Episode 148: Being One Whole Person: Building Human Resiliency To Be Your Favorite Self Wherever You Are With Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe
Ready to unlock the secrets of resilience and handle anything life throws your way? Join this episode as Amy Vetter sits down with Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, an award-winning author and scholar, who takes us on an inspiring journey through her life and research. From overcoming personal hardships and a transformative car accident to transitioning from a high school dropout to a university professor, Dr. Hanley-Dafoe shares her powerful insights on resilience, career transitions, and balancing personal and professional roles. Discover her five key findings on human resilience and learn practical strategies for thriving amidst change and stress, all while exploring the vital importance of belonging, perspective, acceptance, hope, and humor.
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Being One Whole Person: Building Human Resiliency To Be Your Favorite Self Wherever You Are With Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe
Welcome to this interview with Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe. Robyne is a resiliency scholar and multi-award-winning author. She specializes in resiliency, navigating stress and change, and personal wellness in the workplace. Robyne’s work connects research-informed practices with everyday applications that are realistic, universal, and sustainable.
During this interview, we discuss her parents’ examples of hard work, being open to your gifts, and how that affected her journey and life. Through her hardships and recovery, she began studying resiliency and human performance. During this interview, we will share with you her five findings on human resiliency and how to achieve it for yourself.
You’re going to love this interview and have so many actionable takeaways to be able to implement into your own life. Please like and share or forward this to somebody important to you and to whom you think this could be helpful. Remember that as we think about these topics of resiliency, it’s all about the energy that we create. That energy we create is contagious to the people around us, so being intentional and learning these tools can help not only ourselves but the people we care about most.
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Welcome to this episode of the show. I am so excited about this episode with my new friend Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe. Robyne, would you start off by giving us a little bit of background on yourself and then we’ll get started?
Dr. Robyne’s Journey
I’m so excited to be able to connect with you and your audience. My name is Robyne. I study human resiliency and performance. I get to work with groups all around the world thinking about resiliency and well-being. I also happen to be a mom of three teenagers, which keeps me on my toes and keeps me learning each and every day. I appreciate being able to have these conversations with people about resiliency, creating these livelihoods and our lifestyle, and how it all works together to create these opportunities to be of service and to show up where we’re needed.
It is awesome to have you. I met Robybe in 2024 at an event and immediately was so intrigued. The work that she does is so aligned with the type of learning that we try to put out in the world of mental health, being aware of how you’re feeling, and having the courage to go on that journey. She’s got all that data to help us, and we’re going to get to that. We’re going to start off learning about you. Maybe you can give us a little background on where you grew up, what your parents did, and your childhood.
I grew up in a smaller town outside of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada. Both my parents were hard workers. My mother was a nurse in the nursing field. My father worked in television. He became an entrepreneur early in his career. My mother supported my dad at different times and seasons, which I remember feeling was cool when I was a kid seeing these different roles of how households and livelihoods were created. I grew up and things were great. I was very fortunate to have a solid upbringing where we talked a lot about integrity, hard work, being open to finding our gifts, our talents, and our skills, and taking whatever direction we would find would be a good fit.
When I got into my adolescence, I got sidetracked and went off the rails. I had a dark season for many years, even to the point of dropping out of high school, navigating addictions, and a lot of the things that teenagers often get lost in. What was quite pivotal for me was there was a pretty significant car accident, which was this turning point, and then realizing that my way through this dark experience was going to be through education. Education is how I built a comeback. I went from a high school dropout to a university professor and finished my doctorate. I had a pretty wild pendulum swing that went from going through a pretty dark season to coming on the other side of it.
Going back a little bit, when you talk about resiliency, we do yoga teacher training and have had a number of nurses come through who are burnt out. It’s a very hard profession as far as they’re not the boss but they’re the ones coordinating everything. They’ve got long hours. How did you notice your mom navigate that career and be able to raise a family and support your dad in his dreams?
What was special about how my mom engaged with her career as a nurse was that when my brother and I were very little, she worked in a hospital. It was a traditional nursing setting where there were high levels of burnout and not a lot of agency, yet being that frontline person for families and patients, which I remember her sharing was challenging. Also, the shift work wasn’t ideal for her in terms of how she felt like she was able to be her best in the profession.
She transitioned into what’s called community nursing where she would support persons who were doing their best to stay at home. She was what was called a visiting nurse. She would go to people’s homes under the program that was called the VON, which was the Victorian Order of Nurses. What was amazing is she found a way to stay in her field, which was nursing, but in a way that worked around her children’s school schedules.
I remember my mom would get into her uniform and she would drop us off at school. She would work all day and then she would pick us up. She had flexibility with the type of way she chose to pursue nursing. That was a huge advantage for her to be able to support her family. We always felt the priority was us as children. She was family-first focused. She also found a way to still be of service as a nurse but in a way that fits our lifestyle.
It’s interesting you say that because there are breaking points in everybody’s career. I had one of those as a CPA being a firm partner. When I went through the journey, it was similar to your mom where I realized I was serving my purpose as far as helping small businesses. That’s why I got into the profession, but I had to pivot. A lot of people run away when things don’t feel good and then sit in the muck because sitting in the muck is hard and being able to evaluate as a researcher of what’s happening versus quitting everything and walking away.
Career Points
You’re right. It’s quite interesting. There’s lots of amazing research that talks about what we call exit career points. Often, we see that at different points. For some people, it’s that 5 to 7-year mark where they realize, “This isn’t for me,” and will choose to leave the field despite all of the years invested, whether it be the education or those practical skill sets invested. One of the things that I know even for myself is when I hit that wall at a few different critical points in my career, it wasn’t that notion that I wanted to leave the field. I had to find a different way to be able to engage with the work that was more in alignment with how I wanted to feel most of the time.
You’re right. People abandon ship when they’re like, “This isn’t for me.” Sometimes, we have these visions, these ideas, or almost like these boxes we get ourselves painted into to think, “This is the only way I’d be able to do this particular skill or this particular profession,” when there’s a lot more flexibility than we originally give ourselves credit for if we choose to look for it.
I love that you’ve researched this. How many people exit completely or pivot? What have you seen in that research?
The research that’s coming top of my mind to me was around education. What we were seeing in education is that they would abandon the field completely. More often than not, they felt that their only role was as a “classroom teacher” and they didn’t necessarily see how they could continue. In that particular research, the majority of them were leaving the field altogether. We also see that it's very prevalent. We see this in healthcare professions. We see it in different types of professional practices where the majority will leave versus exploring different ways of still being within the field but in a way that’s better aligned with their values.
This is so much a piece of the work that we do, which is why we resonated with each other so fast. I even see it in yoga where someone will be like, “I can’t sit still that long,” or “That’s not me to do that.” These pivotal points in our lives are times to figure out where we’re not aligned and where we’re off, rather than giving something up that could have possibilities.
When students ask me how I got to where I am, I have no idea.” I was open to shifting and pivoting when I needed to when it didn’t feel right anymore. It’s having that awareness and observation and then allowing yourself to feel bad. The thing is if you go to another job, you take yourself with you. What are the recommendations that you give people in those instances who have to do that work?
It’s multifaceted. One area of this is the idea that sometimes we are forced into change not by choice. All of a sudden, we have this amazing awakening while we’re sitting back one morning and having our cup of coffee and we’re like, “I should do this radically different.” A lot of times, we’re pushed or forced into it, whether it be a difficult boss, a health issue, a change in family structure, or whatever it might be like.
Rarely do these big changes happen in a proactive way. They usually happen as a reaction to something that’s going on or that something isn’t working. We get forced or pushed into these extremes where all of a sudden, we have to figure this out. It is recognizing that a lot of times, it’s not our first choice, but it’s a choice that ultimately is going to benefit us in a pretty great way if we know how to navigate that season of uncertainty.
Human Resiliency: Rarely do these big changes happen in a proactive way. They usually happen as a reaction to something that's going on.
One of the gentle encouragement I offer people is to see if you can find somebody who has gone through this. Often, we try to struggle by ourselves. We think that a resilient person or a stoic person will do this on their own. I remember at my last major career transition point, having this moment where I looked to be like, “Who else has left the university who has full-time, permanent, guaranteed employment with benefits and pension?” I had it all except the fact that it wasn’t working for me.
I remember having this significant conversation with my oldest son who at the time was coming up to his fifteenth birthday. We were sitting around the kitchen table and having a chat. I had a no-good rotten day at the university. It was the fourth difficult boss that I’ve had. I kept thinking that once a new boss comes in, it’s going to get better. You think that it has to improve. It didn’t work out that way.
I was sitting there having this conversation with Hunter and he said to me, “Mama, when I was little,” and I loved that a fourteen-year-old was reflecting on his childhood, “You said I could be anything I wanted as long as I am willing to work hard and if I put in the effort, I can do anything.” I said, “Yeah.” He then said, “Why can’t you be anything? You’re a grownup. You’re willing to do the hard work. Why are you staying in these situations where you’re so unhappy?” At that moment, I was at this critical point where I realized I love being a researcher and I love the field. However, doing it in the traditional way in the academy was not working for my family and me.
What I did is I looked out there and said, “Who else has bounced back from a career when they leave the university? Who else is out there who maybe has tried this before?” I was so fortunate because I had someone in my world, Dr. Greg Wells, who has left the university who is full-time, permanent, and has all of the golden handcuffs.” The first thing I did was reach out to be like, “How do you do this? What’s life like after you leave this security?” Being able to surround yourself with at least one person who’s had these conversations before is a huge way of taking some of that hard-earned wisdom so you don’t have to do it all by yourself.
It’s important. I remember hiring an executive coach and he was confused about why I was hiring. He was like, “Your career seems fine.” I said, “Yes, but I’m not feeling right. I need to explore it.” I wanted a third party that had no skin in the game that wasn’t just going to be like, “You should do that.” The interesting thing, because I have a music side and an art side to me, is when we did all the tests, art and music came out. It wouldn’t feel like work. The numbers came out and 50% does feel like work.
I realized, “I have all this experience. I’m still passionate about helping people, but if I help people in the music industry or I was part of the music industry, would it feel better?” I did that. I started researching what it’s like to work in the music industry and was like, “It probably wouldn’t feel that good.” It’s good to go through that process of making sure whether it is still going to be what you think it is as you said. You don’t want to get to that point where you leave too because you’re like, “This isn’t it either.”
What helps when we start to have those conversations is thinking about what the priorities are. What is it that you want to feel most of the time? How do you want to interact? How do you want to do the work? One of the things that I realized quite quickly was that I wasn’t so concerned necessarily with what the exact work was or who the audience was. For me, what was such a big driver was flexibility. I wanted that flexibility and that agency to be my own boss.
I was willing to take the risk of uncertainty. I was willing to take the risk of not having everything mapped out and having an HR department and all the things. I was willing to take that risk because of the feeling of wanting the freedom to be able to show up at my kids’ sporting events and the freedom when I want to be able to do a good workout in the morning and maybe log on at 9:30 or 10:30 and not be a big deal. What are some of those feelings or those variables that feel like non-negotiables?
A lot of times, it’s not about the work per se. There are so many different iterations of it. For me, what was the biggest barrier and why I was feeling so smothered, trapped, and unhappy had to do with the control and other people telling me what I could and could not do. It’s not that I have issues with authority. I respect authority 100%, but I realized that I had missed out on most of my children’s childhood for almost a decade because I would’ve needed permission to leave campus to go watch a track and field meet. I didn’t want to live like that any longer.
Having a new boss wouldn’t have fixed that. When you’re sitting there and thinking if something else changes, it’ll help, it’s the work you have to do. Probably seeing that example with your mom was one that helped guide you as well, seeing that she was able to pivot and be able to do those things with her family.
It was with my father as an entrepreneur as well and having his own television production company. My dad had clients and worked for all these different organizations, but ultimately, he was the one who said yes or no to the project. There were a lot of examples in the early ‘80s of entrepreneurial spirit. It’s not talked about like it is now where it seems like everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, an influencer, and all the things, which is amazing. Back then, it was pretty different because of the media and television production.
My father’s background was in the arts. That wasn’t another career that necessarily was talked about. It was significant what I grew up with with modeling and those examples that were in front of me. It was also critical when Hunter challenged me like, “Why can’t you do something that you love?” because I realized this was so important. It was that moment where I was like, “Am I going to model what I teach about resiliency and being brave even in the face of adversity or am I going to play it safe?”
It’s what comes out of the babe’s mouth. You don’t realize how many times you say something until they say it back.
It’s that notion. He followed that up because I did push back saying, “I do this because I want to create stability and safety for you and your brother and sister.” I remember Hunter saying, “You got to bet on yourself. No one will work harder to make it possible for us to grow up with security and safety. It’s not in this institution. It’s not in this collective agreement or this pension plan. It’s you. You are the one who’s going to make sure we’re always okay. We bet on you. We want you to bet on you too.” It was significant to have a 14 or 15-year-old be able to challenge me to step into that uncomfortable place to see what my potential could be there.
Human Resiliency: We bet on you; we want you to bet on you, too.
I have a similar example except a little different. For a lot of women out there, especially women who are tuning in and have demanding careers, you’re always judging yourself. Even your shift was judged, “Am I being there enough for my kids?” For him to even give you that advice, you were demonstrating things to him that you didn’t even realize he was learning. That makes your relationship unique. I was always comparing myself when I was seeing moms that were at home and being like, “Am I doing as well as them? Do they wish I was doing something that I’m not doing?”
I went through this period of time, this crossroads, and then I was thinking about going back to college and becoming a fashion designer. That was where I was. It was right before I had this opportunity to take on a different corporate role that was exciting. Before that, I was telling my son that I was considering it. He said, “What does that mean for our house?” I said, “We’ll always have a house to live in. If we have to move to a smaller house, we’ll move to a smaller house.” He was like, “Would it have a pool?” I was like, “Okay.” You don’t realize how much they appreciate the stuff that you’re doing too. You underestimate it. I know it’s financial, but it is giving them the life and the experiences that they’re able to have that maybe they wouldn’t. It was funny.
You’re right. It’s interesting, I appreciate that notion about comparison because I know that when I was teaching at the university, I felt as though I was supposed to teach as if I didn’t have young kids. When I was home, I felt this pressure that I was supposed to parent them as if I didn’t work outside of the home. You couldn’t win.
At work, I felt like I was supposed to be a full-on academic. Don’t talk about your kids because you’re this scientist. When I was at home, it was like, “I should be making homemade baby food. I’m supposed to be going to all of these things.” I was like, “I can’t win in either of these.” I realized I was going to stop. I’m not going to get into the ring. There’s no point.
There wasn’t a way to find this middle ground until I created a different path where all of a sudden, it wasn’t us or them or these two opposites. It was this way to have what we call in psychology true integration where I was able to be who I was as a mother, a scientist, a professional, and a person who was contributing to the livelihood and lifestyle of the children in a way where it was one whole person, versus splitting off or parceling off of ourselves that we do so often in this work.
Being One Whole Person
It’s so important to be one whole person no matter where you are because that’s when you start feeling off. You start blaming your outside circumstances, versus what you need from within.
It was interesting to note about all these different roles and responsibilities. I was talking to one group of people and they said, “What’s your morning routine?” They were curious about my morning routine. As somebody who studies stress management and well-being, people often want to know, “What do you do?”
I shared my morning routine, which is very basic and simple, but that also means it’s easy to do. It doesn’t matter where I am in the world. I could be consistent with it, which is where you’re going to get the best return on your investments in any type of well-being program. It isn’t necessarily what you’re doing. It’s the consistency of how you’re doing it.
I shared that with this group and one woman said to me, “Don’t you feel guilty for taking that much time for yourself every morning?” I had a moment and responded without thinking it through. I said, “I feel guilty if I yell at my kids. I feel guilty if I’m short with my husband,” or “I feel guilty when I know that if I do these things, I’m in such a better head space, physically, emotionally, psychologically, all of it, to be a present parent, a good partner, and a good daughter. I feel guilty if I don’t do the things that I know work for me. I do not feel guilty about looking after myself so I don’t end up down that way.”
It was this interesting notion. A woman said to me after, “I always feel so guilty if I am short with my kids.” I’m like, “I feel the same. That’s why I don’t do those things. This is why. I choose to be consistent in my morning routine because it makes me a better parent. I’m a better partner, a better entrepreneur, and a better instructor. I do better when I take care of myself than if I’m pouring from that empty cup.”
Human Resiliency: I do better when I take care of myself than if I'm pouring from that empty cup.
You’re going to have to share what your morning routine is.
It’s not that big of a deal. I try my very best. I have learned that I am somebody that consistency compounds for me. I wake up, grab water, and get outside. Even if it’s snowing, cold, or raining. It doesn't matter the weather. I always go outside for a 30-minute walk. I come back in, have my coffee, and do a little bit of intention setting. I find that that is the key practice wherever I go.
When I’m home and not on the road, I make sure I incorporate harder physical activity because I enjoy what it feels like. It’s one of those things where I’m not trying to achieve any form of perfection anymore of having to get X amount of workouts in. I make sure that at least 2 or 3 times a week, I’m lifting heavy things and I’m making sure to stretch out those muscles.
I wake up, drink water, and walk with my dogs, which makes it a lot more enjoyable. I listen to my favorite podcast. I do this morning routine where I physically get outside as soon as possible, and then when I come back, I have that coffee, do some intention setting, and map my day. I find it makes a world of difference for me.
Becoming A Scientist
Tell me about how you became a scientist in the first place. Is that what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Absolutely not.
What did you want to be?
When I was little, I was fascinated with dinosaurs. I had family that lives in Western Canada where they have some of the largest dinosaur research institutions. It wasn’t this wild idea. It felt plausible that I could go to Drumheller and study dinosaurs. At first, it was a bit dinosaur-related. I also competed as an athlete. Thinking of something to do with sport in my future was something that I was curious about, but at sixteen, my whole life went off the rails. Education was how I built that comeback.
What I got motivated by and curious about was how it was, for example, that some people give up when they’re in a hard season of their life versus the people who were able to get up. I didn’t know at the time that I was building a career around human resiliency. As my career unfolded, I realized that it very much was looking and seeking information from myself to understand, “How did I survive this catastrophic car accident? How did I overcome addiction?”
I was self-motivated to try to learn about the psychology of the underdog or the psychology of somebody who has been in that dark season but was able to bounce back. I didn’t set out to be a scientist by any means, but through inquiry and curiosity, it very much led to that field. Through education as an instructor or as a teacher and learning psychology, it all started to braid together to create this pretty cool career.
How did you get yourself out of addiction, or why? What was the pivotal point for that?
After my car accident, it was very much a moment of realization. I go into a lot of details in the book. I was rescued. A person risked their life to save my life. There’s something that happens when all of a sudden, you realize that people put their lives on the line to save you. It was also how my family stood by me, and my mother especially was so instrumental in my recovery, that I felt this need of having to pay it forward.
It was doing a lot of relationship repair and a lot of work and figuring out how I could move forward in a way that honors not only what I had gone through but also the people who stood up when I needed them the most. That was pivotal for me. I’m so mindful that part of the work that I do, if we were to boil down all of the science and all the research that I practice, very much comes down to the notion of hope as a strategy and hoping for a better future, and then working towards what that could look like.
To follow up with what you said before, hope is a strategy with consistency. I’ve been around dreamers who never do something. You can have a dream and then you’ve got to create the steps and the consistency to get there.
We often talk about the idea that certain emotions are very fleeting. We hope that there’s that steadfast undercurrent of hope throughout it. It requires that motivation, for sure, but also that discipline for follow-through. What contributed as well to my getting on the right track and moving forward was the field of psychology I chose to study, which was behaviorism. That gets actionable. It's a very instantly actionable focus of learning habits, tactics, and strategies that we can put into practice. Moving from that theoretical into that action or that dreamer and what it is that it looks like to move forward was a help as well.
Human Resilience
Maybe you can give us some insight into some of your research and what you found on this.
Lots of big ideas. One of the things that we found was super crucial with human resiliency was we found that there were five variables that made what we saw the biggest impact on a person’s ability to weather difficult seasons and difficult experiences. The first was a sense of belonging. People needed a home team. People need that one caring, consistent person in their corner who is worth fighting for or that person is going to be your encourager or that cheerleader for you. We know that one critical person makes all the difference in somebody’s life to be able to withstand difficult times.
The second we learned about was this interesting idea about perspective. It was about understanding how to critically think and problem solve, but also how to feel your way through the world. There was this amazing alignment between people’s heads and their hearts. Sometimes, the greatest delta could be between someone’s head and their heart. Your head has an idea but your heart is like, “I’m not ready.” People who can honor the emotions and be able to have that connection, and the synergy between the two are important.
The third one we came upon was the role of acceptance, recognizing that we have to work within our controllables. We can want things to be different, yet we can’t touch the past. We have to build a future based on the lessons learned from the past. That degree of acceptance was crucial. The other two were a wee bit of wild cards. I love these. We learned about the power of hope as a strategy. Hope very much is this through line that we have to believe and trust that better days are ahead and that there is a big bright future we can go after.
The fifth and final variable was humor. We found that resilient people were pretty funny. Yet, it was a bit of dark humor. It was a little bit of HR violation-type humor. They would use humor as this way to create breaks. What I mean by that, for example, is when you laugh, your body releases a natural tranquilizer. For that moment in time, your pain receptors are blocked. That doesn’t solve your problems, but what it does is create these micro-breaks or moments of relief where people can choose again and show up in a consistent way. What we discovered in our research was belonging, perspective, acceptance, hope, and humor seemed to be the five variables that made the biggest difference.
It’s interesting some of the things you’ve talked about, even in your own addiction. Those are big questions I’ve always had because as a family, you can go through the same experiences. For some reason, I made different choices than other family members. The one that you said, power of hope as a strategy, no one has taught it to me, but it was in my head every morning like, “I’m going to get through this. It’s going to be better.”
I don’t know why no one taught me that. I feel like I was born with it because other family members weren’t. You wonder what that difference is. Is it something that you can’t describe or research? Is it your soul? What is it that allows you to look past the situation you’re in and be resilient to that situation to envision a better future and keep working toward that?
You’re asking an amazing question. I subscribed to the idea that there are some tendencies or undercurrents in our personality and our temperament that make some of these variables, specifically hope, a little bit more workable. However, ultimately, it’s this notion that even if it wasn’t present in a direct lesson, the absence of hope, for example, would in itself be a lesson You’ll see people giving up perhaps, or you’ll see people not taking risks or trying. The absence of that skill is enough to put that skill or that concept somewhere in your head and your heart. What you decided is that you were willing to take action. The question is how do you have these kids where one kid grows up quite resilient and another kid goes off the rails and never comes back?
It’s the same experience.
The reality though is when I reflect back, I grew up in a nuclear household where I had a mom, dad, and an older brother, but the brother didn’t have the same parents that I did in terms of years of experience. My parents had four years extra experience with me than they did perhaps with my brother. Even though it feels like the same dynamic, there are some variables that are moving.
These are parents who now have four years of experience. In their four years of experience, as we went into adolescence, I probably got way more freedom than my brother did because my brother very much was toeing the line, didn’t ever chalk at a turn, and followed all the rules. My parents gave me way more freedom and flexibility than probably I could manage.
I was coming to the equation with ADHD, impulse control issues, and a learning disability, so I was bringing certain variables to this interaction. My parents had their own set of experiences that they were bringing into it too. I don’t fault-find or blame, whether it be my own ADHD, my own learning disabilities, or my parents’ experiences or lack of experience. The reality was this was the ecosystem that I was trying to navigate. All of a sudden, you put me with a group of peers who weren’t necessarily making great choices. It was a perfect storm.
That’s a very interesting thing. For me, it was a little opposite. I was the oldest as well, but the years I was alone before I had other siblings were better and then things shifted in the family. I might have had more security in myself because of that. In our generation, there wasn’t as much exposure to underlying conditions as there is now. At least you know what you’re dealing with, and then how do you modify based on that?
When I was in elementary school, no one was talking about girls with ADHD especially. No one was even talking about learning disabilities, so I was labeled as not very smart. I was labeled as a wild child. People keep telling you over and over again, “You’re not very smart. You’re not really good at this school thing. You’re going your own way.” All of a sudden, you find this peer group that wildly accepts you for not being smart in school. Their expectations of me were appreciably different from my peers. It’s this recipe where these were not things that we were talking about.
What’s quite fascinating is when I look at my experience, hindsight is 20/20. One of the things that I do a lot of work is supporting families, groups, and organizations. We have a different set of challenges that we’re facing. Especially for our teenagers and for children, what I’m mindful of is we’ve lost this capacity for this threshold of frustration. What’s happening now is people aren’t comfortable with any form of frustration.
Human Resiliency: What's happening now is people aren't comfortable with any form of frustration.
I had my own unique challenges as an adolescent. The unique challenges that adolescents face have a lot to do with the fact that they’re living in this instant grab-and-go culture where any sixteen-year-old is a millionaire on social media. We’ve lost that sticktoitiveness, that ability to work, be frustrated, and tolerate frustrations.
Also, the differences of opinion.
There are different challenges. Every generation has their own unique circumstances that they have to navigate.
Acceptance
The other thing that I thought was interesting that you said is the role of acceptance. That’s one thing that I’ve seen in people that recover like you have, but the difference is they keep regurgitating in their head what happened in the past and they can’t get out of it. It’s like, “That’s not your now.” Once you’re lucid, you feel bad about those things. It ends up creating your experience all over again and it goes on repeat.
How do you help people? Using an example you said, because I talk a lot about belief systems, little belief systems are that you’re not smart, which then drives habits, behaviors, and everything you demonstrated. You were lucky to be a learner and come out of that. What if you kept that belief system of, “You’re not smart,” that’s ringing through your head?
We have this notion that we have to let go of those certain parts of our past that no longer serve us. It’s realizing that reframe of, “I wasn’t smart in certain situations where I didn’t have the right support.” We go back. It’s not that we can change it, but we’re able to reframe it and reprocess it. That’s the goal around integration. I am recognizing part of me wasn’t very smart in those situations and struggled, yet there was a part of me that was always underneath that had this steadfast belief like, “I do have something about me that’s unique. I have skills, talents, and gifts. I haven’t found the right way.” There’s a lot of unlearning that has to happen in that process of acceptance.
We have a tendency in our culture to very much define people by the worst things that they’ve ever done or the worst things that they’ve ever experienced. What happens as somebody who has gone through some pretty difficult times is letting go of judgment not only against myself but also against other people in general. I very rarely have strong opinions on anything because I always know that there’s more than meets the eye. There’s more going on that most of us will never be aware of.
In showing yourself empathy, what happens is it can flow through you. If I want to be empathetic towards other people’s struggles, I have to make sure I’m holding empathy for myself. For example, I hear people say often, “I should be happy or grateful because I have a roof over my head and food on my table. Who am I to have a bad day?” The reality is if you’re drowning in 2 feet of water or 10 feet of water, you’re still underwater.
We have to give ourselves a break. The more that we give ourselves a break and show empathy and compassion to ourselves, then we’re able to show it more to other people. The reverse happens when we don’t show ourselves empathy and compassion thinking that we’re saving it for the people who need it. Ultimately, what happens is we cut off that energy source and we have none to give.
Human Resiliency: We have to give ourselves a break and the more that we give ourselves a break and show empathy and compassion to ourselves, then we're able to show it more to other people.
Steps To Building Resilience
In your research, what are the steps or remedies? How do you help people be able to move past this and be able to do these five things that you talked about?
There are varying degrees of where people are starting because nobody ever starts at the same starting block. Everybody has different experiences and a lived story. What’s really important is to do that snapshot of it. How are you feeling most of the time now? How is it that you want to be feeling moving forward? I can give you examples.
If you started the conversation by saying, “What’s something you want to change about yourself?” I’ll hear people say, “I’ll be happy when I lose these last 10 pounds. When I lose 10 pounds, then I’m going to be happy.” I know people who have lost that 10 pounds and they’re still unhappy. I’ve heard of people who left difficult jobs and they bring themselves to the next job and they’re still unhappy.
Instead of thinking about these concrete objectives at the end, you should be asking yourself instead, “How do I want to feel?” Let’s say you want to feel more energy. Walking every morning for 30 minutes if you want to have more energy and feel more energized becomes a much easier behavior versus, “I want to make sure I’m trying to lose weight.” That’s always in that place of deficit.
Focus on how it is that you want to feel and ask somebody, “Do you feel your best or your favorite self when you are riddled with guilt? When you’re trapped in the past or defined by your mistakes, do you feel like your best then?” Many people will say, “That’s not when I feel like my best.” My question will be, “When do you feel like your best?” They’re like, “It’s when I take care of myself, when I get a good night’s sleep, when I’m connecting with loved ones, or when I’m doing meaningful and purpose-filled work.” It’s like, “Let's put more of our energy there than our energy in the past which we can’t change.”
It reminds me. I’ve been working with an executive, doing some coaching. I asked the question, “What brings you joy?” and they couldn’t answer. They struggled with that question. It goes back to how you would want to feel. If there’s an emotion, you can’t even tap into what would create that emotion and what activities and what things you do that help you.
They went back and did all this research because it drove them crazy. They couldn’t figure it out. That's how we went back and said, “Any activity that doesn’t meet one of these criterias is a no.” You have to start creating boundaries in your life. You’re never going to feel 100% of the time. None of us have that perfect day, but if you could get 60% or 70% there by making hard choices of your yeses and your noes, that is a way to help you to feel the way that you want to feel.
I love that example. That’s beautiful. The other question I also love to ask people when I’m doing some of that one-on-one work is, “How are you feeling when you’re your favorite self? It doesn’t have to be your best self, your wisest self, or your joy-filled self. What’s your favorite self?” Often, there’s this child-likeness that goes with it where it’s carefree, spontaneous, playful, lighthearted, and all of these high vibrational emotions. High-vibration research is not woo-woo. It’s science. We know emotions carry a frequency. The lighter the emotion, the lighter the frequency of merriment, joy, opportunity, and possibility versus grief, helplessness, and sorrow, which are so dense in terms of emotional frequency.
Tapping into your favorite self usually gives us a wee bit of a window into what some of those higher vibrations are. It gives people a starting point. With that notion of your best self or your wisest self, there’s pressure. There are stereotypes that get put in versus, “What’s your favorite self? What are you doing? Who’s around you? What activities are you engaged in? What’s going on?” is usually a neat little window into that as well.
It reminded me. I was listening to a podcast or something. They were talking about how most emotions have to come out of you. Happiness might be a smile or a laugh. If you’re sad, the tears come. Anger is one of those emotions that don’t necessarily have a way to come out in a safe way. Sometimes, people are trapping that emotion which makes them feel negative and so forth rather than finding safe ways to let that out so you can feel better.
It’s so amazing because there’s so much science that backs this up in terms of those emotional frequencies, especially for women because many of us were conditioned or groomed that we weren’t supposed to be angry or we weren’t supposed to experience anger. Imagine a school example with little ones. If a little boy is mad and he kicks the chair over, it’s like, “Boys are being boys.” If a little girl did that, it would be like, “She’s out of control all the time. What is wrong with her?” There are these different thresholds.
The other piece that’s interesting about what we would call more of that dark or dense energy, and Freud talked about this a lot in his work, was this idea that just because we’re feeling anger doesn’t mean we need to express it in an angry way at the source of anger. It’s one of the reasons why watching competitive sports is such an amazing release. It’s releasing those endorphins in that adrenaline.
Sometimes, people will be like, “Why is that person so engaged? They get so worked up about sports,” or whatever it may be. It’s that competition. That competition is another outlet in a positive way for some of those emotions that are harder for us to express, especially when we have this unwritten rule book around what women are supposed to feel and not feel.
Rapid Fire Questions
I could keep talking to you, but I got to be able to close this up. I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. I want you to pick a category. It’s either family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
I’ll do family and friends.
Things or actions I don’t have that I do want with my family and friends?
More travel.
Things or actions that I do have that I want to keep?
Team huddles. We get these amazing one-on-one moments or these small group interactions where I have a good pulse on how the people in my world are doing and I love that.
I love that you called it a huddle. Things or actions that I don’t have that I don’t want to have?
We have very good lines of communication with the people in my inner circle. I want to make sure that nothing is going to interrupt that we have that approachability and we can connect. It’s keeping those lines of communication as they are. I don’t want anything to interrupt that.
Things or actions I do have that I don’t want?
What I’m ready to let go of is some of the guilt. I’m one person, one heart, and one head and I can only be in one place at one time. Sometimes, I apologize for things that are outside of my control. It was our daughter’s grade twelve graduation and the weather wasn’t good. I was like, “I am so sorry that the weather isn’t good,” as if I had any control whatsoever of the weather. It’s this odd guilt I sometimes carry on things that don't necessarily serve me. I’m ready to let that go.
Is there anything that you want to make sure people take away from this conversation or anything we didn’t discuss that you want to close with?
First, thank you for the opportunity to be here and have this conversation. I’m happy to let folks know we have lots of open educational resources on the website. Go there if you’re looking for more information, tools, and ideas. Also, we have lots on social media to keep the conversation going. What’s so important is that people have that inner circle of being able to talk to people who have similar views in terms of really wanting to do good work and be of service. I’m here to help. Thank you for this opportunity to have our conversation and for many more that will come.
Thank you so much for being here. There are so many great takeaways that I’m sure people are going to be able to take action.
Take good care. Thank you too.
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It’s time for my Mindful Moments with this interview with Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe. It was such an incredible interview. I love her. We met this year and immediately started connecting because we both love this topic and going deeper into it, and being able to share this with the rest of the world because education is what helps us grow. The more we learn, the better we can become not only for ourselves but the people around us. Robyne is an example of not only researching it but living it. If you’re around her, she gives off such great energy and care for others. Reach out. Look at her website. Read her books. It could be helpful to you.
During this discussion, we started off talking about the lessons she learned from her parents about hard work and being open to your gifts. The thing about hard work is hard work doesn’t mean that we have to work hours. It means that we are putting the right amount of effort in the right times of our day with the right people who could be at work or at home. It’s how we shift that.
She was talking about her mom’s path of how she went from nursing at a hospital and pivoting her experience to going to home nursing so that she could have the flexibility that she needed for her children at home but also still have the career that she desires. That brought us to talk about her research around exit career points and what causes that to happen.
It’s important that when we struggle at work, it isn’t necessarily the work itself. It could be our environment. There could be something not aligned with our personal purpose. We don’t necessarily take the time to learn about our own personal purpose, what drives us, and what gives us energy, and make sure that the work that we do aligns with that.
When we talked about her research, she said that many times, this exit point comes about 5 to 7 years after you start your career. I hear this all the time when people have gotten into the field that they wanted to get into and maybe it wasn’t what they expected. It’s those points that are the hardest time to pause and be still so that you can observe what it is that is not in alignment with the things that you want to be doing or that will fill your cup or make you feel like you are living your purpose.
It’s important that if we want to make a pivot or a change, some of the things that we talked about were first navigating this journey and not jumping quickly. We want to make sure that we find someone who has gone through this journey similar to us. If there’s something we want to do, we look for somebody who has done it as well that we respect and talk to them about their journey so that we are properly prepared for the reality of it.
Sometimes, we think it will be better because it’s new. A lot of times, as we go through change, we find we’re in the same situation because we take ourselves with us. If we’re not clearly aligned on what our purpose is, what we want, and how other people have been able to achieve that shift, we go in without information or without learning. When that happens, we can end up in the exact same situation or even worse.
In a couple of the things that she talked about, the first is what are the priorities? What are the things that are most important to you that you achieve? It may not be in your work. It might be in your life. She was saying that she wanted to be there for her kids’ games. It wasn’t necessarily the work that she was doing that was out of alignment, but her life balance was out of alignment. If your current workplace isn’t willing to talk to you about that or be able to shift that with you, then that gives you a trigger point of allowing you to know that this is something that you’ve got to explore.
The other important question that she asked was, “What do you want to feel most of the time?” What this means is you’re not going to ever feel 100% of the time that everything is perfect, but 60% or 70% of the time, what do you want to feel, and what is non-negotiable? It could be how you’re treated, what the environment is, and the type of work that you’re doing as well to make sure that you have what you’re looking for if you do make this pivot in your career.
The other thing we talked about was true integration, being who you are, and being authentic in any situation you’re in. You should not have to be different as a person at work versus at home. Whoever you are should be whoever you are in all those places. Showing up and being consistent in that makes you believable. It makes you someone that people want to be around and connect with. It’s very important to think about where you’re off and why so that you can shift those things so that you’re showing up the way that you intend to show up.
We talked about when she was in high school having an addiction and being woken up from that period of time so that she could repair her life and repair the relationships around her. She talked about how hope is a strategy. A lot of times, we think that if we dream something or hope for something, it won’t come true. It can come true when we are consistent or when we have a disciplined approach and a plan of how we’re going to get there.
We don’t expect instant results. It takes time to have a transformation. There are little wins along the way of transformation, but it’s changing one habit at a time or one tendency that we have and making sure that we are clear on the habits that we are trying to change. What are we going to do to be able to change it? What is the intentional thing or tactic that we’re going to put in place to make sure that we can change it?
We talked about the five variables of human resiliency that she found through her research. The first one was a sense of belonging. You’ve got at least one person in your corner who can support you as you’re trying to go through change or even go through a hard time to get to the other side. The other thing is perspective. This is the way you feel your way through the world and your head versus your heart. You’re trying to align the two so that your perspective is reality. You’re making sure that you are doing the right things, but you’re doing the right things authentically, ethically, and morally so that you can build those relationships around you.
The third one we talked about was the role of acceptance. We can’t fix our past. We did get into a longer discussion about this that if we get too stuck on our past, it can ruin our future and our current time. We need to review our past to help us make decisions going into the future, but we can’t harp on our past for the rest of our lives. We have to live in the present. We have to do as good as we can each day.
The fourth one was the power of hope as a strategy. There are better days ahead. You’re keeping a positive mindset, looking into the future, and envisioning what that would look like. What I like to call this is a mental rehearsal. You start envisioning what it would be like when you’ve turned things to the point that you’re trying to get to. How would it feel? How would it look? How would you react to things? How would things change so that you can get there?
The fifth one, which was interesting, was humor and using it as a way to create breaks or moments of relief. If you’re not humorous, where would you find something that could help you laugh and bring that into you? In her strategy, a lot of it is around hope. If we don’t have the tendency for hope and we have an absence of it, we look to see how we can change that habit, that feeling, that perspective, or that mindset and decide to take action. You make an intentional decision to take action so that you can make those shifts in your life.
I hope that what you got out of all of this is understanding how you’re feeling now and how you want to feel in the future. Envision that and create a strategy to get there. Ensure that you create little tactics along the way to start changing habits, and make sure that you can be your whole self wherever you are. Feel comfortable in the skin that you’re in, and live in the present rather than the past. When we do these things, the energy that we create is better inside of us and we show up better for the people around us.
I want to thank you for tuning in to this interview. There are many great takeaways from this interview. I hope you enjoy it. Make sure to share it with someone that you think it would be important to. Subscribe to us on the podcast channels. It is important to us so that other people are able to tune in to this show. We so appreciate your support to continue to provide these learning and interviews to you as often as we can.
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About Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe
Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, a resiliency scholar and multi-award-winning author, specializes in resiliency, navigating stress and change, and personal wellness in the workplace. Robyne’s work connects research-informed practices with everyday applications that are realistic, universal, and sustainable.