmer, and then when you feel a little bit calmer, that’s when you get a chance to look around and go, “Huh. All right, what can I do now?”

You know, it’s funny, you reminded me of something from many years ago when I was writing my first book. And a month before it was going to come out, I had excruciating back pain. It was so bad my back was seizing up, and the only way to stop it was I’d flip myself onto the ground, onto a bed, something. And the joke in my house is that they would hear the sound, “Ahhh!” and that was me having a—a spasm at that moment. And what I learned from reading a book from John Sarno called Healing Back Pain, I believe it is, is that it is a real feeling that you have, but it’s caused by oxygen deprivation that’s induced by some event that’s held in the body.

Yes.

And thus, the idea is to identify the event. Now, amazingly, I’d say probably a year later I had my next episode with it. And it happened on three different days.

Hmm.

There was a day in November, I believe it was the 24th; it was on December 6th, coincidentally my birthday; and it was on December 23rd. And my wife asked me, “What happened? Think back. Is there a linkage between the three days?” And the three days represented the day the divorce papers from my previous wife hit with her, the day it hit with me, and the day she got it.

There you go.

And it was held in my body, and once I could realize that, no more spasms. It’s fascinating. So, the idea of asking a better question to sort through what’s going on here…

Mhm.

…what am I feeling now, how could I take a first step and make some progress here? I use the question, “What’s possible now?”

That’s a great question.

Thank you, I love that question. It’s—it’s on page 14 of my repertoire.

So, the other great one is, “What am I not telling myself?”

Ah.

Right? So, that’s one when you really feel stuck, ask yourself the question, “What am I not telling myself?” Because we actually always know what we’re not telling ourselves, we just don’t want to say it out loud. And so, when we bring that level of curiosity to it, it becomes a lot easier to answer the question.

And you’re coming at it from a different angle than the one you might normally use.

Mhm.

I have a version of that about the lie we tell ourselves. It’s a different question…

Mhm.

…but it’s—it’s one designed to confront some tape—sorry, some stream that’s coming through our ears. We can’t use tapes anymore. What’s streaming in our head that’s a message that we’re taking in that we know isn’t true.

Yeah. So, that’s a great—that’s a great point too about, you know, the habit that we have of thinking things, which is part of what keeps us out of resilience at times. So, we’ve all developed these habits of thought. And the only thing that creates a habit is repetition. Right? So, the habit is created because we’re repeating thoughts over and over and over, and then we build a belief that it’s true because we’ve repeated it so much, we think it’s actually true. It’s just a thought. So, as we start to ask questions of ourselves like, “What am I not telling myself?” or “What am I pretending not to know?” or “What’s possible now?” “What can I create next?” All those questions bring enough curiosity to help us invite ourselves into the conversation and look at, “Oh, what’s the assumption I’m making?” or “What’s the old habit that’s showing up in my thinking that’s keeping me in this place, but I want to move forward?” Does that make sense?

It’s the ham story. We—the classic ham story is about the family that always prepared the ham by cutting off one end of the ham and the other end of the ham, and that was part of the recipe. And no one knew why it was done, but it had been passed on for generations. So, they tried to follow the chain back in time until they got to the great-grandma in the nursing home, and they said, “Why did we cut the ham off at each end?” And the answer is, “Because the pot was too small.” But—but there’s a habit that develops that we do in an unthinking manner without ever asking ourselves the question after a while, “Does this really serve me anymore?”

Right.

“Could I do something different to get better results?” “No, I must do it this way!”

So, there’s a great trick too that is actually a really fun thing to do if you have kids and you want to help your kids build resilience. When you’re clear—when you’re emptying out the dishwasher or doing anything that’s kind of mechanical like that and repetitive, have—do it and have your kids do it with their opposite hand. So, if you’re used to, you know, you take all the utensils and you put them away with your right hand, do it with your left hand. And have them do it as well and make it a game. Because not only when you make things a game, it’s a lot more fun, but you’re also literally creating more resilience in your brain because you’re trying to create new neural pathways for things. And it’s another physical activity that will get you out of this, “I can’t possibly do anything else, I’m stuck in my house right now.”

What other sorts of physical activities might people do to try and build those neural pathways of difference, the non-habitual ones?

So, there are some really great ones from really small to really, um, uh, let’s say over the top, right? So, one of the really small ones is that—that can be really fun is, if you write with your right hand, practice writing with your left hand. And so if you’re writing a grocery list, write with your opposite hand because, again, you’re triggering new neural pathways, but you’re also having to think about what you’re doing in a different way. And it’s going to generate a different way of seeing the world, quite literally. So, that’s a small one. Um, other—other physical…

I’m going to update that for modern times.

Yeah.

So, since no one writes anymore…

Oh.

…and they put everything on their phone, instead of—if you’re a two-handed typist on your phone, go for one finger on the non-dominant hand and try the non-dominant hand typing for yourself instead of thumbs.

Your opposite thumb. Right. Right, right. So, even if you do two-thumb texting, you always are going to use one hand more than the other, so just do it with the opposite thumb and do it one-handed for a little while. It will—it will create a whole new way to see the world. So, that’s one thing you can do. Um, another thing is just looking at your environment and noticing, what are the things in your environment that are either lifting you up and making you feel supported and happy and joyful, and what are the things that are really just like, “Oh, that thing that has been there for forever and I’ve been meaning to get to it.” So, do a spring cleaning. Things like that will actually really help you get a perspective on what’s possible and—and it will help you be organized. And it keeps you moving, physically.

I always think of something from coach training I did, where they said one wonderful line: “Environments win.” So, you create an environment that’s supportive of you, knowing that somewhere along the line what will probably happen is that paper is going to start to grow again.

Mhm.

It’s an amazing phenomenon. You get rid of all the paper and suddenly, a month later, what the hell happened? It starts to grow.

I know, right. Right. And it’s the same thing, you know, and I will bring this into the modern day, right? So, I don’t read papers. But I have a ton of journals and blogs and things I like to keep track of, and I’ll tell you if I forget, my inbox gets just filled with the stuff. So, one thing to do is set a cup—time blocking and set, you know, an hour or two on specific times during the week that you’re just going to deal with your inbox, or you’re just going to read the blogs, or you’re just going to catch up on the news. And then delete them once you’ve read them! That’s the—that’s the key.

Deleting! Oh my goodness. You mean I shouldn’t possess forever? Oh my god.

No. So, here’s one interesting thing, and I’m going to bring a little Eastern philosophy into this.

Ooh.

So, about—about a year ago, I went to a workshop. And they gave us some writing assignment before the workshop that we had to do. So, we’re—we had to write, and I wrote in my journal because I keep a journal. And in that same—I keep a bullet journal, in fact. And so, in that same bullet journal were all my notes for my business, all the notes for the upcoming workshop I was planning, all the notes for what I had to get my web designer—all of that kind of stuff was in there along with a whole bunch of other things. And we—I took the journal and we did the workshop. And in the middle of the workshop, uh, the—we were—we were told, “And now you have to burn it.” And I panicked! And I thought…

Nooo!

…”I’m terrible at marketing. I’m never going to remember all of these notes that I’ve taken from my business coach and my web designer and my marketing person. I’m going to forget all of it. I finally got it organized to write down. Holy shit, I can’t possibly burn this thing.” And I—I started tearing out just the pages for the workshop, and this woman comes along and she takes the whole journal from me and she throws it on the fire. And then she turned around and she said, “You don’t need to live in the past. Anything that’s really important, you will be able to remember.” And I—I almost smacked her!

The truth comes out!

I was really pissed because I was terrified that I wouldn’t actually remember. And what I realized was, I—I got home five days later because we had—I had nothing to write with for the rest of the five days. I got home, and I felt so calm, and I just started tackling things one at a time, and I didn’t worry about it. And she was right. When we hold on—we hold on to so much stuff. I think that’s a lot of what’s coming up, too, with, you know, we’re all stuck in our houses and it’s harder to get our hands on things. So, a lot of people went out and they bought a million rolls of toilet paper, and a million bottles of Listerine, and a million of this, a million of that. But we’re—you know, one of the things to realize is we don’t actually need as much product as we think we need. And we don’t need as many notes as we think we need. And the more we rely upon ourselves to know what’s really important, that’s where we shed old habits, that’s where we start to move into resilience. Because that means we’re always looking for towards what’s going to happen next and what can I affect positively.

And the beauty in that, Amy, seems to be that the important things we remember and know. There’s ancillaries, and they’re probably connected to the important in our psyche. It’s kind of like there’s antennae that come out from the core place that connect to these memories. But the important things we remember, and we can always track down the secondaries.

Yeah. And the more we simplify, the easier it becomes to see what we actually need to do next. When there’s all this noise, right, it’s that whole signal-to-noise thing. When there’s all this noise around, it’s really hard to see which signal is the important one.

Beautiful. Amy, this has been wonderful. How can people find out more about you and the work that you do?

So, people can find me online at my website, anunstoppablelife.com. You can email me directly from the site if you’re interested. You can also book a free two-hour strategy session with me. And um, coming up on March 30th, there’s a wellness summit I’ll be part of, and I’ll get Jeff to put some information along with the podcast and the audio for that. But that is also a free three-day, four-day wellness event with a whole bunch of really wonderful people. We’re talking about mind, body, and family and kids during the coronavirus and how to build resilience. And uh, you can also find me on LinkedIn at Amy Kohut, on Medium at @anunstoppablelife, and uh feel free to just email me directly: hello@anunstoppablelife.com.

Cool. And folks, we’ll be back soon with more. I’m Jeff Altman, the Big Game Hunter. Hope you enjoyed this. And if you’re interested in my coaching, visit my website,—let’s try that again—visit my website, nobscoachingadvice.com. I’ve got a lot more there to support you.

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