Resilience in Times of Uncertainty

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Title card, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) A Webinar Series. Resilience in Times of Uncertainty. Logos, SBE Council Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, Travelers Institute Travelers, Humana, ACCION. Video feed, Joan Woodward. 

(SPEECH) 
OK, good afternoon. And thank you for joining today's program. My name is Joan Woodward, and I have the honor of leading the Travelers Institute, which is the public policy division and educational informational arm of Travelers. Today, we're continuing our Wednesdays with Woodward Webinar Series exploring issues impacting us, both in our personal and our professional lives. We've hosted these programs since the beginning of the summer. And we've welcome thought leaders from across all sorts of industries to join us to share information about their topics. 

So we're glad you're here today, and hope you'll stay in touch with us. Join our email list if you would like information and invitations to all of our webinars, that's institute@travelers.com, or you connect with me directly on LinkedIn, or watch replays of past webinars on our website travelersinstitute.org. We're excited to continue our series today with the support of the Small Business Entrepreneurship Council and Axion 

Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to draw your attention to our disclaimer on the screen. 

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Slide, About Travelers Institute Webinars. Wednesdays with Woodward educational webinar series is presented by the Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers. This program is offered for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with your financial, legal, insurance or other advisors about any practices suggested by this program. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. Returns to title card. 

(SPEECH) 
Today's presentation is on a topic that is equally important in our professional and personal lives, which is resilience in times of uncertainty. We've all been living through immense uncertainty since the onset of this global pandemic. And then on top of that, stress, one of the most polarizing elections of our lifetime. With stress weighing on us and uncertainty continuing, resilience is more important than ever. 

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Slide, Speakers. Two profile images. Text, Joan Woodward, Executive Vice President, Public Policy, President, Travelers Institute, Travelers. Wendy Wollner, Trainer, Humana 

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So what are the qualities of resilient people? And how can you build your own resilience? 

Here to help us answer these questions today, we have Wendy Wollner. Wendy is a resilience trainer with Humana Employee Assistance Program, and as CEO of Balancing Life's Issues, a leading workplace training organization. She is also a research scientist and a faculty member at the American Management Association. 

A note on this presentation, the content is brought to you through our collaboration at Travelers with Humana's Employee Assistance Program. Humana is an industry leader in the EAP field and has partnered with Travelers from more than 20 years. We are pleased to be able to offer this program to you today through that partnership. 

So before I hand it off to Wendy, a quick note about submitting questions. As you know, we love to get questions at the end of our presentations. So we'll definitely save some time for that at the end. So please don't wait to submit your questions. Do that using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. And if you want to send your questions, do send anonymously or you could attach your name to it. So with that, join me in welcoming Wendy Wollner. Wendy, take it away. 

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Slide, Speaker, Wendy Wollner, Trainer Humana. Video feed, Wendy Wollner. 

(SPEECH) 
Great. Thanks. Welcome, everybody. We can go ahead and start. I'm incredibly excited to be here today. What a day. I'm sure many of us stayed up late. And we cannot change to the next slide. So you don't see my face anymore. I am here on behalf of Humana, your Employee Assistance Program, to talk about a topic that I've been studying for just about the last 30 years. 

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Slide, Disclaimer. A message from Humana. These non-insurance services are provided by Humana Wellness. Availability may vary based on product. Not all products are available with all Humana health plans or for standalone sale. This material contains links to websites that contain information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. We do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of the information found on these sites, and the inclusion of these links is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse the organizations sponsoring the sites, the views expressed, or the products or services offered. This material is provided for informational use only and should not be construed as medical advice or used in place of consulting a licensed professional. You should consult with an applicable licensed professional to determine what is right for you. For more information about Humana EAP and Work Like Service, please visit humana.com. 

(SPEECH) 
Go ahead to the next. And you can see that we're really going to talk about the science and the skill of resiliency. And some of you I know I get to do this presentation. So often people are saying, do we really know answers? And we do. 

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Slide, What We'll Discuss Today. Understand how people respond to stressful situations, examine self-care strategies, explore sources for resilience, consider tips for caring for and communicating with others, understand the five intervention principles and essential needs after a distressing event. 1, safety, 2, connectedness, 3, hope, 4, calming, 5, competence and self-efficacy. 

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So get ready because we're going to give you a lot of great information. I can't wait to hear your questions and comments. So let's go ahead and get started. So we can spend every second in the most meaningful way. Next. 

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Slide, Resilience. The ability to cope with and manage both ordinary and extraordinary life events and return to one's usual state of well-being. 

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The art of resiliency or the science of resiliency is the ability to bounce back from anything and everyone. So I went to University of Pennsylvania and studied positive psychology and resilience. It doesn't mean we walk around happy, jumping up and down, excited all the time because that's actually very silly. What it does mean is that we have a fundamental belief that every single problem has a solution. And so we're going to do a roadmap today to help us understand what we need to get there. Next. 

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Slide, Why Does Resilience Matter? 

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So it matters. It's interesting is this question over the years people would say to me, everything is going great. Do I really need to focus on this? We don't get that question in year 2020 or certainly anymore. We know that resiliency matters. Many of us did stay up probably too late and will continue to based upon uncertainty. And it was a normal beginning of a 2020. And then more chit or April, depending upon where you're at. And we got hit with the pandemic and civil unrest and financial uncertainty, and on and on and on. 

And in the middle of that, we had our own lives. People were diagnosed with cancer. People had loved ones that were lost due to COVID, or to other illnesses, or to accidents. People got married. People got divorced. So resiliency continues in spite of or because. Let's go next. 

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Slide, Characteristics of Resilient People. Resilient people tend to be purposeful, self-reliant, accepting, optimistic, able to re-frame situations, less likely to suffer from depression, active in taking care of their health. 

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So this is your answer sheet. If I only got to do one slide--and Joan said to me, you can only take one. This is your recipe. And while I consider myself to be an expert on the topic, I have to tell you that does not mean that at any point during my lives, during my marriages or divorces, during raising three children by myself or starting a business that I could take this in to sit down and say, yeah, I'm good. 

So I want to call a few shout out takeaways from today. So that this is a really useful amount of your time. The first one is a reminder to go back and read a book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It was that research that showed us those who lived during the concentration camp, during the Holocaust that gave away their bread were more likely to survive than those who took their bread. 

So what does it mean? It means in the midst of everything, our lives have to have meaning. So I like telling stories. I'm going the introduce my dad and tell a 1-minute story, not just because my dad was in the insurance industry and absolutely loved it with all his heart, but because he was my best friend and mentor. And he taught me this slide in a really good way. 

When my father passed away, I was devastated. And the funeral director came and said, your dad was older. He was trying to manage my expectations about how many people would come to the funeral. So long story short, I showed up the next day and the funeral was packed. But three quick people that I met. 

The first was this bank teller. His bank teller came to the funeral, and she was crying, and she talked about how amazing my dad was. And my dad had given her daughter her job. 

The next one was a dry cleaner. I love the dry cleaner because I got a free year of dry cleaning. And she talked about the relationship with my father. And he had helped her when she'd come here from another country. 

And the third was actually his car salesman. My father was a big car person. Loved it. The car person actually offered to help me deal with my dad's car. 

But the point of the story is really not how awesome my dad was, although he was. The point of the story is I went home that night and I realized I was missing something; I was missing that first bullet. I live in a day and age where I can Venmo, I can app. I don't need to talk to anybody else, and now worse than ever. So I stopped and I realized if I truly want to be the best version of Wendy, I need to connect with everybody and anybody. 

So even now in the middle of the pandemic, I make sure that I talk to the people in a socially distanced in front of me. Sometimes they'll say, oh, you're in much more of a rush. You go in front of me. I make sure that the fundamental part about resiliency is that I'm doing my part to make this world a little bit better. 

And in a world where I can't always feel that way and I can't always control that, there's so many little things along the way. So someone is in a really particularly nasty, cranky mood this morning walking the dog. I'd let the dog off the leash just a minute too early, and they snapped at me. And I turned around and said, you know what, I think we're all just feeling that real stress right now. And they were so grateful for just a moment of kindness. 

So when we talk about the characteristics of resilience people, I want us to really think differently. It's about the science of kindness. It's about the science of, I can do this. Let me learn how to be able to handle this myself. 

And it is about understanding that only 1% of this world population is born optimistic. The rest of us, we got to learn it. We got to sit and say, do you really believe that today is going to be a little bit better than the day before, and tomorrow is going to be a little bit better. Are we able to see things in a different light? 

So many of us have children and family members. And so this is a great opportunity to re-watch some classics. So Finding Nemo, best movie ever to re-watch. Best line ever is when the father can't find Nemo. And he's really freaking out. And he says to ditzy Dory, gee, I promised him nothing would ever happen to him. And then ditzy Dory says a line that changed my life. She says, but if nothing ever happens to him, nothing will ever happen to him. 

And I want us to think about that because I want us to think about the fact that we wouldn't choose to be here right now in the chaos that we are but we're here. We have an ability to learn more about ourselves right now than ever before. And we may never get it again. Let's go on. 

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Slide, Range of Reactions, We All Respond Differently to Challenging Situations. Each person's reactions will differ depending on emotional and psychological resilience, physical health, financial security, social network, severity of experience, and access to assistance. Current situations may trigger past traumatic experiences. Pre-existing mental health and or substance abuse issues may be triggered or amplified. In uncertain or distressing times, many people need concrete assistance and someone they can talk to. However, people are resilient. Everyone has natural strengths they can call upon. You can identify and use your own strengths and help others recognize and harness theirs. 

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So when you start thinking about where you rank, where you grade yourself on some of the different characteristics I just mentioned, we can start to understand that we all respond differently. But we all get the choice to respond the way we are proud of, no matter what. So they call upon their natural strengths. 

So if I asked each one of you and I was sitting in the living room, which would be my passion to be with you in person, If I said to you, what are your natural strengths, right? What is it? What is your go to? Sometimes people say they're in good shape. Sometimes they say that they're givers. 

But I'd like to throw out two more that we're doing more research on. One of them is like lighten up. We've been studying humor for a very long time in resiliency. A four-year-old laughs 400 times a day. How many times a day do you laugh? Is it possible that we take things just a little bit too seriously? 

I have a dog. I have a three-legged dog. He's like right behind here. And prior to the pandemic, I would really be panicked that he might bark. Now, I don't care anymore. You know what, I realize that we're in people's homes, that it's messy. And he certainly barked on some of the classes. I wish he wouldn't. But you know what, part about me being resilient is not him barking. It's the way I respond to him barking. Let's go to the next. 

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Slide, Intervention Principles and Essential Needs After a Distressing Event, Calming. Distressing events can make people go between adrenaline fueled energy and physical exhaustion, managing stress over an extended period requires resilience, have realistic expectations of yourself and others, develop a personalized menu of stress relief options. 

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I also want us to think about the fact that we have our soothing techniques. I think this is super interesting. If you've ever seen a baby, they learn with the pacifier or their thumb to calm themselves down. We take it away from them, which is so really wrong. We tell them no, no, no, stop soothing yourself. And now here I am saying, no, no, we need to go back to learn how to do that. And hopefully not with wine or with liquor, or with food or shopping, but find ways that truly literally make you calm down. 

I have a client now that was telling me that they did a social media detox. My daughter, my 29-year-old daughter went off social media. She found ways to say, this is what works for me to calm down. My personal one is I love sunrises and sunsets. And I schedule around them. I have an app that does download it and I watch it. And I can actually feel my blood pressure just-- 

So do me a favor for a second and uncross your legs. And if you feel comfortable, close your eyes or look down. And just take a deep breath in for six, hold for three, and let go for six. Just one more time. 

Take a deep breath in for six, hold for three, and let go for six. I appreciate Joan doing it with me. We don't get to take our words back. And I'm sorry it can get old very quickly. And so calming yourself down before we say or do the wrong thing is very important to all. Next. 

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Slide, Connectedness and Hope. Disruption to communities and daily life has a powerful emotional impact, faith groups and community organization provide a shared source of connection emotional relief and hope. The workplace offers a source of connectedness and hope that is often overlooked, work family. Virtual connectedness is key in the workplace and in the community. 

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You've heard a lot about hope. There's a wonderful reference book by Dr. Groopman called The Anatomy of Hope. And it's based upon a lot of research that the American Medical Association did about two years ago that talked about genuine faith and faith in whatever you choose to believe in. But genuine faith is part of our connectivity. 

So what do I mean by this? I've had the opportunity to interview hermits, people who live alone, they do whatever they want whenever they want. And you'd think, well, what is pretty cool, right? They actually live decades shorter than we do. 

We are connected. We're mammals. Matter of fact we can die from broken heart or loneliness. So what makes the difference for resiliency is people who believe that we're going to be better. So believing in a cure for the pandemic. 

I talked about my dad. It would only be fair to give a mom story for a minute here. My mom, who is 85, all the time talks about polio. She was telling my children the other day through FaceTime that she went to camp and they were very scared that they were going to wake up paralyzed. Of course, that was the time of polio. And then a man created a vaccine and polio went away. And she brought to that family this idea of hope because she's witnessed it. 

And I think sometimes it's so important to go back and look at it and think about in our own roles, have we lost hope. Because hope is a key component to resiliency. We truly believe, resilient people truly believe that we're going to get back up. But we truly believe we're going to get back up better than when we were before. Next. 

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Slide, Competence. Distressing situations can cloud perspective and drain energy. Breaking preparedness efforts into smaller achievable tasks helps avoid feeling overwhelmed. Helping others increases sense of satisfaction competence and control. When you help others, you know you can also help yourself. Focus attention on things you have influence and control over. 

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I also want to be clear. I don't mention I teach at a business school. This doesn't mean that I don't think people-- they need to know how to do their job. They need to be able to show up. They need to be reliable and trustworthy. And they need to be competent. 

I read four papers every morning, so I get a different sense of what's going on. So focusing on your continual learning is part of resiliency. There's a wonderful book called Taming Your Gremlins, which talks about how we can silence our own critique to move forward. 

So maybe this is the time to go back to online school. LinkedIn Universities have tons of learning. Coursera has tons of learning. There are so many amazing opportunities about learning things right now. I have a running coach and I have a tennis coach because I'm not very active in those things. And I want to learn how to do those. So resilient people are constantly learning. They're constantly embracing. 

I've had the pleasure of meeting. Warren Buffett. And of everything that he taught me, he sponsored 10,000 small businesses through Goldman Sachs, He reads 60 books a year. Now, I mean, I'm at 30. And I think that's like really a lot. He does 60. The man is in his 80s, has cancer, and works full time. So becoming an avid reader and learner is part of resiliency. Next. 

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Slide, Questions. Video feed full screen. 

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So I know I fast forwarded. I even have more time because I really believe in the conversation of this topic. And I know we have some good questions. But I personally when I like to engage a group--and I appreciate so many people being here. 

I'm here because I believe people need maybe more direction about resiliency in their own lives. So Joan, I tried to give a ton of time for questions and conversation. And I know you have some good questions for me. So I thought it'd be a little bit more fun party to get everybody involved. 

That's terrific. And Wendy, really, I mean, great slides, great advice. And I can relate to you with the story with your father. I had a similar experience with mine and I thought, wow, who knew all these people had connected with him. And so anyway, I appreciate you saying that. 

Thank you. 

So all right, folks. We have a lot of folks on the line. We'd love to hear your questions. So if you could put them in the Q&A function. Just hover over the bottom of the Zoom call there and just type your questions in. And you can attach your name or not. 

And can I just dive in here. 

Yeah, please do. 

Great. So how do we as business owners help manage stress and focus on hope and our mission? I love that. And I will repeat the names of books. So as a leader, our first job is to come to work 100% of the time in a good mood. 

And believe me, I'm very mindful of what I just said. Your job as the business owner like mine is to wake up saying today is going to be even better than the day before. And you have a different journey to get there than I, right? It's sleeping well. It's eating well. It's mentally preparing yourself well. But your job is to bring your A-game on. 

And then your next job today is to understand some of the other pandemics we're going through. We are in the middle of a mental health pandemic. People need to talk about how they are feeling. So I am here on behalf of your Employee Assistance Program because we believe that we need to talk about our mental health and our mental health concerns. 

So we want to engage people in that conversation. My thesis, my master's thesis was on work-life balance. That doesn't sound funny today. But 30 years ago, when I was at Penn, they thought it was funny. And there's a little revenge there because they are now a client. 

So encourage people to talk about how they're feeling. Do regular check ins. And one other thing we do is to have some staff meetings where you're not allowed to talk about work. We're going to do a lot of check in and put your video on and just tell us what's going on. 

So people ask for the names of the books. I have so many. But the ones that I talked about this is Man Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. But to add one to the list that I loved, if you've ever read a book that you cry when it's over, Shonda Rhimes book, the Year of Yes, is an incredibly great story about resiliency as well. And Taming Your Gremlins, those are the ones I've talked about. 

I'm curious about your thoughts on meditation. OK, so I love mindfulness. Meditation is extremely difficult. And having studied it for decades, The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama, he was four years old when he was picked to groom a billion people. And he meditates seven hours a day. 

Studying meditation means you can clear your brain. I want you to think about that for a minute. If I ask you a tough question right now and said, I'm pretty sure. I don't know, Joan. Was this boring? It's an interesting topic. We're having fun today, right? 

Yes, absolutely. 

And I bet that of all these people, quite a number of them were multitasking. So we are pretty far away from meditation. I would start with mindfulness and just paying attention. Just be here now. Ask yourself, why did you feel the need to multitask in the last 20 minutes? You signed up for the class, you knew there was a need for the class, and yet you felt some burning desire to do something else. So I would start with mindfulness and then move to meditation. 

Great. So I have I have a couple of questions for you Wendy. 

Sure. 

So we are eight months into this global pandemic. As you say, there's no real end in sight, right? Even when we have a widespread vaccine out there, we will still have a number of people who don't want to get the vaccines. 

So you'll have kind of this messy middle of people who have had the vaccine and may not want to get it, getting back into our offices, getting our kids back to school. So what advice do you have for us for maintaining resilience in the face of long term stress, where you clearly feel uneasiness about when this is going to have a date certain to end? Long term stress, can you talk about that? 

Yeah, so the first thing is we've got to get past the point of just saying, I'm fine, as if we're really fine. So we're not fine. I don't even like the term the new normal because I don't think that's the right way to describe it. So this is not a marathon. This is a forever. So the reality is there are many people that are living in denial. I'll give you a hint. 

If you're someone that says, I'm going to date when this is over. I'm going to get married when this is over. I'm going to look for a new job. We're constantly putting everything forward. The first step is that's a warning. Because as you just said, Joan, when this is over, we don't even know what it's going to look like. 

The second thing is let's talk about some fundamentals again. Eating healthy, losing weight, getting to optimal weight. If you've read this week's paper, it talked about making sure you're getting things like vitamin D, which means going outside. And by the way, you can go outside in the rain and the snow you actually don't melt. Sleeping, using fit trackers, Apple watches or Fitbits to make sure you're sleeping eight hours a night. These are the ways that we have our foundation. 

But then the next thing is I'm going to challenge you to take a piece of paper. And every time you say something negative, I just want you to rip off a little piece. 

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Rips off a piece of paper. 

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Because long term resiliency is about the words that come out of your mouth, right? Thoughts become behaviors; behaviors become actions. So resilient people, this is probably all that they rip a day. 

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Holds up the paper with one rip. 

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The average person today is ripping between 11 and 15 pages a day. We won't make it. 

So positivity has a direct correlation on resilience, being positive and optimistic-- 

Absolutely, yeah. 

And talk to us about fitness. You said it's important for you to be fit and eat healthy. And how is that related to resilience? 

So at the end of the day, our bodies--I mean, we're a little late to the game, some of the other countries I've studied, right? In Asia, the mind-body connection is part of their culture. If you've been to China, you get up in the morning, you can see them doing tai chi. And you can see them partaking in many different exercises outside on their roads. 

We here are just beginning to understand the correlation between mind-body connection. So ask yourself how you feel. I'll give you an example. I worked with a client last year, an executive, who really was a very cranky individual. Truly had a very stressful job and a very cranky individual. 

We went through his life. He had an amazing family. Everything was amazing. This man was eating five New York City bagels and cream cheese a day. Do you have any idea how many calories are in one? About 800 calories of nothing. 

So if I said to you, just ride your car without oil. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. No problem. You don't really need the oil for the car because you don't notice the oil. You know what would happen. It's not the gas. We can get by putting in gas. Like, we can get by eating the potato chips and the junk that we're eating. But our internal body is not going to be pushing out the best we can. 

And I'm betting everyone who's here has had the experience where they've eaten too much, or eaten the wrong food, or drank too much. Those are in normal times. All our cortisol level is very high. And it will be high not just when the election gets settled or not--because this is going to have residual effects, I'm 58, for the rest of my life. So this is not a marathon that we see, oh, in--I did something for the cruise industry the other day. We're planning out until 2030. 

Wow. OK, so speaking of cruise industry and speaking of eating, let's talk about the holidays Wendy. So the holidays are going to look very different right this year for everyone. And I know a lot of people are canceling or they're just not doing Thanksgiving, maybe not Christmas. Can you share advice for maintaining that connectedness with your family and friends over this holiday season? How important is that? 

This is a great question. I want to be clear about something. Resilient people do not make their lives easier. They're not looking to make their lives easier. So let's be clear about that. They're not looking for easy fixes. They're not looking for quick fixes. 

So I'm very judgmental about this. Holidays and rituals are incredibly important to our wellness and our productivity. And they're regrets because I want to be very clear. You don't know who will be there a year from now. So this is a holiday you may never ever, ever get again. 

So I do believe in following CDC guidelines. I do not think we should pass judgment on anybody's family. But I can tell you if I can teach my 85-year-old mother to use FaceTime so she can see her grandson again, we can all work around technology. 

And instead of focusing--remember the part I talked about reframing. A resilient person just doesn't sit there and say, oh, this is just not as good as last year. Last year was so much better. That's not the way it works. What we do embrace is what we can do. What creative ideas can we come up with? 

I love that one of the schools that I was working with--that I heard of, I'm sorry, they did sunrise, drive-by sunrise get togethers because they wanted to bond the senior class. I was like, that is a creative idea. Today's Wall Street Journal talked about the hotel industry saying, you know what, maybe we need to do day rates, meet to five so people can leave their home to go to a hotel. 

It's a new day of creativity. So maybe there's a way to do an outdoor Thanksgiving that you haven't thought of before. The answer is never to cancel or shut down. The answer is to reinvent and re-excite. 

That is terrific. That really is great advice I think for all of us for the holidays. OK, another question for you. We're going to get more to the Q&A in just a minute, folks. We'll get to your questions. But what advice can you share about communicating or supporting someone who's really experiencing a life challenge right now? Again, either a death in the family, or someone who's found out they have cancer, or someone who's just really struggling with their job, with having little kids around and trying to homeschool and teach them, keep them on track while they're also trying to keep their career on track. 

Because a lot of women, especially, are being adversely affected because the burden of childcare sometimes falling on them disproportionately. Not in all cases obviously, but someone who's experiencing life challenges. What do you say to that person, or how do you communicate to that person, either as their boss or their colleague, or just a friend? 

So I like to give references because we have limited time obviously. But the first is I would go back and revisit Inside Out. It's a great movie. And if you haven't watched these movies during what's going on, they're particularly helpful. Inside Out was done by a lot of emotional intelligence experts, which I've worked with, that talked about the value of feeling what we're feeling, feeling sad, feeling overwhelmed, feeling despondent, feeling scared, feeling frightened. 

So the first thing is we've got to become very good friends with the feelings and negative feelings. And for many of us, this is a new experience. We've lived in a culture where if somebody asked Wendy how she was, she said, fine, good, or stressed. That really is not going to work right now. Domestic violence is up in this country about 13%. Suicide rates are also up, especially if you are involved with the military. And we always want to thank people who work for service. 

So we need to be able to talk about difficult situations. I fervently believe, and I'm going to say this with the drum roll, that we all should be able to talk about anything and everything to everyone. We need to learn to do it respectfully. 

So how do we answer Joan's question? Very hard. Instead of saying the rules, like we can't talk about politics at work or we can't talk about religion, that's not the right answer. The right answer is how can I understand why you voted that way? What can I learn from you? Because what do we do to help people through tough times, we get them to talk about it. 

Great. All right, I have a question coming in from the audience here. 

Sure. 

Joseph Bishop asked, do you have any recommended group exercises which can be distributed by email or webinar links, which are designed to make and maintain interaction with family or colleagues? So this is a clear I work out not ask yes a question, forcing family members or others to join them. It sounds like it is actually-- 

I do. And boy, there are so many. I'm not sure which one to shout out to. But I am a big believer. I'll answer it more in a global way rather than endorsing one particular one. I believe in mandatory fun. I did this with my company over the last week. We did pumpkin decorating. We've never done that in 30 years. And we gave a donation to a charity. So I've got one, Joan. Is that all right? I'm going to jump in. 

Please do. 

OK, how do you promote resilience in unity among a diverse workforce when there's so much divisiveness in our society? And that's from Jason Schiano. So the way we build inclusion and the way we foster inclusion in today's divisive work is to embrace differences. And so there's a good saying, we didn't just invite you to the party. And we didn't just invite you to pick the music. We invited you to explain why you like the music. 

So resiliency is messy. And diversity and inclusion can be messy. And it can mean that you might say the wrong thing. And then you're going to say, hey, help me understand what I did wrong. Teach me. I want to understand. I don't know what to call you. I'm not sure whether I should use this word or that word. What's the right word? Let's engage in the conversation. Let's take the time. 

I know you interviewed so many people. And so my personal bias is that this is our foundation, right? Our relationships start with the ability to show that we care. By the way, there's a great example of where this works. eBay was started. And when eBay was started, they spent a lot of time really analyzing how they were going to make sure the trade happened. 

And finally, a group of people said, you know what, we don't have to worry about that because people are good and honest. And the fact is eBay is built on that. People do what they say they're going to do. And I think in this world where we're always hearing about division, it's actually not true. The truth is we go above and beyond, especially in the insurance industry. You're there to help people know what could come next. 

We are. 

Go ahead. 

So it's great. Unsolicited endorsements. We love that. All right, Wendy, here's another one for you from Ted Walsh. Can you talk about sustaining and building culture in a remote virtual world from a leadership perspective? So we have a lot of managers around the place, a lot of our agent broker partners. We as leaders are struggling ourselves and sometimes we don't know exactly what we can do to help our teams. So how do we do this virtually? 

So there's two answers. And the best shout outs would be to Brene Brown and Adam Grant. Full disclosure, Adam Grant is at Penn. I was one of his first book reviewers. These are great podcasts. And as leaders, start being a podcast listener. They're up 78%. 

I do a minute. I record as a leader a 3, 4, 5 minute podcast. I send it to my team. First thing I did this morning when I woke up I was like, wow, crazy ride. I really make sure that my messaging as a leader is inspirational. We get the ability to influence and inspire people with our words and our actions. But that also means I share vulnerable stories. And I tend to be a little bit outgoing. I don't know if you can tell, Joan, I'm a little bit of an extrovert. 

Certainly. 

But that does not mean that I always love sharing some of the stuff that I share. But I know that it's going to help build bonds together. 

Great. OK, another one coming in here. You said, less likely to suffer from depression in one of your slides. Do you mean clinically depressed? I think I've been depressed several times in my life, but those experiences helped me to become incredibly resilient. Today, I feel I'm unbreakable because of these experiences. Can you elaborate on that? 

Yeah, I can. So depression is something that there's a lot of new research. And let me just quickly really define. Everyone has blues. They have days where they feel like [SIGHS] I just don't feel like it. And they're normal ups and downs and we still flourish. Depression by really a good way to look at it or understand it would be to say, I have nothing I'm looking forward to. 

There's no question that with seeking the correct medical help and seeking the correct psychological help that we overcome depression and become stronger. So I'm happy to hear that that person understands that. They truly embrace the fact that there were times in their life where they couldn't see tomorrow and then they learned to see tomorrow. And it's a combination. 

So we are absolutely a believer in getting the appropriate medical help that you need. Interestingly enough, though, we are seeing less and less about it being genetically linked. So some people just it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? They'll say, well, it runs in my family. So I'm going to get it. And we want to be sure that people know that that's not necessarily true. 

But I will say what is amazing about why I love this topic so much is there's nothing in the world that can ever feel as good as doing something that you didn't think you could do. So I have a mantra. I say it to myself every morning by Georgia O'Keeffe, "I've been terrified every minute of my life, but it never stopped me from doing anything." 

I love that. I'll share a personal story, tell all the folks on the phone-- 

Yeah, story time. 

The thing that I personally would never thought I would do, never thought I would be good at because I'm not an athlete--if you know me, I'm not an athlete. But I took up golf during COVID. 

I love it-- 

And I just took lots of lessons. I was very humiliated many times playing with family and friends. But I took up golf, and I never thought I could do it. And actually, it turns out I can actually play golf, which-- 

[INTERPOSING VOICES] 

--I'm probably not going to have anytime anymore when I get back to my real life. But you're saying this is my real life now. That we shouldn't say, when it gets back to normal. We should think about in terms of this is the normal. Make yourself happy within that normal. 

OK, a couple more questions here for you, Wendy. How do you find a time to read 30 books? And give us some tips for setting aside your own personal time, especially now we've read stories about people actually working more because we're working from home. So we're working more. So how do you find time for yourself and setting that aside, not just to read a book, but maybe go get a facial or get a massage, or play golf? 

Absolutely. We have so much time. We're masters of time wasters. I would challenge you to do a quick activity. We all get 168 hours a week. Actually, I'll do it. We'll play. We have a minute. If you take your calculator and you play with me, I'm going to sort of make you feel appropriately guilty. 

You all get 168 hours a week. You're going to take away 56 hours for sleeping because you all eat, you all sleep eight hours a night times 7. So you're down to 112. We're going to recommend that you work 50 hours a week, no more. I keep it posted toward 50. We're down to 62. 

We do about 10 hours a week of caring. You can play with your own numbers. Put your own numbers in. We do about another 10 hours of chores. We're down to 42 hours. We exercise an hour a day, seven days a week. So we can take away 7. Then we do about 12 hours of what we call the emergency fill in. So no matter how many times I do this with every client, I can guarantee you I just found you 20 hours a week that you have no clue what you're doing with. 

But I will say something to you, hopefully not arrogantly, but more something I'm proud of. I know where every second of every minute of that goes. I know where every choice that I'm making-- if I make a choice to binge watch, it's a choice. If I make a choice to read a book, I make a choice. But what I don't do is ever say I don't have enough time. Because I just found you 20 hours a week that you have no idea what you're doing. 

OK, excellent. Another question from Susan Snearly here. Any good book recommendations for our kids, either younger kids or teenagers maybe during this time of anxiety? 

Absolutely. So Who Moved My Cheese? Has a teen version as well, which I love. I love a book called Hey, Little Ant. And I know it's meant for very little children, but I use it with teenagers. It is an amazing way to teach empathy. Again, it's called Hey, Little Ant. And another one which I think is really important because a lot of families that are together all of the time, the sibling issues have become quite high. It's called I Love You the Purplest. And it's a book about a sibling story. And if you ask me the age, I use those up to 18. 

The last book I know you all know, but it's just so important right now. It's Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. And for those of you you're saying, oh, I already read that. If you haven't done these things lately, and I mean really lately, like now, like if we're not waking up this morning when we're hearing the ambivalence and the divisiveness, this is the time to pull up books like The Giving Tree. This is the time to pull out books like Hey, Little Ant to revisit those conversations. 

OK, great. So another couple of questions here. Effective interventions to reduce anxiety related to pandemic and environmental conditions. So massive brush fire for the wildfires out west and the pollution here. So environmental factors. 

It's hard to escape it if you're in California and some of the places that are having these wildfires, or even hurricanes. So in our industry, people get affected overnight. I mean, you have warnings about hurricanes, but say, a tornado. There's hardly any warning for a tornado. And how do you become more resilient when these catastrophes happen in your own personal lives? 

Yeah, so we just finished doing a lot of work with the hurricane and the wildfires. So the first thing that always-- no matter how many times I get involved with these communities, I really am so impressed with the community, with the firefighters, with the first responders. And so with the sharing. 

I saw in Lake Charles recently one of the families I was working with, their neighbor's son drove 10 hours with a chainsaw to help cut down trees. The communities--and I think many of this, the communities become so strong. I will tell you what I do think is very important. 

Remember the slide, they talk about confidence. Resilient people are smart with knowing how to handle something. So again, not a shout out, but they take insurance seriously. They're prepared for things. They live in a world--I'll use a reference. Dr. Andrew Shabtai, who's at out of University of Arizona, talks about living in a world of not if it happens, but when it happens. 

So my one second story is I used to have two dogs. And about three months ago, my dog took a real turn for the worse and I knew it was a tough decision. I went to the vet and I said, well, if he gets to the place that I have to make a hard decision--the vet said, no, not if, when. 

It's not if he's going to be put, it's when. Because we all are going to die. And so when I sat down, I made a whole list. I was very prepared. Talked to my children, I knew what to do. And the day when he woke up and he was clearly in pain, it wasn't that it was less sad, but I knew I could do it. 

So we live in areas where there are hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires. it doesn't mean I don't think that seriously, but we are prepared for that. We're not blindsided by it. We have no excuse anymore. We cannot continue to be blindsided. We need to be prepared. 

That's great. OK, another question very apropos. The day after the election. Here we are. At least as of today right now, we don't know who the new president would be. And this comes from Jonathan Reddick, how do I ensure my employees feel supported without asking their political affiliation? 

And as you recall back in 2016, people are really hesitant to talk about which candidate they may have supported. There's all these potential uprisings and depending if your candidate loses or wins. And so how do you as a manager, how do you help employees kind of navigate through that? 

We're really going to have to go back to--forgive me for being a little redundant here to saying to people, how are you feeling? How are you handling the stress of what's going on? How can I support you? And how can I change a perception and change rules to say, I'm actually OK with you telling me who you vote for as long as it's done in a respectful way. Here's why I did this. Here's the choices I made. Help me understand why you feel that way. 

Many of us remember pressure cookers. And pressure cookers will always explode if you let it on too long. That is us suppressing our emotions. And if we are living in work environments, we'll leave. We'll explode or worse we'll do something that will harm ourselves or others. So I would say to you get to a place where the environment says, I want to share what I'm thinking or feeling about even the most difficult topics. 

OK, great. How do you promote resilience and unity among a diverse workforce where there's so much divisiveness in our society these days? 

We talked a little bit about this blustering inclusion. And one of the things we want to do when we're having this conversation is, we want to first admit that we have this conversation, right? So if you haven't seen the YouTube video where Oprah goes to buy the Birkin bag. I don't know, Joan, if you've seen it. She's shopping-- 

Yeah. 

Oh, it's really unbelievable. And it's a great video to show to your staff. She doesn't really look like Oprah. And she walks in and she says to the salesperson, I'd like to see that bag. It's about a $25,000 bag. And the white girl says, well, no, I've been told I can't show it. And Oprah is like, I'm Oprah. I can buy the bag if I want to buy the bag. In the end, she won't show it to her. 

And so it's a really powerful YouTube video to show to a team because we can unpack it, right? So I think you can hear the theme in our questions. Resilient people, they talk about that. They talk about, what was it like to be the salesperson? What do you think Oprah felt like? So they're going to use real life teaching moments to talk about it. 

OK, can you repeat the podcast that you talked about, the one of your favorite ones that you like or maybe spell it. I don't know. Yeah. 

Sure, I will. Absolutely, thank you for asking. It's Adam, A-D-A-M, Grant, G-R-A-N-T. He's got a work life podcast. Maria Shriver, I'm sure you recognize that name, S-H-R-I-V-E-R. Her podcast, there's more interviews kind of like what we're doing. And Brene Brown, B-R-E-N-E, Brown, B-R-O-W-N. Those are the three really go to resiliency podcast, my opinion. I'm sure people have others. They can send them off. 

OK, terrific. Another question here. People are getting very cold to others. We're losing our interpersonal skills, afraid of customers, distancing from contact right now in this environment, less passionate and trending to be more impersonal. So how do we reverse course? Obviously, you said, social media and you can Venmo everything. And you can Instacart, Uber. So how do we go back to--I don't want to say the 1950s because we don't want to look back-- 

Yeah, I don't want it. 

But how do we get those, your father, my father, personal connections? And how do we be purposeful about getting those in our lives? 

We have courageous conversations. So I'll tell you that I live in Westchester, New York. And we have a block party, even this year socially distance. And for many years, it's very boring. There's no other way to say it. It was very boring. We talk about the house because that's what we have in common. We talk about the roof. And we talk about the gutters. And we talk about sometimes the driveway paving. And it's boring, and I don't like it. 

And a number of years ago, I was at the block party and I was recently divorced. I said to my neighbor, how did you meet your husband? I mean, that's a pretty benign question. But it wasn't about the gutter. 

And so it turns out they're from India, and it was an arranged marriage. And so we're talking, this is so much more interesting, way more interesting than the gutters. Well, at the top of the street was a biracial couple. And she was telling me what it was like to bring her white husband home in the south 30 years ago. 

We had the best time at the block party. But the interesting part about the story is that that winter we had a brutal winter. And it was the first time that I lived there for almost 30 years where we actually will help each other. And so, what I've learned is we can ask questions. 

We've got to say, Joan, I want to get to know you better. So you know what, I'm not going to chit chat. I'm not going to talk just about the weather. I'm going to talk about, so how are you feeling about what happened last night? How is it affecting your relationship? 

And you may not answer me the first time because it's a little uncertain. Like, whoa, why is she asking me these personal questions? But I can guarantee you by the second or third time when that person says, well, he really actually cares about how my family is doing, I'm doing. 

You're going to go back to a place where you're going to say, I have the time to build a relationship based upon the probing question. We've got the time; we just need to have the energy. And we have to have the really true courage to say, I'd like to know more about you. 

So that's terrific. And I had the same block parties. And I agree with you. We could all use a little bit more of that kind of personal interaction and questions versus the gutters. 

OK, so another question coming in. What are some concrete things that I could do today? So give me kind of three things here that I can do today to build my resilience, besides eating better and sleeping better. Those we all can do. The question is do I've willpower to do those. But what are some of the other things we can do? 

I have one.  If I could pick any one thing in the world, I would start by picking two to five people in your life that you're incredibly grateful for. And I would pick up the phone and I would tell them, listen, I want to take a few minutes and I want to just say thank you. We're studying gratitude, we're studying how gratitude makes us healthier. We want to remind ourselves that every interruption is a measure of your success. And so the first thing I would do is stop and acknowledge people along the way. Show them you're grateful. 

The second thing I would really do is to set a goal. And I would set a goal that you barely think you can make. I went back to school. I have an executive MBA from Dartmouth, and we had to write our eulogy. It's pretty common in business school today. And I worked really hard on mine. I really liked it. I thought I nailed it. And I read it. And the teacher said to me, go outside the room Wendy, come back when it's better. 

And I didn't understand what she meant. I'd written a eulogy about growing my business and working hard. But I never thought about growing it globally. I never dreamed that I could run a global training company. I just didn't think that way. She pushed me to say, I don't care if you succeed, but I certainly care. 

And the last thing, and I mean that, my oldest son is a surgeon. And at his medical school graduation, I met a woman. And I stupidly thought that she was her son or her daughter that was in the class. And I said, oh, you have a child? 

She said, no, I'm in medical school. She went back to school at 50. And we ended up going out for coffee. And she said, how lucky am I that by 60 I'll be a doctor and doing what I love. And I'd ask you, how many of you would have thought at 50 of applying to medical school? 

Wow, those are some real goals. And so setting goals for yourself where you feel like you cannot achieve that is really important. You don't feel like a failure, though, when you don't achieve them or. 

No, have you ever been to Ben & Jerry's, Joan? 

I try not to, really. I really try not to as part of my personal ability-- 

There you go. But what if you go to their corporate headquarters in Vermont, the very first thing you see when you walk in is a graveyard of flops. Because what they will tell you is they only became a success because of all the things that didn't work. 

Great. Well, Wendy, we are going to wrap up. I have a few more closing comments here. But did you want to say anything else in terms of how you're thinking about post-election, and how we should be treating our colleagues and friends who may have different views than ours going forward? 

I appreciate that. Yeah, no. I mean, first of all, Joan, thank you so much for inviting into your home and letting me talk about a topic that is so important. I would just encourage everybody to continue the conversation with themselves, and to do some research on where the next steps are leading, which we know is going to be about being a kinder person and a kinder world and a kinder of community. So we are all going to make commitments to continue the conversation. I want to thank you so much, Joan, for inviting me to be part of your day today. 

Wendy, I want to thank you. Personally, I've learned a lot. And we'd love to have you back next year some time to remind us and kind of track our progress against some of the goals you set out for us here. So we really, really appreciate your time, Wendy. And again, thank you to Humana for sharing you with us. 

So 

(DESCRIPTION) 
Slide, Wednesdays with Woodward, A webinar series. Upcoming webinars. 

(SPEECH) 
we have some fantastic webinars coming over the next few weeks and months. We're going to have a blockbuster launch in 2021 too. We're already planning a lot of those webinars. But the next one for us is on November 18. 

We're going to speak with Karen Kerrigan. Again, she runs the Small Business Entrepreneurship Council. And that's going to be on the post-election small business outlook. So what are the bills, laws, regulations that small businesses will face with the new president, the new Congress, and how to think about them and how to work towards making those happen. 

And then December 2, we are going to talk with the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. It's their 10-year anniversary. And it's going to be a behind the scenes look. And this is a organization that kind of blows up things and test all sorts of weather-related, storm-related materials, in a huge facility in South Carolina. 

And they build houses, and then they burn them down. They see how different materials--they have a huge fans, and they do hail, and they do wind, and they do lots of rain. And so that's going to be kind of cool, interesting. And that's on December 2nd. 

So visit us at travelersinstitute.org or send an email institute@travelers.com to register for those programs. And again, Wendy, thank you so much. We really appreciate your time, your thoughts, and all your terrific advice for us. My friends, stay safe out there, wear your masks, social distance, and we'll see you in a few weeks. Take care. 

(DESCRIPTION) 
Slide, Watch webinar replays at travelers institute.org. Life after shelter in place, business liability issues during COVID 19, emotional and social reintegration, PATH to reopening your business, cybersecurity during the pandemic, return to work with cyber security, an inside look at IntelliDrive, Crafting your come back, employee safety during COVID 19.