Rules of Resilience with Valorie Burton

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This podcast will deliver today on our promise, because our promise is to add value to you, so you will then go multiply value to others. And today I’ve got a way for you to do that, because we’re going to talk about your resilience. We’re going to talk about the concept that I believe will help you increase the effectiveness of your leadership, but it will increase the effectiveness of the people around you. And I’m excited because my friend, my colleague, my co leader, my coach, America’s coach, America’s life coach, Valorie Burton, is with us today. And Valorie, I’m so glad to have you on the podcast. Now, you’ve been before, but not today, as the author of Rules of Resilience. Welcome.

Valorie Burton:
Thank you. I’m so excited, Mark, and thank you for your part in this book and just the whole Maxwell Leadership Team. I am. It’s my first book in five years, believe it or not. I’ve never gone this long between books, and I’m super excited about it.

Mark Cole:
Well, it’s funny because you’ve been a. You’ve been a faculty member with me in this John Maxwell coaching ecosystem that we have over 58,000 coaches. You’ve been with me for almost four years. And I remember us talking about you coming on and helping us and saying, mark, I’ve got a book in me. It’s on resilience and the world needs it. And so I almost feel like you’ve been carrying this book for four years. Like you. And really, you’ve been carrying it a.

Valorie Burton:
Lot longer than that.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, yeah. But we’ve been talking about it, and I’m super glad. But let me say this too, podcast family, as I do when I get the privilege of bringing on authors like Valorie, I’ve got our head of content and head of publishing, Jared Cagle with us today. Jared, I’m glad you’re on the.

Jared Cagle:
I’m thrilled to be here. Yeah, this is going to be a fun conversation. As Mark mentioned, we’ve been working on this content for quite some time. Valorie is a key voice for us, and we can’t wait to expose some of the learnings that we’ve had along the way.

Mark Cole:
We started a publishing company, we started publishing imprint just because John’s known for content. And so I’m super excited on the book. I’m holding it up for all you. You need to get on YouTube. Valorie makes Jared and I look good, so you need to be on YouTube. But those of you listening, I’m holding up the book. And on the back is what we call our Good Housekeeping seal of approval. Maxwell Leadership gets to partner with this book.

Mark Cole:
We’re on it with Tyndale. And I’m so excited about the partnership, by the way, if you’re just like one of those leaders like Valorie Burton and John Maxwell, and just go, okay, enough. Where’s the book? Give me the book. I’m going to tell you right now how to get it. You need to go to RulesOfResilienceBook.com. RulesOfResilienceBook.com. And you’ll not only be able to order the book from there or Amazon or wherever you like to get your books, you’re going to get some value add resources as well. We’ll talk more about that as the program goes. But Valorie, let’s talk resilience because you were resilient in writing this book. So why the book? Why now?

Valorie Burton:
You know, I’ve been talking on the subject of resilience for now, 17 years, you may know, as I’ve known you over 20 years, Mark, you know, I had background in journalism but went back to grad school again to study positive psychology. And when I was doing that, I had the opportunity to study under these foremost researchers in positive psychology and resilience specifically. And so when I finished, I started being asked to speak on resilience. And then I was asked to be a part of a resilience training team for, for a short period of time in 2009 into 2010 for the military, in conjunction with University of Pennsylvania, where I had gone to grad school. And that happened to coincide with me going through the most difficult season of my life to date at that point, which was going through divorce. There I am helping to facilitate and teach on resilience while I’m needing resilience in the midst of, at that time, the Great Recession, as we called it. And then what I noticed is I kept being asked more and more, but even more importantly, everything I was teaching was working in my life, which gave me this really deep sense of conviction about what I was teaching on resilience. I thought it would kind of peter out after the recession, but it never did, especially with corporate audiences, with leaders, even within families.

Valorie Burton:
And then we hit a pandemic, and that’s all I was asked to speak about. And then the pandemic was over. And I said, you know, I’ve been talking about writing on this, but Mark, I really believe that resilience is the key to success and it’s also the key to overcoming hardships and difficulties and challenges. And so success requires resilience and it’s actually contagious. Like how you show up resiliently with your team, with your family, impacts all the people around you. So I wanted to create a resource that gives people a very practical framework to build their resilience, but then also gave them rules that are easy to remember. So you kind of pick and choose, depending on the challenge, what rule do I need today? And so these rules are all easy to remember and they work and they’re rooted in research. So that’s how I came to write the book on resilience.

Mark Cole:
Well, and you touched on this, but in the post Covid reality, Valorie, I think the thing that we came out of COVID with was a lack of resilience. We had been taught to quarantine at home. We had been taught to separate ourself from difficulty, which was then. And I think what we did is we taught ourselves, hey, if you don’t have resiliency, just separate yourself from everybody. And so I think the book and its timing, even from when we first started talking about it, I think the timing is now. I’ll give you a quick side story. Just this morning I knew I was going to be on the phone with you and my daughter Macy. You and I talked about Macy because we both have something we don’t like about Macy.

Mark Cole:
For those of you that don’t know, Valorie Burton. Yeah. Well, hold up, hold up. Valorie is a Florida State fan. I’m a Georgia Bulldog and my daughter went to University of Florida. And I don’t know if a Georgia Bulldog or Florida State Seminole likes Florida Gators worse. But between the two of us, we struggle with that. Right, Valorie?

Valorie Burton:
What I can tell you, Mark, is that if we’re playing Miami, we’re on the same team.

Mark Cole:
But I was talking to Macy this morning, a second year college student, and she was telling me about a couple of her friends in the conversation they had last night. And the conversation was all about a couple of her friends wanting to give up because they had hit some difficulty in her studies. And I said, macy, I’m going to tell you, I’m on the phone. I’m on a podcast with Valorie Burton today and she’s written a book about the rules of resilience. And I want to send you three copies of this book and I want the three of you as college students considering quitting. Not Macy quitting, but her friends. I want you to go through this book together and we’ll talk more about some of us need to gift this book. Book to somebody else because we have an epidemic of resigning and stepping back.

Mark Cole:
And Valorie has given us a solution here. Valorie, you’ve coached executives. You speak on stages across the world. You’re on Good Morning America. I mean, you really get your message out there and have had some great, great books. But how is your definition of resilience after all that access and all of those influencers, how has that morphed and grown over the years?

Valorie Burton:
Wow. Okay, so first I want to go back to what you just said about Macy and her college friends. This is why I feel so strongly about the importance of this message for this time. Resilience is necessary. If we look at what’s happened with younger people, anxiety has increased dramatically. Even rates of depression have increased. But they are so ice. So much more isolated than previous generations because everything’s online, everything’s social media, media, everything’s texting.

Valorie Burton:
They didn’t even grow up, like answering a home phone and learning how to interact with lots of different people. And also, if we look at the research around things like grades, there’s grade inflation. So what happens is our kids get out into the real world and they’re not getting that feedback that everything’s an A. Right? And it may feel like they’re failing. And so when we talk about resilience as it relates to young people or as a parent helping them, as I. The foundational rule is expect the unexpected and be ready to handle it. So that when something comes along that’s like ouch or disappointment or you’re discouraged, you get well. This is a part of the process.

Valorie Burton:
This doesn’t mean quit. This means lean and find your grit. It’s okay if it’s not perfect, like, so that you. You’ll have me on soapbox. I. I didn’t graduate college with, you know, great grades. In fact, my whole first year, I was on academic probation. It was a punch in the gut, right? To be this great student.

Valorie Burton:
And does anyone ask me today what my grades were?

Mark Cole:
No, that’s exactly right.

Valorie Burton:
Nobody cares. But I’ll tell you, I learned a lot in failing and continuing to push forward in spite of the failure. I learned a lot. Working full time and trying to finish my degree and it being difficult and realizing, oh, you can still keep going. Okay, that’s side note.

Mark Cole:
That’s beautiful, though. And by the way, I love speaking of the next generation to interrupt you. I love that you dedicated this to your son. I’m telling you, I love that concept, especially when I was talking To Macy this morning and I think we’ve got an answer for the next generation and what we trained them over the last five, 10 years and how we’re going to have to equip them and resource them. But anyway, back to your personal struggles and then how you have worked with executives. How’s that definition evolved?

Valorie Burton:
So I define resilience. It’s twofold. We know it’s our ability to bounce back. It’s also the ability to thrive and grow and be effective in the face of adversity, challenges and opportunities. Right. But in this book it is a personal system that you create that enables you to adapt to and recover from your setbacks so that you can keep going. And a system is basically a set of rules. It’s approaches, it’s procedures.

Valorie Burton:
And so for me that was super important. It’s a three part system. It’s your adaptive skills. That’s what’s going on in here. When you face a challenge, it’s your protective resources. That’s the stuff that’s external that you use to help you overcome, including your relationships, your experience, your background. Money. Right.

Valorie Burton:
Why money is an important component because money can solve a lot of problems and help you be more resilient. And then third, and this was a piece that I did not see, talked about a lot in all of the data around resilience, but it makes a whole lot of sense. It’s preventive choices. So this doesn’t fix a problem you have right now, but it makes it less likely that you’re going to deal with that problem again in the future. So your preventive choices are the things that answer this coaching question. Looking back a year from now, 10 years from now, what will you wish you had done? Whatever your answer to that question, that’s what you should be doing. Because whether it is preventive choices in your health, preventive choices in your relationships, preventive choices in your finances or your career, the more you begin making those types of choices, the less likely you are to deal with adversity. It doesn’t eliminate it, but my goodness, just setting some strong boundaries and saying no every once in a while will prevent you from a lot of the stressors that are in your life.

Mark Cole:
That’s good.

Jared Cagle:
I love the rule, Valorie that you talked about. Don’t pretend and don’t defend. And that’s what my mind went back to when you were talking about Macy and the next generation and, and even the fact that nobody asks us what our grades were, you know, that took me right back. I’m like I stressed over those A minuses, you know, and nobody’s asking me. Now, talk to me about this rule of don’t pretend, don’t defend. You talk in the book about how we need to embrace imperfection and learn from our failures. Can you take us a step deeper into that concept?

Valorie Burton:
Hey, Mark, I’m laughing that Jared was stressed about A minuses.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, me too. I was thinking the same thing.

Valorie Burton:
Praise the Lord. A minus.

Mark Cole:
The minus was irrelevant. I saw the A.

Jared Cagle:
I have no. I have no defenses because I’m not pretending or defending. Valorie, I don’t know what you want from me. I’m just trying to live by the rules of resilience here.

Valorie Burton:
Okay, let me get back to the question at hand, Jared. All right, so don’t pretend, don’t defend. One of my favorite rules. Obviously, I love all the rules, but that one’s. It’s easy to remember. That’s so important. So don’t defend or. Excuse me, don’t pretend is about not pretending things are okay that are not because you can conquer the things you’re willing to confront.

Valorie Burton:
But if you don’t acknowledge that a problem exists, you tell yourself there’s nothing to fix. And so a resilient person is able to be authentic. It’s a hallmark of resilience. You’re able to say, I got a problem here. Right. You’re not hiding it out of your embarrassment, out of your shame. You’re saying, yeah, this happened. Yeah, I made that mistake.

Valorie Burton:
Yeah. I need to figure out how to do better. I don’t even know how right now, but I’m acknowledging that I need to do better. Something has to change. And that authenticity opens the door to the answer you need. It actually opens the door to relationships for others to help you. If you’re pretending nothing is wrong and everybody else is like, well, everything’s great. The don’t defend is so not pretending is about yourself.

Valorie Burton:
Not defending is when others notice something’s wrong. But you’re defending, right? You want them to pretend. Right? You want them to pretend things are okay. So it’s like the next step beyond pretending is now you’re defending because you’re upset that someone else wants to act like things are okay that are not. There is a lot of power in illuminating the truth. So I tell a story in the book about my mother. A couple years ago, she made a really huge decision, and it required her to stop pretending that things were better than they were. My mom suffered a massive brain aneurysm when we were on the phone One evening in 2001, she was 49, low blood pressure, 120 pounds, not a candidate for a hemorrhagic stroke.

Valorie Burton:
But she was under a lot of stress. And that the. We were talking about the thing that was stressing her when she said, oh, my head. Turns out a blood vessel had burst in her brain. She had emergency brain surgery that night, and she was in the hospital two months. Lost all physical abilities. And, you know, I just. I.

Valorie Burton:
Everything in our family changed, but she was so resilient through that. It took a long time to regain abilities, and she finally, over time, she lost all the abilities. Couldn’t see straight, couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t swallow. I mean, they said there was a 90% chance my mother would never walk again. And she did. Through her persistence, through her gratitude for the opportunity to get better. She kept saying things like, you know, there’s a lot of people in this hospital. They’re never going to get better.

Valorie Burton:
They have a terminal illness. I have a chance if I just keep. If I just keep pushing, if I just keep doing my physical therapy. And so she went from not even being able to sit up to being able to sit up to eventually being able to walk with a walker and then a cane. You know, she had been in a wheelchair for a while, then she could walk without a cane for a few years. And then around 2010, everything went in the other direction. And we haven’t been able to understand what happened. Well, by 2023, after, you know, we’ve been everywhere.

Valorie Burton:
I mean, everywhere you can think of that would try to explain what was happening. She realized, like, my mobility is. This is not safe, right? To be in my house alone. She had a couple times, like, fallen and not told us. And so my husband and I. My husband especially, is like, why doesn’t she move with us? He had said that since we got married, like, your mom might have to come move with us. Y’ all know that’s a blessing when your spouse says before you even marry them, like, your mom may need to come live with us. We need to make sure there’s always space for her.

Valorie Burton:
And so one day, you know, he was cooking. He cooks great. She loves to eat. I told her. I told her what he was cooking, and she’s like, oh, save a little for me. And Jeff said, well, tell her if she lived with us, she could just walk in the kitchen and get some. And she was immediately like, no, no, no, I’m not every. I like living by myself, y’.

Valorie Burton:
All. The next day I took her the food and I said, mom, if I were you, like, I’m not you, but if I was. And Alex said that his wife said I could come live with them, I would come live with them. And a week later I got an email, said, being realistic. She said, I prayed about it and God said, I’m not being realistic and I’m blessed to have family. I mean, she was only a few miles away. And I tell you that because she had been telling herself that it was okay, but just in that moment, she decided to stop pretending. For her, it came from her faith.

Valorie Burton:
And I think that for her, that’s the one thing she had to hear. If she felt she heard it from God, then it was like, all right, I don’t really have any choice. But sometimes we just need to acknowledge the things that are not. Well, the things that are not right. The conversation that needs to be had with a client, right, that keeps overstepping boundaries, or the conversation that needs to be had with a friend or what’s going on with our health or new financial habits that we need. And when you do that, you face it. You don’t pretend and then you don’t defend and then you find your answers.

Mark Cole:
You know, so I’m going to take us to rule number five, which those of you who hadn’t read the book, you don’t know it, but let me give it to you because it really impacted me. It’s rally your resources and what you just described. Number one, Valorie, I read all your books. You know, my friendship for you, my belief in you, all of you that have followed Valorie for a long time. This is a different Valorie and it’s a good Valorie. You went personal, you went deep. You just did in that question, talking about your mom and your husband and just how that brought all together. And then in this book, you pull out chapter five, or rule number five, which is rally your resources, which is all about resilience in community.

Mark Cole:
Can you dig just maybe a little bit deeper? Because you just gave us a great example with your mom. Dig a little bit deeper in this rally of resources.

Valorie Burton:
The bottom line is our relationships matter. How we intentionally build our resources matters. So as I told you, there’s this three part framework. The second is protective resources. The adaptive skills are in here. The protective resources are how you intentionally build the resources that can help you through challenges. So community is the biggest. You cannot be resilient going it alone.

Valorie Burton:
We need other people. And so it really is important, one, to listen to others who’ve been there, done that. Right. Sometimes it’s a matter of actually asking for help. Sometimes it is making sure that you are a part of community or support systems that just organically keep you inspired or moving forward. I think about all the people we have on the Maxwell Leadership Team and what it means when you know other people who are aiming for a similar goal and having similar challenges in that you realize you’re not alone. You realize that if you’re struggling with doubt or confidence, oh, I’m not the only one, which is huge. So the resources you want to develop intentionally, are you nurturing your relationships? Are you giving back in some way? Right.

Valorie Burton:
It’s not just what you get from others, but what you give. We actually increase our resilience when we pay it forward. That’s actually the last chapter in the book when you realize, ooh, when I come all the way through on the other side of this, how do I pay it forward? How do I leave a stronger legacy? The resources are community, but they’re also the basics, like the training and the education you get so that you can fall back on something when you need to. It is the financial resources. So as you’re making financial decisions, how might you arrange your finances or start doing things that make you stronger and able when something difficult happens, able to weather a storm? That’s resilience, too. So the rally your resources is understanding what the resources are, intentionally building them so that you are stronger and you don’t have to be so afraid or so anxious when things don’t go as planned. Because you know what? Things don’t go as planned. So you plan for it.

Valorie Burton:
Yeah.

Jared Cagle:
Yeah. You know, I grew up with the quotes that you mentioned, some in the book of never give up. Winners never quit, Quitters never win. You mentioned those at the top of one of the middle chapters, and you were talking directly to me, and then you said something that was profound. You said, never give up is actually a very poor strategy. And in light of resilience, I think this is a key topic for the next generation, to be honest, the current generation, what we’re going through, quiet quitting was an epidemic after the. The pandemic and even before that as well. But we’re seeing this in organizations in corporate America, but we’re also seeing it in the next generation.

Jared Cagle:
This mentality of what does it look like to give up? Well, and so I’d love for you to. Or give up maybe in the right moments or give up rightly. Can you take us deeper into that and maybe coach us on this topic.

Valorie Burton:
Yeah. So you talk about the quiet quitting. I think the rule is don’t pretend, don’t defend. You quiet quit because you’re not being honest with yourself and deciding to do something different. Sometimes we’ve got to be honest with ourselves about where we are and whether it’s where we’re supposed to be, which is what I’m talking about in this rule. Know when to grit, know when to quit it. Okay, so purpose fuels perseverance. So if you understand why you’re on a path, that purpose, when it gets difficult, it will pull you forward.

Valorie Burton:
So I can tell you that in. I’ve literally been doing this work half of my life. I wrote my first book at 26. I’ll let you do the math without saying the number.

Jared Cagle:
Five years, that’s phenomenal. I mean, you did say it took you five years to write this one. Valorie, that’s amazing.

Valorie Burton:
So I got my purpose in 1999. I had been praying about it. I got. I just. I just heard it in my spirit one day standing in a Barnes and Noble store. And I. I still know that’s my purpose. Inspiring others to live more fulfilling lives.

Valorie Burton:
Do it through writing and speaking. That has not always been easy. I mean, this last 10, 15 years, things multiply. But that first seven years, the whole time I knew I could. Could have stayed in public relations and I would have been making more money and. But I wouldn’t have been in my purpose. The purpose fueled the perseverance. We have to.

Valorie Burton:
And we have to note the difference. Sometimes things are hard, and hard is normal. And you have the grace to push through when it’s hard, when it gets to the point where you realize this is a burden. And a burden means you don’t have the grace to do it anymore. Which is a season. Sometimes as a. Is a it. Sometimes it’s a sign that the season is over for it.

Valorie Burton:
So maybe it was purposeful for a time, sometimes. It never was purposeful. You did it for other reasons. And then you’re telling yourself you can’t quit, but it’s not purposeful. So being able to say I got on the wrong path, I need to course correct and get on the right path really is okay. Grit, which we talk a lot about, it comes from the research, a lot of the research of Dr. Angela Duckworth, who wrote the book Grit. She was one of my professors.

Valorie Burton:
I talk about this in. The book is about purpose, and it’s about perseverance in things of passion, that we have passion and purpose for so you can’t grit through everything because you were not meant to grit through everything. So that thing that, you know, you’re kind of teetering, do I keep. Do I keep pushing or do I go in another direction? The question is, what is the purpose in it for you? Because if you are meant to be doing it, keep going. If the time period is over, you were never meant to be doing it in the first place. Give yourself permission to do something else. There is no shame in that. And so I think it’s very important for us to understand because resilience is not just not quitting.

Valorie Burton:
I mean, some things you need to quit.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, exactly.

Valorie Burton:
Some things are not meant to be. And that’s okay. Yeah.

Mark Cole:
So you tackle another subject that I have. I feel like I’ve been super resilient on, and the payoff has been pretty incredible. And that’s growth. You talk about this concept of close the growth gap. I think it’s rule number six. But you talk about this concept of closing the growth gap, but here’s how you set it up. And I love this. And by the way, I’m going to interrupt myself because I have to.

Mark Cole:
John Maxwell, as he read this book, he said, mark, Valorie talks about grit and quit. She talks about pretending and defending. She talks about performance and performance goals and growth goals. He says, she gives me handles. And that’s a huge endorsement for mine and your mentor, Valorie. Again, we’re talking about Valorie Burden’s book, Rules of Resilience. Go to Rules of Resilience. Book, Valorie, in this, rule number six, close the growth gap.

Mark Cole:
Here’s what you said. You said performance goals are your vision, but growth goals are the engine. Break that down for us in the vision and the engine piece of that.

Valorie Burton:
Thanks for letting me know what John said to you.

Mark Cole:
You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

Valorie Burton:
I’ve never had anyone write a forward, so having the forward of this book be by John Maxwell has been like.

Mark Cole:
It was his honor.

Valorie Burton:
So performance goals are the goals that are easily measurable. They’re what we tend to think of when we think of a goal. And so that’s why I say performance goals are the vision. It is. You know, it’s how much money you want to make, how much money you want to keep. It’s the job that you want, the relationship that you want, the fitness goal that you have. That’s very specific. It’s very easy for you to.

Valorie Burton:
For me to look at you and say, oh, yeah, they reached this goal. What we don’t ask is how Will I need to grow to get to that goal? Because we tend to think that knowing how to get to the goal is about knowing the steps to take. So we look at someone else that’s reached the goal, we go, what did they do? Well, here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if you know what they did if you won’t do it. When it’s time, we tend to, we tend to know. Like the example I always use is losing weight. We all know to lose weight you got to move more, you got to eat better, move more, eat better. But when the alarm clock goes off at 5:30 in the morning, you’re supposed to work out that day and you hit the snooze button.

Valorie Burton:
What’s the reason? Therein lies your growth goal, right? When someone tells you how you could lead your team better, but when it’s time to have that tough conversation, you don’t say what needs to be said. There’s where your growth goal is. Your growth goal is the engine that powers your goals. If you were doing all the things already, you’d already be there. You wouldn’t even be setting the goal. So the question is, how will you need to grow in order to get to where you want to go? And the growth goal could be leadership, it could be communication, it could be courage, it could be consistency. It’s the inner stuff, right? It’s those adaptive skills that I’m talking about. So if you don’t know the growth goal that goes with your performance goal, it’s highly unlikely you’re actually going to get to the performance goal.

Jared Cagle:
Gosh, I love how you get right to the bottom of it there and forcing us to dig deep to the driver and the motivator. You mentioned leading teams there. Valorie, I’d love for you to take this same concept of growth goals and talk to us about it from an organizational leadership perspective or a team leadership perspective. One of the things I’m most excited about is we’ve already created actually a resource for corporate America for the organizations that we’re working with. Maybe some people that are listening to this today would want to get involved in that and want to learn how to transform your organization. We’re bringing a brand new resource from Valorie right here with Rules of Resilience and MaxwellLeadership.com, Transform Your Organization, you can find out more information there as well. But Valorie, talk to us about this, this concept of leading teams, transforming organizations and the importance of resilience in that and how we set growth goals.

Valorie Burton:
So I am so excited about what this can mean for teams and the rules of resilience training that we’ve created within Maxwell Leadership, corporations and organizations. So psychological capital is just an interesting research concept. A lot of times organizations think automatically about financial capital that’s needed to grow the organization. They think about the human capital having the right people. But what’s missing is psychological capital. Can your people adapt? Can they be agile? Are your leaders leading in such a way that it’s showing everybody else the way to resilience as you’re dealing with change, as you’re dealing with growth? Because ultimately, if the people won’t go, if the people won’t be flexible, if the people are turned around going, but we used to do it this way, and I like this better, then it doesn’t matter what the business plan is, because your people will not go in that direction. So understanding that is essential, and that’s what the rules of resilience training is all about. When we, when we really think about resilience as building that psychological capital, what is important to me and what happens with organizations that take on this language? So in the book the I have I told you about the framework, then we’ve got the rules.

Valorie Burton:
Here’s what that does for you. As you’re leading a team, you all have a common language to talk about resilience. You’re sitting there in the meeting, you’re talking about the challenge in front of you, and the person says, you know what, we’ve got a growth gap. Or you know what? I think the. I think the rule is don’t pretend, don’t defend. Because we aren’t acknowledging this challenge over here. This is actually repeated over and over and over again. But because we’re not acknowledging it, it we can’t fix it.

Valorie Burton:
So organizations understanding, it’s about each person in the organization having the skills to be able to navigate whatever challenges or change or even opportunity is in front of them. And therefore they can carry out their role in the organization’s success. But it’s not individual anymore. When you’re all trained together, when you’re all reading together, you have the language. And that’s. I think that’s really huge. And that’s been the exciting feedback already from people is having a common language to talk about how to be resilient.

Mark Cole:
So. So we’re so stinking unfortunate to be out of town. But I’ve got two things I want to finish with, Valorie. One is, is you gave me a whole new way of thinking about resilience. We hear all these colloquialisms, all these statements. Well, in fact, my granddaughter, she’s three years old and she just taught me a new way for. You ever heard of that? Suck it up, buttercup. Right? Imagine that coming from your three year old daughter.

Mark Cole:
But she came in, Jared, to me yesterday and she said, Paul. I was telling Stephanie I was frustrated with something. She said, paul, stick it up, buttercup, stick it up. And I went, stick it up? Do you mean suck it up? She said, no, stick it up. Well, another colloquial. I know, stick it up, buttercup. But you know, another one is hang in there. And we call that resilience.

Mark Cole:
Or bounce back is another one. We bounce back, bounce back. And you went, after reading John’s book failing Forward, you went, let’s don’t bounce back, let’s bounce forward. Talk to me about this concept that we’ve put resilience in this. Stick it out. Hold on, I think I can make it. Just give me a little bit more time. And you go, no, no, no.

Mark Cole:
Make resilience your bounce forward, not your bounce back. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Valorie Burton:
Yeah, so in the book I talk about these levels of resilience and I made up a word, the words unresilant. We’re just going to go with it. Okay? Those first two are the unresilient. You know, maybe it’s, you’re totally malfunctioning or you’re dysfunctioning. You’re mount. You know, you’re, you’re, you’re not quite hanging on, right? Then there’s just surviving. And surviving is resilience too. You know, sometimes if you survive, my gosh, depending on the situation, you’re golden.

Valorie Burton:
Thriving is that next level. How do we not just survive the challenge in front of us, but thrive? Because we didn’t just go through the challenge, we actually grew through the challenge. There’s something called post traumatic growth. There’s a lot of research around that shows that there are many people that on the other side of a difficulty, they actually say that they’re somehow better. Not that they would have chosen to go through it, but it actually grew them. They became more compassionate, they became more grateful. They somehow expanded their capacity to handle all sorts of things. And once you expand that capacity, you never go back to that smaller version of you.

Valorie Burton:
And so that’s what we’re looking to do. And I wait until the end of the book to let readers know that there’s actually a fifth level. That fifth level of resilience is where you are Actually paying it forward, it is that you, on the other side of it, are sharing how to be resilient. And when we recognize that others have already done that for us. I found my own strength in it. I talk about my family, my grandparents, and how I grew up knowing I had opportunities they never had access to growing up in the rural, segregated South. And so I always felt this responsibility, like, I’m getting an education my grandparents, even my parents, couldn’t have, and I’ve got opportunity they didn’t have. I have a responsibility.

Valorie Burton:
You begin to see that others have paid it forward for you. And your job is to keep, like, take that baton and keep running and then pass it on to that next generation. That helps us, us all to be more resilient. So you see that your resilience is not just about you. It’s about how you’re going to be used. It’s about the fact that when you’re going through something hard, you don’t have to pretend it’s not so hard, but you should be aware that others are watching how you handle it, and that might actually help them increase their own resilience. So you just see that it’s not. It’s not just about you.

Valorie Burton:
It’s about your sphere of influence, no matter how small or how big that is. And to me, that’s just. It gives me hope about what the future can look like. And, you know, we’re living in times that are very uncertain. There’s lots of division, there’s lots of anxiety. And if we don’t shrink in fear and instead say, hey, maybe I’m here right now at this time for such a time as this, what is my role in helping our whole world to be more resilient? It gives you a greater sense of purpose to persevere through whatever you’re dealing with.

Mark Cole:
With Jared, I want to close before I remind people to pick up the book, but I want to close with you because you said something before Valorie got on that I want to pull back out, not only for Valorie to hear, but for all of our listeners and viewers. You said, you know, Valorie’s books is always good. It’s very tangible. Sometimes it really gets into the psychology of it. But what she’s done in this book, she’s balanced psychology with practical next steps. Almost inspirational, is what you said. You see manuscripts. You see manuscripts.

Mark Cole:
Hundreds of them a year, dozens of them a week. Talk to me a little bit about, as you read this, what made you say that practical inspirational piece as well as the sound?

Jared Cagle:
Sure well, Maxwell Leadership, we have a lot of theory. We have a lot of even practical wisdom. We’re very principle based. That’s kind of our leaning when we introduce people like Valorie to you in this audience. You find the. That there’s research really rooted behind this and it gets clinical almost as well. But what I love about Valorie is we don’t go overboard with that clinical side. We don’t go overboard with that research.

Jared Cagle:
She has a way of packaging it. Valorie, you really do have a way of packaging it in a way to where I think the normal person that isn’t interested in reading a white paper is able to process it and also apply it to their life. And so that’s what I love about. Yeah, I mean, without question, immediately I saw, okay, this is rooted. This is. Someone in academia would appreciate it, and someone that doesn’t read academic papers can also apply it. That’s a hard balance to strike. And it’s the thing I love probably.

Mark Cole:
Most about those books. And I wanted him to say that. And Valorie, I’ll let you give us one last final thought on resilience in just a moment, but I wanted Jared to say, they said that Valorie, before you got on today, and I was just like, yes, yes, what you said, that was an A minus report right there. That was a very, very good report, which is good.

Jared Cagle:
Apparently, I’ve learned it well.

Mark Cole:
It’s pretty good for me. Well, okay, it’s an A. It’s inching up. So I wanted you to say that because I really do. I try to bring into these settings books that we really believe in. We believe in this book. It’s got our imprint, it’s got our logo on it. It’s something we partnered with Tyndale on.

Mark Cole:
We believe in the book. We believe in Valorie. She’s one of our faculty members, for goodness sake. But I wanted you listening. I really wanted you to grab this, because not only do you need this book, even if you don’t know that you do, you do. But you’ve got some people in your life that is hanging on by a thread that is emotionally distraught and may not even know how to tell you. They may be in the pretending stage of things that Valorie was talking about earlier. And I want you to pick this book up.

Mark Cole:
I do not want you to pick up one copy. I want you to pick up multiple copies. You can go to RulesOfResilienceBook.com, you can order the book there, but certainly you can get it from Amazon or wherever as well. You’ll get some other resources. Valorie, it is an incredible privilege every time we sit down and work and do something together. Give us one last thought, one parting thought on resilience that’ll send people on their way today.

Valorie Burton:
So, Mark, I just want to say thank you for many years of encouragement. You’ve believed in me since I met you and never been shy about sharing. That and your encouragement on this book. I want you to know even how I titled it Rules of Resilience comes in part from John Maxwell’s influence on me and his mentorship of me. Because when I look at how John has packaged some of his best books, five levels of leadership, 21 irrefutable laws of Leaders, Knowing that resilience is my core, I learned from that, and I wanted to create these simple rules. So, yes, he wrote the forward. He didn’t tell me to do that. But that’s me gleaning from what has worked for him.

Valorie Burton:
As I move into this next phase of my life and my career, I want everyone listening to remember, number one, you’ve already been resilient, right? This book isn’t about, oh, you have no resilience. You wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be listening right now. You’ve pushed through a lot of things, but it’s really important to understand wherever you’re trying to go next, resilience is the key to you getting there, and it’s needed when you go through challenges. But resilience isn’t just for the bad stuff that happens happens. You need it for success and happiness, too, because life doesn’t go as planned and it’s very easy to knock you off course or, you know, all you got to do is get in your car and drive for a few minutes and someone will probably upset you. So even your happiness be disturbed if you don’t learn how to be resilient. And so I just know if you’ll pick up the book, you’ll listen to the book. I read the audible version of it myself.

Valorie Burton:
You’re going to take away some things that help you practically and immediately, whatever it is you’re going through. And then I want you to take that and use it to teach the people around you, whether it’s your team, your kids, your nieces, your nephews, your friends, so that all of us stop being thrown off so much by the uncertainties, the unexpected that comes. You don’t need to waste your energy being anxious, being nervous, being scared. You need to harness that energy, expect the unexpected, and then be ready to handle it. So I know you can I want to equip you to do that in a practical and consistent way.

Mark Cole:
Rules of resilience. 10 Ways Successful People Get Better, Wiser and Stronger. Pick it up today. Thank you. Hey, by the way, here’s why you want to pick it up. The world around us needs a powerful, positive change in the leaders around them, because everyone deserves to be led well.

Transcript created by Castmagic.