Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of interviews, but this time we have a new interview. We are going to be speaking with Alison Graham. While we have had a couple of overcoming adversity types of discussions, I think she's got a little bit more of a productivity hack and some good things that she brings out that are maybe your mental approach and your awareness when you're struggling, when you've got something that's just dragging you down. And as you'll find out, what dragged her down is dragging her down is quite a bit to overcome. And since she can, I think you'll see that maybe the things that are bothering you, the things that challenge you as you go into meetings or you're trying to be effective during your day, that those things are things that you can overcome. Because if she can, then I think her approach will be very helpful to you. But I don't want to steal too much of her thunder, so let's go ahead and dive right into our conversation. Okay, today we are speaking with Alison Graham and we are going to talk about everybody's favorite, we're going to talk about stress. We're going to talk about, even though everything's lining up for you, you're doing the work you want to do, things are going well, they're never going that well. There's always stress, there's always challenges, and there's that seemingly unreachable, hey, I want to have the job where I can hang out on the weekend and do whatever I want. Yet I don't want to just be lazy and do nothing. I still want to work, but I want to have time for myself. And it's how do you find the best ways to do that? How do you find the best ways to do your job and not burn out and not get exhausted? And I don't want to take everything away from her, so I'm going to let Alison introduce herself and give us a little bit of her background and tell her about it, maybe a little bit about her most, or I guess her most recent book. And then I think from there, we'll just go and you guys will see why she's on here today. Welcome. And if you'd like to tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure, I will be happy to. I am very much like you, a consultant and speaker. I was let's see, I started my business in 2006. In 2007, I ended up going in for a simple surgery that went terribly wrong and ended up causing neuropathic damage. And that led me down this path of really getting deeper into resiliency. And, you know, how do you not have your challenges in life to find your outcome? Because my neurologist told me I had to go on disability and that I would never work full time again. And I was not willing to accept that answer. Unfortunately, though, I got really frustrated with the advice, the advice from the doctors, from the books, from the well, back then we didn't have YouTube and podcasts and social media at the level we do now. And I really went searching for deeper answers that would balance the desire to have a very successful career with having to control my pain and my stress levels, because I notice a correlation between my destructive stress rises. So does my pain, my chronic neuropathic pain. And so as I was working through that, I created some frameworks. And those are what I now keynote speak and consult and coach. And that's my world is talking to people about how to do that. Still be successful without suffocating on the stress of success. That's a pretty good that's pretty good recipe. I think a lot of people would like to have that is and I think a lot of people initially you see the success is just success. You don't note that usually there's a lot of stress that comes with it. And especially if you want to get to the top of your game and staying at the top of your game. Now, I want to start those is back up a little bit to. You're in a sort of your your origin story will say is you're in a situation where you've got a lot of struggles because you've come out of the surgery. And obviously, there's this the physical side of that, but then you're also getting. Bad news or negatives, you're basically having a lot of people that are just saying, don't bother, just you know, you're sort of your hose. There's nothing you can do about it. How did you and you said you really were struggling to find a different approach. So can you maybe talk a little bit? How did you, I guess, walk yourself or crawl yourself out of that situation? I think part of it was desperation because there was no I was single. I didn't have a nest egg that was sitting there that I could have a full life and beyond disability. And for some people, that's the right choice. It wasn't the right choice for me because I knew I wanted to be a speaker. I knew I wanted to help people. I felt very mission driven. And so what I did was actually the day that I left the hospital after this, when the neurologist told me and I was like, it was not a particularly put together conversation. Right. Like, you know, like ugly crying with some high pitched squeals and delicately placed in appropriate words, screaming throughout the hospital. Yeah, it was a bit of a dramatic, dramatic experience. But I left that hospital defiant. And I think sometimes when we hit that, I can't go anymore button, like we're just at the bottom and there's nothing left. Our capacity is gone. Then it forces us to find a new solution. And I left that hospital and I said, I'm going to put I'm going to treat my body, my pain, my circumstances as if it was one of my clients. And I would put on my consulting hat to deal with my physical pain. And there was everything else that went with it. Right. I was grieving six people in my life that had died very suddenly. I was, you know, I'd had eight major injuries. It was like it would just felt like, and I know everybody's gone through these times in our life. And if they haven't one day, they may, unfortunately, where it feels like it just the punches will not stop. Like where it just one thing after another, after another, after another. And that's how I felt. And I was like, enough. And putting on that consulting hat, I got out my sharpies, you know, all the colors and my post-it notes and down on my floor. And I just was like, OK, if this is the pain and the pain is not going to go away. And so often we're trying to fix the thing that we can't fix. And so I said, OK, what are all the byproducts of my pain? And I started writing out all of these byproducts, which now in my framework, I call obstacles. And so there are the adversities that the pieces of the puzzle that we just have to heal from, we can't fix them. We can't go back. When people talk about resilience, they often talk about the phrase bouncing back. And I'm like, yeah, but the very notion of change and adversity is that what was is no longer. So you can't bounce back. It was like I was constantly looking for my pre-pain body. That was my measure of success. Can I go back to the way things used to be? And even with the pandemic and, you know, people are going, when is it going to go back to normal? You know what? You're never going to know life the way it used to be. It just doesn't exist anymore. And so what are the byproducts of that? And as I looked at those, I thought, OK, let's take all the emotion out of it. Let's take the negative storyline out of it. Let's take the procrastination and the avoidance and all those other barriers to performance that are part of the human experience and look at that objectively. And as I went, I put all the post-it notes, got their own piece of paper, and I said, OK, this is a byproduct. I can't drive myself longer than two hours at a time without crippling pain and pulling over on the highway. And that's unsafe. Well, what are my options? Well, I can hire a driver. Didn't have the money to do that. I can do what every successful young female entrepreneur might do. I called my mom and said, hey, mom, why don't you come hang out with me? And she became essentially my chauffeur. And she took care of the house while I kept my business alive in those early days, trying to figure out how do I keep going and really had to ask for help. So it was this concept of adversity. I need to heal byproducts are the obstacles that I need to solve objectively. And from there come tasks that we need to do as efficiently and effectively as possible. And that became my framework. And actually, that particular model, one of the heads of psychiatry at one of the big business schools here, or not business, medical schools here in Canada, has said that that is a pivotal framework. Like when I drew it out and she's like, it just brings context to everything. So when I go and I speak at a conference, I'll often share that model for people. So sometimes we go through adversities. And sometimes we don't, we just have, but we are paid to deal with obstacles all day long and do tasks all day long. And so really separating those two has been pivotal. And that was really the first foray into quote unquote consulting for my body. So where, now, I guess to just to get a little bit more on that background, where were you doing consulting before the surgery? Was it the, was it the same or did you sort of change gears when you came out of this? So I've always had a talent for noticing patterns and human behavior. So I was, yes, I was consulting, but I was consulting on business development and networking. That was my first two books were about networking and getting connected. And that really was my area. But when you're coaching people and you're talking about, okay, well, I want to go out and do this, you often have to put on that hat of seeing the bigger picture and then clearing out the noise for our clients. And so that's what I still do to this day. I was already doing just by accident in my coaching practice and my training and speaking practice. And so that was the lens that I approached it. It was just like, I'm just going to treat this like I'm my client. You know, it's funny because often it's our message, our message. The very things that we need to help ourselves through are the very things we can help others through. Yeah, that's always a fun thing is any sort of consulting role or even when you're just even when you're giving advice, it's amazing how often that we're in one of those two situations where either we can look at what we did, what we had and how we dealt with it. And that becomes something useful to somebody else or we're helping somebody else and it suddenly dawns on us. Oh, we should probably listen to our own advice because that'll really help us out. What a good idea we had. That's brilliant. I should try that on myself. Maybe that will make things work better. Do as I say, not as I do. But you know, what's interesting is I live this every day, right? And I mean, I've been practicing this methodology that I've created and put in my new book, The Stress Illusion, that'll be coming out later this year. But it's like, I live it because I still have my pain. And if I don't live it, I can't function. You mentioned, which is interesting to me because I wonder if that was one of the key things is we can't fix what can't be fixed sometimes. We want to fix something that cannot. And so it is a, for lack of a better term, we get tied to a past. It doesn't matter whether it's the recent epidemics and all that other stuff, but it's just life moves on. And so there's always going to be things that are in the past and you can't reach back. How much of was it sort of freeing for you to sit down in your consulting hat to say, okay, I can't get back to that. And instead I need to sort of essentially look at the obstacles. Where do I want to go forward as opposed to being, I see it as being sort of detached a little bit, it's like, take that weight off and say, now where do I want to go? I think that is a huge part of it. The way I look at it in adversity is if you and I were walking on a path and there was an earthquake and all of a sudden there's a sinkhole that has taken away the path in front of us. That is an adversity. And so often we try to power through, right? And push, push, push as if the past still exists. But essentially what it is, is the chance to fall into the sinkhole. And so I actually, there's an old piece of advice. It's a lot of platitudes out there. I mean, obviously, right? They usually are for reasons. But the one that I heard so often is you have to focus on the things that you can control and let go the things you can't. And the problem I have with this advice is that we as humans, our emotional experience is often tied most to the things that we can't control. The things we can't control are the very things that make us make our heart break. They're the very things that we need to heal from and we need to process effectively. Otherwise, it's going to go down in our system and it will come out one day as, you know, there's a lot of research around destructive stress and resentment and regret and how those negative leaning emotions, I mean, if you want to label negative or positive emotions, but how those can actually cause physical ailments and, you know, it would be problematic. And so my approach is, okay, this horrible thing has happened. What does that mean? And I'll lean into it rather than pull back from it. Because if we don't give ourselves the space and the grace to process and heal from those adversities, we're going to carry them with us forever. And so the reason why when I'm working with my clients and I say, okay, let's write down everything you can control and everything you can't control. Most of the time people say, okay, everything you can't control, park it, forget about it. It's done. And I'm like, okay, let's look at that list and say, what does that mean to you? What is the storyline around you not being able to control? How does that change your expectations for what you thought your life was going to be? We have to grieve that. And so it's a little bit of a play on that control piece of the puzzle, but I found that by separating it, it gave it context for what, like if I was getting, you know, spinning in the, oh my God, I hate my pain. And I just want to go back to the way it was. It gave me context to recognize that the way I'm approaching it is like, okay, I'm having a natural emotional reaction to something I can't control. Let's unpack that and feel it and go into it as opposed to ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist. Well, that's a really good, good sort of segue into stepping back where you, you know, you sit down, you got your Post-it notes, you're laying out everything you got. Here's my obstacles. Here's my task. You've laid this out. In a sense, it feels like it's like, you know, it's like it's magically just tied up with a ball. It's like, boom, we're off and running, but it's, you know, I'm assuming it's not for you because it's not for most of us. And so how do you, how does that process that you have help you move forward from it? Because there are things that you can't, you can't just set it aside and say, okay, it's done. Like in your case, you can't just suddenly say, oh, I'm fine. I'm not, there's no pain. I'm awesome. There is reality to that that you can't control. And I know that it's got to be something that comes back at times. So it's in, how do you utilize maybe that process or help you process the things that you can't control and then get back into the things that you can. Yeah. So if I do this, a version of this exercise, I'm going to say once a day, at least five times a week, we're all scribble out. So the second I get overwhelmed or I start worrying about something or I feel off or I get really grouchy, I have this whole process that's, you know, going to be in the, the stress illusion book and I like go through, I call it the rapid fire resilience rundown. And I'm happy to give it to all your listeners. So just, we can do a free giveaway for that so they can have it. And so I'll be thinking, okay, if I'm feeling overwhelmed, I go immediately, okay, what's really happening here? And I'll name it. And I do this with my clients, right? When they're having a day or trying to get away for a vacation and they're totally overwhelmed and they're upset, I'm like, okay, what's happening? And then it's like, is this a task, an obstacle or an adversity? If it's an adversity, we need to bake some time into our day. To heal it and to feel it and to sit with the emotions and honestly, just even having that freedom is enough to give it enough space. It doesn't go away. It just, we can process it. But what it does is it compartmentalizes it so that we can go, what are the obstacles that are within my control or I have more control over? And then we say, okay, I've got to look at those. And then we look at them objectively and we say, okay, if I strip away storyline, which is often negative, if I strip away the emotions that I'm feeling from this adversity, because those worst adversities when we're feeling overwhelmed, they tend to cloud everything if we don't have a system for placing them somewhere. And I know this with my mom. My mom has had a lot of health challenges over the years as I have. And early, early in my journey, when I wasn't able to deal with my pain, my dad had passed away and my mom was in the hospital. And I didn't have the emotional regulation that I have today. I didn't have the systems and the perspective, but like stress, survival stress, that stress that we feel when one of our, when ourselves or our loved ones are in danger is completely normal, completely normal. And it's emotionally charging. But if we don't recognize that that's happening, then we can take it out on the innocent bystanders or on other issues that are happening around us. And so in this particular time, I will never forget it. I went out to the parking garage and I couldn't get out because my credit card wouldn't work. And I was not kind. I took all my angst out on the parking person. And I ended up going back and apologizing because it was a real pivotal moment for me to realize how misplaced emotion plays a role in our lives. So I call it pangry, like pain-induced anger. It can be the grief, right? Can induce our anger. Like it's a, if we don't have a lot of emotional regulation and we don't have some way to look at what's an obstacle, what's an adversity, which deserves the emotion and the obstacles, which you might have some emotion around it, but really we deal with obstacles all day long and the tasks require none. We just got to do the stuff, empty the dishwasher, no need to have a fight about it. It just keeps going. That framework, that thinking has given me and my clients a sense of understanding of what's happening because when we can catch it, we know when we're at risk. So when I walk into a meeting, I always check what's my pain level. How is my body feeling right now? And if it's high, I'm like, okay, that puts me at risk. And just recognizing that gives me more of a sense of what's going on. So that I can shift how I'm showing up. Now you have a, I guess I'll say an obvious tell in that sense is one of the things is that you have a physical pain that is now something you say, Hey, okay, I'm, I'm at risk. So in your, in your consulting or within, within people in general, particularly from a stress induced type of, you know, you've got some other thing that's, that's bothering you. What are maybe some signs or ways that they can then have something like that to say, Hey, how do I do a self-check and say that, Oh, I'm at risk or Hey, I'm doing great today. Yeah. So it's interesting because the word pain can be swapped for anything you're going through. That is an adversity, grief, money, troubles, house, loss, bankruptcy, business, not working. Like you bring it on, it can be swapped. Same process, adversity, obstacle, task. Having said that every person right now who's listening can likely imagine that when they feel anxiety, when they feel overwhelmed, when they feel that that buzzy sort of stress, that there's somewhere in their body that it shows up and you will only know the sensation for you because it's different for every person. But for a lot of us, it can be the shoulders come up. It can be, you can't take a deep breath down into your lungs. You're sort of really breathing shallow. I've worked with people before who tend to start mouth breathing instead of nose breathing. Some people get like a little twitch in their eye or their left arm will go numb. Like it can be little things that they know that they're disconnected from their absolute flow. What I call the sweet spot of performance, productivity, profitability, and personal fulfillment. That's where we want to hang out, right? We're not so stressed that we're overwhelmed and burning out, but we're not having so little stress that we're bored out of our mind. But when we start screeching up to the top of our capacity, this is often described as the suffocating. You've got so much to do. There's no time to breathe. There's no time to like, if you just don't even have the ability to take a breath or to think. So often people will say to me, oh, I like the second my head hits the pillow at night, that's when I start thinking and I can't get sleep because my head's going a million miles a minute. That's because that's probably the very first time that day that you've actually been quiet. It's probably the first time you've given yourself the space and the grace to process what's happened throughout the day. And so what I want people to do is figure out what is that sensation that they don't like. And that becomes the sort of starting point of when we notice that sensation, we start going, oh, wait a second, I get a shift here. What's really going on? And that's it. Because the interesting thing about this model is too many tasks, left hand done, will ultimately cause obstacles. Too many obstacles left unsolved will eventually cause an adversity. So just as we can work down from this, adversities will always create new obstacles, will always create new tasks. We can also work up. And so that feeling overwhelmed, off-kilter, anxious, that's the trigger to say, I got to shift gears and figure out what's going on right now. We will pause there, but don't worry, we are not done speaking with Allison. We will continue next episode. We will wrap up our discussion with her and get a little more deeper into some of the specific challenges and specific suggestions and recommendations she has, particularly as we go more into talking about how her business works and how she consults and helps people that are struggling with some of their challenges with sometimes just their perspective in some ways that you can change that and make it work for you. Hope that's a good enough teaser to bring you back next episode. But as always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you because that was a good enough teaser. We will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.