The surprising root of resilience

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A couple of things for you. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned here but I’ve done a new Audible Original podcast/audiobook called No Office Required. It is free. In December I spent a long time contacting a wide range of people from the likes of the author of Solo, Rebecca Seal through to futurists, psychologists, architects to find out the most effective way to do remote working. Like I say it’s free if you’re an Audible subscriber. I love audiobooks, whether just to break up the cycle of podcasts or because the escape into a novel can be really satisfying. If youre interested in getting going in the shownotes I’ve listed some of my favourite recent listens as inspiration.

A free download of my new Audible Original here - No Office Required

For those who aren't audiobook fans some inspiration on audiobooks

If you want to write a book here's my guide.

Secondly I was on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast. I’ve listened to a lot of his podcasts - he was the founder of the Social Chain media agency and I’ve met him a couple of times through that. He invited me down, it was only when I got to the Tube that I remembered it was going to be video. I had my full working from home garb on. Climate school strike T shirt and that. Anyhow there’s been lovely feedback to the discussion. We discuss why work culture isn’t feeling right at the moment, what any of us can do about it and also - as I used to work at Twitter - Donald Trump being banned from the platform. Again there’s a link to that below.

I chatted to Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast - watch it here.

On with today’s episode. At the moment I’m in the middle of writing a book on the myth of resilience. What’s the myth of resilience, the myth is that resilience is an individual strength that some of us have and some of us don’t. As I’ve been immersed in the most wonderful research along the way there’s been some people who I’ve seen their work and thought firstly I’d like to chat to them and secondly they’d be a good podcast.

Today’s guest is Dr Damian Scarf, he teaches at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

I saw him do a short and impactful TED talk: Dr Damian Scarf's TEDx Talk

Very much like Dr Jill Bolte Taylor who did that wonderful lecture about having a stroke, Damian uses his psychology to diagnose what went wrong with him when he was studying. He describes how he thought the way to get things done was to cut himself off. And as he cut himself off from more people he felt worse.

He says:

‘it’s our connections with those around us, the groups we belong to, that bolster our resilience. The number of groups we belong to not only bolsters our resilience, but is also protective against developing depression, can be curative of existing depression, and helps to prevent depression relapse. Even when you're old, groups are critical. The more groups we belong to, the slower our cognitive decline’.

So could our strength come from our connections?

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