Psyched For Business Podcast Episode 6
Episode 6:
Positive Psychology - How We Can Flourish In Challenging Times
In this podcast episode, Richard Anderson is joined by Jackie Wade.
Jackie is founder of Flourissimo, and a positive psychology coaching practitioner.
In this episode, we cover:
✅ positive psychology - what is it?
✅ how to apply positive psychology to your business and life
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Episode 06 - Transcript
Voiceover 0:00
Welcome to Psyched For Business, helping business leaders understand and apply cutting edge business psychology principles in the workplace.
Richard Anderson 0:10
Hi, and welcome to Psyched For Business. Thank you for joining me. I'm your host, Richard Anderson. In this episode, I'm joined by Jackie Wade. Jackie is founder at Flourissimo, and she's a positive psychology coaching practitioner. In this episode, we talk all about the topic of positive psychology, what it is, and how you can apply it in business and life to get the most from your life and your work. I hope you enjoy the episode. Thanks again for listening.
So Jackie Wade, thank you very much for your time. How are you doing?
Jackie Wade 0:40
I'm doing great, Richard, thank you for inviting me.
Richard Anderson 0:43
Thanks so much joining all the way from France, which I understand you've had a nice time there for the last four months. And it's great that we can do this, isn't it?
Jackie Wade 0:50
Yeah, the power of Zoom. Honestly, one of the benefits of COVID is that we can work anywhere in the world and find our energies anywhere and still have these kinds of conversations.
Richard Anderson 0:59
Of course it is, yeah. So it's really, really nice thing. And it's funny because Jackie, you and I, and I don't know if you know this, but we've been connected on LinkedIn for some time. And I'm probably talking the thick end of 10 years, if not more, and I'll tell you where the connection initially came. I attended one of your sales training workshops through winning sales, I think 2010 2011, something like that. And I still remember - you'll not remember me because I was just, I was an attendee, but I do remember the course. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. And one of the big things I remember doing that supported me in my career in sales. But anyway, there you go. That's where the background...
Jackie Wade 1:32
That's the connection. Yeah, God you're bringing it back Richard, probably the Chamber of Commerce was it?
Richard Anderson 1:37
It was exactly the it was the Chamber of Commerce. It was my first job. I remember it, well thoroughly enjoyed it. But there you go. But you've you've, Jackie, taken a very interesting change of career or, or along those lines. But you've gone very deep in the area of positive psychology. And I'm really interested to get into why that maybe came about and what it was that got you interested in psychology after such a long career in just maybe working in sales, for example,
Jackie Wade 2:02
Let's call it change or transition. Yeah, I suppose, for the audience clarifying that. For 20 years, I was involved in sales, sales training, I had a very international global career in business development, you probably tell from the accent, I'm Irish. So I kind of left Ireland emigrated, lived in Germany, and most of my corporate career was very much in sales and business development and working internationally for organizations. And then when my kids came along, which there's three, that I think that was probably now looking back, that was kind of my first big transition, where I recognize that who I was, as a person didn't sit well with corporate life, and the ability at the time to be a mom, and to work in international business development, etc. There was a real dilemma for me around what that felt like what that looked like. So I set up my own business to take some control of my career. And I've been really doing that for the last, gosh, you met me 10 years ago. So for about the last 20 years, that was wonderful, but towards the back end of it. And if not the back end, because I'm still I'm still running winning sales, I still do training, but coming at it from a slightly different angle. Towards the back end of it, something started to not feel quite right. For me, I think with my positive psychology hat on now. It was again, this clash of values, it was a sense of working with organizations and being in situations where I just felt there was this conflict between potentially what boards wanted what management wanted, and then the people I was working with. And over a number of years, I just found myself falling out of love with what I was doing. And I guess, you know, it's also good to change. You know, I was doing that for a big period of my life. I'm in midlife, you know, and I think trying to think about the next phase of my life. There's a positive psychology term that I've come across, which is middle essence, which I love, which is almost like adolescence, but in middle life, it's about what's the next phase? And what does that look like? And who do we want to be now that we're growing up? So for me, that all came together, and it coincided a little bit with COVID. I was kind of on that journey anyway. And then COVID came along, and a lot of stuff stopped for me. And it gave me the opportunity to look around and think right, what do I really, really love and what interests me and - people. That's what interests me, I love people. I love working with people. I love exploring what makes people tick, what makes people not take and so you could call that psychology, you know, the psychology of the human being and it was just an area that interested me. So I kind of started looking around and I came across positive psychology and hadn't a clue what that was. I started looking at it, dabbling in it I did a course with Berkeley University in California called the Science of happiness again, I was a bit of Is there a science to happiness? This was all new stuff for me. But the fact that there is a science behind happy, why are some people happy? Why are some people not? What's the science? I found that absolutely fascinating. And when I'd finished that, I thought, right, I want more of this because I could just see so much unhappiness. You know, I think the world we're in, there's so much unhappiness, there's so much anxiety, depression.
Richard Anderson 5:28
That's often all we hear about isn't and what I love about the term positive psychology, and I know that we're gonna get into the detail of it. But it's nice to hear something talked about with the word positive, isn't it? Because when it comes to emotions and feelings, we're being told about negativity, or we're experiencing negativity and kind of flipping that on its head and thinking, well there is a positive way to look at things, it's nice - novel, but it's nice.
Jackie Wade 5:50
I think it's more than nice. I think it's a necessity. It feels to me at the moment, we're in this real challenging period in life, where we are being bombarded by cataclysmic events, going back to Brexit, and COVID, and Ukraine, and now everything that's going on with the politics in the UK, and it's hard to get through the day, I think, for many people without feeling absolutely overwhelmed. And so, for me, positive psychology is all about how can we flourish in challenging times. So it's not, you know, sometimes I think positive psychology gets a bad name for happy clappy Pollyanna, let's all be happy, and let's park the negative, but actually, it's it's embracing the dark side, it's understanding that life is full of tough stuff. You know, it really is, and that's life. But how can we, as human beings, develop the skills to cope and to be resilient and to stay well, and to flourish? So so I kind of feel with positive psychology at the current time, it's probably for many people enough to just focus on staying well and preserving our well being. And obviously, my passion initially is around human flourishing, and how can we actually thrive and ultimately, that's what I want to do through my business. But if you like, positive psychology is almost helping people not become unwell. Because normal psychology for want of a better word or your regular psychology is often fixing people who are broken, whereas Positive Psychology, the focus is, I guess, helping people not get broken in the first place. If I was to put it in a very, I'm sure there's lots of positive psychologists that wouldn't like that definition. But it's kind of, you know, in layman's terms, it's how do we stay well, and preserve our well being and look after ourselves, particularly in the current climate? So for me, it's not a nice to have it's an absolute essential way of living and being that I practice every day.
Richard Anderson 7:59
No, absolutely is I really liked this term that I have to say I've and I've said this on a previous podcast, with a lady called Amanda Mac and me when we were talking about mental fitness. But mental fitness as a term is something that I wasn't particularly or fear with, I feel like I am a little bit more now. But kind of working on your mental fitness as if it were your physical fitness, being equipped to deal with challenging times. And you talk about recent events, the war that's on you know, you've had COVID and challenging times will come up. And it's about how best to deal with that. I mean, you mentioned right at the beginning Jackie about it was almost COVID, that kind of set, you in this particular direction. And maybe you know, the way that you thought about COVID There, you thought well, actually, I know this is a challenging time, but it's put me on the route that I want to go down. And that's going to be thinking positively and thinking about the plus side of what's what's happening, and maybe using it to your advantage or to better yourself. And I bet there's a lot of people out there that have also used those challenging times. I mean, maybe through positive psychology, or certainly through positive thought to say, well, actually, yeah, we are in a very, very challenging time. Some people are dealing with this terribly badly, but let's think it Are there any positives here? And can I apply them to my life, I mean, I use the COVID lose a hell of a lot of weight, and maybe probably a bit too much by wrong, but I lost a hell of a lot at the time when I started running and exercising and all sorts of things. So I do think mindset is a huge, huge thing and being positive is massive, isn't it?
Jackie Wade 9:24
I think for me the word that's really important, is choice. I am conscious of using this carefully because we're both white middle class privilege, whatever that terminology that's bandied around you know, and I know some of us have more choice than others but I think knowing that all of us somewhere have a choice around our some of our emotional fitness and choosing you know, where we focus our energy and whether it's, you know, just take the simplest of things I worked in an environment for several years where bagel and plan office You know about 40 people in that open plan office, and it felt frowned upon to take lunch, you know, people use dash to the kitchen, grab a meal, get back to their desk, get back on the laptop, that was before positive psychology days. And it's not rocket science. But for me taking a half an hour to go outside. And it still might have been a Gregg's, it might have been the healthiest. But it was grab something and then sit in the park, or go for a walk or focus on something that energizes and then to come back to your desk. And I think just taking that little, you know, that's a choice that, you know, we're talking about working people, the choice to sit at your, you know, to get up and to work for 12 hours and stretch and just to be zapped at the end. And then to come home and be cross with your partner, your kids, your dog, your cat, because, of course, why wouldn't you be? So recognizing that we have some really simple choices in life. And as you say, practicing emotional fitness or agility, it's going to the gym and going to the mental gym can be something that you do before you go to work, it can be those 10 minutes, you know, the walk in the park, it can be in the evening, sitting outside, you know, in whether you have a garden, whether you have a balcony, whether you've nothing, but just stopping and thinking I'm alive, you know. So it doesn't have to be huge, big things that take tons of time. But because we've probably come across this Richard, like negative stuff is it's almost like weights negative is three times at least three times more heavy, you know, this research on YouTube, or Messi is famous, the three to one ratio, which some people have disputed, but regardless of whether it's exactly three to one, or four to one or two to one, negative stuff, it's like Velcro, it sticks. And when we have something negative going on, we ruminate and we get stuck in that pattern and it pulls us down. So to get out of that tar to just say stop, what we have to do is replace it with something that's beautiful or Johannes,
Richard Anderson 12:03
I fully agree. And I think that negativity almost breeds negativity and rumination breeds rumination. It becomes habitual. I fully agree with what you're saying, Jackie, there's there's almost no excuse to not get out for and think was Joe Rogan, I saw on another podcast, I was listening to a slightly more famous podcaster than myself, but so there's, you know, there's no excuse to not do 45 minutes exercise, whether that's just getting out in the fresh air and, and walking or and that's a choice thing. But I mean, how much of this do you think boils down to maybe a lack of awareness for people awareness that mental fitness is a thing and it doesn't just happen overnight, or by accident, you need to work on this, I feel that we're still probably probably still need to educate people that this is an important thing.
Jackie Wade 12:47
Yeah, and I think people prioritizing it. I think a lot of people know, it's important, but I think unfortunately, it's only when something goes wrong. It's like everything, you know, often we don't look at our diets until we're being told that we've got high cholesterol or where, you know, it's all of these things, you know, we don't reduce our wine intake until, you know, all of these things. Unfortunately, as human beings, we often need that crisis moment to have that wake up call. But there's so much going on at the moment around wellbeing. And and I think for me, the word well being, it's worth stopping and reflecting on what that word means. Because I think it's bandied about a lot. And I think organizations are playing lip service, a lot of them and you know, putting well being in their to do list or, you know, acknowledging that it's important, but what is it exactly, and if we stop and think well being, it's being well, and I think particularly in business, Richard and you know, this, you know, we're, we're doers, you know, we're involved in human doing, not human being, we mentioned about the entrepreneurial side of things, when we first met as entrepreneurs and as business founders. And as running of it, you know, we're focused on doing and striving and achieving, and this kind of habitual need to be on this what's called hedonic treadmill, you know, constantly wanting more and achieving more and growing more, that's a part of who we are as human beings. But actually, the being side has been left behind how can we be? How can we sit still and calm with ourselves and, or how can we be walk and just appreciate nature or, you know, that whole side of what Bing means I think for a lot of people, that's quite uncomfortable, it's quite uncomfortable to slow down or to stop and you know, those big maybe for some people too big existential questions. And I don't even mean to, you know, want to go off down that path, but it's that stopping and being with your family or being with your partner.
Richard Anderson 14:49
I don't know how you know how much of this aligns to things like meditation and mindfulness, but I know that that's always about focusing on being and being in the present moment and appreciating where you are and what doing without constantly having your mind gone a million miles an hour thinking about whatever the next thing is, and we've all been in commuted to work or whatever, where you can hardly remember the journey because you've been a million miles away and thought and one more, you know, what's my next meeting going to, you know, what's gonna happen in the next meeting? What's my next business project or whatever it might be? And when we talk about being, is it that sort of thing? God? Would it be meditation? Or would it just be sitting in being present with yourself or going for a walk and being mindful? This is where I am. And I don't have to think about anything or chew about anything. That's just Let's just enjoy the moment.
Jackie Wade 15:34
Yeah, definitely. Richard things like mindfulness and meditation, yoga, you know, when you talk about positive psychology, there's a broad range of what we call interventions. And, you know, some of them, they're not necessarily positive psychology interventions, but they're all things that are focused on allowing people to get comfortable with being with themselves. And as long as we're not, you know, when we're not comfortable with being with ourselves, being in the moment, we're uncomfortable with, we're not present today and being comfortable with who we're being we're either anxious about what's coming tomorrow, or later on in the day or next week, or we're ruminating on what was yesterday. So most of us spend our time either in the past or in the future. And so the past is gone, and, you know, ruminating or being depressed about or regretting, it's gone. And then the future hasn't happened yet. So, you know, being anxious and as human beings, of course, I do the same, you know, I can't stop myself thinking about wish I hadn't. But it's, I think it's the self awareness and catching yourself and being able to say, I'm human, I'm sat here talking to you, I have the exact same issues that everyone who's listening as and, you know, I didn't sleep great on that middle aged woman going through all the great things we go through. And I didn't have a great night's sleep, because I've had a conversation before I went to bed, suddenly, a little bit and so I struggled, but I was able to then stop and think right, what's going on here and actually meditate and meditate not only grace, you know, I've been to the Hindu Himalayas or wherever. And the Guru's it's, it's literally just sitting and breathing. And finding a can within me, that stops me from ruminating about the call, I've had half an hour of separating, stops me getting angry about, you know, all of that stuff. So, the being is learning the habits that allow us to stay in the moment and manage the discomfort, because discomfort happens, and we're going to have more of it. So we will have death in our lives, we'll have divorce, we have redundancy, we love bankruptcy, that's part of life. So I think part for me positive psychology and positive psychology interventions are around helping people giving people tools to allow them to navigate the challenges that are going to happen. And I think for me, that was a big lightbulb moment, because I think I thought positive psychology was going to help me be happy all the time. And instead what it's doing is allowing me it's resilience is being able to go through something difficult, but probably stay in that period for less time and bounce back quicker. Instead of sitting with it, you know, a thing that might have upset me for a day or a week or, and then I'd be angry with some you know, it's allowing me to kind of still go through the emotion, it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be afraid. You know, positive psychology isn't saying we shouldn't have those negative emotions. Negative emotions are powerful. They're human, they're important, but it's what we do with them. And whether we allow them to take us over and pull us down, or whether we have a way of finding some positive emotions to counterbalance then. So you've got the negative ones that are dark and heavy. So you need to kind of find some positive ones to counterbalance that, if you like. It makes
Richard Anderson 18:51
total sense. And it really works this sort of thing. And I've I've had examples in in my life where you find you know, you find yourself ruminating on something whether it might be at work, a difficult conversation, something that you have to do that's completely out of your comfort zone, and it's catching yourself ruminating the thing. And while these aren't helpful thoughts, let's think something more positive. I think you hit the nail on the head before Jackie, in my experience, when I've come across this sort of thing before it's about building the habit, isn't it because it's great to be part of the plan but mindful of things like doing meditation and being present in the moment but I mean, I'll give you an example. So I downloaded headspace app a few years ago and when I very first started evolve when it was just me as you can well imagine I know you've done this before but when you start a business and it's just you by yourself there's a hell of a lot of pressure on it was quite a stressful time and I was constantly thinking well what if what if what if I think one of the things that I did was download headspace I used it for a bit and got a lot of enjoyment from it. But then for whatever reason I got out of the habit of using it. But one thing that interests me a lot when it comes to we talk about positive and negative emotions. Why is it do you think that negative emotions seem to automatically become habitual, whereas positive emotions, I feel like you have to work on the habit all the time. But I don't know whether that's just to do with, you know, your defense mechanism or subconscious mind or something, but it'd be a lot easier if it was the other way around, wouldn't it?
Jackie Wade 20:14
I don't think so much of it is, you know, and I don't want to go back into that, you know, most of us have heard of this fight flight and to win within our nature, instinctively, these emotions are there to protect us. You know, we were born the Stone Age caveman analogy that we always talk about, about it's, you know, this idea that we needed either fight flight freeze, we needed, you know, that dinosaurs were coming out as, as the lions, tigers and bears, and we needed to be able to get that cortisol going fight them off. That was survival. But I think what's happening now is we don't have the lions and tigers and bears, although the kind of feels like that sometimes. But we still feel these, you know, we have these moments of stress. And then we stay, you know, that cortisol stays in our bodies, and we stay ruminating on stuff and we don't release it. And, you know, this is where we then end up with health issues around, you know, heart attacks, you know, weight gain pains, aches, because we're sat with these, I suppose what was meant to be short term emotions that would create, even if you think of anger, it's okay to be angry, because that will allow us to have that burst of energy that will allow us to fight a cause. But if we're angry every day with every person, then you know, we've got road rage, we've got really serious situations where people feel it's okay to kill each other or to cut each other up. So it's anger staying around, because you know, we're not able to let it go. So that's why we do need to practice the positive stuff. Because it's not coming as naturally, the kind
Richard Anderson 21:45
of brain almost working against us, we've evolved past the point where we need that Uber particular, we always going to need it, but we need it for very different reasons now than we did at one time after the show, you talked before about values and your values, maybe not aligned into other people's or the direction that you're going in, I'd be really keen to get into the topic of values, because I do find it interesting. So where this kind of values tie into all of this
Jackie Wade 22:11
is such a big question. Let me try and give my version of it, I think our values is who we are. And so again, we use the word often authentic self, or I often call from Shakespeare to thine own self be true, we have values within us that some were born with, you know, some that we inherit, if we look at as an online tool that people can look at Core Values in Action, bia assessment.com, that looks at you know, talks about values, and virtues and strengths, those words can get, you know, combine. But I think if your value if you have a core value around, and one of my big values is love, you know, I was surprised when I did that, that my number, I think it came out and I went well is over value, I thought was better than that. That's not a value. That's just who I am. And that's exactly it. So for me, to feel loved, and to love is a huge part of who I am. And so for me if I find myself in situations where and I use the word love in a broad context, but if I find myself in situations where I feel people are not being treated well or not being loved by their boss, you know, and I, again, I use that in a very liberal way. But that feels wrong to me, and no amount of kind of going well proffered and we need to focus on, I still think there's a human and kind and loving way for us to deal with other human beings. And so I find it really important for me to be in environments where that's respected. And my second value is gratitude. So again, for me, me being grateful and expressing gratitude is a very important thing for me. But I also need that back. Because it's all it's this kind of, how do we work? How do we not work? Well, and so for me, I see that in the workplace, my dissertation is on mastering and the reason I'm doing it on mattering is there's huge evidence around, you know, people in the workplace feeling like they don't matter. They're not valued. They're not seen, they're not heard. And so we have things like the great resignation, or now we're talking about sign of resignation. And some of that comes back to and I've seen it time and time again, the minions are the normal everyday people in the workforce, not feeling that what they do is appreciated or seen or heard, and people at higher levels in management or even within the team actually being able to say thank you, I value you. I appreciate you in my business rather than particularly in sales environments. You know, it's a very throwaway culture. It's very much you know, two three years targets continuously rising, wanting more and more and more, and people probably listening who are in sales will recognize it. If they're in sales person, if they're managing sales really well that's the nature of it. But you know, this never ceasing kind of need to stretch people beyond looking for that last kind of flow. Ah, and so therefore, for me, those values around love around gratitude are huge for me. And so when I'm in an environment where I can't express those, or I don't feel it's present, I really struggle and start floundering. So again, that comes back to positive psychology. And if we're working in environments, as business owners or as employees, or if we're in environments where our values are being crushed, but we can't express our values, or when it's not aligned with our values, we end up floundering, and we end up getting sick, doing less having days off, not feeling committed. So understanding the people in our business and understanding their values and their strengths and recognizing them and being able to play to them, you know, and that's in relationships as well, it's a huge part of why relationships go wrong, because people don't feel seen, they don't feel heard and understood. And people in relationships often have very different values, and there can be a values clash. So it's important in relationships to talk about, you know, perhaps, we don't do the marriage counseling until the marriage is breaking up. But we should be looking at it before we even get into the relationships. Are our values aligned? Do we have an alignment in our values that will allow us to have a relationship that there's harmony? Identify answers, you
Richard Anderson 26:17
get those answers and answers really well, the reason I'm interested in values is because we do a lot of discussions around the whole topic of values, and how that aligns with company culture and how you develop a company culture. And I think the reason that I'm interested in this topic is because I know what my values are, and funnily enough, I did the VI Strengths Assessment, I'd encourage anybody who's listening to this to do it, because it's a really interesting exercise. But we haven't officially documented the values here at evolve, but it's something I'm really keen to do. But you mentioned it before there, it's in relationships or or across the business, it's important to find out what the people's values are. And I'm really keen to do this across the team. So it can't just be okay, well, what is Richard Anderson's values, and therefore, everybody needs to adhere to these, and then it will automatically become your values, because that's not how it works. But it's so important to get the, I suppose the founding team, or the first few members of the team all bought into the values, subscribing to that completely. And essentially, that's going to underpin your culture moving forward, isn't it and staying true to it?
Jackie Wade 27:18
I think more than just buying into the values, it's, it's co creating the mind?
Richard Anderson 27:24
Absolutely.
Jackie Wade 27:25
I think what happens, and I've seen this time and time again, where organizations, you know, they bring in an agency and external agency, and we'd like the brand exercise as well, those two things, just the theory of the work, I'm not nothing against people, hiring external agency to do either of the above, but it becomes an exercise that comes from the top 10 comes it's external, and then it works with the leadership team, or the management team. And a lot of the time is presented to the rest of the people and and then you're looking for buy in culture is how we do business. How do we do business here, particularly in a founding organization, in those first few months, years, you know, how do we want to do business here? And then how do we hire in people that sit with those values? So we co create and collaborate around what that looks like. And then, you know, we grow and expand to reflect those cultures. And I think, certainly working in foundership, in founders with several years. I think that's one of the challenges. How do founders keep, you know, most of the time when somebody sets up their business, it's with a real desire to make a difference. And to make something better, you know, whether that's a product, whether it's a service, you decide to set up your own business, because you see something is broken, that you want to fix, or you want to make it better, and particularly young people, you know, they have this passion around, I work for a long time at Newcastle Uni with young founders, and they want to put things right. And then people get involved externally, you know, they're looking for funding, and then they've got to do this pitch and then leave. And so many founders, in my view, end up going off track and being forced to kind of veer down a path that they never really intended, but to kind of get funding or finance or whatever that is, and they lose, they lose the values, they lose sight of the values and their original purpose in setting their business up.
Richard Anderson 29:15
And then the passion might end up winning or you know, the dynamic completely changes. And yeah,
Jackie Wade 29:20
yeah, and then they find, you know, sometimes it's five years later, sometimes it's 20 years later, you know, there's a lot of research around that kind of midlife phase where people you know, think, oh my god, what have I created? What is this business about? In the meantime, I've lost my marriage. I've lost my kids. I don't connect with I've haven't got friends because I've been so focused on building this monster and feeding this monster and actually looking around and going, Oh, crikey. What have I created? I'm not saying that happens to everyone, I'm sure with lots of people, they're thrilled because they've got, you know, achieved huge big things. But and so I'm not saying this applies across the board. But I think it's really important in business to be clear on your why. And to me going back After the question, you asked about your values, your values to me or your what, you know, why am I doing this? What are my values around this? And how can I almost like reviewing your business plan on a annual basis? Or whatever it's reviewing and looking at your core values and your why and has that changed? And are you moving away from that? Are you moving towards it? And hence, advice you seek? And you know, people are always happy to give you advice. But does that align with who you are, and what you want?
Richard Anderson 30:28
Because one thing's for absolute? Sure If that changes, you're going to find out about it at some stage on you. And you're probably going to have a little bit of negativity, when it comes to think about, well, what am I doing? How's this change? Why is the dynamic changed? It's a very, very interesting topic. So just while we're on the subject, journey of founders, because I know that you do a lot of work with founders, when you look at positive psychology. How does positive psychology connect with founders? So how can it be used with founders?
Jackie Wade 30:56
Yeah, great question, Richard. And if I'm being really honest, I'm working on that. Right now. I'm developing, I'm talking to a few different universities, and I'm looking at developing a program for founders to really focus on their, I'm going to call it psychological capital. And I think that's the word really, because so much of founders focus is on the business and business capital, you know, cash flow, raising capital, we kind of started to talk a little bit more about human capital and recognizing that on the balance sheet, and social capital, how we network and how we build our social network. But I think the psychological capital is really interesting for founders of psychological capital in positive psychology, we talk about the hero model, and AGR Oh, and hero stands for the haters for hope, the ease for efficacy or self efficacy, the ability to steer your own ship, are as for resilience, and always optimism, so psychological capital really looks at those areas as founders, but I would go a step further and not even a step further with it further, I'd go step backward, and say, it kind of encompasses the things that we have talked about already, for me, wellbeing, and the founder prioritizing their well being and prioritizing, you know, we've all seen it, and we've all done it, and you know, that kind of 12 hours, 15 hours, nonstop. And we live in a culture where that's embraced and that there are definitely times when that's required, you know, we're giving a pitch, or we're up against some deadline, and we need to head down and work through the night, etc. But that's not sustainable, and we burn out. And we create a culture within our business that's not sustainable. We have people in our teams that come in often young people that are afraid to say, actually, this doesn't work for me, and they're looking at the founders and thinking we need to, I have to live like that. And I know a number of founders that really struggle with their mental health and, you know, their stress levels. And so I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier, remembering that you are the single most important thing in your organization and minding you, is your biggest job and responsibility. And doing that. And, and partly that's going to the physical gym. You know, usually founders are quite good at the kind of tough stuff, usually they'll pound the pavements and run etc. So I've gone to the gym, or, you know, do these big things, but actually taking time out to relax. And what's interesting, there's a model in positive psychology that's called the broaden and build theory. And it looks at the upward spiral and the downward spiral. And without getting into it, there's tons of research that tells us, if we sit still and calm, and go into a place of positive emotions, or a place of or gratitude, or, you know, whatever that calm space is, we are much more creative. Creativity thrives when we give ourselves space for to thrive, and living sometimes, because binders are in a perpetual agentic forward, you know, pace, it's sometimes quite hard to kind of sit back and actually take stock and be reflective and be creative and find alternative solution. So, so I think for founders, recognizing the importance of their well being, and recognizing what that might look like for them, how they find time for their own well being, how they found time for their, you know, their team in the early stages, values, what are their values? What is their why, why did they set that up? Why did they go down this path in the first place and making sure that they don't get diverted by people who may have their best interests in heart or may not have their best interests? You know, the the interests of the CEO and founder is not always aligned. So again, my advice is be careful when you're getting into bed with you know, and is there a values alignment there, because sometimes young, inexperienced founders chase the cash and are very grateful for wherever they can get that from. So Again, you end up with a misalignment. So wellbeing looking after that finding the time to prioritize that values, your why, and then potentially the hero or, you know, looking at all of those elements, particularly self efficacy, this this, you know, taking control of what's going on, and resilience, looking at how we stay resilient and how it's a tough, tough, tough gig, running your own business. So you need to find, you know, resilience is something that we say founders, or you know, people, entrepreneurs are naturally resilient people, are they naturally resilient, some are, but some have to work at it. And I think, again, looking at different tools within positive psychology to help build resilience is a big part of what I do when I'm coaching founders.
Richard Anderson 35:44
I mean, I love this stuff. And I have to say, I would have been a brilliant candidate for it. I'm probably still it still wouldn't be but but five years ago, I remember Utah, right, the beginning, there's almost, I guess, need among some entrepreneurs, and I guess I wasn't maybe one of them. When I started the business, then I had to work 12 hour days, every day, you know, I couldn't lift my head or be at the detriment of the business, if I did, and whether it was at the detriment of the business, or whether I just thought that that was the right thing to do as a founder, I'm not sure yet. But there's this, the certain actions that I took, and that was one of them that I really regret now, because it would have been infinitely better. If I just worked a normal kind of eight hour day, and then taking more time for myself. I mean, when when I started the business, I think my son was like three months, my firstborn, and I really regret not going out for more walks with him and taking advantage of my wife's maternity leave and things like that, because I was starting the business. And really yet, of course, the business, it managed to survive and, you know, get past those times. But I don't think I think it was in spite of that not certainly not because of work in the extra hours. So I love this this positive psychology stuff, I have to say,
Jackie Wade 36:49
there will be lots of people that will think very differently. And I think it depends on your goals. You know, I think if you are trying to grow in scale a business quickly if your goals are to make a shitload of money, build a business sellers, all of that stuff. So it depends on your goals. But I think sometimes as business startups, etc, we focus on those big ambitious scaling businesses. But actually, the reality is there are a lot of people, particularly post COVID, who are choosing to set up a business and they're not setting out to set up a huge high scale, high growth business, they're setting out to be independent, maybe to just be by themselves. And lots of people would dish that and say, I remember been told, Well, you're not really an entrepreneur, because we don't have any team. And maybe I didn't, but I worked with tons of other businesses, my objective was to help others grow. And I deliberately didn't want a big team, I didn't want to hire loads of people for me, I'd set my business up to give me work life balance, so I could, you know, I left corporate life, so I could work with my, you know, be spend more time with my kids. So why would I give that up to run a huge business and take me away from? So all I'm saying is I'm not dishing across the I'm saying, Be clear why you're doing what you're doing.
Richard Anderson 37:59
I think it's awareness change. And that's, that's the key thing it's been aware of, of these things that there are different ways of doing this. And terminology I've heard this week a few times is all about life, work balance. I think that's why I put the you know, this this post COVID stuff, but it is really, really interesting. So, Jerry, I can't believe the time we've done around 40 minutes, there are there abouts, which I've thoroughly enjoyed. I want just to kind of wrap up by giving you the opportunity to talk a little bit about Clarice Amol. And how you how you support or how you can support your clients and also how people can reach you if they want to get in touch. Yeah,
Jackie Wade 38:31
well, no big pitch, I think people have who've listened to the podcast will get a sense of who I am. And what's important to me, when I set up my business, this new business I called it flourish symbol FL o u r is s IMO. And that's made over the two words flourish, and EC Mo, which is Italian for to be at our most flourishing. So my passion, and everything I do is about helping people to flourish. And I do that in a number of ways. But you know, really, it's about coaching and working with people to help them explore where they're at and where they want to get to. It's going into organizations and understanding how can I support a flourishing, thriving culture and organization that's working with business owners, it's working with leadership team to explore what is flourishing look like for our business? And how can we potentially embed some of the tools of positive psychology across the business? So we create a business where, you know, going back to what I said about my dissertation where people matter, you know, what people feel they matter and that's where we, as business owners feel we matter not just to our business, but to our families and to society, or, you know, to communities. So, so I love you know, for me, I've kind of developed a model around mattering, which is going into organizations and helping to explore how does a business owner make a difference in matters? How do they look after themselves? They say I matter? How do they look after the people in their team so that the team feels they matter and how do they say Do the relationships with the children and their family so that they feel they matter not. And that sounds like a big ask. But there are ways once again, coming back to your point, once we're self aware, we can work on that. So that's my passion. It's a work in progress. You know, this is, you know, my journey is I'm on this journey, and I'm evolving. For me, everything I'm doing right now is organic. It comes from a space of hearing and understanding what's happening in our planet in my human space and my community, particularly in the Northeast, and how can I make a difference? And I'm open, I'm open to working at who I work with how I work with those people. And and, you know, my purpose and passion going forward is to make a difference, and to help in this space of flourishing and wellness. Yeah, it's to make a difference and to be a light, you know, I feel there's so much darkness so, so much darkness out there. If I can bring some light into an individual or an organization's being done. That's what I'm about.
Richard Anderson 40:56
I love the work you're doing. You're incredibly passionate about it. And that certainly comes across and I've thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. Really appreciate you making the time and looking forward to catching up.
Jackie Wade 41:05
Thanks for the opportunity, Richard and good luck with podcasts.
Voiceover 41:08
Thanks for listening to Psyched for Business, for show notes, resources and more visit evolveassess.com
