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Terry, welcome back to Tech Nation.
Terry Healey:Hi, Mora. It's great to be here.
Moira:Now your book, the resilience mindset, I think it's a good place to start by how we might recognize resilience in others, especially others that we know personally and love, know their story about how they're living and what they've lived through. How do we recognize resilience?
Terry Healey:Yeah. I think they're really people that have the ability to adapt, to pivot, find new ways forward. I think this concept of a growth mindset, are people that are always learning from their challenges, from their setbacks. I think there are also people that find meaning and purpose in their adversity. And the most important one to me is that people that are resilient, I think, remain hopeful.
Terry Healey:They remain optimistic despite whatever might be going on. So hope is key.
Moira:You know, it really is amazing when you look around at all the people you know. It seems like life just you know, when you just live long enough, bad things are gonna happen that you have to, you know, come back from. There are little things every day up to bigger and bigger things, and you look around and some people just never come back from some of those. And then others, you're like, how the heck did you do that?
Terry Healey:Yeah.
Moira:So it is that there are some elements here that make up what you have to come back from. How would you describe how would you break down the different kinds of adverse events that might happen to you?
Terry Healey:Yeah. So I typically think of it, I categorize things. It makes it easier for me. So I've categorized adversity into like four areas, right? So if I think about those four areas, physical, certainly that would be represented by an illness, a disease, perhaps it's addiction.
Terry Healey:And then there's sort of the mental part, which might be high levels of anxiety or depression. You get into emotional where you might have somebody that's dealing with an abusive relationship. Maybe they are facing divorce. Maybe it's any number of other things like the feeling that they're being discriminated against in some way. And then finally, financial can be a myriad of things too.
Terry Healey:It could be the loss of your job. It could be someone facing eviction. Maybe it's somebody facing poverty or somebody that that was on the road to riches and made a poor investment, and suddenly they had to relook at their entire financial picture. It's any number of areas.
Moira:And it's individual. You know? It doesn't really it's there's no general thing here. It's like it's the circumstance that you are in at that moment, and it is the most important circumstance you have right now.
Terry Healey:Yep. Absolutely.
Moira:Now we can list the bad things. What I've learned from reading your book, though, is that each of us process these adversity events in different ways. Your reaction to the event sort of is this initial evaluation or self evaluation, if you will. It's what you believe about it. It contributes mightily to how you can recover.
Moira:Let's go there. What are the various ways people react?
Terry Healey:Yeah. I think oftentimes, people react and think that, you know, oh, I brought this on. It's my fault. They also sometimes get caught in it to the point where they feel like it's never going to end, it's permanent. And Martin Seligman, who is really the father of positive psychology, he talks about three P's, right?
Terry Healey:Personalization, which means it's always your fault. That's how you perceive it. Pervasiveness, meaning this is going to affect everything in my life. And permanence is really that you feel that the situation's never going to end. It's going to go on forever.
Terry Healey:And it might feel like that, right? But that's really where this concept of reframing comes in. And it's really important. And I don't think that it's that complicated for many people to make that shift.
Moira:So it's something we can learn in a sense.
Terry Healey:I think it's something that we can learn, and I would say that it's certainly something to practice. I talk a lot about practice, you know, build muscle memory with how you're dealing with adversity. There's tried and true ways that people have dealt with this. There's a million people out there and you can find them on the internet, right, that have dealt with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They've come out the other side.
Terry Healey:What can we learn from them? Well, think there's some common threads, and it's really about turning negative self talk into positive self talk. It's things like, Oh, this will never end. How am I going to get through this? And that's sort of a block that people have and they need to step back for a second, reflect and say, Well, just maybe there's another approach that I can take.
Terry Healey:Maybe what I need to do is go seek support. Maybe I need to go to group therapy. Maybe I need to rethink how I've been living my life. And this concept that it's always your fault, we have to get away from that, right? That's a really important one.
Terry Healey:People blame themselves and they find it hard to get out of it. Accept what it is, try to focus on how you're going to cope and keep hope and move forward.
Moira:Independent of whose fault it might be or how you got here, you gotta move on from now because this is the reality. And it and it does touch on something, a recent guest said, Angus Fletcher. He said the most important story is the story you tell yourself about yourself. That's woven in there, you know, part and parcel.
Terry Healey:Yep. Absolutely. This concept of believing in yourself sometimes is really difficult for people to do. Again, I think that there's methods and actions that you can take to where you can start to build that back. I certainly lost it in my situation.
Terry Healey:I lost my self confidence, but I found a way to build it back and believe in myself. And there's there's ways to do that, I think.
Moira:Well, now is a good time to talk about your situation. You didn't decide that suddenly this was really a a good idea to, just a great idea to, write a book about resilience. You actually had to develop them. So a a really, really, really big adverse event happened to you, as a young man. So tell that story.
Terry Healey:Yeah. I was somebody that was living life on easy street. Life was great. I hit all the milestones I had set for myself and that my family expected of me. Right?
Terry Healey:And then I was a junior at UC Berkeley and out of nowhere, this bump formed behind my right nostril, Seemingly, insignificant event, right? And at first it was, but it changed my whole world. It turned me upside down. So, this bump forms behind my right nostril, I go to a doctor. Long story short is that I get a diagnosis of a really rare form of cancer called a fibrosarcoma.
Terry Healey:Typically doesn't occur in the head and neck. I was grateful and fortunate that I got the right diagnosis. So I get referred to UC San Francisco. They treat me initially with surgery. They feel that they've caught it early.
Terry Healey:I don't need any more treatment after that. I go back to living this life of invincibility, right, that that I was living before. Looked
Moira:That only a junior in college could live. They're immortal. They're invincible.
Terry Healey:Only a junior in college could live. Exactly. Looked normal, felt great, and then six months later I get this sort of sensation in my cheek of ants crawling through it, and you just can't relieve that itching. So I go back to the doctor, and it was, I like to call it almost acceleration mode when I hit that doctor's office. He looked at me and examined me, and before he had any testing done, he was already scheduling surgery.
Terry Healey:But to back everything up, he brought in the tumor board, X, Y, Z, all these steps. But, yeah, I ended up having this recurrence that necessitated the removal of half of my nose, the shelf of my right eye, the muscle and the bone from my right cheek, part of my upper lip, part of my hard palate, six of my teeth. And I woke up attached to my chest because I had to transplant a full thickness skin graft of my chest to fill in this cavity on my face. And so, yeah, when I woke up from that, it was, oh my god. Not only now am I facing life threatening situation here, but I'm facing a life of disfigurement.
Moira:I can't imagine what that event would have been like for anyone. And at that age at that age, what a pivot.
Terry Healey:Absolutely. I, you know, fortunately, I was I was raised in a family where we had a foundation of faith, and I was fortunate to have this doctor that I truly believed in. And he had warned me that I might lose my eye, but I remember gratitude was always something that was a part of my life. I remember waking up in the Recovery Room and meeting the recovery room nurse, I thought I might've lost my eye. She started swabbing my eye and suddenly I could see out of it and it was like, okay, as bad as things are, I was grateful for that.
Terry Healey:Now let's be honest, I hadn't seen myself in the mirror yet, but I did find some positive out of that experience right away.
Moira:That was the first seed. The first seed of moving forward.
Terry Healey:That was the first seed.
Moira:You're listening to Technation. I'm Moira Gannon, and my guest today is Terry Healy. His book is the resilience mindset, how adversity can strengthen individuals, teams, and leaders. Now you write about the link between adversity and self esteem, and self esteem can be a big challenge.
Terry Healey:Absolutely can. I think when we're faced with adversity, we oftentimes start to lose a little bit of ourself. We start to doubt ourselves. We begin to feel uncertainty. And those types of things can lead to a loss in your self confidence to impact your self esteem.
Terry Healey:And I certainly experienced that. And so naturally I started to retreat more. I started to retreat from my life and pull myself inward because I didn't feel good about being out in the world and interacting with people. And so I had to go through that whole journey of how do you rebuild.
Moira:So many times your adversities, I always say, well, they're kinda, I can keep them to myself. People don't know about them. But I really feel for people who have an adverse event that the world knows about. You know? You can't, like, you can't hide from the world.
Moira:Every time you turn and you look at another person, whether it's just in your circle or around your neighbors, it's like, there it is. That is a real characteristic of what happened to you.
Terry Healey:Yeah. And and honestly, that's you're spot on. I mean, having a visible difference is something that you're going to get noticed, no matter how you try to hide it. It's visible to everybody. And I think, that became a journey as well in that I think what we have to learn is that we think everybody notices us.
Terry Healey:We think everybody's looking at us, but the honest truth is most people are pretty caught up in themselves. They're pretty absorbed with what they're doing. And that's oftentimes our own belief that everybody's noticing our differences, when in reality, it's really not that way, but it took a long time for me to kind of learn that and gain that level of wisdom.
Moira:Because you're involved in your own trauma. And think that there's
Terry Healey:That's right.
Moira:Going on, and you can't even see it.
Terry Healey:That's right.
Moira:Now you have an overall model here for for sort of climbing back, whether it's small, it's big, and, whatever it is, what kind it is as we were talking about earlier. And I liked that you call it rebar, which are those those heavy rods in the middle of cement columns to keep them strong, you know, give them a lot more, lot more strength and integrity for what we call structural integrity. And there are four phases to that, which happened to be r b a r. So let's go through that. What are they, and are they in that order?
Terry Healey:They are in that order. Thanks. That was a great definition of of how it all actually luckily came together to represent rebar. Yeah, so those four phases reflect is really something that I write and speak a lot about because I think it's so important to take the time to yourself, for yourself to step back from your busyness. Take time to start with gratitude.
Terry Healey:Think about all the things you're grateful for. There's always a million things to be grateful for. And when you start there, it puts you in a more positive place, in a positive mindset. From there, what I like to suggest people do, and it only takes five to ten minutes a day, is to step back and do an audit of your whole day. So reflect on your day, think about what you might have learned, think about what you might have been inspired by.
Terry Healey:And if you were inspired by something today, can you apply it tomorrow? And know that it's really about building this muscle memory, getting in the practice of doing it, because you're not going to have an inspiration every day, but I truly believe that you will start to recognise those inspirations more readily when you're in the practice of doing it and clearing your mind. So that's the first phase. Then I move into BUILD, the B and rebar. BUILD is about developing that positive mindset.
Terry Healey:It's about developing a growth mindset. We can develop our own mindsets, right? And so that's about starting to identify your support team. That's about figuring out how you're going to find life balance. That's about beginning to practise your faith if that's something you lost and that's important to you.
Terry Healey:And it's really about choosing positive because we choose our attitude. And with those things, it's much easier to navigate life's roadblocks when you're doing it with positivity instead of uncertainty and doubt. The third phase act is really where the rubber meets the road, right? That's when we start to face challenges. That's when we start to take control of our life.
Terry Healey:It's when we get focused and set goals. So that's execution mode. That's really the biggest part of my rebar framework because there's so many methods to choose from. One size doesn't fit all. And then finally you move into renew.
Terry Healey:Renew is really stepping back again and thinking about what you might've learned from that adversity, which is really that growth mindset. It's what did I learn about myself? What are the skills and characteristics that I possess that enabled me to get through this ordeal? That helps build confidence. That helps build your self esteem.
Terry Healey:You start to feel better about yourself because guess what? You survived that adversity. You're still here. You're moving forward now. You're at another phase.
Terry Healey:And so that's really about becoming a better version of yourself every day. And so it's a cycle.
Moira:You know, I liked very much that that cycle and how you described it. And as an engineer, of course, I love the the fact you called it rebar. Real big plus. Real big plus from this corner.
Terry Healey:Good deal.
Moira:Good deal. One of the things that that that hit me, though, when I read it is you distinguish between the build and the act. You know? A lot of times when we think we're building something, well, we gotta do the actions in there, but there's build and there's act. Let's go back and distinguish between those two phases.
Terry Healey:Yeah. So I think that there's a foundation. It's like building a house or something. Right? I mean, there's a foundation that you have to put together before you can start to take action.
Terry Healey:So you need some support systems, right? You need that rebar in place before you can actually start to do things with that concrete, right? Before you can start to put things on top of it. So yeah, I think it's a really important phase because when I talk to people, I learn a lot about how they don't necessarily have a support system that they know to lean on. They don't really know who to turn to.
Terry Healey:They're afraid to talk to people. And that's okay, right? So maybe the answer for you is to find your support system in a support group. Maybe it's not with your closest friends because you don't feel that that's where you're going to get what you need to move forward. But it's really building that foundation so that when you're ready, you take action.
Moira:It it's so important. You just said also about where to find the support group. You know, we used to have a little joke. Well, don't ask aunt not to be named because she'll say she'll say, well, what did you do? You know?
Moira:How did you you know? No matter what you come up with, you well, why do you think that would work? Because that would you know, you're like, don't ask her. You know? Don't be around her.
Moira:That's right. Run-in the other direction. But I also think it speaks to that old thing that says, well, when in doubt, just just do something. It's like the something isn't hard to take these actions. The something is to get support around you, get strength around you so that when you do take action, it really is helpful because I think you feel better not just from acting, but from building that strength, building that capability.
Terry Healey:100%.
Moira:Now I'd like to close with some thoughts you might have for everyone because we're kinda all living through a bunch of adverse events right now together collectively. You know, whether it's, you know, what's going on in the world today, whether it's the big concern about AI and, frankly, with technology. We don't know where it's going, and we don't know what impact it's gonna have on ourselves individually and collectively, just the nature of technology and our jobs. And and anybody who's planned out their future knows there's no guarantees there. What are your thoughts on that for us collectively as we go forward?
Terry Healey:Yeah. I like people to remain remain hopeful. That's really what resilience is about, right? That's part of having a positive mindset. But I encourage people to embrace change.
Terry Healey:I use an analogy oftentimes to explain what I mean by how change can impact us over time. And an easy way for me to do it is to think about the Standard and Poor's 500, the biggest 500 stocks in The US index, that you can look at that chart. If you take a forty year period or a ninety year period, you're going to see that it moves up and to the right. But if you drill down on that, you might see it's very jagged. And if you drill even further, you'll see, wow, there's some really big indentations downward.
Terry Healey:But you know what? It always bounces back. And usually it does so in a fairly short order. And so that's the big picture I think of with adversity too. Yeah, you're going to have setbacks, you're going to have periods that are difficult, but know that if you embrace change, typically you will find a new way forward that you're grateful for.
Terry Healey:And I think to your question about AI and maybe the effect that has, let's just pick marketing teams who are affected by it in big ways or market research teams affected by it in big ways. I think that, yeah, it's a threat to your job, but think of it as an opportunity to push yourself to learn new skills. And when you learn new skills, you're probably going to end up meeting new people, working with new people, and all of those things represent progress. If I look back on technology disruptions, and I've been through a lot of them and so have you, They're pretty positive at the end of the day. I can't imagine having to go to a blockbuster and getting a movie, for example.
Terry Healey:You know? I mean, that's a really simple one.
Moira:Yeah. We're not doing that. That is interesting. When we look at the technology aspect of it, I mean, it's always like, hey. You have to do this.
Moira:You have to write it in Pascal. It's like, who the last time anybody like, what? That's like and then you have to do all this in social media. You have to do all these. You know?
Moira:It's like, we still got the same number of eyeballs and the same number of brains, the same number of ears, and it's a little different now and that we're not quite sure where the AI is going. But I think we're we'll begin to see we'll swing out of chaos into settling about it's gonna do these things this way and these things that way. And what do you know? You still get up in the morning, and and, as my father would say if he were here, you still put your pants on one leg at a time. That's right.
Moira:It's gonna be life.
Terry Healey:Yeah. I mean, you know, that's right. And I think if you're an engineer that's used to writing code and stuff, think about the benefits of AI and the fact that now you can actually do more strategic things. So again, you have to think of it as progress, new skill development, new opportunities. But my guess is that you'll look back on that in a year and you'll say, God, that was great.
Terry Healey:That really pushed me.
Moira:Well, no matter what, still takes nine months to have a baby.
Terry Healey:That's true.
Moira:So these tech this technology, they're not working on all of it. I just wanna just wanted to point that out.
Terry Healey:Scary thought there.
Moira:Scary thought there. There you have it. Terry, such a pleasure for you to come in and talk to us, and, thank you so much. I hope you come back and see us again.
Terry Healey:Thanks for having me, Maura. It's always great to see you.
Moira:My guest today is Terry Healy. His book is the resilience mindset, how adversity can strengthen individuals, teams, and leaders. It's published by ECW Press. I'm Moira Gunn. You're listening to Tech Nation.
Moira:It's published by ECW Press. For Tech Nation, I'm Moira Gunn.