3 Mindset Shifts to Build Emotional Resilience | Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein

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31:49Use code charm at monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with code charm. Our clients, they wanna be better networkers, right? They wanna be better connectors with people. So that first step and just understanding what you're feeling right now walking into that room, it may be anxiety, it may be that you're a little bit nervous and all of that is okay. This is probably a new room for you. Maybe it's a new event for you. Maybe there's a lot of people that you don't know. Maybe it's the first time you stepped out to a networking event on your own and you want to do well for yourself.

32:28You took time out of your day to make arrangements that come out here. That first step is the radical acceptance part of it. Yeah, it's okay. I'm here by myself. I'm going to be a little bit nervous, but that's okay. I got frameworks and strategies from AJ and Johnny that are going to allow me to nail this as long as I move through that nervousness. And which for all of them and for people out there, are those first few conversations while you're a bit wound up going to go amazingly well? Probably not. You probably need to get knocked around a little bit to settle into yourself. But again, that's okay.

33:10You need to shake some dust off. And for every conversation that you have, every time that you're able to perform the engagement loops that we've provided, you're going to be, you get smoother. You get more confident in those loops and those behaviors that allow you to complete those loops. And you've slowly become more successful at it. Each little step, patting yourself on the back that, hey, I did that. I got through it. And now I left it with four different contacts that I had went in with. What Shereen and I didn't include in this book, and I think it's an incredibly powerful skill, is mindfulness of others.

33:48So there's this dialectical tension between mindfulness of our own experience and being mindful and attending and imagining the experience of others. And I think for folks who are looking to network, who are looking to connect, that is such a powerful skill because what we are doing is we're having this dance between, okay, acknowledging our own anxiety and becoming attentive, fully being one mindful and participating in imagining the experience of the other person as well. And that helps really build connection when we are opening up to people with curiosity. A big part of this that I love is the lens of mastery, as Johnny was saying, recognizing that skills are built over time and we can pursue mastery.

34:37Many of our clients and listeners have huge goals for themselves. And oftentimes with these goals, when we don't reach them as fast as we want or we have a setback, that self-doubt and frustration creeps in and can overwhelm us to the point where we give up. So how do we unpack that through the DBT lens? One of the analogies that I often use and I used in the book as well is imagining that you're learning a new language and a foreign language and that no one expects to learn and master a foreign language in a day, in a week with one try. And the same is true with learning to be skillful in general and also learning to be skillful with other people in particular, is that if we think about this as a behavior to be learned and mastered, like any skill, it's going to take time and practice.

35:31And that's the only way to get to that point is practice, right? Practice, practice, practice in different contexts, different situations, different people. That's how you improve. And so I think this is something we often see with our clients is people get really black and white about this. Like, I tried it once, it didn't work. This is stupid, right? Or I tried it once, it didn't work. I'm a failure. And just like we would say to somebody who goes to a new country and doesn't know the language, would we really say you're a failure because you didn't engage in a fluent conversation your first time?

36:08No, we would say, be kind to yourself. And that's one of the things that Johnny, you said that I actually think is is one of the favorite things that I say to myself that I learned from being more skillful is to tell myself it's OK to feel this. Whatever this is, it's OK to feel nervous here. It's OK to feel anxious that actually it's might even be more than OK, because it's telling me that this is important for me. and if I don't do as well as I want, that is also telling me that it's important to me and I want to keep trying, but to also give myself grace and forgiveness that this is not something that is easy.

36:47It takes time. Absolutely. For myself, anytime that I'm doing something new, just like anybody, I have the same thoughts. My brain starts working to come up with whatever excuse it can to get me not to do the new thing. And so for myself, yeah, I'm telling myself that all the time. I've never done this before. Of course, I'm nervous. Okay, no big deal. We're going to be nervous. But the thing that has helped me the most out of all of it is I think a little bit ahead of that. What's the worst that could happen? My intentions are always for the best for other people that are around me and for myself.

37:26So if my intentions are for the best and nothing really bad can happen, then it doesn't matter how I feel. I'm going to now jump in to the deep end of the pool and make a giant mess and sort it out from there, which has allowed me to be successful at new things as well. because if you've already shown that you're incredibly successful in other areas of your life, that means that you have the skills to be, to put things together. And if your intentions are true and clear and nothing bad can happen, then you owe it to yourself to have a lot of fun, to jump right in because you'll surprise yourself at how quickly you begin putting things together.

38:17That could also be considered a wise mind approach, right? That instead of having your emotions dictate to you, and your emotions are going to tell you to avoid doing something scary, right? That's just what fear does. It tells us to avoid doing something scary. Johnny, what you're doing is you're saying, I'm scared and this is really important to me. This is something that means a lot to me. And so I'm going to push myself to do this, even though or because I'm scared. What would you rather be saying to yourself? I gave it my best shot or I regret not doing it. And we all know what the data says at the end of your life about regret.

39:01Yeah. So moving now towards interpersonal relationship skills, as this is a big reason that people are listening to the show. I think many of us go into high stakes situations, unfortunately, lacking clarity. Maybe it's due to inexperience. Maybe it's due to our emotions getting the best of us. But whether it's negotiating a raise or handling conflict, it can be really challenging if we don't have clarity. So what does DBT show us to create that clarity for us to build these relationships and have these conversations more effectively? The first thing we have to ask ourselves is like, what is our goal?

39:38And so in DBT, and you'll see this in the book, we sort of map out three different types of goals. One, is there something specific that I want out of this situation? Or am I looking to say no to something? Another option is, am I focused on leaving this conversation with the other person thinking well of me in our relationship? And then another option is, am I really prioritizing my self-respect, how I see myself after this conversation has taken place? And what we're trying to do is not to say that one thing disqualifies another, and how can we take a look at these three different types of objectives and begin to prioritize them?

40:25And that's a really helpful framework to then enter into a conversation if we're asking something from someone to know, okay, what is the degree of, let's say, pressure or the intensity I ask someone if I'm holding those different objectives in mind? So we call that the skill of interpersonal priorities in dbt just to just to label it as such and what we say is going into in advance of any difficult or challenging conversation how would you rank these three different things in order of importance because that then will guide how you approach the situation effectively if you're still overpaying for wireless it's time to say yes to saying no At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no.

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43:10Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash charm. That's shopify.com slash charm. Go to shopify.com slash charm and make this Black Friday one to remember. Let's take negotiating a raise as a great example, because I know that causes a lot of stress for almost all of us, especially when it comes to situations where maybe we feel that we have shown enough, but it hasn't just happened for us. And now we actually have to move things forward ourselves and take action in that way. How could we look at that through the lens of this interpersonal priorities? So we have a set of interpersonal skills.

43:48You mentioned all the acronyms in DBT, and they really come into play when we're talking about the interpersonal skills, because the acronyms are, hang with me, are Dear Man, which is the set of skills to get your objective, the acronym of Give, which is the set of skills to help the other person feel good about you after the interaction, and the set of skills called FAST, which is how you improve and maintain your self-respect. So in an ideal situation, interpersonally, you're using all of it. You're doing a dear man give fast, we would say, to get your objective, have the other person feel good about you and feel good about yourself.

44:32But depending on how you rank your priorities, you're going to emphasize one set of skills more than the other, especially if you don't immediately get what you want. So let's say you do a dear man, and it would be something like I've been working at this company for three years and my salary has been stable over this time. I feel like I've been contributing a lot to this company's growth and revenue. I would like to request at this point a 5 % raise in my salary. I would really appreciate it. I think this will motivate me to do even better work for the company and to stay here for longer and contribute.

45:18So that, in essence, is the D-E-A-R of dear man, which, by the way, if I were going into this situation, I absolutely would do my homework first and I would write that out and I would really think about those steps. Of course, what we would most want is for your boss to say, yes, totally agree. Here's your 5 % raise, right? But instead, what you might get is something like nobody else has gotten a raise recently. We want to be fair or 5 % is probably more than we can do right now. So now I'm thinking about what were my priorities going into this? because if I really like this job and actually what's most important for me is that my boss likes me and wants me around, then I might not push too hard, right?

46:10Because what's most important to me is that my boss likes me. However, if my objective is most important, getting this raise, then I might figure out how can I be more skillful and still go after my objective, which has to do with staying mindful, being broken record, appearing confident. So I might say, totally get that. Yes, there's a lot of factors to consider. And I've been a really great employee. And I believe a 5 % raise is completely in line with all that I've been doing for you. So it's thinking about those priorities as a means of affecting how am I going to be in this interaction? That conversation brings up a point of contention with what I see in a lot of our clients, which is the thing that they want most in life or they think that they need is balance.

47:07But when I start asking piercing questions, trying to understand why they want balance, it becomes clear to me that they're not aligned with their values, therefore not having an alignment with their values. they're easily pushed all around from one thing to the next, which has this that then results in that feeling of I'm out of balance. I have all these things going on. What in that reality? It's you're just not focused on the one thing that means the most to you right now. How we classify that as a part of the self-respect piece, which is in interactions with others, how do you stick to your values?

47:49And that's the S in the fast, but yeah, that requires people knowing what their values are, which some people know other people.

48:04Most people will tell you what they think their values are, but they've never sat down, actually done the work and then set up engagements to actually participate in those values. Then and build a relationship with them so that they're communicating them, which when you're able to do that, then the only thing you hear when you communicate.

48:31A big part of this is important to understand, the clarity that the acronyms provide actually helps us take action. And the worst thing is to not ask for the raise and then go another year where you're beating yourself up, You're facing self-doubt and frustration. You're feeling underappreciated. Maybe it starts to build resentment with your job. So I'd love to go through the acronyms because I think they're such powerful tools for our audience now that we've gained clarity. So in that example, just walk us through the dear man at play. Sure. So the example that I gave about asking for a raise, the first step in the dear man is to describe.

49:10So this is to describe the facts of the situation and just the facts, not adding on and also not talking too much, which is something that I think a lot of people do. They go on and on and on and the other person has just got to the point already. So when we say describe, we're talking about one sentence, two sentences. I think in the example I gave, I said something like, I've been working at the company for three years now and I've not received a raise. That's the describe, right? And that's it. The E in Dear Man stands for express. And this is where you express your thoughts and feelings about the situation.

49:46I already forgot what I said in this particular example, but it's something like, I feel like I've contributed a lot to this company. So that's my express. This is recognizing that the express is an opinion or a feeling. It's different than the describe, which is just the facts that nobody can dispute. And when we say express, we say use I language, where you're just talking about what your thoughts and feelings are about the situation. The next step is the A, and the A stands for assert. And this is actually a challenge for so many people. And I would actually say that at least in our culture, this is especially a challenge for women who have long been taught not to assert themselves, right?

50:32But assert means to say explicitly, what is it that you're asking for. So what happens with a lot of people is that they just do the describe and express. I've been working here for three years and haven't gotten a salary. I've contributed a lot. And they leave it there and they hope the other person reads their mind and jumps in and saves them. Oh my goodness, you're right. Like you deserve a raise now. So we that's what we hope for because it for whatever reason, it's uncomfortable for us to assert. But this is the really, this is why I think the skill is so helpful because it says you have to learn how to assert what it is you're looking for.

51:10So in this example is I would like a raise. And in particular, I said I would like a 5 % raise, but that's what you actually ask for can vary, but you want to get to the place where you are asking for something specific. And I want to just point out here, this trips up a lot of our clients because without the assert, your boss might say, great, here's your title bump. They think they're satisfying you like you haven't gotten value at this company and they're doing it in a way that helps them by keeping their bottom line the same. But it wasn't really what you were asking for. And we've had so many clients over the years talk about taking on more responsibilities, getting the title bump.

51:51But what they really were after what they really needed was that raise and they just continue to struggle in that role. So the assert piece, getting clarity on what is it that we're actually asking for after we've described it and after we share how we felt about it is where the rubber meets the road. And if we're not doing it, we can find ourselves walked all over. Totally 100 % agree with you. And just mentioning it now, and I'm sure we'll circle back to it, is just the importance of practicing this with your coach, with your therapist, with your spouse, friend, whatever, before you go into that situation because just getting the practice of uttering those words before you're in the higher stakes situation is really important.

52:36Learning how to say, I would like a raise and saying that and seeing how it feels when you say that, practicing that ahead of time is really important. So that's something that we say with all the interpersonal effectiveness skills is the importance of practice. And I would say just in relation to assert, that is especially important. But the last or the not the last, but the R in dear man stands for reinforce. And this is something that I think a lot of people forget to the reinforce is basically saying to the other person, what good will come their way? If they give you what you want? What reward will come their way?

53:16what natural positive consequence will come their way if they give you what you want. So I think in the example, I said something like, if I were to get this raise, I would continue to be such a valuable player. I would give it my all. I would really continue to add value to the company. Or depending on the boss and the situation, it might be, I think with this raise, I'll be more motivated to work even harder and to bring in more revenue and whatever it might be. So that is really for that to be effective, you need to know what's reinforcing to the other person and think about that. In other situations, when it's not work, the reinforce could be, I'd really appreciate it.

53:58This is really important to me and I would really appreciate you doing this. that when we're talking about our spouse or a friend or something, that could be a reinforcer. So it doesn't have to be. And then I'll pay you ten thousand dollars. In fact, we're not talking about bribes, but what matters to the other person and then highlighting how what matters to them matters to you in the situation. We talk through objective, but I think the second one, oftentimes we do care deeply about the relationship. And sometimes there are situations where maybe we have to say no, we have to draw a boundary, or maybe there's something that's happening that has created conflict in the relationship, and we want to repair the relationship.

54:39So what does DBT say for us in that situation? Those skills are captured by the give skills, which stands for be gentle, act interested, validate, and what we refer to as an easy manner. I think it's easy at times for us to forget how critical being or behaving gentle with another person is. Sometimes we can be, especially if we're overwhelmed and we've got lots of stuff going on in life, we can be curt, we can be short, and gentleness goes a far way, as does acting interested. I think in some respects, one of the most powerful things that I can do as a therapist, as a friend, as a son and brother is just paying attention.

55:34It is, I think people have such an infrequent experience that someone else is interested in them and what they're saying. So communicating that interest goes such a huge way. the next is validation and validation as shereen mentioned earlier is one of the core parts aspects of something that we both a skill that we teach in dbt and what we practice as therapists and coaches which is to communicate that what someone is thinking saying what they're feeling that it makes sense in some way. Oftentimes, people may have the experience that somehow what they're doing or behaving or feeling is somehow wrong.

56:19So this is a way of communicating, oh, I get that, that makes sense to me. Another form of highlighting the connection with another person. And the last is easy manner, which is people, for the most part, respond to, at times, a type of playfulness. Now, this depends on the context in the situation. Easy manner might not always be appropriate if someone is experiencing some intense sorrow. And in some conversations where it may feel high stakes, sometimes some easy manner can sort of short circuit the intensity and allow someone to feel more deeply connected to you. As we talked about earlier around mindfulness in the labeling of understanding of our own emotions, if we're not practicing that, it becomes very difficult to validate others emotions.

57:09If we've repressed them, if we've tried to push them out of our life, if we stayed only in the analytical mind. So this is an area where the wise mind actually really helps us because we've tapped into our own emotions. And now in conversation with a relationship that we care deeply about, even if it's conflict, even if it is something that you completely disagree with the other person on when we can bring in that validation and help them to see that we actually care about their emotions too, not just the objective that we have, the outcome, how we're perceived. It goes such a long way towards repairing that relationship.

57:42You're highlighting a really important point here, which is like validation does demand that we contact something in ourself that allows us to be curious about the experience of the other person. If we see other person feeling sad, then it maybe asks us at times to imagine how that sadness would live in us, how we would experience it. And so it is at once a can be a really challenging skill and also a deeply powerful and connecting one. Now, for our audience, the third objective, I think, can often be very challenging, too. I know for myself personally, I have people pleasing tendencies, which makes drawing boundaries very difficult, saying no, very difficult, tapping into my own self-respect.

58:27Sometimes my wife even says, hey, why are you putting aside everything that this is going to put on your shoulders just for this other person? So how do we tap into that self-respect objective when it comes to our interpersonal skills from the DBT standpoint? The set of skills that go with the self-respect piece of interpersonal effectiveness are called the FAST skills. So the acronym there stands for being fair. It's a clunky acronym. So stick with me. being fair, F, fair, no apologies. That's the A is apologies, but really we're saying no apologies. Stick to your values, which I mentioned before, and be truthful.

59:08So the idea here is that if you are in situations where, or in your life, you always prioritize the other person and how the other person feels, your self-respect is going to erode. Whether you're intentional about that or not, and that you're sacrificing kind of your own wishes and goals, and you're always acceding to other people's requests, you're going to have, you're going to start to feel bad about yourself if you don't already. So these are skills that are designed to help us recognize how we can improve or enhance or maintain our self-respect. So being fair to ourselves is like in this example of asking for a raise, it's recognizing, you know what, I have worked for a long time here without a raise.

59:55And this is a reasonable thing for anyone to ask for at this stage. That's a fair thing. And it's being fair to myself to ask for this. The apologies piece is something that I think is really critical is that we tend to apologize for things that we don't need to apologize for. Or if we do need to apologize, we tend to over-apologize and say, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. So for this, to have no apologies means not to say, I'm so sorry to ask this of you. I know this is not a good time. I know the company has been struggling recently, right? That's making apologies for your request, which will not feel good to you.

1:00:36So not apologizing for having an opinion, for having a request, for wanting something is important for our self-respect. Sticking to our values means asking for things that are in line with our values and going after that. So our values might be to make money, right? That could actually be a value that we have to be successful and to make money. A value might be to be a team player and to be a contributor. So that might influence what kind of raise I ask for or how much I push for that raise. And then be truthful means not to lie or make excuses. So in this case, not to invent something to say, oh, I've been really struggling at home with making payments.

1:01:27And that's why I need this raise. Because lies will sometimes people find that lies help them get what they want. But over time, lying and even little white lies over time will erode our self respect. We'll forget what we lied about, right? We'll get caught up in our own lies and we'll start to feel bad about ourselves that the only way we have gotten what we want is by lying. So we encourage people to think about ways that they can be truthful in order to get what they want in the situation. We really appreciate both of you stopping by and walking through all these acronyms. As I went through the book, I really enjoyed the illustrations too, to help really understand what was going on.

1:02:10But I think so many of us in these situations, one, don't recognize that maybe there's a skill gap here that I can overcome by thinking through and starting to put into practice. And two, hey, there's some clarity that could be gained from looking at this a different lens or a different view. And I think the book really offers these tools as a way to do that for so many in our audience, as Johnny said, who are analytical. So we really appreciate you walking through all those acronyms, giving us such great examples. Where can our audience find out more about the book and learn these real life skills that they need?

1:02:42The book is called Real Skills for Real Life. And we were really inspired by this idea of trying to get these skills out to as many people as possible. So we have made it as user friendly. We have these amazing illustrations by Jesse and we hope that people like it. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you.

1:03:14what a great episode and now comes the part of the show where we showcase one of our x-factor accelerator members take it away dave it was like the start of self-improvement journey and a lot of the concepts went so much i remember johnny even said this is going to take months to years to kick in to really get this shit and he was fucking right then you start like reading more and you start seeing things more you start like testing the waters with little ideas for me i lacked the confidence and i thought that like i was a shitty engineer that i could never get a job at a fang company or like a unicorn startup where i'm at now and like i was oh well i'll stay in my even when i moved from pnc and this was after auc i still stood in my little comfort zone but like i moved to another bank sure i was making like 20 grand more but it was still peanuts compared to what I'm making now.

1:04:02Once I jumped ship and realized, oh, it's just the same everywhere, just a little bit different processes and slightly different code base and slightly different architecture. Then I'm like, okay, I'll move again. And then that job really sucked. And I was only there for five months. And now I'm where I'm at. And it's like, well, shit, maybe I should move again. Really, it was honestly, for me, the biggest difference was the lack of confidence in myself to know that I can make it elsewhere. I felt like no one else would ever want to hire me because I'm just this like low value person. Like, why would anyone want to hire me?

1:04:37I'm lucky to have this position. Then versus the mindset after it's like, no, bitch, they're lucky to have me. And it sounds easy. That's a really tough switch of the mind. It takes a lot of time to do that. It takes like being too cocky or being too, I fucking go. And it's like, whoa, dude, You'd like slow down a little bit. Like when you have someone check you, it's like, okay, I need to scale back a little bit. Thank you for the kind words, Dave. And it was an honor and a pleasure working with you too. And good luck to you and all of your future endeavors. If you've gotten value out of this or any of our podcasts, head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show.

1:05:17It means the world to us and it helps others find the show. Until next week, go out there and make it amazing. I remember you You were a bad boy You threw your love away Like you were just a toy And you sold the world You're a song of a tragedy Cause you had your taste All black on the yesterday Yeah, but I remember you Oh yeah, I remember you It was a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad It was a way