Resilience Unravelled

People step out of marriage for different reasons but in Nanci’s experience it’s usually because communication has broken down or people are just not being honest. They don’t feel secure enough to say what they mean and mean what they say. The failure of communication leads to a lack of accountability and people get entrenched into positions of misery and want to blame and point the finger at othe...

The states to traits progression in people who meditate, especially those who meditate effectively, means that they are able to increase neural mass in parts of the brain such as the corpus callosum and the memory and learning system. There is an increase in neural tissues in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that hooks the executive centres in to the emotional brain and down-regulates all the ir...

Martha Aviles is a marketing executive based in Austin, Texas. Her parents were Nicaraguan immigrants who arrived in Miami, Florida in the 1970s. Martha was born and grew up in Miami before moving to southern California and then Austin, Texas in the early 90s where she became involved in high-tech marketing, the career she has pursued for the last twenty years. She focuses on impacting high-growth...

Living a life of discord and emotional suffering doesn’t need to be the norm. When we unravel the stories that the mind holds on to so tightly and become aware of our patterns and triggers, it can lead us to an awakening of a very different reality filled with ease and grace. Beth Bell’s soul journey has taken her around the world to live, starting with humble beginnings in North Dakota, to Califo...

Nowadays there is a lot of discussion about the impact of childhood trauma but not a lot of time has been given to the relationship between siblings who are part of emotionally abusive families. It can be difficult to realise that you grew up in a home with these dynamics because denial that these things are happening is common. Sometimes this denial lasts to adulthood. The relationship between si...

Like all high level sport speed skiing is about failure, rectification, incremental gains and constant evolution. It’s an extremely tough sport mentally and physically – you know you'll have crashes but you have to have a long-term vision and know where you’re tying to go. You have to put goals in place that are incremental – you’re not going to get to your end goal of skiing at 200 kms an hour on...

There is a criticism of some awareness approaches. The critical thing is what comes next, of having awareness not for the sake of awareness but of making choices and taking meaningful action. We can’t just pretend to live joyful lives, we can’t just hope and affirm. Being consciously brave is about being able to know what is needed in any given moment and then doing it. When we have the capacity t...

Where there is a rupture in a team or where people don't necessarily agree, there is often a desire to get to a place where it is a little less uncomfortable, where it’s ‘nice’. We need to move, not to ‘nice’, but to a place where we can generate fresh ideas, where we can have discussions that move the organisation, team or a group of individuals to a new place, a new solution or a new way of doin...

Laura Purdy feels telehealth and digital health are the progression and future of healthcare. She sees healthcare as following the way the banking industry has evolved – we do almost everything remotely, rarely go to the bank and when we do its’ an inconvenience. If healthcare follows that trend, as technology is developed and adoption increases, it will get to the point where the first thing we t...

This week we thought we'd give you another opportunity to listen to Dr Thackeray's take on Psychological Safety, something he has long been fascinated by. He is particularly interested in how it aligns with Burnout and Resilience and in this podcast he discusses: What psychological safety is What it’s all about What it has to offer us Some of the different theoretical ideas around psychological sa...

Ryan Larson has been a firefighter in Phoenix, Arizona for twenty-one years. In the emergency services sector people often talk about the physical requirements, the structure, the sense of clarity and knowing your role and what you have to do. But being a firefighter is a lot more than this - it isn’t just about running into a burning building, it’s about knowing your environment, knowing the stru...

Sam LaCrosse hasn't done anything amazing. He's not extraordinary or impressive. He’s just an ordinary guy from Cleveland, Ohio, who now lives an ordinary life in Austin, Texas. Sam’s approach to living a rich and fulfilling life doesn't involve slogans or self-esteem dogma. He feels the path to a good life lies in discovering and honoring your own core values. Sam grew up as part of a tight-knit...

Estelle Giraud is passionate about creating a better healthcare system. She believes that we all have the fundamental right to have agency over our own body, our own health journey and, the privacy that goes with it. The idea that we own and cleanse our own health data means we can show our own data to the people providing our healthcare needs on a global scale. Different countries have different...

David Richman is an author, public speaker, philanthropist, and endurance athlete whose mission is to form more meaningful human connections through storytelling. As a former sedentary, over-weight, smoker, David knew that he needed to focus not on what others wanted out of him, but on what he wanted out of life. Through lessons learned in business and sport, he introduced the concept of the “midd...

When artists describe their creative process, they inevitably talk about being in an open mind state where the download of core creativity can happen, that creativity isn’t a rational, calculated activity, its about allowing oneself to become receptive.  Pure originality is core creativity, something that comes from ones pure core collective unconscious. Mindfulness meditation can take us out...

Research and science shows that meditation actually enhances creativity so you can come at a problem with several different angles and be more creative about solving it. It decreases anxiety and in a more relaxed state you are open to getting more insights and having more breakthroughs. Meditation can also enhance emotional intelligence which makes you more empathetic, less likely to act impulsive...

Jennifer had dissociated with the person she was as a teenager who was physically, emotionally and sexually abused by three teachers. She had put this away in a box and not integrated it so it started to operate as a mind bully. She was a high achiever in the academic world but when she came home behind closed doors she bullied herself through cutting and eating disorders. She was hurting her own...

When we tell ourselves about not being defined by something we generally mean not talking about it. The traumas that happen and that we don't want to be defined by we don't talk about and so we don't deal with them. They then become ‘the monster under the bed’. They end up controlling us because we haven’t dealt with them. We have to face these things head on. Feel the emotion then go back to what...

Although everyone dreams, most people don’t know that their dreams can be used for personal development. They key is to ask the right question and keep your mind open so your dream can provide the answer.  With direction it is possible to learn the reality of how your dream is constructed, how your own mind creates part of the dream and your emotions, expectations and intent. This gives...

As the founder and CEO of of dance company in India and now CEO of a multinational organisation in the US, Rani Puranik has realised there are 4 stages to leadership. Initially its to listen so you can gather information and then reflect it back out then to act as a bridge to bring stability to organisations, teams and individuals. This means thT slowly and steadily you can gear your team towards...

There is an intersection in business which makes people feel their lives have to be compartmentalised making it impossible to combine their spiritual and work lives - the idea that work just has to be work and `I can't bring some of what I believe in terms of my own spirituality’. Some of the things we do at work however are in alignment with the things that exist in our spiritual life such as com...

The term midlife crisis has a really bad reputation but it can be a time for positive change and far more exciting and interesting than we think. The pandemic has caused many people to have a mid life crisis simply because they had time to think about their life choices. That’s really what a mid life crisis is. A time to reevaluate what’s going on in your life whether it’s your career, relationshi...

Energy touches every area of your life - how you’re feeling or sleeping, how your relationships are working, how quickly you heal, whether you have an optimistic or pessimistic outlook or whether you take action of pull back. All are affected by how coherent all of your energy systems are. The need is to find out which area is out of balance energetically and bring it back so that the body does wh...

This week on the Resilience Unravelled podcast, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Craig Archibald who is an acting coach in California who works with actors at all levels in their careers. He became involved in the theatre when he was 11 years old and progressed to a professional actor when he was 15. He worked at the Royal National Theatre in London and New York’s Neighbourhood Playhouse studying the...

Growth and resilience go hand in hand. We can think about our growth in two ways - by accident or on purpose. If we want to be resilient we need to take life by the horns and maximise our wellbeing by embracing both. Most people focus on growth on purpose because that's what’s wanted – its the things we planned for, were hoping for and were willing to get uncomfortable for but it's the growth by a...