Four Questions for When You Don’t Know What to Do Next

Robyne Hanley-Dafoe: The best way to support your self-esteem is to be the person who does what they say they're going to do. To be the person who does what they say they're going to do. And last episode, less episode 100, I left by telling you that I would start this episode by explaining the relationship between our predisposition and our genetics, our DNA, and our capacity to hold happiness. So As the person who wants to do what they say they're going to do, that is what this episode is going to start. I will finish that thought loop around how happiness is factored in with our DNA, our circumstances, as well as our habits. And your perspective just in time for this moment, I'll share with you this four-step framework that I use in coaching and in my community of practice. So stay tuned. It's a goodie. I'm hopeful that it's useful. I left you last day with the promise that I would circle back today to finish the thought around how we can use our genetics to help with those factors that influence our sense of happiness. Now, just to recap, one of the things that I shared last day was information that first came to me ⁓ from David, ⁓ sorry, this was from Dr. Arthur Brooks, and he talks about ⁓ happiness. having three components enjoyment, satisfaction, and this idea of meaning or purpose. And our ability to actually hold those things had other factors, three other factors, which he introduced were 50% of a person's ability to experience enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. So 50% of our ability to be able to be happy actually is genetic. It's like in our DNA, it's in that blueprint. 25% is based on our circumstances. And the other 25% is based on our habits. Now, if I heard that my DNA was essentially a 50-50 shot about whether or not I could hold a lot of happiness or experience happiness, I would feel pretty discouraged because that tells me it's outside of my control. But what's so remarkable is when we think about psychology, what we know from psychology about how we essentially activate some of our genetic predisposition, I find that information is actually super encouraging. Now I still remember coming across this theory. I would have been in second year as a second year student when I first learned about what's called the diathis stress model. And how it was presented to me was this understanding that we have these markers in our genetics and essentially they have to be activated. for certain things to be released or for things to get turned on or for things to be kind of present day. And so there's a whole bunch of stuff that's happening like behind the scenes. And I'm not going to go into a huge DNA lesson here. That's not the point. But the idea being was this. They had identical twins who shared the exact same DNA. And they would have one of the twins who developed schizophrenia and the other one didn't. Now, if you have a gene for schizophrenia and these two identical twins both had the gene and one of them had it activated and they started to develop schizophrenia and the other one didn't. What the scientists started to figure out started to question and got curious about is well, how is that possible? So if you have the gene of alcoholism, that means you're like destined to be an alcoholic, but there are some people who have that gene. And it's never expressed. That gene doesn't essentially turn on or get activated. So, this is what introduced the notion of the diathos stress model, to the best of my knowledge, which is under certain conditions, some of those genetic predispositions may or may not get activated. So, in some of these classic identical twin studies. What happened is that in many cases, those kids were separated at birth. I don't know the backstory. I wish I knew the good backstory, but I also know that ethics have changed dramatically in psychology studies since. But the gene that was activated in an environment that was more stressful, the s the child who had that expression of schizophrenia in adulthood had a much more stressful childhood and or adolescent period. And so the whole kind of philosophy or understanding around this is that when we experience acute stress at particular moments in our development, it's gonna make it so it's more likely that these things get turned on or these things get expressed. So, what does this have to do with happiness? You can ask that. We're four minutes in, fair question. Well, if we know that 50% of our ability that is of to hold happiness and to experience it is related to our genetics. It means that our environments, also maybe our habits, can actually offer us a bit of a buffer or maybe a hedge of protection. So here's the other example. And I believe this is what Arthur Brooks talked about when I heard him share it was that again, if you are predestined to be an alcoholic or somebody with alcoholism and you never drink, you cannot become an alcoholic. Like you literally have to do the behavior, even though you might be at a greater risk, even though you have all these other kind of predetermined factors. If you just don't do it, you can't actually be an alcoholic if you don't consume it. Now you can make the argument that that person with a kind of tendency towards addiction might find other things, but ultimately it's the habits, it's the behavior, which circles back to one of my favorite big ideas that I love to talk about that the habits make up the quality of. Your day, which make up the quality of your life. This is why habits are so important. Or at the root of it, our behavior is so critical. There are going to be behaviors that are going to help. There'll definitely be behaviors that will also hinder. So when we go back to that example of here's happiness, so the three criteria, we find enjoyment, we find it satisfying, and it's meaningful. Okay, and then we think about, okay, so then what puts us in that place to be able to experience it? 50% are genetics, but thankfully we can work with that. 25% of it's made up by our circumstances. 25% is our habits. So let's now unpack the circumstances piece. So if I'm thinking about my behavior and how I'm feeling and what I want to experience, circumstances are going to play a big factor, or at least a quarter of a factor. What I mean by that is if you, for example, just came down with the summer cold, there's a summer cold going around where I live right now where folks are dropping like sniper shots. And what's amazing is that when you are unwell or you're sick, the circumstances are going to make it a lot harder for you to be able to be happy. Again. If, for example, you might be in a similar situation as I am, where my youngest is about to move out of the house to go start his post-secondary side quest adventure. Jackson's starting university in less than 25 days. That circumstance is going to impact my ability to be happy. Now, I can have a ton of dual truths packed into that. I'm so proud of the guy. I'm so excited for him. And my mama heart. Damn, he's gonna be pretty far away. And he's not going to have, we're not gonna have the same experience of having our everyday interactions. So I can be so proud of Jack's while also grieving the fact that the chain of family dynamic is shifting. That's the circumstance. I know a really difficult drive home on the 407 back to where I live after saying bye to little Jackie Boy, it's gonna effing suck. It is going to hurt. I will feel gutted. I also know that it won't last forever. I will get back into my routines and my patterns and my habits and have lots of extra cuddly times with the puppies and and and Jeff and Ava and I, we're we're gonna figure it out. It's gonna be a shift, but it's gonna be okay. But I also am well aware that the circumstances on that one particular drive home leaving him for the first time, it's gonna be really hard. And you know what? I think it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be hard. If I was like kicking him out the door and being like, see you later, ⁓ I think that would be more abnormal. So the fact that just speaks to the the commitment and also just the attachment that Jax and I have together that you know what? I'm gonna miss my dude. I'm gonna miss seeing that six foot six kid every morning when he comes out in the summer months anyway, just shortly after twelve. It's circumstances. Okay. Now, as I shared in that example, something that I am so appreciative of. Is that I will be able to lean into those habits, those routines, those rituals where I can get a sense of steadiness and even a sense of feeling a wee bit more durable or a little bit more solid. For example, when I take the puppies out for a tour, I can't actually say W-A-L-K or those three sleeping beauties will have a different plan for us for the next few minutes. But I know that if I go out for a tour first thing in the morning, I know the songs that I can listen to, the friends that I can call, the text messages I could send, the memes I can exchange. I already know what habits and behaviors are going to help. I also know what habits and behaviors are going to hinder. If I like sit at the end of his bed, like smelling his hoodies, like seriously, like, yeah, there's a time for that little nostalgic. And yeah, there's gonna be times where I walk by that room and I'm gonna feel that little heart pang. But if I like like Marinate in the misery of missing him in that space, chances are I'm not gonna feel pretty good. Definitely won't feel happy. So it's useful to see that interconnectedness of our habits with our circumstances. Now, also knowing I have that predisposition to sometimes get pretty down sometimes, I also have to be on guard. Right. Because my genetics are going to have a factor, even if I have the best of intentions, even if I do all the things right, I know that it still might be tricky. So that's why pretty like in almost like preventative support is like cope ahead of time, which means you darn right I've already booked my appointment with my therapist. You know darn right I have already put some things in the calendar to look forward to. Because if I don't have some of that support, it's just gonna make this harder. And again, I can also be super proud and excited for him and look forward to seeing him all decked out in purple as a Western guy. And I recognize that the circumstances are going to make that. So happiness is going to feel a wee bit different. I hope that makes sense. Now, one of the things that I just got to do, and ⁓ my gosh, I am so excited and fired up. One of the things that I get to do is facilitate a community of practice. This is literally where ⁓ people are able to join. We meet once a month to be able to talk about big ideas. The real emphasis right now is on perspective. And this is one of the things that I wanted to share with you because I literally just got off a call with these phenomenal human beings. And there were, I believe there were 16 of us ⁓ on this call. It was just on Zoom. But this is what was wild. I asked people before they joined today. I asked them just a few questions because I wanted to capture. capture something that I thought was really, really important, which was how strong we are and better resourced and better positioned when we try to figure things out in community. Okay, so this is what I discovered talking to the people in my group today. So of the people who finished the homework, and there's no judgment, 14 of them did, ⁓ we had 340 years of professional paid work experience. 340 years of professional paid work experience. There is no way, I don't believe that there is really any problem of practice or issue or challenge that any one of us are facing that between the 14, 15, 16 of us, we wouldn't have been able to have an insight, a learning, a knowing, a strategy, a habit, an approach, a system to be able to address. When you have 340 years of experience in a space, people have likely come across these issues before. In that group, okay, 22 businesses have been built and sustained. So imagine you're somebody and you're like wanting to start a business. This group literally has 22 successful businesses running through it. This group had a collective, a collective of Over 250 years in marriage or committed relationships. You can't tell me when you have 250 years of collective knowledge in that group, it's not gonna be able to offer you some key insights. We spent over a hundred years raising children. We have a hundred percent of the people in my community have spent their lives helping others. And the big learning gem. None of us have it all figured out. ⁓ my goodness. Now, when we got into community and we're able to talk about these big ideas, there was this one particular framework that I shared that I wanted to share with you here for our little dose of our just in time perspective. Now, this is a practice that I have come upon that I use when I'm coaching people one-on-one or working with small groups. Around four steps of navigating essentially kind of any process of knowing what to do next, or when you're trying to figure out a problem. So let's say you're trying to figure out a sticky situation, right? It's sticky, and maybe it's the circumstance that's preventing you from being happy or feeling content. And there's four questions or four frames that I want you to think about. Number one, looking back. Okay, like. What does this what do we know about this? What does this tell us about ourselves? Like looking back on it. So reflecting, looking in. What is it revealing about myself? What does it say about me? Looking around, how is this affecting other people? And finally looking ahead. Looking back, looking in, looking around, and looking ahead. Okay, so here's an example of using a perspective approach to this. The problem of practice that somebody shared with me in that group was people pleasing. They have that need to please, that desire, that disease to please. And they just want to like, they're done. Like they're tired. I think something magically happens when we go into our 40s, especially as women, where it's like, ⁓ no more F's to give to this. Nevertheless, they want to stop people pleasing. Okay. So we said, okay, let's look back. How is people pleasing served you? Well, you know what? When you were little, damn, that kept you safe. When you were trying to be able to like read moods and keep everybody good, and you were only good when everybody else was good, like that really helped when your kids were little, right? Like every behavior we do serves a purpose. So to just take a moment and look back, not with judgment, but just again, as the famous Ted Lasso said, with curiosity, right? Look back with curiosity about like, okay, well. How is that behavior work? Because again, every behavior serves a purpose. Okay. So I don't know if you can hear Navy in the background. She's ⁓ rage baiting her brother. ⁓ these are puppies for people who don't know who I work with in my immediate environment right now. We have Memphis, we have Navy who is rage baiting her brother, and Apollo the wise elders watching. I digress. So now we're gonna do step number two, which is looking. Okay, what is this revealing about myself? Okay, if all of a sudden you've come to this kind of crossroads where you're like, I am so tired of people pleasing and putting everybody else first, and you're about to have like a wee bit of this like rebellion where you're just like, no, like I don't want to do this anymore. Like, I am tired of always being an afterthought. You're not alone, first and foremost. And when we start to like look in, okay, so maybe you're feeling a wee bit weary. Maybe you're feeling like fed up, maybe you're ready to. you know, burn down some bridges, whatever it might be. The question then would be looking around, how is this behavior affecting people around you? Something that I know when I have overextended myself and I'm trying to chase and please everybody else, something that I know is that it hurts my family. Like it absolutely hurts the people that I know matter most to me because at the end of the day I'll have like nothing left for them. So if I've put all of my energy being of service to all of these other people and saying yes when really I don't have capacity, if I'm not being able to take care of the people that matter most to me, I'm doing a disservice to the people that do count on me. So it impacts the people around it. So for example, if I'm being of service to everybody else and then all of a sudden Ava's like, Hey, mama, will you watch the show with I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, sister, I'm totally gonna watch that show with you tonight. And then I'm asleep in the opening credits. Right. Like that's how this stuff shows up. It's not this like, ⁓ I'm picking other people over you, child. It shows up in the almost like the aftermath or the blast radius of what we have left over. So it I know it's impacting the people around me. And for the woman who shared that with us in the group, I know it's impacting the people around her as well. And then the question is, okay, now let's look ahead. No shame, no judgment, because shame is a terrible teacher. Guilt is a useless emotion. Looking ahead. What's one small step that I can take to show up in a way that increases the likelihood that I'm able to hold a boundary or I'm able to say no and not feel bad about it to somebody else? So what could be one small micro step? Now it could be a micro step simple, because this is where you want to practice, right? We need to get the behavior first and then we can improve the behavior. So your first boundary, I would highly recommend not being in a super high stakes situation or with a high stakes person. We're talking about being able to say no when somebody maybe asks us for a donation. It's okay to say, hey, I donate to these particular charities, and this is what I'm doing this year. This is my charity plan. So ⁓ thank you very much. But no, like again, practice small. And again, not that I'm discouraging you in any way from Giving to charities and and that philanthropic, the phil philanthropic practice. Sorry. I'm not encouraging not to do that. But again, it's like there's easy there's easy no's that we can practice with, especially when you have a system, right? Systems make this stuff way easier. What's another small step in terms of that idea of like being able to say no? Well Again, perhaps when you're asked to volunteer for something. And again, I don't want you to think like all of the things of being of service to others are the things that we're supposed to cut out. But I'll tell you right now, if you do not have enough resources in your tank for you and your loved ones, the first place we need to start cutting back is the outer circle. Okay. It is the it is the outer circle. You gotta take care of your home team and just remember you are part. Of your home team. In most cases, if you're listening to a podcast around well being and perspective, chances are you are not just like on the home team. You are the quarterback. You are the asset. You literally are the oracle that knows all things, that you run all the systems. You literally could be on the other side of the planet and somebody says, Where is my lunchbox? And you know exactly where it is. Like you literally are the knower and the doer. That's who who listens to podcasts. We know that. Now, the reality is I appreciate that it's so important to look after community and others, but you can't do that at the expense of you and your inner, innermost circle. It's not selfish. It is science. And even when, ⁓ my goodness, Saint Mother Teresa was asked, How do you help? There are so much, there's so many places that we could help and we can be of service. Like, where do you even start? She gave us this like divine insight. Start at home. You start at home. That's where we start to take care of the people that matter most in ourselves. And when we are well resourced and recovered and replenished, and the people around us are well, ⁓ my gosh, the growth is. will be like to the power of three outward and beyond. So just to do a breath of a recap, the perspective just in time I want to share with you today is a four step process looking back, looking in, looking around, and looking ahead. As I love to say, better days are always ahead. And when we get that right piece of information with that right tool And we have the right tool for the job, you're going to find a sense of ease. Because at the end of the day, I get that life is hard and there's parts of life that are so, so difficult. And sometimes it's things that are happening to us, it's things that are part of we've brought into our world. I totally get that. But at the end of the day, it doesn't have to be this hard. There's gonna be hard enough seasons in your future. I want to make sure that you are enjoying some of the middle time. It doesn't have to be as hard as we are making just the everyday pieces and parts and ways of showing up in our life. It doesn't have to be this complicated. And the reality is, if it actually was this hard for us to stay healthy and well and grounded and regulated, my friends, we never would have survived as a species. Like if we literally were this delicate and we required all of these things. Like if you think about all the things that you are being sold in terms of like, you know, mainlining apple cider vinegar. Okay, not quite mainlining, but you get my drift. All of the supplementation, the lasers, the wiggle boards, the journals, the meditation, the HIT workouts, like like, ⁓ my gosh. Like if you just think of all of the messaging that is coming at us, if that's what it actually took for us to survive, my friends, we wouldn't have. Okay. We would have expent extinct if it required that much. What are the things that we know actually matter? We obvious we absolutely have to make sure that our basic needs are met. And we have spent a lot of time pouring from an empty cup. And I love when people say like, ⁓ you can't pour from an empty cup. Yeah, you can. You do it every single day. But you've probably heard this before, and it actually makes me cringe when I even hear people say it. And I'm not even sure why I'm saying it here on episode 101, other than it's probably pretty true. There's no, there's no ribbons for burning yourself out. Right. There's no reward at the end of the day for being like, look how how depleted I was, yet I still accomplished this. burnout isn't a badge of honor. It's actually something that our loved ones would desperately wish that we would stop pursuing. So then that way we can really show up and be present. So I hope that was useful. As always, if you have any questions, wonderments, curiosities, like please reach out. I would love to hear what's top of mind for you or what you want to hear more about, or maybe there's a sticky situation or some friction and you're like, ⁓ Robin, I would love your take on it. ⁓ by all means, there's lots of takes on lots of things. But ⁓ if I can bring any insight or a perspective shift to you. ⁓ that would be pretty epic. Thank you for listening to this episode of Perspective. It means the world to me that you spent time listening to this idea, these conversations. Now, if you have found something useful or helpful, please share it with someone else. Something that I know it means the world to me to know when something has landed and then you pay it forward. Another way you can support the podcast is to rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you, and I look forward to connecting again very soon.