Do You Know What’s Been Holding You Back?

December 6, 2022
62. Do You Know What’s Been Holding You Back?

Anne Grady has overcome some tough challenges in her life. She has great advice that will motivate you to finally start to tackle those issues in your life that have been holding you back.

Here are some important moments with Anne Grady from the podcast: 

At 6:52 How have you been able to overcome all the things that have happened in your life?

At 9:42 When you speak to a group are you talking to people who might have mental illness, or encouraging people to work on mental wellness?

At 15:02  What do you say to parents who might be struggling with the decision of whether or not their children need to be on medication?  

Here are some ways to follow or contact Anne Grady:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegradygroup/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnneGradyGroup/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/anne-grady-group/

Website: https://www.annegradygroup.com/books/

Important information from Homeowners Be Aware:

Here are ways you can follow us on-line:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeownersbeaware/

Website: https://homeownersbeaware.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-siegal/

If you'd like to reach me for any reason, here's the link to my contact form:

https://homeownersbeaware.com/contact

Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

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Thanks for listening!

Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

Today's podcast is about overcoming the challenges that we face in our lives and getting past things that are holding us back. How is your mental health? What if I told you there are things you can do to train your brain to help you have better mental health? My guest today has been through some challenges that hopefully most people won't have to experience, but rather than crumble under them, she found a way through it and is now in the position of helping other people overcome their challenges. And Grady came to the realization that it wasn't her problems that were keeping her from reaching her goals. It was her. Now she's using her experiences to help people become more resilient. She's known as a resilience expert. She's a best selling author, two time TEDx speaker, and has spent the past two decades working with Fortune 500 companies, associations, non-profits, government agencies, and school districts to teach resilience as a skill that can be learned, practiced, and honed. And after you hear what she has to say today, hopefully it will motivate you to finally start to tackle those issues in your life. That have been holding you back. I'm George Siegal, and this is The Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. Every week we introduce you to people who are working on real world problems and providing actual solutions. Tell Us How to Make. It Better is partnering with The Readiness Lab, the home for podcasts, webinars, and training in the field of emergency and disaster service. Anne Grady, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Anne Grady: 1:27

Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

George Siegal: 1:29

Now, the way I found out about you, it, it, it's pretty interesting. My wife works at Dell and you did a talk for them. Um, her group, it was, I think it was all through Zoom and she came up to me and said, wow, you have gotta try to interview this woman. And she told me all the stuff you've done and all the stuff you've been through. And um, so that's why I said I had to get you. And it is great to have you..

Anne Grady: 1:51

Well, the privilege is all mine.

George Siegal: 1:53

Well, so what is the problem that you have identified? And tell us what you're doing to make it better.

Anne Grady: 2:00

We have a mental health crisis and mental health is more than the absence of mental illness. So, you know, my personal story, I was deeply impacted by mental illness, but as I've gone through this journey with my health and some other things, I really have found that people view it as a luxury, almost like self-indulgent, to do things to care for yourself. But there are so many science backed ways to train your brain to improve your, not only your physical health, but your mental health. So I'm really on a mission to help one person at a time, one audience at a time, really make some common sense, practical choices that aren't overwhelming, that improve mental health and wellbeing.

George Siegal: 2:43

Now I went and watched your, um, your TED Talks and, uh, wow. I just thought they were great. You know, they were, I, I've watched a lot of those and some of them you go, all right, get to the point. You had so many interesting points along the way as you talked about what you dealt with with your son. Um, you know, let's touch on that just a little bit. Um, because as a parent, I mean, I have five kids and I'm thankful every day when something is not wrong, you know, you want everything to go perfectly. You had some huge challenge.

Anne Grady: 3:12

Yeah, so my son Evan, is severely mentally ill autistic and has developmental delays. I mean, you throw everything but the kitchen sink, oppositional defiant disorder, sensory integration, auditory challenges. But I think the most frustrating thing was none of those things were diagnosable when he was young, and so he was just this really cranky, irritable, unconsolable baby who got increasingly aggressive as he got older to the point where he tried to kill me when he was three. By the time he was four, he was on his first antipsychotic, and I was my, my husband left. His father left when he was just 18 months old. So I found myself with like this new consulting career and I'm, I'm a motivational speaker. I don't like that term, but I was speaking for, for companies and groups, but at home I was just really struggling to survive and, uh, His first psychiatric hospitalization was at the age of seven. I lived at the Ronald McDonald House for two months. His second hospitalization was at 10, his next was at 13, and at 15, um, we made a really tough decision to place him at a therapeutic boarding school in Idaho. There are just absolutely no services in Texas. Um, and so, you know, that journey has has been painful, but it's also been eye-opening because there are so many families that suffer in silence and don't talk about it because of the shame and the stigma, and initially, I wasn't even talking about his story as a, a force for inspiration. I was desperate for answers because doctors could not help me. So I would just talk to any group that I was in front of and would explain the symptoms and say, if anybody here knows anything , I would love your suggestions. And I found that people would come up to me after the, the session or the speech and say, you know, my, my daughter, my son, my neighbor, my uncle, my cousin, my brother, my sister. Thank you for sharing it. I never hear anybody talk about it. So it really became my mission to, uh, to make a difference.

George Siegal: 5:10

Now, you said something interesting, how you overcame it, um, by not blaming the problem on him, that you put it more on yourself. That, that you're the one that controls how you handle it.

Anne Grady: 5:22

I'd love to say I did that flawlessly, but of course, no. I mean, for a long time we didn't know what was wrong, so it just seemed, and even today, like I'll see him next week for Thanksgiving, even today, it can feel, um, It can feel very manipulative and very challenging. So looking at it through a lens of empathy and understanding, people behave the best they can with what they have. Um, that's really been a huge shift for me and a lifelong journey so far. And I'm still definitely on it. So I wouldn't say I'm, I'm there a hundred percent, but it's definitely given me, given me a new lens to be more empathetic to people and know that everybody is on their own journey and sharing their own sense of struggle. And you know, you can't control, I people say this and it's cliche, but you, you really cannot control a lot of life circumstances. So you have to learn to shift your mindset and develop the skills to be able to navigate what you can control because the rest is just noise. And if you let it overwhelm you and exhaust you it, it can take you to a dark place. And I've been there many times.

George Siegal: 6:28

Well, I think one of the things that's inspiring about you is, okay, so you, you have this problem with your son. Those things don't go away. It's not like they're just gonna give him a pill and he is gonna be better tomorrow, and then your husband doesn't stick around for it. So how do you take all that and then turn it in to be appearing to be so strong yourself and ending up having such a successful business, um, that you're involved with now?

Anne Grady: 6:52

Well, you know, and I, I wanna make it clear, everybody can look in and see a successful business, right? You can look at anybody and see what they project on the outside. But there were lots of days where I was crying on the floor of the bathroom, desperate for answers and searching for things. I think for me, it became all right. There's lots of people in a similar situation and nobody knows how to deal with it. So how do I take what I'm learning and not pretend like I have it figured out, but really share that in an effort to help other people, what we know is that like the number one way to feel better yourself, the fastest way to increase dopamine and serotonin, which you know, lead to happier, healthier mental health is to help other people. It's called a Helper's High. So, you know, between my facial paralysis and a tumor in my face and all the events that happened alongside that, and Evan. You know, I was fortunate enough to be able to afford therapy and to be able to learn and, and really gain some practical tools. And I have a master's in communication and I found that like a lot of the stuff I learned in school wasn't very helpful. So I really just took the things that I learned and started sharing them. And what I found is that those tools resonate with people and it, it's just allowed me to cultivate the skills and keep building on them. And, um, and I'm just so blessed to be able to do what I love and know that it's helping people in the process. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that I'm consistently strong and have it all figured out because nobody does.

George Siegal: 8:23

Sure. But it's nice to see somebody that, at least in their life, has overcome what is appears to be weighing them down. A lot of people might not even get as far as you did. I mean, when it, when you tell the story about how you went to Las Vegas and, and then. You were already facing having to have some, uh, some radiation, but then you fell and, and fractured your foot.

Anne Grady: 8:45

But it made one hell of a story.

George Siegal: 8:47

It's a, it is a story. That was a, that's a pretty unbelievable story. Most people would just sit there, curl up in a ball and give up. It's like, wow, what else can go wrong?

Anne Grady: 8:55

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but here's my philosophy, right? Like I, I don't think it's a matter of if we're going to encounter obstacles and adversity and trauma. It's a matter of when. So the way I look at it is I got all this packed into the first half of my life. So from here on out, it's just gonna be, it's gonna be smooth sailing. I'm just, I'm gonna manifest that knowing that there's gonna be bumps along the way. But hell, if I can survive what I've been through, i, I, I figure I can get through just about anything at this point.

George Siegal: 9:24

So when you're on stage doing a presentation or you're working with a company and you're talking to people, Who are you looking for in that audience, and what are you trying to get them to do? Is, is it, is it necessarily about mental illness or mental wellness? I mean, is it, or is it both?

Anne Grady: 9:41

That's why when you ask me what problem I'm trying to address, I say mental health, not mental illness, because it's really about improving wellbeing. I mean, the numbers are staggering. You've probably seen all the statistics. 85% of the global workforce is disengaged. Seven out of 10 people are experiencing a mental health challenge right now. The pandemic served as a catalyst, I think, to bring a lot of this to the forefront of people's mind. But when I'm speaking with groups, I'm looking for people who are ready to make a change. They're ready to try to find new ways to deal with the same challenges. And I think part of what makes me different, you know, you'll see a lot of speakers and facilitators who rah rah. Right? And they've figured it all out, and they have it all together. And what people wanna know is that we're all on this journey together, right? Like, nobody has all the answers. Nobody has the perfect life. You see on social media. Nobody can flawlessly balance the competing demands on their time and attention, and still have the energy to be sexy, fit, and fun, right? Like we're all, we're all just taking it one day at a time. And if you can learn, if you can share what you've learned, And what has helped and it resonates with just one person and makes a difference for them. For me, that's what it's all about.

George Siegal: 10:54

Has remote working made it the problem worse? Because I remember in a lot of places that, that I've worked in over the years, sometimes it can be a toxic work environment because people are all in the lunchroom or they're all hanging out together complaining and they all find things that they don't like about work and it can be a pretty negative environment. How has that dynamic changed with so many people not going into the office?

Anne Grady: 11:15

I think it's different for different people. I mean, social connection is the number one predictor of how long you live and how long and how happy you'll be. So for many people, they got that sense of connection and belonging in an office and the interactions that they had during the day. Whether they were, I don't wanna say toxic, but it, for many of us, even just these passing conversations in the hallway served as that, um, connection point that so many people that all of us really need. So some people who had a really, uh, dysfunctional team or toxic work environment thrived and they were able to focus better and really improve their life in the process. I think there are a lot of people who, um, it created this sense of seclusion and lack of connection and loneliness, which is really a challenge. And so leaders right now are grappling with, I've got all these employees who want flexible work life balance and they're in search of this and reevaluating their priorities. And do we force people to come into the office? Do we let people work from home? How do we navigate it when we've got people all over the globe and there's not really an easy set of answers. I think it's gonna be a while until we get it dialed in and figured out. But. I definitely think for some people the work from home made lives significantly better. I love working from home. This is my home office. I mean, I, I love it. Right. And, and

George Siegal: 12:43

I thought that was a set behind you, that's actually your office.

Anne Grady: 12:46

No, these are my drama llamas. Yeah. I figure if I'm gonna spend lots of time in this room, I want it to be fun and make me feel happy and feel good. But Exactly. You know, I think for a lot of people who became not only, uh, an employee or a leader, But also a teacher, a coach, a parent, a therapist, you know, my kids, uh, my daughter is gonna be 21. She graduated in the middle of the pandemic and I watched her mental health just, you know, go down the tubes like so many adolescents and young people. So there, there, there's upsides and downsides and I think people, it impacted people very differently. But I think at work, We thrive on those social connection and that on that, those positive experiences that we have, and they're harder to replicate. They're, it's possible, but it's much harder to replicate when you're working with someone in a, in a three inch box or who's not on video at all, and then you, it makes that connection even more difficult.

George Siegal: 13:41

Yeah. I think it takes a certain kind of person. Personally, I don't, I don't like it. My, I've only had two podcasts that I've done where I interviewed the people in person, which is what I've done my whole career. And I loved those cuz you're sitting there talking to somebody as opposed to being a thousand miles away. It's not the same thing, it's, you don't get the same connection.

Anne Grady: 14:00

No, it's definitely different. Um, but I think there are things that we can do in place of that to cultivate those relationships, but it has to be deliberate and it takes work. And so it used to be, you know, you just pick up a phone and talk to somebody and now every meeting is on camera and on Zoom and people are fatigued. Um, and so I think if we don't rethink the way we are living and working, and our daily habits, then we're in for the downfall of a lot of mental health and wellbeing.

George Siegal: 14:31

Now with the story that this, what you've been dealing with with your son his entire life, that's an example of where they probably would've been great if that had been caught early. At least maybe would've helped you. But a lot of times it seems like we use mental illness it's like an all-encompassing thing. Is it too broad a definition of it? Is there, are we giving too much medication to people that, that don't need it? I mean, it's a really tough balance as a parent to go, wow, this is the right thing to do, or not the right thing to do.

Anne Grady: 15:01

Yeah, I mean, it's such a hard question. Evan's been on 60 plus medications, right? And that's not what I wanted for him. I never wanted to medicate him. I want, I tried diet, I tried acupressure. I've tried, you know, a shaman, I've looked at spiritual healers. I, I've really taken every avenue. And even when he was on medication, tried all of these different things. I talked with a parent last night who's got a teenager in crisis and there's no set of resources that everybody has access to, so depend even, even if you're all living in the same state, there's just no central place where you can go. And so parents are caught between this rock and a hard place. You've got teachers saying, your child is misbehaving and they're not focused. Well, we've taken recess away, right? So kids need that outlet. They need to be able to exercise and be active. So the, the solution for everyone isn't just medication. There's lots of things I would try first, but when you're in a situation where it's either my child is medicated or they're taken away from me because they, where I am not safe anymore. Then I think there are times when it's appropriate, but yeah, of course we're overmedicating ourselves and we're self-medicating, right? People are drinking and and drugging and eating and doing all kinds of unhealthy things to try to ease some of that discomfort. But what I think has been helpful for me to understand, at least as someone who struggled with depression, my whole life is we're not supposed to be happy all the time. This happily ever after Bill of Goods we've been sold, sets people up for misery because we think when we're not happy, something's wrong with us. And the truth is, your brain doesn't care if you're happy. Your brain wants to keep you alive. So it's goal is to magnify negative experiences and min, minimize positive ones cuz the positive ones aren't gonna kill you. So we have to train our brain to work for us instead of against us. But it starts with the way we talk about emotions and the way we handle it as parents, because when our kids don't feel well or they're, or they're sad, we're like, come on, turn that frown upside down. You have so much to be grateful for. I wanna throw punch those people. The, the toxic positivity there is not helpful. Every emotion serves a purpose, and when you allow yourself to kind of sit in the suck and just feel it without trying to numb it, You decrease the duration and intensity of the emotion itself, but you also train your nervous system not to have this knee jerk reaction whenever you don't feel good and immediately have to feel better. And we learn how to process and cope with those emotions in healthy ways. So that it's not overwhelming, and that's really what leads to mental health. It's learning to experience a full range of emotions, to savor the good days and really internalize that because doing that encodes it into your brain, but it's also knowing that there are gonna be challenging times. The average person experiences five to six traumas in a lifetime. Now I'm an overachiever , so I have, yeah, you got 'em all in a couple over I'em, but you know, it's going to happen. And so when we look at other people's lives, I think social media also is a huge cluster because we look at people's perfect moments, right? And we compare our insides to everybody else's highlight reel and then wonder how they have it all together. And nobody does. Nobody.

George Siegal: 18:17

Social media is one big illusion. I have some good friends that post pictures all the time and, and they look like the happiest family in the world. And they came into town and they were fighting. The kids weren't good. Nobody was getting along. And it's like, wow, this is an illusion. You know? I see your happy snapshots, but I don't see you wanting to kill each other. Post some of those pictures.

Anne Grady: 18:37

Exactly. And nobody wants to post the crappy stuff. Right. We, we post the best moments and then everybody else compares their life to it. Yeah. And it, it's a huge cause of anxiety . And depression. It, it's, it, yeah. I think there are lots of benefits to it. It helps you stay connected, but one small strategy, instead of posting your own stuff, comment on other people's. Right. Engage in that connection by being part of other people's lives instead of making it all about you.

George Siegal: 19:03

I have one now that's worse than social media. My wife and I were at the lightning hockey game last night and they always are showing crowd shots and I said to her, why is everybody in these shots look like they're having more fun than we are? And we were having a great time, but there's always people up jumping and smiling and all this energy. And I was like, where are they getting that? What's going on in that section that we don't have an our section?

Anne Grady: 19:24

Yep, exactly. And we do that all the time. And those people are looking at the other people thinking the exact same thing. And so we don't, we, we just don't realize that that's what's going on internally in everybody's dialogue. Why does everybody else look like if they're having fun? I need to smile. I, I need to fake it till I make it, and I don't think that helps anybody.

George Siegal: 19:44

I made a documentary film a few years ago called License to Parent, and we weren't, I wasn't actually advocating licensing, although I, I, I think at some level it wouldn't be a bad idea because I think a lot of people become parents that probably shouldn't be. I said if you had to fill out a form like you were applying for a job, Would you have gotten hired as the job of parent? And I bet a lot of people would not.

Anne Grady: 20:05

Um, well, if you're adopting a pet, I know you just got a new puppy. If you're adopting a pet, you have to go through a much more rigorous background process than you do if you're having a child. It, it's, you know, I think it's sad.

George Siegal: 20:20

The only thing they really care about that I found along the way was they wanted to make sure the car seat was put in the car properly before we left the hospital. Nothing else. And I think that's insane. But the main takeaway is for me was we don't support parents enough. You know, we're quick to score other people for doing a bad job rather than trying to understand what they may be going through with their situation.

Anne Grady: 20:43

And I think there are so many parents who judge their success by how many activities their kids are involved in or whether they're the PTA president. And really children need time and they need unconditional love and acceptance and it, you don't have to be enrolled in every sport and every extracurricular activity. And we're putting so much pressure on these kids to get into a good school. And my daughter, In eighth grade was forced to choose the path that she wanted to be on for the rest of her life. Like she chose medical sciences in the eighth grade. What eighth grader knows what they wanna do with their life, and so this pressure to perform causes burnout in kids long before they ever graduate from high school. And then from there, we just launched them into life without very many life skills. You know, I, I never learned how to manage stress. I, I learned how to do algebra and calculus, and I learned about the war of 1812, and I don't use those things very often. I, I use, How do I navigate stress and trauma? So I think we have to cultivate this socio-emotional skill set for children at a younger age more consistently. And I think parents need to your point, resources to help them perform better because we're not taught how to do it.

George Siegal: 21:57

And the last thing they need, you know, if it's the crying baby on the airplane or the kid in the supermarket is that nasty look from somebody judging them. You know, my kids were melting down in a restaurant one time and we got up to leave and people were applauding. I mean, it's like, wow. Nobody had any empathy. Nobody understood. Wow, that's gotta be a crummy situation for them. I think that's lacking in a lot of situations, is empathy for other people.

Anne Grady: 22:21

It's tough. I remember being that parent. I was on the plane and I tell this story in my Ted Talk. There was a, a guy literally throwing Tootsie rolls down the, the rows of the plane to get Evan to be quiet. And I'm like, really? You, you think it's candy? That's, that's gonna make him feel better? And it. And as the parent, you feel shame and you feel embarrassment and you feel the judgment and the stares. And so I get not wanting to sit next to a screaming baby. I don't wanna sit next to that baby either. But I also know that the parent is mortified and exhausted and needs some empathy instead of the judgment.

George Siegal: 22:55

Yeah. Talk about the Pike Syndrome story. That was a great story in one of your TED Talks. The fish eating all the other fish and the lesson that, a painful lesson that it learned. I thought that was a great story.

Anne Grady: 23:09

Yeah, so there was a, an experiment at the Wolf Lake Hatchery in Michigan, and they take this carnivorous fish, it's a, a northern pike, and they put it into a tank full of minnows. And of course, as you would expect, when you put a carnivorous fish into a tank full of minnows, it eats 'em well, the scientists then encase those minnows in a, in a glass cylinder so the pike could see them, but it couldn't get to them. And it kept ramming its head against the glass over and over and over again, and eventually it just kind of settled on the bottom of the tank. And then the scientists released the minnows so that they could swim freely all around the tank right in front of the pike, and the pike did nothing. It laid at the bottom of the tank and it starved. And this has become known as the Pike Syndrome. While it might not be a glass cylinder or a glass barrier, we have all of these mental barriers, our fear, our self-limiting beliefs, the desire to not feel stupid or be judged. And so in our effort to look smart, we forego getting smarter in our effort to prove that we're worthy we don't always make the right choices. We're so worried about, you know, I, I think we spend a lot of time telling ourselves what we're not capable of, what we can't do, what we shouldn't try. And then we don't understand why we're not trying it or why we're not capable. And so those stories and those self-limiting beliefs are actually what drives our internal and our internal neurological and biological stress response. So if you can learn to shift those stories, you get a different result. The problem is most of us have read all these books about positive affirmations. You know, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough. Gosh darn it, people like me. And if you're in a negative place where you're thinking I'm an idiot, going to, I'm a genius isn't going to work, but going to a neutral message, like I'll figure it out. I figured out everything this far, I will figure it out. Those slight shifts in messaging, your brain will believe. And so if we can shift that internal monologue that we all have, my, and I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this, but my daughter's therapist calls it her shitty committee. Uh, we all have this like voice in our head that's reminding us, I shouldn't have said that or eaten that or done that. What's wrong with me? And we have to retrain the voice. It's just a mental habit.

George Siegal: 25:19

Do you think anybody can do that? I mean it sometimes when I hear somebody like you that has overcome so many things, but how do I flip that switch? Like what does it take for somebody to have that light go on and get it? That's what seems to be the tough part.

Anne Grady: 25:35

I wish I had the answer. You know, I still have the days, I still have the moments, I still have the the committee in my head. Right? So when you look at somebody and you see what they've overcome, that doesn't mean they don't still have daily struggle. It means that they're able to pull it together for periods of time, right? But I think anybody who tells you they've mastered it, Is full of it. There's it, it's a lifelong process, but the more you practice, the more it becomes your default. So any, any habit, a habit is just a cognitive shortcut. It's something you've practiced so many times that it's just become the, what your brain does. Like it's crossing your arms, right? Well, if I, if I had to cross on the opposite direction, it takes work. So your brain just takes any repeated thought pattern, any repeated behavior, any repeated task or action, and it converts it into a habit, a cognitive shortcut, so it doesn't have to work as hard. The problem is our, our brain doesn't know the difference between the habits that serve us and the ones that sabotage us, so we just have to train it in the right direction. But people are so busy questioning, why do I feel that way? That they don't take action. They wait for this magical motivation and inspiration, and it's kind of the other way around. You have to behave your way into better not wait to be inspired to get there.

George Siegal: 26:54

Do you remember some motivational thing several years ago called The Secret?

Anne Grady: 26:58

Oh yeah, absolutely.

George Siegal: 26:59

Yeah, I tried, I tried that outta nowhere. I got nowhere with it.

Anne Grady: 27:03

It's funny you mentioned that because I listened to a podcast yesterday about manifesting and, and how that really works. And you know, the, the idea behind the secret is the law of attraction. What you think about, you bring about, Well, if you keep track of your inner dialogue, you might say, I will be rich, I will be famous, I will be on this stage. But what we end up doing is manifesting the opposite by having the internal dialogue of, I'll never figure that out, how, you know, why does this person get it? Why can't I get it? So, I think there's a couple things. One, you have to manifest the right things, not what you don't want, what you do want, but you also can't just manifest the outcome. You know, if, if, if I'm, if I've never spoken at an event before and I'm, I'm going to be Brene Brown, right? Well, That's great, but you have to manifest the process to get there. So I have to visualize speaking in front of 10 people for free at a luncheon in the middle of a busy restaurant where nobody's paying attention to me. Because thousands of those are what get you to the big stages. But nobody wants to manifest that because it's not as glamorous. So I think it's about what you choose to manifest. And you know, there are a lot of people you, you have to truly believe it and see it and feel it and visualize it. You can't just think about it, it has to be internalized. I have a vision board, and when I was going through facial paralysis, some people call it a dream board, but I had a smile on it, like a giant smile. I had an avocado with a slash through it because that was the size of my tumor I had, you know, this beautiful nature on there. And I was like, someday I'm going to live in nature. And last year we bought a 20 acre ranch and it's like my happy place. Well, it didn't happen by accident. Not only did I visualize it, but I visualized the work I would have to do in order to get there. And nobody, you know, when you're thinking about authors right? You didn't see me an hour before this podcast pulling my hair out over an article I'm writing right now. Like I was literally an hour before I talked to you. I'm like, Ugh. I don't know what to say. Nobody ever talks about that. You have to visualize the process too.

George Siegal: 29:16

You know why? Cuz you're not gonna post that picture. No one's gonna see it.

Anne Grady: 29:20

Right? Right. I post the finished book and do you wanna see my new book cover and the journal that goes with it? And I'm a bestseller. Nobody wants to post them sitting at their desk going, uh, I don't wanna do this anymore.

George Siegal: 29:31

I'm sure. So there's a million things I wanna ask you, but one more thing I wanna talk about, because it's kind of, it's similar to what my last film, the Last House Standing was about. Um, and, and, and you talk about it in regards to people, and that's resilience. You know, with a house you need a resilient home, so it survives. So when the disaster blows through, your house is still standing and you have to put in the work before to get it to be like that when the storm happens. So how does resilience work in people?

Anne Grady: 29:57

Well, so a lot of people think you either have it or you don't. And it, it's, it's not like you're born with it like skinny thighs, right? You, you, you have to like really cultivate the skills and that's what it is. It's a set of skills, behaviors, and mental habits. So the truth is everybody who's listening or watching this interview is resilient cuz they're all still here. You've survived every crappy thing that's happened to you, and you're still here by virtue, that's resilience. But there are ways to cultivate skills proactively so that when you are bombarded with life, You have the capacity to absorb it and get back up faster. And, and so most people think, how do I minimize stress? But what really cultivates resilience is mental strength, and that comes from cultivating positive emotions. So it's training yourself to do the things that you know is going to be good for your brain. I, I don't love to exercise, but I do it because I understand that my brain needs it. I don't love kale and salad and salmon. I'd way rather have a cheeseburger, but I understand that that's gonna make me feel better. I don't wanna sleep. I wanna watch the last episode of whatever Netflix show I'm binging on. But I know that my brain repairs neurons damaged by stress when I do, you know, when we get busy, our social calendar becomes the first thing to fall off our list. Those connections are the most important. So, you know, I, I think if you can train yourself to make small shifts in behavior over time it doesn't mean that the bad stuff's not gonna happen or that you're not going to have the stress, but you have the capacity to absorb it more easily because you've built up those mental and physical resources along the way. Just like your house, right? If your foundation has a crack in it, you don't wait till there's a tornado. You fix the crack before the tornado comes so that when it does come, you have a structure that's solid. It's the same thing with our body and our brain.

George Siegal: 31:52

Except, I would hope there's more hope in people becoming more resilient because what I've seen year after year with people with resilience in their homes, most people live under the the strategy of hope. They hope the disaster's not gonna find them, or they don't think it ever will, and so they don't do anything. And then when it happens, they're shocked, and then they get mad at people for not helping them, and nobody's there to put their lives back together. So it's kind of, you know, you, you wouldn't want people to have to experience what they're going to experience with their home if a disaster hits.

Anne Grady: 32:21

But that's the, okay, so one of the resilient strategies is extracting meaning, how do I learn from it? Well, that, that was the beauty of the pandemic. Nobody wanted another global pandemic. Nobody wanted to be, you know, disconnected from friends and family. But I think it was a rude awakening to the fact that there are things we have to do in advance to build our mental strength, to be able to navigate stuff like that. So some people just started hoarding, hoarding toilet paper, but other people decided, okay, I need to have really tight connections with people in my life so that when I am trapped in my home, I have people to talk to. Um, so I, I think that sometimes it takes a really crappy situation to force us to get uncomfortable enough to change. And I, I believe people change for one of two reasons. It's either inspiration or desperation. And so my, my goal is to help people be inspired enough to change so they don't have to wait until they're desperate.

George Siegal: 33:20

So if you could give everybody one action item to try to put into, into play to begin the course of taking care of themselves to towards mental wellbeing, what would you tell people?

Anne Grady: 33:34

Oh, just one. Oh my gosh.

George Siegal: 33:35

You gotta give us a starter. Just a little tidbit. I know they can't just do it. It's not gonna fix everything. No, but how do you get Get 'em off the bench. Get 'em in the game. Get 'em to think about it.

Anne Grady: 33:44

Start looking for what's right in your life instead of what's wrong. Start really internalizing when you have a good experience, sit in it, soak in it. What it does is it retrains your brain to offset this natural negativity bias that we have. So whether it's a gratitude journal or a gratitude jar, or I practice gratitude while I brush my teeth, right? And so when I'm brushing my teeth twice a day, I think of three small little things that are going well in my life. Start your meetings at work with a simple question, what's what's right, right now? What am I proud of? What successes have I had? Because you can train your brain to start searching for what's right, and that offsets the stress response. It's not the other way around, but most of us are so busy catching all the red lights and the reason the person cut us off, and the reason that person snapped at me or didn't email me back. And what we don't realize is going back to the law of attraction, what you focus on, you generate more of that. That's not a magical law that that's, that's neurology. Wherever you direct your attention, that becomes your reality. So when I say stop thinking of pink elephants, George, just don't think of pink elephants. Why do you keep thinking of pink elephants? I told you not to think of pink elephant. Well, what are you gonna see? Right? So when you're like, stop feeling crappy, stop feeling stressed, stop feeling overwhelmed. Stop feeling negative. Your brain looks for the evidence to support that you should feel those things. So start looking for gratitude. Start looking for peace. Start looking for quiet. Start looking for friendships, start looking for volunteer opportunities, and, and that's when you start shifting what your brain scans your environment for.

George Siegal: 35:26

All right, so now you have Ted Talks, you have books. What's the best way for people to follow you so they can, uh, they can become fans of yours. Like, uh, like I have and, and my?

Anne Grady: 35:38

So my website is anne grady group.com and Ann has an E, but you can sign up for my newsletter on my website. You can find hundreds of free articles and videos. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel or follow me on social at Ann Grady Group. Um, or you can just do a Google search for resilience anne Grady and all of that will pop up.

George Siegal: 36:00

Yep. And I encourage everybody to watch those Ted talks. They were awesome. And thank you so much for your time. Uh, I'm gonna try to put some of this stuff in play. It's great advice and, uh, I appreciate you joining me.

Anne Grady: 36:11

Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me to be part of the show.

George Siegal: 36:15

Thank you so much for joining me on today's Tell Us How to Make It Better podcast. All the information to get ahold of Anne is in the show notes, and as I said, when, when, uh, she was with me, you definitely want to check out her TEDx talks. They are fantastic. If you have any questions for me, there's a contact form. I'd love to hear from you, anything you'd like to see in future shows, anything you'd liked or haven't liked in the past. It would be great if you would share the link to this podcast with other people and also become a subscriber, and all my social media contacts are in the show notes as well. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.