Confronting Adversity: Tools for Resilience with Terry Healey

Resilience is not about staying positive, but about learning how to reframe the moment and take the next step. In this episode, we sit down with Terry Healey, a cancer survivor, to discuss his journey from a promising young life to a life-altering diagnosis of a rare form of cancer. In our conversation, Terry shares the profound impact of his experiences, the emotional and physical challenges he faced, and the transformative power of the people he encountered along the way. He explains the importance of resilience, the role of support systems in overcoming adversity, and how he was able to eventually accept the trauma he went through. Terry talks about the various “guardian angels” he met during his recovery, and the spiritual and emotional impact they had on him. Explore the power of support groups and therapy, what led him to write a book about resilience, how he was able to rebuild his confidence in his professional career, and how the support of his wife played a pivotal role in rebuilding his self-esteem. Unpack Terry’s REBAR framework, how it helps in overcoming adversity, and the importance of accepting emotions, setting goals, and finding support systems. Gain insights into the power of gratitude, why it is important to combine therapy with productive activities and goals, and the steps for reframing negative thoughts. Tune in now!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Terry’s story of overcoming cancer and how it led to his interest in the idea of resilience.
• Why he did not fully comprehend the emotional impact at first, and how he began to accept it.
• Learn how his support system helped him through his recovery journey. 
• How a visit from a local priest influenced Terry’s recovery and why it was so powerful for him.
• Hear about Dina and how she uncovered his deeper struggle with insecurity. 
• Explore how the lack of early mental health support affected his recovery.
• Uncover why therapy and shared experiences are so powerful in recovery.
• Find out how the lessons from his recovery played into rebuilding his professional life.
• He shares his experiences of self-doubt and how he was able to overcome it. 
• What inspired him to write the book, and why he included other people’s experiences.
• Get introduced to Terry’s REBAR framework: reflect, build, act, and renew.
• Discover the power of vulnerability, group therapy, and a positive mindset.
• Advice for parents on how to be the best support system for your child. 
• Unpack why achievable, incremental goals help build confidence and momentum.
• Lessons from his therapy experiences and what he would do differently about his recovery.
• Final takeaways he has for listeners on reframing moments of adversity. 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Terry Healey

Terry Healey on LinkedIn

Terry Healey on Instagram

Terry Healey on YouTube

The Resilience Mindset

Douglas Bodin
The Bodin Group

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Step back and do an audit of your day. Think about what transpired during the course of your day. Did you learn anything today? Were you inspired by anything? If you were inspired by something, can you apply that to your life tomorrow?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome to the Reframe, where we have real, unfiltered conversations about mental health, parenting, and addiction treatment in a changing world. Hosted by Douglas Bowden, a therapeutic consultant with 35 years of experience, we explore the shifts shaping mental health care, featuring experts pioneering new approaches and offering practical advice. Join us as we challenge old narratives and reframe the way we think about the challenges in mental health treatment. This is the reframe. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Today I'm joined by Terry Healy, who's written The Resilience Mindset. It's a fantastic book about his experiences as a survivor of cancer and the things he's learned in the years since, both in his own experience and by doing a lot of research on what makes for resilience for himself, for young people, and for just about anybody. He speaks to business groups and organizations regularly, has appeared on many bigger podcasts than this one, and I'm excited to have him here. Terry, welcome to the reframe.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Thanks, Derek, for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

It's great to be here. I'd like to just start with telling your story. Tell us a little bit about the context. I have known you for a long time, and your new book came out. I was struck by the title. And when I read it, it was just, it was so powerful. And I think that starting with your story would be a great place.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

Okay. So I like to say that I was living life on Easy Street, and this was before you and I met. So in my teens, early 20s, I was really hitting all these milestones that I had set for myself. I had gotten into UC Berkeley, I was president of my fraternity, and then boom, this little bump starts to form behind my right nostril. And initially it really didn't seem like anything. In fact, the first doctor diagnosed it as a pimple and said kind of with a smirk on his face, yeah, I think just use some Drixerol and hot comfortes, it'll be fine. Well, long story short, is that I did get this diagnosis of a very rare form of cancer called a fibrosarcoma, which is rare in and of itself, but incredibly rare to have in the head and neck area. So that was part of the challenge in getting a diagnosis. Grateful that I got the diagnosis because back in those days, 1984-85 is when I was diagnosed, those were not things that typically pathology labs saw very often. They still don't, but at least they have a better way of finding them today. But life went on after that in terms of recognizing I had cancer. Life was different, but at the time they kind of said, hey, we caught this early, we think everything's going to be okay. We think we can treat this with surgery and surgery only, and that's what they did. So after that procedure, I looked just like I did before, returned to normal life, started taking life for granted again, thought I was invincible, and then I had these really strange sensations, Doug, where it felt like ants were crawling through my skin. And that was about six months later. And that's when I rushed back to the hospital to see my doctor. And fortunately at that time I had been referred to UC San Francisco, so I really liked my new doctor. And that's when the wheels went into motion in an accelerated way. I just was kind of spinning watching the actions the doctor was taking and moving forward with because he obviously knew this thing was back. And so that's kind of where the story begins, and the enormity of what happened took place. And so I was 21 at that time.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

And you had the world by the tail at that time. You were in a fraternity, you had a lot of friends, you were athletic. Your life changed dramatically with something that I think we would now characterize as trauma. Did you see it that way at the time?

SPEAKER_03 4:16

I would say that I was a little naive. I was 21. I don't think that I recognized the severity of what was going on. So I would say probably no initially. When I had that recurrence, though, Doug, and if you want, I can jump into that recurrence episode because that became very traumatic at that stage.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

I think that's powerful if you don't mind sharing a little bit of it.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

Yeah, so I went through a number of different exams, including a tumor board session with 15 specialists, and that really confirmed that the enormity of what was going on was far beyond what anybody expected. So I went under surgery and I woke up with the removal of half of my nose, the shelf of my right eye, the muscle and the bone from my right cheek, part of my upper lip, part of my hard palate, six of my teeth. And I woke up attached to my chest because they had transplanted this full thickness skin graph from my chest to fill in this cavity that had been created on my face. And so when I woke up, I really didn't want to see what I looked like because I had a terrible sense of what it was going to be. But I did find gratitude in the fact that they saved my eye, my right eye, which was at risk. So that was the positive of it. But when I finally did get in front of a mirror, I thought to myself, wow, I actually do look like the elephant man. And so, of course, now things are spinning in my head. I'm starting to wonder how I'm gonna get through this. Am I gonna survive? What am I gonna do about the disfigurement? And that's when my whole life literally changed and turned upside down.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

And this wasn't just over a short period of time. This evolution of how many surgeries you've had and the different emotional layers that you went through was a course of years and ongoing. It's a multi-year process. It was not something that you came to quickly. And one of the things that you speak to in the book, as you weave your story through the messages of the book, are the important people that you encountered along the way. And everything from another patient, Dina, I believe, back in Chicago. You talk about a priest who visited you in San Francisco. There were a lot of angels you call them along the way. And maybe speak to that a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

Yeah, I was very blessed that I had incredible friends. I had a very supportive family who was there for me day in and day out. Positive people. That's really what I was fortunate to be able to surround myself with. So I didn't get a lot of negative energy. So I was really blessed that way. I loved the doctor that I was referred to. He was this incredible guy. I believed in him. He was confident. I knew he was confident. He had this attitude that he was going to get me back to who I was. He was going to cure me of my cancer. He gave me so much hope, right? But you're right. I sort of had these guardian angels that sort of entered the picture of different stages of my life that were incredibly powerful experiences. And I think that I was lucky to have that. Those were things that entered my life. I think maybe what's a little different is that maybe other people have these experiences, but I've always been somebody that spends a lot of time reflecting after events. And so I really took in some of these experiences. Like this guy in the hospital who worked for the local parish. I was a Roman Catholic, so he he worked for the local parish and he came in to give communion. That was really his volunteer time that he gave every week. But man, this guy was one of the most powerful people I met during my journey in terms of the strength that came out of his hands and into mine. I mean, it's like I felt this incredible power and I felt this incredible inspiration and this strength and courage that seemed to be like running from his fingers into mine.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

But what was it about him? It was something very special about how he approached you. And I think that I want to encourage people to read the book and hear the story, but can you speak a little bit to what it was about his presence? Because that came through in the book about because he wasn't there for a long time. He knew that you didn't see him. It wasn't like he talked to you for hours. It was really about his presence and what he conveyed in that moment, not about the words.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Yeah, he walked into the room, and I had this image in my head when I saw him. I thought, this guy looks like Jesus Christ. Like this is the image that I've always thought of, that I've prayed to, you know. And he had these incredibly deep eyes that were just powerful. They were unreal, like captivating. I looked at him and he didn't smile, but he walked in and offered communion, and he asked if he could take our hands. My mother and my brother were in the room at the time, and he said, Can we pray together? So he jumped right into a prayer. And when we prayed together, at the end of that, he just squeezed my hand, and he's and everybody squeezed hands, and he just said in this really powerful voice, you know, take it away, take it away, take it away. And that was really the extent of the encounter, right? But I think we were all just kind of stunned by the power of this guy, and just what he brought into that room changed the air, everything changed. And he sort of got up and left. And we were all sitting around my mother, my brother, and I just kind of stunned that we all captured that same interaction in a similar way, in terms of wow, that guy was intense. And I truly felt like he got dropped in there for me at that critical time because that was literally within days of that procedure that I had, where I woke up, you know, attached to my face with this disfigurement that I still hadn't even come to terms with in any way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

You speak of Dina as being another angel, but for a different reason. Do you want to tell that story?

SPEAKER_03 10:29

Yeah, so Dina was this girl that I met in Chicago at a hospital. So I was at this, so now so Doug, you're talking about all these procedures I had.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

And you've had how many total?

SPEAKER_03 10:41

I've had about 30. So this is at a stage, so I had had maybe five cancer surgeries, and then the rest became reconstructive in nature. So they were, how do we fix this guy's eye? How do we fix this guy's nose? How do we fix his mouth? You know, there were all those elements were impacted. So this particular instance was I was referred to a surgeon in Chicago who was at the time considered the best nasal reconstructive surgeon in the country, probably in the world. He had done amazing things, and we spent hours together looking at the results of his successes. And I went back there, so there were a series of six procedures just confined to my nose, just designed to try to make it symmetrical again. So I have five procedures, not feeling very good. So I got one left. I go back and I'm expecting something really magical. When I was able to get out of bed after that sixth procedure and look at myself, I was really disappointed. It just didn't come out the way I expected, right? So new scars, two steps back for every step I was taking forward, but new scars on my forehead, new scars on my cheek. All this stuff created an effort to try to move tissue around to make my nose symmetrical again. So it's funny how sometimes in our darkest moments, right, we find light. And so I went for a walk, honestly feeling pretty down. In fact, starting to realize that my life was never going to be what I hoped. I was never going to get back to who I was. I was very low at the time. And I run into this girl in the hallway, and she was had this great smile. Long story short is that we got to know each other in the hospital and we hit it off. So we began to see each other. And we had an intimate relationship for a short period of time. And I say short because it's important because she got to know me really well in a short period of time. And at the end of this weekend, she just looked me in the eye and she said, You know, Terry, you have a lot of issues that I can't help you with. And you need constant reassurance. And I'm not able to give you that. And really, what I realized right then and there was, wow, it shook me to my bones, but it really highlighted the fact that my issue was not my face, it was what was inside. It wasn't about my appearance that bothered her. What bothered her was my insecurity. And it took some time for me after that weekend to reflect a little bit, but what I realized was that I was grateful ultimately for what she said. At first, I was obviously bummed out about it, it hurt. But I thought to myself, wow, what a great person to be that honest with me, because that honesty came at a critical time when I knew I couldn't do any more surgery. It wasn't working anyway. And even if it was, then I got to be my own worst critic probably forever. And so she was really the impetus as I as I reflected on what she said. I became grateful that over time it was, hey, I'm not gonna search for another surgeon again. I'm gonna search to find a support group where I can start to find ways to share with others and see if maybe I can learn a little bit more about myself and how can I start to rebuild from the inside out. So she was really one of the most critical turning points in my life.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

And that set you on this journey that, again, you've explored it in your book in a tremendous way. But part of what struck me though was that it wasn't through individual therapy so much. And you and I talked briefly after your book signing about this notion that it might be different now for someone going through a similar thing and how much therapy one would get early on, and how much other people would be telling you about your trauma and about what you were about to experience in your mental health domain. And that it didn't really happen for you. And I thought that was an interesting part of our conversation. What would it have been like if people had been telling you how much trauma, how much mental health challenges you would have as a result of your surgeries?

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Yeah, it was very interesting at that time that that it wasn't something certainly my family encouraged me to do. And I think they were sort of in denial, I guess you could say, at some point, where it's sort of like, oh, our son's fine. He's strong, he's gonna get through this no problem. But what they didn't realize was like I was sort of deteriorating inside, and nobody around me really knew it. I think it would have been incredibly helpful if it was presented to me in a way that was positive and was presented in a way that would sort of help me realize at the right time that, yeah, in your journey, Terry, you're gonna go through these procedures, and it might help if you talk to somebody one-on-one. It might help if you start to go to group therapy. Instead, I think what happened at that time was I had a social worker come into my hospital room who basically told me I was gonna need help. And this came on very early. Like I was days into my recovery, and it was just I wasn't ready. And so I pushed that off because it was just too forceful. It was somebody coming in telling me how I was going to react and respond, and I just I wasn't ready to respond to that at that point. And yeah, it took a long time for me to recognize the power of therapy. You know, that's another thing I'm grateful for that I eventually found it, Doug, because I've used it in other parts of my life, in other conflicts, let's say, in my life that ensued in years and years after.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

You speak later in your book when we get into the practical points of resilience. You speak to the power of the group therapy and the research for group therapy, mindfulness, visualization, et cetera, really dramatically increases the outcomes for, and I think you you speak specifically to cancer survivors, but those types of things, again, you focus on a few things, visualization and mindfulness and group therapy, but the data are out there. This is very powerful stuff. And you really, I don't think you knew that until you went through the journey of writing the book, but somehow you experienced it. It came to you. Maybe speak to a little bit more to what that was like and what you encountered with with other people and similar journeys and what that power was for you in your experience of things.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

Yeah, so yeah, it is interesting as I as I started to write this book. So so I had written another book, which was a memoir, which was just, hey, this was my experience. This is what I encountered. This new book was more about, hey, I want to help others deal with adversity and change in their own lives. So my expertise is really based on my experience overcoming it. But many times these books are written by uh PhDs, people that have done a ton of research. And so I thought to myself, I better validate all of this stuff and I better spend time before I decide I'm truly writing a book. And yeah, it was inspiring and a little mind-boggling to see that every experience that I encountered and every reaction to it and how I actually leverage different methods is very well proven in so many different ways. I mean, John Kabat Zinn, I referenced many, many times in the book, who has done all kinds of research and studies about how people have better outcomes when they use meditation, right? When they use visualization in different forms and positive imaging. But yeah, time and again as I go through sort of my coping and my survival kit, I found that there's a ton of research out there to support it. And therefore, hey, this is what worked for me, but it's worked for a lot of other people too. You should, if you're encountering these kinds of things, know that I'm not just some quack telling you my stories. This is out there. There's a ton of research out there to support it.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

And you went through a professional journey as well, because you had to build back your confidence in yourself in a professional world and figure out how you could bring this experience and overcome your own self-doubts and fears re-entering that world. And I I found those stories to be very inspirational as well. And by the way, the book isn't just the stories, it's that the stories are woven into very powerful and at times instructional or almost a workbook type of format. Not quite that, but really a very clear guided path. If you can speak to how what you experienced in your professional world and how you then took those lessons into your first the career that you had, taking a company public, and then into your own consulting career and working with companies. How did you bring these experiences and these the research that you done to those domains of your life?

SPEAKER_03 19:44

What I learned was so, first of all, I did get lucky. You know, sometimes luck plays a role in how we adapt and how we get an opportunity to move our life forward. And I did get lucky that an individual that I knew came to me. He offered me a job when I would say my confidence level was was not high, right? And he recognized that, but he also knew me from before, and I think he felt that I needed to sink my teeth into something. And so when I got this job opportunity, I realized that, okay, I'm gonna fake it until I make it, right? I'm gonna prove that I'm good at what I do. I'm gonna prove that I can deliver just like anybody else. Because you're right, and in part of your question, I think I had gotten to this point where I started to doubt myself. I didn't think that people would take me as seriously because I was different now. Oh, he's a charity case kind of a thing, right? And so I pushed myself even harder, I would say, than maybe normal to prepare. So my life's a lot about preparation, spending the time to prepare, to practice, to anticipate objections that you might receive if somebody questioned an approach you took, if somebody questioned a proposal that you put on the table. And so I spent a lot of time probably working harder. And that's kind of this whole thing about persistence and grid, I think that's part of resilience, right? It's it's putting in that time, and it's not just about working hard, it's about working smart too. But I think for me, it was really about spending extra time to ensure that I knew what I was doing better than the next guy, so that if I was put into a room and I had to present my case, I could feel content and confident in myself. That was a lot about my journey was sort of this over preparation. And that really helped me to begin to believe in myself because when I entered a room, I did believe in what I was saying. And it helped me to rebuild my confidence. And so that trajectory of sort of losing my confidence. And sort of going down into a deeper and darker place started to rebound a little bit. Don't get me wrong, Doug, it's a journey. It took many, many years. I was still insecure during the course of a lot of my professional career. But like I talk about and write about, I didn't want my people to ever see that. So if I was prepared, and when I walked into the meeting with my team of people, if I knew my material and I came off as confident, then they would follow and feel like they wanted to be part of this team too, and that they believed in the same vision. So that was a long game before I got to that point where it became more just normal.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

I think that's an important point. It didn't just happen because you read a book or some other thing. It was diligence, it was daily proactive commitment to these things. And this is part of what you speak to in your book as well. And I think that whatever propelled you to stick with it over time was a major factor. Were there times where you felt like giving up?

SPEAKER_03 23:02

Yeah, I remember times where I had a lot of self-doubt. I'm picturing when you ask that question, I'm picturing a particular time. I remember I had my own apartment at one point, and I was sitting on a Friday night with pizza, reflecting to myself on why I was here. And I was sitting there by myself on a Friday night at 25 years old because I had told my friends that I didn't want to go to the city that night. I didn't want to go out. I didn't want to go to the triangle. I didn't want to go bar hopping in San Francisco. That just was not something that I enjoyed anymore. It was a difficult and stressful experience for me. Even though I was with my supportive friends, I was so insecure about meeting new people or what reactions of people I didn't know might be, that I said, you know, that's not fun. That's not painful. I'd rather just sit here by myself. When I reflected on that, I thought to myself, that is bad. This is not a good situation. I obviously was sad. I didn't feel good about who I was. I started to think, what am I doing? Where am I going? Where's my life going? Is this what it's going to be? So yeah, I had moments like that for sure. And I would try to kick myself in the butt when I recognized it. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. But that happened over a course of years as well, too, where I sort of lost some of those intimate relationships, not intimate, but those close relationships with friends because I chose not to participate.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Your most profound relationship is with Sue.

SPEAKER_03 24:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

You want to say a few words about that? I think that's a very powerful component.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah, so Sue was interesting because she came along at a time when I was probably, I would say, when I 27, 28. So I had started to rebuild myself quite a bit before I met her. But but what struck me about Sue was when I met her, she just was this cool woman who had this great attitude, and she never I think we had a couple dates together before the topic of what happened and even came up in a conversation. I thought that was cool. I didn't recognize it at the time, but I thought, wow, you know, she's asked about my family. She's asked about what I do for a living, but she hasn't asked what happened to my face. And that was so refreshing. Not that people did that or did that, you know, that that experience was common that people say, Hey, what happened to you? But just her way and her acceptance of who I was, and the fact that she just truly wanted to get to know me as a person for who I was was so refreshing. And so she was definitely the angel that really opened me up in new ways and changed my life in so many ways.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

I imagine she was one of the people that encouraged you to write your first memoir and then this book. Yeah, she did. I'd love to get into some of the practical matters in the book. You came, I don't know exactly what was the research first, and that inspired the book or how that played out, but I'd love to sort of segue into how this book came about, the research that went into it, and then what's in the book. I would love to get to some of the content. I've got a bunch of notes and we could hit on a ton of it, but there is a lot of very practical and useful information that's really connected to the emotional world that you were going through in a way that I don't think a lot of books are.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

Yeah, so how the resilience mindset came to be was that I had started presenting to groups, associations, schools, corporations. And what I found from a lot of these presentations that I would do was that people would come up to me afterwards and they would say, Hey, you know, I actually read your book. And this was my memoir called Half Face Value from you know, I wrote that in 2001, and they would come up and they would say, Hey, I read your book, but what you speak about is actually a little bit different. I expected that you just tell your story, but instead you tell your story and then you share all of these methods and tools and a survival kit and all this stuff to help other people deal with adversity, you need to write another book. You know, I was working full-time, Doug, as you know, in marketing and high-tech, and that required 60-hour weeks, pretty much, most of my career. So when people would say, you need to write another book, it was like, yeah, sure, you know, I got time to do that. Well, this has always been an important purpose to me in my life. It grounds me. It's a wonderful thing to be able to help others deal with their own adversities. And so I kept hearing that over and over again, right? That people would say, You, you know, write a workbook or write something else, but you've got to write another book. And so I was on a podcast four years ago, three years ago, and this woman really hit a chord with me, the host, because she kept talking about, well, you know, you've really found ways to rebuild confidence and regain self-esteem. And you talk about these things. Can you elaborate? And so I got off that podcast and I thought, you know, combined with what everybody else is saying, and this concept of how do we rebuild who we are when we go through difficult times, was really the impetus for me to say, you know what, I'm just gonna sit down and write this thing. I didn't put together a big outline because that's not the way I am. I just kind of said, maybe there's a book, maybe there's not. Put a page outline together and just started writing it with no real sure outcome in mind. And so that's how it came to be. And as I started to write it, you talk about Sue, my wife. It's funny, she came in and she was asking me, you know, how it's going. I said, Well, here's what I'm doing. Um I'm writing this and that. And she said two things. She said, Well, one, this isn't all about you. Remember that. And she said, what wives are for? She said, I think it'd be way more powerful if you brought stories of others who experienced difficulties, of others who went through different types of adversity. Because people can relate to those in different ways. Maybe they have a connection to a different type of experience. So that was a good adjunct that I think came into it. And what that helped me do, Doug, was to interview people and actually talk to them about my methodology or my framework for dealing with adversity, which is called rebar, right? So as I interviewed these people, I would sort of ask them about their coping skills, about their abilities to deal with their adversity. And I found very common threads throughout, right? That people that go through significant adversity come out the other side with a newfound purpose typically have similar patterns in terms of what they use for strength and what they use for rebuilding. And so that helped reinforce that, okay, maybe there is something here. But to your point earlier, it was just about doing some research as well, you know, from other experts that study this stuff and do a lot of research around the power of positivity, the power of digitalization, how people survive, and what are the key ingredients to that? And so I just kind of combined that all together and then it sort of just fell into place.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Do you want to go through a little bit about rebar and give some of the key points for each of those?

SPEAKER_03 30:37

Yeah, so just a quick background. So I used to talk about my survival kit a lot, right? Which was how I survived. So that was really my toolkit to get through my daily ordeal. And as I encountered these people that would say, hey, you need to package this up for others, that's really what rebar became is it's really a prescriptive way to package up my survival kit in a way that could help others personalize it to their own journeys and take away something actionable. That was really important, right? That you could literally finish this book, answer questions, and take away some kind of a blueprint to help you deal with your life. So rebar came to be as this four-phase process to help others kind of work through what I consider to be the key phases of dealing with an adverse situation in your life. So those four phases are reflect, build, act, and renew. Would you want me to touch on each one of those really briefly?

SPEAKER_01 31:41

I do. And you don't even have to be brief.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

Yeah, because that is the core of the book, is really rebar, which is well, be brief enough that people go out and buy the book. Yeah. So this is really the core of it. But so reflect is really about stepping back, taking time for yourself every day. Maybe it's five or ten minutes a day, but to step back and think about your day from the standpoint of starting with gratitude. So when you start with gratitude, it puts you in a positive mindset. It truly does. Just try it. Think about all the things you're grateful. Because there's always a million things to be grateful for, despite what might be going on in your life. And then the process I suggest is that from there, step back and do an audit of your day. Think about what transpired during the course of your day. Did you learn anything today? Were you inspired by anything? If you were inspired by something, can you apply that to your life tomorrow? And the idea here is that you're kind of building muscle memory, right? You're practicing every day. You're not going to have an inspiration every single day of your life. But if you're in the practice of reflecting, you'll start to recognize things more readily. But it's a wonderful practice, if nothing else, just to remind yourself how grateful you are for so many things in your life because there's always so many things. So that's reflect. Build is really that phase where you start to develop a positive mindset. It's where you develop a growth mindset. So this is when you might start to think about okay, is faith important to me? How am I going to practice my faith? Is that a component that's important to me? How do I build and develop a support system that's the right support system for me? Which also means making hard choices, right? For people that maybe don't fit that profile. How am I going to find life balance? What are the things I'm going to start to do to incorporate more balance in my life? And then finally, and most importantly, I think is choosing positive, right? Because we choose our attitude. So choose positive because when you're positive, navigating life's roadblocks is much easier than when you're in doubt, when you're uncertain. Believe me, I've been there, I know. And then act is really the third phase. That's really where I like to say the rubber meets the road. So this is when we start to literally face challenges. It's when we start to take control. It's when we get focused. It's when we start to set goals. So it's execution mode. It's really the most, there's a lot of different methods that you can choose from in this section of rebar, and it's designed that way because one size doesn't fit all. And sometimes you try things that don't work optimally for you. So you can try something else. For example, some people might think meditation is the answer. For others, meditation is really hard. But my guess is that if you just tried simple visualization or positive imaging, that might be something that works better for you. So try things out, but give it time. So that's a critical phase, obviously. And then finally, renew is really that point when you step back and think about what you learn from the adversity. So, and let's face it, you know, if you've gotten to this phase to renew, you've survived this adversity, you're thinking now beyond the actions you took. You've survived, you're still here. So celebrate that. Start to celebrate wins and think about the traits, the characteristics that you possess, that you embody that helped you to get through this ordeal. Because believe me, that will help you feel better about yourself. It helps you believe more in yourself, it builds confidence. But really, this phase is really that stage of the growth mindset, right? It's about learning from the experience. What can I do to make myself a better version of myself going forward? Because let's face it, work, something else is going to come along at some point. That's what it's about. It's a commitment to the process. I don't think of it as work. I really don't. I don't think it's like, oh God, this is something I got to add. How much time am I going to have to add in my day? No, I mean, this is really a gift. I mean, this is how I pretty much live my life every day. And I want it to. And as you go through these cycles, I think it does really make you realize the power of gratitude in terms of positivity in life. So that's kind of the broad strokes of rebar.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

There are many. That last piece about gratitude is one of them. There's a lot of parallels with AA and recovery. And we've talked about that a little bit, and we'll leave that for episode two of this. But there's a lot of those parallels. Have people told you that before? Have people come to you from other domains, therapy, recovery, and talk to you about how that can influence other domains? Because that's part of why I wanted you on this podcast. I wanted to bring this out because this is largely therapists and people who run treatment programs and and parents, and I wanted them to hear a different perspective. So I guess I'm curious what other encounters you've had with other professions or or with recovery that you've gotten. I guess you've been told about these parallels, or out of it. I don't know if there's a good question there.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

It's a great question. Yeah. Thanks, Doug. So I have heard that. In fact, I did a presentation recently in Capitola where there were a couple of recovering alcoholics who actually mentioned that to me. And I my response was, you know, I don't have that experience. So I'm glad that you got something out of it and that it's in line with sort of how you're living your life. I can't comment on it because I haven't lived that. I haven't experienced it. And honestly, that topic came up when I was writing it, Doug. And for whatever reason, even though I did a lot of research, I also wanted my book to be authentic. And so I didn't want to do too much research. You know, there's sort of a boundary that I gave myself. I didn't want to leverage AI too much either, because I thought I want authenticity. I want this to be really truly how I experienced how I lived it, how I think I can help others, as opposed to borrowing from different methodologies or types of programs. But my guess is that there would be commonalities in it, especially just, you know, going through the group therapy piece that I went through and how powerful that was. I mean, that was, this might relate to your question. You know, I think finding the courage to share your vulnerabilities, that was incredibly liberating to me. I had no idea until I did it. But um what a powerful concept that is to share with others and listen to others and understand others. It helps you become more empathetic too, which is huge in life, right? I mean, if we could all be more compassionate.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

And the first time you encountered that was in the group therapy, as I recall?

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Yeah, because as I said, Doug, you know, when I when I was growing up, therapy was not encouraged. It was sort of like, oh, you don't have a problem. Really? I don't have a problem. No, you're so strong. And so if I can touch on this for a second, this to me is the power of group therapy and therapy in general, is that I think there's an incredible value in having a support system, right? And surrounding yourself with people that are positive and caring for you. I think there's something to recognize though, too, which is the downside of that, if that's all you do, they always prop you up and they always remind you how great you are. I can't sit there and say that my friends came to the hospital and saw me in this state and ever said, God, Terry, this is brutal, man. You look terrible. You know, they never said that. They said, dude, you're great, you're strong, you're gonna get through this, right? And that's fine. I was glad to hear that, but I also think recognized that I needed outsiders, people that had a similar maybe experience to me, who could relate to me in a different way than my friends and family. And share, you know, when you start to share vulnerabilities, start to learn that other people have very similar challenges in their lives, or they're willing to open up to you about things. That just sort of builds on itself and helps. I mean, I felt so energized. I think I write about it in the book. I felt so energized, Doug.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

I mean, I was you and I were working long days at this company.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yours longer than mine.

SPEAKER_03 40:24

Yeah. And then I'd go to a support group. And at nine o'clock at night, I'd come out of that thing like so energized. You would say, God, I'm gonna be exhausted after this. Do I really want to go to this session after a long day of work? No, I look forward to it. I was energized.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

One of the things that we've noticed with our clients is we have, I would say, a disproportionate number of them who have had medical trauma or are are dealing with grief over a parent who's passed away or a parent who's dealing with terminal cancer, for example, or their own medical circumstances. And I guess I'm curious to hear more about your parents and what they went through. You've spoken a little bit about how it wasn't necessarily encouraged, but I think a lot of the listeners to this are themselves parents. And I don't know if there's something you want to speak to of what you think parents can do or how to approach or how to bring help to their child who might be encountering a severe medical uh trauma. In addition to, you know, of course, all of our clients are encountering some form of mental health or other trauma or neurodiversity stuff that we're working through. So there's their own trauma around those things, but then when you add in the layer of the medical or that sort of thing. What are your thoughts for parents here?

SPEAKER_03 41:42

You know, I think it's so critical for people to experience their emotions and for them to be encouraged, right? To have grief, to feel sadness, to be frustrated, to have fear, even to be angry, right? I mean, any of those things I think are natural human responses. And instead of just saying you're tough, you're gonna get through it, I think it's okay. Let people experience their emotions. And I think that, as I said about anger, anger can be something that's really motivating, actually. It can help people set new goals. Who knows? But I think you experience them, and then you also need to move on and find concrete ways to deal with whatever your circumstances are. So I found that Doug in group therapy actually was I did find people that I felt couldn't get beyond the pain and sadness and the difficulties. And so what they would do is consume themselves with therapy. And at the expense of really having their own life anymore, I noticed that there were people like that. Now, I for one was sort of the opposite of that, that felt like, okay, yeah, this is really difficult, but at the same time, I need to be super busy, I need to have goals, I need to have objectives, because that takes my mind off of some of the anxiety that I'm experiencing every day, some of the sadness that I have. So when I was sitting in front of that television sit on that Friday night eating a pizza, the wake-up call there is like, okay, sitting around like this isn't helpful for me. I know myself. Whether I'm ready to go to a bar, that's not important, but I've got to do things to keep myself occupied, set goals, don't spend idle time that's not helping me, that's just fueling this sadness and grief or whatever. Find productive things to do that help me feel better about myself. So I guess all I'm saying is I think that there's a time for everything, and it's okay to experience these types of things. But having something that you're reaching for is so important. And I talk a lot about sort of this concept of a single. Goal, right? I don't like people that talk about setting multiple goals or having all these priorities. I hated the corporate world when they talked about, oh, we've got seven priorities this year. You know, it's like people can't even repeat three. Let's simplify. If people understand what they're focused on, they will more likely be able to achieve it, and they will more likely be able to take actions every day toward that. So this concept of just setting a single goal, I think is so important, a personal one, a professional one, something for yourself and something for your professional life. In tandem, those things so much help build confidence. At least they did for me. I don't know if that's good advice or not for a parent.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

I think it's great advice because it really supports what we try to do in our mentoring program. Because we really try to get out of the therapist office or out of just their rooms or eating a pizza on a Friday night into doing things in the community, taking actions and small steps. And this isn't to your point about balance, it's not to not have the occasional pizza on a Friday night. And we certainly encourage people going to therapy, individual group therapy, and doing that work. But I think the philosophy behind the mentoring program that we run is to have the actions, to be able to set goals, to have, for a lot of our clients, they need a little bit more accountability because they don't have the inner drive necessarily. And so we need to, in some ways, act as a proxy for that until they can get into some new habits, different ways of approaching the world, develop the self-confidence, the identity to self-esteem that to some extent you already had by the time you encountered this. A lot of our clients, we have to start building that. And it is these incremental, small getting out, doing stuff, having those successes, bolstering that sense of confidence over time. It doesn't happen quickly or easily. And that's the commitment part that you also speak to.

SPEAKER_03 45:57

Yeah, I think to your point too, uh I talk about achievable goals. And that might sound odd to some people. You know, you think about people that have this concept that Steve Jobs started thinking different and believing that nothing's impossible, right? I love that too. But I've been more of the mindset that, like, for yourself, for your self-confidence, don't set goals that are so far reaching that they're almost impossible to attain because then they create stress, right? And then it actually is a counter to what you're trying to do. So it's okay to have incremental goals. Like if you say, you know, let's just throw out an example. I want to run a 10K in X amount of time. Well, set those stages because when you achieve a certain time, let's say your goal is 40 minutes, so you break that time, now you can set another goal, right? Because now you feel even more confident about yourself. So I'm a big proponent of sort of setting achievable goals, and it helps you start believing yourself and you start to realize, man, I can do this. I can do a lot, and I'm happy because I feel good about myself.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

What did you see in those people that you encountered in group therapy or other areas that weren't able to take it on the way you have? Do you see any commonalities among them or factors that you could call out?

SPEAKER_03 47:22

Yeah, I mean, I would say that my circumstances were different, Doug. So I was generally the younger one in the groups. In fact, in many of the groups, I was the youngest until they actually formed a young adults group. There just wasn't enough people in the program to warrant that for many years. So I was being the youngest and being at a stage in life where I was kind of still in college and just beyond, I didn't have a family, I didn't have a lot of responsibilities. I could pretty much focus on just getting through the day, having enough money to pay for my rent, but I didn't have to worry about a kid's education, I didn't have to worry about health care, I didn't have to worry about a lot of things. And I think what I saw in groups were people that were the breadwinners, the father, the mother. And suddenly in the situation where they could not be who they wanted to be as that parent. I think there was a sense of maybe hopelessness in some of them that, wow, how am I gonna get out of this? What am I gonna do? And so I think they were often preoccupied with things like that, and they probably couldn't relate to me, right? So again, I was grateful that I was in this situation that was in many ways far easier than what they were in. As we know, Doug, I mean, hopefulness is the key to being resilient. So you've got to find a way to keep hope. But I also felt that those types of people that I encountered who sort of got consumed by their treatment and their therapy and quit their jobs or took leave of absences, I often wondered to myself, is that the best approach? And maybe their employers weren't, maybe they truly didn't feel good enough to go to work every day. I just came from a different mindset, maybe that way. That's sort of what my observations were. Whether they're right or wrong, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 49:16

What are the things that you wish you had known then that you know now that you could tell a younger Terry to do or not do if you could go back?

SPEAKER_03 49:28

I would probably say that I would recommend to people that they should embrace change, whatever that change is. That change typically is ultimately a positive thing, as difficult as it might be in the moment, as challenges it might be to think about the uncertainty that lies ahead from change. If you feel like strong enough to say I can get through this, you will be a better and a stronger person for it. I wouldn't trade my experience for anything. I wouldn't wish it on anybody either. I use this analogy sometimes, Doug, of the S P 500 stock index in the US, right? It's composed of 500 companies, 500 largest companies in the U.S. stock index. And if you look at the chart over take any period of time, let's say it's 90 years, it depends how you look at it. But if you look at a small chart, you you just see a line up and to the right. If you broaden the chart out, you start to see more jagged edges and you see dips. Some of them are pretty big dips, but still, on the whole, over time it's up and to the right. And so I use that analogy only because that's sort of how life is. I think that if you accept change and embrace it, we're all gonna have setbacks. But in those setbacks, we can recover, we can learn about ourselves, we can become stronger, and ultimately our trajectory is going to be up and to the right. I truly believe that. That's certainly how I feel about my life. I think that I look back on every change and it's it's a positive, and there's been many painful ones. It took a long time to deal with, but but positive at the end. And you know, one other thing, Doug, I get asked this a lot is what about young people who are dealing with early in career? They work for a big company, now suddenly AI is impacting the organization, they're having layoffs. What do I do? Think of it as an opportunity, right? You can't change that. There's nothing you're gonna be able to do except to embrace it and say, what can I learn from this, right? What I can learn is that I'll probably be in a different situation working with new people, new leaders that maybe can mentor me in different ways. And I'm gonna be forced to learn new skills. And to me, that that represents progress more than pain because it's tough in the beginning, but ultimately we're gonna be in a better, stronger position and probably more confident down the road.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

It's discomfort, and that's I think what we encounter in our clientele is that not necessarily pain avoidance, which is more understandable, but discomfort avoidance. And that's a big part of the cultural shifts that we talk about more in other episodes. Terry, do you want to speak to the reframe portion of your book?

SPEAKER_03 52:27

Yeah, so I think reframing is really important for a lot of people to understand and think about because it goes back to this guy, Martin Seligman, who was sort of the father of positive psychology. And this concept where he came up with the three Ps of personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence. These concepts of personalization being that we often blame ourselves for things. Permanence, you know, is kind of like this concept that our adversity is going to go on forever. How are we ever going to get out of this? And then pervasiveness, which we see sometimes when people are going through an adverse situation, we kind of talked about it with some of the people I saw in the support groups, is this concept that it's gonna affect all parts of my life. And so with reframing, it's really important to kind of shift from that thinking to a more positive approach, right? So recognizing that it's not your fault that you're in this situation. Don't blame yourself, don't beat yourself up. And it is temporary. I I like to call it a detour. Any kind of uh adversity is a detour. It's something that you have to experience, but that you're you're gonna eventually move on from. And it's not, it's not gonna go on forever. But but one of the things that I think is really important is the concept of negative self-talk versus positive self-talk. You know, a lot of people have these really negative thoughts in their heads when they're going through difficulties and they they think about, God, you know, I'm stuck in this place. It's never, I'm never gonna get out of it. This approach I'm taking, it's never gonna work. And it's sort of this way of operating, and there's there's just really simple, I like to call them pivots, you know, like, okay, step back, take a deep breath. Maybe there's a different approach that I can take. Maybe I can learn something from this, but there's always an alternative positive to that negative thought in your head. And if you just take a minute to think about it, it can really shift how you feel and shift your approach toward greater success. So that's kind of my pitch on reframing how important it is. Did you ever feel like a victim? No, no, I didn't. I certainly thought why me a few times. I wondered why this was happening to me. But somebody told me once that early on, I used the word somewhere in a writing that I did, I called myself a cancer victim. And man, she jumped at me.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

And this was a long time ago. She goes, You're no you're not a victim. You're a patient, maybe. You're a survivor. But yeah, no, I don't I don't think I spent much time thinking I was a victim.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

What was her objection to the word victim?

SPEAKER_03 55:26

It's a word to me that represents almost helplessness. It's like, okay, I was victimized. It just doesn't feel like it's sort of a negative thing to me, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

It's a loss of control.

SPEAKER_03 55:39

I don't know. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 55:41

I think it's a loss of control. I I think we are in a time in a cultural moment where victimhood is the coin of the realm. And a lot of people embrace it. A lot of people, and this is a phenomenon that we've been observing for a while now, but in various areas, mental health or learning issues or other family conflict, that victim stance is much more prevalent now than it was years ago. So I think your perspective is very helpful. Terry, it's been great having you on the reframe. I encourage everybody to go out and get your book, read it for personal use. I think professionals out there in the community and in running programs should also have this in their resource collection. Thank you for being on the reframe, Terry.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

Thanks so much for having me, Doug. Great talking to you.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

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