Navigating Change and Rewiring Mindset

Oh my gosh, guys. You are going to love this conversation that we just had with my new bestie, doctor g. Doctor Deborah Gilboa, MD, known as doctor g, is a resilience expert helping organizations and leaders turn stress into an advantage. Using science backed strategies, she guides teams to navigate change while staying true to their mission.

With contagious humor that she developed at Second City, which is part of the reason that she's my girl. She bridges generations rewiring mindsets to build resilience through personal accountability, fresh and a fresh approach to adversity. A regular guest on the Today Show, Good Morning America and the Doctors, she's also featured in Forbes, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Doctor g is a board certified family physician and clinical associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Let's talk to doctor g. Hello, and welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast powered by GoBundance Women. I'm Mandy McAllister.

And I'm Kelly Resendez.

And today, we have the one and only doctor g. Hello, doctor g. How are you? Hi. I'm so excited to be here. Oh, me too. We were very fast friends when we had a chance to meet offline, but I I'm so excited to give the audience your story and your wisdom. So why don't we start at the beginning? Tell us a little bit about your journey and, you know, what it is that you do.

So I'm on careers three and four. I started off in theater and television. That's what I got my undergraduate degree in and then weirdly actually went on to succeed in those areas. And I was working in theater, and I got a really incredible job, and I maybe peaked kinda young. I was at Second City in Chicago, and there was really no up from there. And I would have been okay with that because every day is different, lots of things to do. I'm Sesame Street generation, so I like that kind of turnover.

When I realized that a lot of the people around me were using a lot of substances, treating themselves and each other pretty badly, and I thought, I could do this for five years. I'd been there for a year and a half. You know? I could do this job for five years, but I don't wanna do it forever. And so I tried to be as open minded as possible. If I wasn't doing this, what would I do? Let's assume I can pay the rent for a minute, and what would I do? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, which was the career that I had had in mind, like, all the way through junior high and high school.

And so then my next problem was, how do I earn money while I would get the requirements I would need for that, take the test, do the interviews, all that. And I had worked at a theater company called Deaf West Theater Company. So I became an American sign language interpreter, which is a really great flexible job that you can do around other things and take certification and effort, but really turned out to be the right way for me and piqued my interest.

So I went to medical school. I went to residency, and I mostly served the deaf community in my residency and when I got out as an attending physician. And so I'm a family doctor. I'm having kids. I'm raising my family, and I realized that there is this gap in my ability to take care of people. And that gap is not my time. That gap is not even my medical knowledge, but there's something else.

I'm looking at some people who are dealing with their medical struggles, their injury, their illness, and then thriving, and some people who are so set back by something that maybe on paper would look even less than the struggle somebody else was dealing with, and they're just overwhelmed. They can't handle it, and they never get to a place that they really feel like they're okay. And I wanted to know what's that difference. What am I not giving them, or what are they not finding? What are we not getting to together?

And the medical research calls that difference patient resilience, which might be a cop out on the part of western medicine. I totally understood that even at the time. But my mom of blessed memory used to say, annoying things can still sometimes be true. So I thought, what if that's true? What if it is patient resilience? What is that, and how can I write a prescription for it so people can have it? And so that sent me onto this journey.

And I'm still a family doctor. I still see patients and teach residents, but I have spent the last twelve years researching resilience for individuals and for teams along with a PhD in fellows lab and a lot of really smart people. And this is my passion. This is the way I'm gonna make the world a better place is by helping people understand how do I make myself more resilient and how do I make the people around me more resilient, by which I mean able to navigate change towards a positive goal.

I think I'm so in agreement, and I have binge watched all of the TED Talks that you have put into the world. So I I have I am so in agreement that being able to get through the hard, to manage the hard while you're in it and get through is the single straight line of the most successful people that I've ever seen.

And I I think, you know, maybe tell me a little bit about, like, you know, in your own journey, do you think that this you chose your hard. You walked away from what was arguably like the peak of the peak having done some second city improv myself. That it's the peak of the peak and you made the hard choice for the life you wanted to live.

You know, talk to me about, you know, when you were in that. What was the resilient stuff? What were the choices you were making for yourself to build that better life?

Okay. So I love that you asked about a choice that I'm really pleased I made because I think people think hard and even resilience, and they think only struggle, adversity, challenge. But we actually need resilience even in the face of great change. We need resilience in the face of success, which the change you're asking about was not immediately successful for me. But even in the face of fantastic opportunity stuff we dreamed about, worked towards, prayed for, we need resilience in the face of that change also. That change is hard neurochemically on our brain.

And that's the the focus my work has taken is, like, what actually chemically happens in our brain when we experience change, and what does it do to us? How can we diminish the negative effects and increase our success with it?

To answer your actual question, I looked at the situation I was in, and, honestly, a couple of things had to be pretty hard by that staying would have been hard to make leaving feel more possible. And I think that was because I was in my mid twenties. In my mid twenties, I didn't recognize that it was okay to leave a good situation for something better. That was not intuitive to me at all.

You love it. Have have either of you experienced that, like, guilt of thinking about leaving a good situation for something you genuinely believe could be better but will be harder?

So many times, doctor Lee. So many times. And I think only some of us have the courage to do that because there's so many shoulds. Right? Like, I had a super successful career. Should I leave it to go do something that's more world positive and and, you know, world changing?

So so much goodness here, and I love that you are a neuroscience junkie and you're a creative. Very rare to meet people like that.

So excited to kinda dig into, you know, some steps. If somebody's in it right now, let's just say they're in it and they've got some worry, they've got some doubt, maybe they're thinking about scaling their company or they're thinking about starting a company or doing something new. What are some actionable steps if somebody's feeling the feels, right, and and they really don't know how to get out of their own way? What actionable steps would you give somebody?

So the first thing I wanna do is encourage you that

loss, distrust, and discomfort are our brains' speed bumps. It is not your brain saying this is for sure the wrong thing to do. Don't do it. We have this narrative in our society where you gotta trust your gut. And if your initial gut feeling was no, uh-uh. First of all, it's not your gut. It's your brain. That just annoys me. But, anyway, love that. Second of all, that's your brain's job to say, hang on. And caution is great.

Your brain has a million functions, but only one job, and that job is to keep you alive. So since, good news, you're currently alive, that means all change is suspect. All change. Even the stuff that's gonna be excellent. So that suspicion comes out with your amygdala putting out these chemicals that say, what could you lose? And I don't mean, like, $5. I mean, what could you lose that you need for your safety? Relationships, housing, income? Do I trust this? Do I trust me in this situation? Do I trust that this is real, that I'll get this, that I could do this? And lastly and most insidiously, what will be the uncomfortable about it?

Right? So loss, distrust, and discomfort are our brain's way of making sure that we're gonna be as safe as possible. It doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't go. So if you are feeling swamped by loss, distrust, discomfort, what I wanna say to you is that just means your brain is healthy. Don't take that as Yeah. The final word that this is a bad idea. Love that. I love that. I I'm putting that in my pocket for later.

And, and I wanna step back because you told me that we're really talking to powerful leaders here, and I wanna say to all those leaders, a mistake that we make in leadership is we announce a change to our company, to our fam I mean, to anybody. We announce a change. And when people experience loss, distrust, and discomfort, we think either that's a referendum on my leadership or that's a referendum on their character. Right? Don't they trust me? Don't they know I care about this as much or more than anyone? I thought this through. I'm good at my job. Or what's wrong with these people that they're close minded, obstinate, difficult, old fashioned?

And it is not a referendum on anyone. It's a reflex. Like, if I catch your knee with my reflex hammer, you'd kick. So just step out of the way, recognize and expect the reflex, say to yourself, okay. Their brains are healthy. And there there are strategies for helping other people navigate that more smoothly afterwards. But please don't take that reflex as a referendum.

So okay. You asked me for strategies, and here's what I would say. The first thing is, if this is a change you're you can choose or not choose. Right? If it's up to you, then the question is, does it best align with who you mean to be with the life you're aiming at? Right? That's what boundaries are. Boundaries are figuring out if my priorities are aligned with this thing that I might say yes to or might say no to. So the first question, if you're still in the if, if I do this, should I do this? Then the question is, do you genuinely believe that this gives you the best shot right now at the future you're aiming for?

I I love that. I I always have conversations with Mandy twenty years from now, which I think is the execution of that. You know? Oh, no. Me get to the me that I wanna be.

And I also feel like that that leadership tip that you just gave, I'm a think about that when I'm talking about teenagers. You know? I think that the parenting piece in that is really incredibly important.

But, you know, as this resilience expert, the the Today Show appearances, all of the things, you are the resilience voice of the world in my opinion. Thank you. Talk to me to because we're mostly leaders who listen to this this podcast. Right? So we are not only looking to cultivate resilience in ourselves. We need to cultivate resilience in our teams. Tell me a couple of strategies of what we can do in our organizations overall to to have that resilience at every level.

The first thing is to not expect that you interviewed for resilience or you hired for resilience, and therefore, that person will always be resilient. Resilience is a it's like the stock market. It usually goes up over long periods of time when you look at it in year long chunks or ten year chunks, but it can drop really profoundly and somewhat unexpectedly unless you're a stock market analyst.

Okay. I love this. I just wish we could just sit in this. Like, I can see it. Like, what a tool for people to be able to see. Amazing. Sorry to interrupt. So I'm really glad you did. I think this is super important because it really undermines leaders' beliefs in

themselves or if you have a larger organization, in your hiring managers, in your HR, in your department heads, when you see people struggling with their resilience because you think, we must have picked the wrong people. And yet we've all experienced having a sudden drop in our own resilience. So we know I mean, and I would bet that everyone in the sound of our voices is, in general, resilient. You don't get to be a successful woman without a fair amount of resilience.

Our research has shown, though, that resilience is not a trait. It's influenced by a few traits. What do I mean when I say a trait? I mean something that is fixed over your lifetime. Your eye color is a great simple example of a trait. But so is your optimism. In the Harvard happiness study, they showed most people's optimism at age seven pretty equal to their optimism at age 70. And you might think that's weird. It should be affected by what you experience. Turns out no. It fluctuates in adolescence and early adulthood, but in general, it stays pretty pegged over a lifetime.

Resilience does not, and it is not simply a function of what you've gone through. You know that statement, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? It's shenanigans, actually. If you I won't ask you who, I promise, but I bet you can both think of an adult you know pretty well that no matter how many hard things they go through, it never gets easier. Right? And if if what didn't kill you always made you stronger, we wouldn't know adults who weren't always resilient because we've all gone through stuff.

So what we found is it's a little bit your experiences, more the work that you're doing in GoBundance. How do you frame those experience? What's your narrative around them? What can you learn from them and move forward from them? But that's about your past experience. There's a few traits, your optimism, your sense of humor, your faith in something bigger than yourself, or your commitment to your purpose. I know you had somebody on speaking recently on a podcast about soul purpose and connection. That makes a difference.

But, really, to answer your question, Kelly, resilience is eight skills. And I love skills because you can teach and learn and always brush up skills. And so you asked me if a leader is sitting in, gosh, maybe I'm past the if. I'm making this change or this change has come to us as a company. How are we gonna handle it? Then the strategy you wanna use is, well, what's our goal? And there is a skill to deciding on a goal in face of change the change you hate. We're all really good at goal setting in the face of change we want, the change we're happy about. We're I mean, we're hell on to do lists. Yes?

But when I found out that my mom was dying, and and she was dying. Like, there was not western, not eastern, not any kind of medicine that was gonna change this. She put herself on hospice for the right reasons, and I hated that. And I didn't want a goal because my goal was that she would not die. To be resilient in the face of that change, I still eventually had to come up with a goal. Who did I mean to be in the face of this?

Yeah. And so, Mandy, to answer your question, what can we do in our companies after we've accepted okay. We hired for resilience skills, but resilience goes up and down. It's like health. I hired people who seemed healthy, but they can get sick. Okay. I feel personally betrayed when they're out for a sick day, but I'm gonna get over myself and recognize that it's nobody's fault. Yes? So how can I help my team be more healthy? You we've been asking that question for the last ten years. What can we do for wellness? That's great. This is different. What can I do to build the resilience of my team?

Two things. One, you can do preventive stuff. A lot of that wellness that we'd like, oh, we wanna give people mindfulness skills, and we wanna slow them down a little. We wanna make sure they take their PTO. We're even gonna take hours so we can model that. That's the preventive stuff. And on the resilient side, there's a lot you can do to build these eight skills in each person and encourage them to build them in themselves. They all have some of them and some of each of them, but you can make them stronger.

But in the moment where their resilience is failing them, there are five strategies that we've been able to show with our research, reliably help other people navigate change more competently. Not make them like it more, not make them happier. You can't do that, but more competently. And I wanna actually, if it's okay, in the time we have, talk about the one that is the hardest that women don't think we're allowed to admit is hard, and that's expressing empathy.

We really believe that if we are decent, nice human beings, good women, expressing empathy should come easily to us. And so when we struggle to do it, we hide that. We feel shame about that. But expressing empathy is incredibly difficult, and there are seven cognitive barriers to expressing it. None of them is whether or not you're nice.

The biggest barrier that women leaders feel towards expressing empathy there's actually there's, like, four that come in very close to first, like, statistically significantly pretty much the same. One is we feel responsible for the thing the person is mad about or upset about, and so it feels somehow disingenuous to express empathy. One is we disagree with the behavior or the attitude or the action that came out of the emotion. And you Mandy, I'm a take this back because we both have teenage boys. When he's done something really not okay because of an emotion that we can absolutely recognize, you can see why we feel like, well, if I express empathy for that emotion, he's gonna take that that low key. It's okay that he hit that guy. Right? Mhmm. And and that's that's a cognitive barrier. I don't wanna express empathy because I think he's gonna take that as an endorsement of the bad behavior or the bad decision. It's not true, but these are the barriers our brain tells us. Another is that we disagree with the emotion the person's having. Like, they're they feel ashamed. We're like, you should be proud. You did a great job, which seems nice, but isn't empathy.

Those three, there's an easy hack, which is empathy and consequences. Not but and. So I have empathy for your emotion, and this thing I said is still the case, you know, if I caused the problem. Right? And we still don't allow unlimited PTO. Empathy and consequences. I totally have empathy for the frustration you are feeling, and we don't hit people. And and there are consequences for that. Right? I totally have empathy for the fact that you feel like that presentation went terribly, and we got the account. So Right. A win is a win.

And the last one that's really hard for leaders is when somebody does something that impacts us greatly. They hurt the reputation of the company we strove to build, and we think, how can I express empathy? I am doing cleanup. I'm angry. I'm hurt. And in this case, I wanna say empathy may not be available to you in that moment. There are four other strategies. That's okay.

Yeah. No. That's so good. And I'm sure everyone's wanting more, which we'll get to your information at the end. So everyone hanging on the on the cliff with me on the other strategies, that's awesome.

I'm gonna take you up a few levels of consciousness here because I've been in this work for, you know, twenty plus years. You know, speak to the people that are at a place where maybe they don't need the strategy anymore. Like, they don't you know? Because they they've understood their neuroscience, but they've really gotten embodiment into, like, I really own my joy. Like, what what does that feel like for the people that, you know, get to that place of how you can experience life?

Because you're obviously at a place now where you you get to do everything that you wanna do in in making the world a better place. Like, is it possible to not need resilience at some point because you've done the work, you've used the strategies, and now you embody this new level of radical acceptance and and detachment.

I think for myself, radical acceptance and detachment, I'm not there yet. But what I would say is you don't stop needing resilience. You stop having to fight for it.

What it feels like is not being afraid of change. You may not like it. Right? You can dislike something without fearing it. It's the fear that really cripples us, that really pushes us to negative coping mechanisms, that pushes us to avoidance.

Right? So if you can get to a place where you're like, okay. I don't know if I'll like it, but I know for sure I can handle it. No matter what it is, I know it won't end me.

Love that. I love it. Even annoying things can also be true. That that is one of my new favorite things that you've said.

You've actually you I truth bombed so many things in this really brief twenty minutes we've had a chance to spend together here. I loved that one. I loved it.

The loss, distress, and discomfort, that is my brain speed bump, and I now get a chance to look at it differently and reframe it that my brain is healthy, and then I'm moving forward in a way trying to figure out if something is good for me.

And the idea of empathy and we do so much stuff that is ands at GoBundance Women. So I think that totally fits with the whole kind of ethos of what we are.

Kelly, what hit you the hardest? Yeah. So many things, and I can't wait for longer conversations, but I love the stock market analogy.

And I think where people are really going up, they don't anticipate that they can fall as far as they do, and having these strategies available to them will be super helpful.

The second thing is just that this is a skill. This isn't, hey. You were born this way. You have no shot at becoming more resilient. This is something that you can study, you can strategize on, and you can apply in your life and even start teaching to your teams, which is gonna drive it deeper.

And just excited that doctor g is here with with all of these amazing, like you said, truth bombs.

I love it. So something that matters a lot to us that we ask all of our guests and every member of GoFund and Swim in so that we are ready for our ask. You know, what is something, a resource, an introduction that would take your stuff to the next level? Anything you're working on, how can we give back to you and our listeners an introduction or a resource for you?

I really appreciate that. I don't know who the person is I need to meet, but I wonder if they can hear us. I'm looking to meet the woman who can help me bring this information.

I love bringing this information to companies. I'm thrilled to work with leaders within the structure of their company, but I would really like to bring this to a wider audience of women who are already thinking, I know I can be doing this better. Meaning, I know that I can be less afraid of stress, less afraid of change. I just need to know how.

How do I find that group of women and help them create the opportunities they need to learn these strategies?

Well, Mandy, it sounds like people should head over to Power Up Your Life now, including doctor g, because where we've got a ton of resources to be able to help people impact more women and influence more women. So we'll have to take that conversation offline.

I I adore the work you're doing for the world and the the huge dent that you're putting into the world. So what a pleasure to have you here today.

So thank you for joining us on the power of your life podcast for anybody that you know that needs a little more resilience there in it. They need to get out of it. They need these strategies and to realize that they're just skills. Make sure you share this episode, like, and follow us, and we will see you on the next episode.

And don't forget to check out goabundancewomen.com where we are definitely here to support you as well.

See you next week.