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Welcome to episode 188 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Today's episode is based on an article by Eric Barker how to be Resilient Five Secrets to Success when life gets impossible. If you're familiar with Barker's work, you know that he likes to take research and simplify it to help you improve your life. And if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that I like to look at Barker's work from a family systems perspective. You've heard me say before that self-differentiation is not selfish or self-centered. It does enable you to lead with persistence. This is really important because we know that anytime you are leading as a nonanxious presence, there's going to be resistance. All change is lost, and the least differentiated in the system will unwittingly resist that change as a way to avoid their own discomfort with the grief that comes with loss that comes with change. When you are able to pursue your own goals and values, especially when they align with the mission of the system that you lead, then you can lead effective and lasting change. So here are five ways that self-differentiation increases resilience and healthy persistence.

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The first way that self-differentiation helps you build resilience is it enables you to embrace reality. Research on resilient people have found two consistent patterns. The first pattern comes from research done with students at a survival school, where they found that the most successful students were more realistic. Not kidding yourself about what you are facing is important if you are going to face challenges and be resilient. It's also important not to make a challenge bigger than it really is. And that leads to the second pattern that research finds in studying resilient people. Resilient people see difficulties as challenges, not threats. When you see something as a challenge, you can do something about it. When you see it as a threat, your automatic response kicks in. Your fight, flight, or freeze response, which is likely to result in reactivity or adaptivity, kicks in. Edwin Friedman famously said, nobody gets the problem they can handle. If they could handle it, it wouldn't be a problem. The difference between a challenge and a problem is all about how we respond and whether we can clearly embrace reality and take positive action. A self-differentiationferentiated leader is better able to do this because they realize that the only thing they can control is their response.

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The second thing that self-differentiation does is it boosts confidence. And this starts with an accurate and vulnerable assessment of yourself. I've written before that vulnerability is an essential element of self-differentiation. It's the ability to say this might not work when we are realistic about our weaknesses, it actually enables us to do something about it. And it's in doing something about it that we find that action is the best way to boost confidence. nonanxious leaders will take on challenges and break them down into smaller steps and then figure out what the next action is. What can I do next? Not how am I going to get to the very end, because that can get overwhelming. But what do I need to do next to move things forward? Just doing one thing that moves you towards resolving the challenge will build confidence. And when you do another and another, that creates momentum and enables persistence. The third thing that self-differentiation does to help you build resilience as it enables you to find a sense of control in the situation. Research has shown that feelings of control activate your prefrontal cortex. When this happens, it shuts down the primitive part of your brain, which is full of automatic and unhelpful reactions that are either reactive or adaptive.

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self-differentiation enables you to self-regulate, first by slowing down your breathing and gaining control of your body, then by focusing on what's going on inside of you. When you combine this self-awareness with intentional action, it gives you a sense of control. The key thing that self-differentiation does is it reminds us that we always have a choice in the situation. And choice is paramount to feeling a sense of control. The other thing about self-differentiation is it is paradoxical. It encourages you to lean into things when you want to run away. Barker shares the story of a runner who would get so anxious before a race that she would vomit like clockwork. She said before a race to her coach, I'm going to puke. The coach responded, Great. When do you want to do it? What? We'll schedule it. When do you want to puke? 945. Good. I'll set an alarm. The time came to vomit and she didn't need to. She ended up running her best time of the year. And it's in that paradox, it's in taking control, it's in having a sense of choice that self-differentiation helps us to be more resilient in the most difficult of challenges.

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The fourth thing that self-differentiation does is it enables us to respond rather than react. This is all about selfregulation. And I talk about this constantly, because even if we can't respond non anxiously in natural ways, which most people can't, I don't usually do that myself. We are still able to self regulate, to stop our automatic reactions so that we can get our prefrontal cortex in gear and respond intentionally. One thing Barker emphasizes here is that this does not mean that we ignore our emotions. Ignoring our emotions and trying to bury them causes them to rear their ugly heads even more intensely. It's being self aware of what's going on inside, but not letting those emotions dictate how we respond. One helpful suggestion Barker makes is to label your emotions. I call this self awareness. Ask the question, what's going on inside of me? What story am I telling myself? When you label your emotions, you invoke a sense of mindfulness, you accept the present without judgment. The example that Barker gives in his article is instead of saying I'm tired, I can say I'm experiencing tiredness. The first is giving into the feeling and allowing it to take over our whole being.

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The second is accepting the present, but knowing that we have control over how we respond. Finally, the fifth way that self-differentiation enables us to be more resilient is that it helps us to transcend discomfort. Friedman often said that leaders need to embrace discomfort to lean into this space when we're not certain about the future and that we know we can do something about it. Whether it works out in the future remains to be seen. But being able to embrace discomfort is a key characteristic of a non-anxious leader. The research shows that those who are best able to do this, who are most resilient and persistent in a healthy way, are driven by purpose and meaning. This is about intrinsic motivation, knowing your own goals and values, which is the foundation of self-differentiation. When we are driven by extrinsic motivation like fear, money, status, or anything outside of us, we are giving in to some form of surrounding togetherness pressure. Self-differentiation enables us to know our own goals and values and then lean on them when we feel like quitting. The analogy I like to use here is the last 4 miles of a marathon. No matter how hard you train, it is going to hurt.

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And the question is, do you give up or do you finish? For most people I know that have done this, they want to finish, no matter how hard it is. Because that is their goal, that is their purpose. It gives them meaning. And that's the way life is. Even though there's no finish line, when we know our own goals and values, we can persist, even through the most difficult challenges. That's what resilience is. That's what self-differentiation helps us do. That's it for episode 188 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. You can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.