Episode 14: Managing Life’s Load in a Pandemic with Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood and Donna Harris
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 0:00
Now none of us have the opportunity to be fragile or break easily. We're all kind of put into this place. So, it's a new journey. It's tough. It's not easy. And Donna alluded to that earlier when she said you can do all the self-care in the world. But at the end of the day, there are going to be days where it's hard. And that's okay. Don't stuff it in the basement, deal with it, let it be hard, because that's part of your process of becoming kind of the unbelievable person that you were born to be.
Matt Johnston 0:27
The human experience is the greatest project any of us want to take. It's often the one we spend the least amount of time working on. My name is Matt Johnston. I'm a self-professed personal development junkie, a retired pro golfer, I now work for an organization that provides employee and health benefits to hundreds of thousands of people. It should be common sense to realize that what happens at work is what people bring home and what happens at home comes to them to work, but that's too often ignored. That's why each week I hope to uncover a little more around what it means to be a human. working and living in the 21st century, will be learning from experts having conversations and getting insights into all those things that fall at the intersection of life and work, emotional and physical health skills and money. All the relationships we navigate each day and of course the purpose and meaning we all desire. This is The Human Assignment.
Hello and welcome to the human assignment podcast or welcome back if you've listened before, I'm recording this episode after an unintentional three-month hiatus from recording podcast episodes. But man is it good to be back it's fun to be recording these episodes and having these conversations again and looking forward to a regular cadence going forward. A lot has happened since our last episode in the world. We are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's April 26th, as I record this, and these are certainly strange and challenging and uncertain times to say the least. So, I hope that this episode finds you wherever you are safe and healthy and that those that you love and are in your life for doing well.
This episode was a great one in timely for me, it's with two very dear friends of mine, Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood and Donna Harris from Toogood Consulting. They've been helping our company out a lot through their company Toogood Consulting, which is a high performance and leadership consulting firm. And we were recording a webinar for our team actually, and the content was just so good that I asked them if we could just keep going and record this podcast. So, for quick bios, Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood was my third interview on this podcast. And I had a lot of positive feedback on that interview. She's spent the last three decades competing and consulting at the highest levels of sport. Adrienne is a licensed psychologist and adjunct faculty member at the University of Manitoba. She's the past chair of the Canadian Sports Psychology Association and is currently the Director of Sports Psychology at The Canadian Sports Center Manitoba. Adrienne has a wide range of experience supporting people in the corporate setting and various organizations and an extensive experience in sports - working with athletes at all levels, including clients ranging from individual Olympic athletes, teams’ coaches, even to PGA Tour winners.
Donna Harris is a chartered professional coach, with a deep background in program development and implementation. She has developed and led the implementation of various national and provincial sport programs across Canada, while in senior leadership positions at Athletics Canada, Racquetball Canada and Athletics Manitoba. Donna holds a Master of Arts and Kinesiology where her thesis explored the impact of passion on the performance and lives of elite coaches and their partners. So, I'm quite familiar with this. With this research, I think it's fascinating and we actually touch on it on this in this podcast. Donna is currently a wellness consultant in the private sector, where I get the great privilege to work with her on a daily basis at Johnston Group where she supports us. So please enjoy this conversation.
The tagline for Toogood Consulting is "Embrace Your Humanity, Elevate Your Performance." These two are experts at supporting folks in uncertain times. I mean, that is their specialty working with high performance athletes. They have a ton of energy, they're smart, they work with the best but they're grounded people and their message is relevant and is accessible. So, I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I always enjoy conversations with Adrienne and Donna. If you enjoy it, if you enjoy the show, feel free to please give us a review on iTunes. That's how we the best way that we can promote what we're doing. Take care, stay safe and enjoy the episode.
Adrienne, Donna, thank you for taking the time again. We just got off recording a webinar for Johnston Group, our company, which was amazing. And we just thought we'd keep the recording going and have a conversation around in podcast form. To give a quick introduction, you both our dear friends of mine have been incredible supports in my life, and I really respect the work that you both do. And it's been a privilege to be able to do work with both of you. And so, I thought that we would frame this conversation around what you both do on a day to day basis. You, Adrienne, you are a sports psychologist, and work with some of the best athletes in the world, you work with teams, you work with coaches you work with in the corporate environment, you work with emergency room doctors, and the work that you both do there, and the research that you've done is very applicable to these uncharted territories that we all find ourselves in. So, looking forward to having a good conversation today.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 6:30
Great.
Matt Johnston 6:32
So why don't we start off by just talking about a little bit about Toogood Consulting, who you are and what you do. Adrienne, you've been on the show before, but if you could just talk about the work that you do and in healthier times?
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 6:50
Yeah, actually, what I'm going to do in terms of two to consulting is I'm going to let Donna start. You know, it's good to know your strengths and describing what we do is not mine. So, I'm going to let Donna take that one and I'll jump in later.
Donna Harris 7:03
Okay, perfect at Toogood Consulting, I guess our elevator pitch is that we help you embrace your humanity and know who you are, so that you can elevate your performance by being your authentic self. With yourself and with the team that you work with every day. And how we sort of came to be was in, I can't even remember what year it was 2011, maybe? I decided to do a master's degree to look at how we could positively influence the performance of elite coaches. Because I was in a leadership role and tasked with creating a succession plan for coaches at Athletics Canada that were our next generation and coaches that would eventually go on to lead our national team. And we found out that there were some challenges in terms of engaging coaches to take that next step. And I myself was a coach that had the opportunity to go down the national team path and did it for a variety of reasons. And we found out that, just in, that sort of initial preliminary research that we did with coaches in track and field was that some people were a little bit scared about taking that next step. And some people were, you know, just unsure that they would want to leave their personal lives as they were and continue down that pathway. I thought, you know what, there has to be a better way to do this, we need to understand the situation a little bit better.
So, I engaged in a graduate degree that ended up looking at the role of passion and the performance and lives of elite coaches. And Adrienne was a co-advisor on that project. And I wouldn't have - project was finally done and [laughs] I defended my thesis, I laughed because I was doing it part time while, having children and building a house and so I don't recommend that as the formula for graduate work for anyone. But when we finally got to the end, we had the opportunity to take the research and turn it into an applied workshop in sports. working specifically with elite coaches and helping them to understand what they need and how they can create an environment for what they need. So that they're able to create a sustained performance level in their lives, not just, you know, survive for one Olympics and then exit the system. And what we've learned is that those concepts that help to sustain coaches are applicable to anyone in their lives, and in particular, some pretty powerful learnings for leaders and anyone who works in an area that they're passionate about. And so, from the beginning of graduate project, we've been able to work together and help support people in and outside of it and outside of sport, for sure. Adrienne, do you have anything to add there? Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Matt.
Matt Johnston 9:49
Well, I I'm very familiar with your research and I've had the opportunity to sit in on a few of the workshops which are very impactful, obviously. Can you speak to the outcomes of that of that research? Because I think that it's very relevant to leaders in everyday life but especially right now in a time where it feels like - I had a friend who said the other day I that he felt like he was flying a jet plane through in an air balloon parade. Some days kind of feel like that. I think that the outcomes of that research you did with the Olympic coaches, I think people could probably relate to it right now.
Donna Harris 10:30
For sure. For sure. I think some of the most relevant findings are that - the research was qualitative. So, it involved - it was interviews. So essentially, we were capturing people's stories and, and getting insight into their understanding. And so, one of the things we asked people about was to describe their passion and talk to us about what passion means and what we learned from them is that in addition to the academic definition, there's definitely elements of passion that contribute to driving us. But that passion can also consume us. And that there's definitely parts of passion that are enticing or almost seductive in some ways when we're really passionate about an activity. And so there there's probably lots of things that people are passionate about.
And in particular, if you are a leader, and you're passionate about your organization, or you happen to own that organization, that certainly - probably things that you identify with that your passion you feel for your people and the work that you do, definitely would drive you at times could consume you and definitely sort of entice you into doing what you do each day. But in addition to that coaches share a part of - we carry this huge sense of responsibility for their athletes and one of the coaches said it best when they talked about you know, the sport performance is in your hands or their sport before performance is in your hands. And I think right now, all of us, or anyone who's in a leadership position carries a huge sense of responsibility for taking care of their people and taking care of their clients and taking care of their organizations and also taking care of their families. And so, that sense of responsibility is probably there anyway, on a day to day basis, but now that we're living in this time of a pandemic, the stakes are even higher, and the stress is even higher and are probably, for some of us our sense of responsibility is, is enhanced. And so the research taught us that, that that element is sort of omnipresent, and then what that translates into is that when you have this huge sense of responsibility, and we're driven to do what we do, it's more challenging for us to give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves. And even though in many circumstances, we know what we need to thrive, we know what you need to do at our best. It's very easy for us to put other needs and other elements in front of that.
And so oftentimes what we found was the coaches - is that is that their performance was being compromised, because they were doing such a great job of taking care of everyone else. And so, I think that's a particularly important outcome right now. To think about is that this really is a situation where put your own mask on, if we use the flight example before assisting others. In order to get through this sort of unprecedented period of time, we really need to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves so that we're able to assist the people around us. So, we're able to serve, you know, our staff members and our clients and the people who, who depend on us. And I'll pause there because I imagine that there'll be some comments from both you and Adrienne. And then, I think the other piece that we'll come back to later, is what we learned about life load and understanding how all the other components in our lives that contribute to our ability to recover, or to not recover. And I think that also is incredibly poignant at this particular point in time. But perhaps I'll pause there we can talk about the passion and that responsibility and the need to care for ourselves. Before we go on to the other piece.
Matt Johnston 14:17
Yeah, I think that that concept of someone in this position of leadership and supporting others, it's what I've learned from you all - and I am trying to reflect it myself in these times - is how critical it is to make sure that I'm well as well going through this. Because you can only support others to the degree in which you the capacity. I actually - like this morning I had an email, and it was a reference from this book Falling Upward with Richard Rohr, and he there the quote in the book, I pulled it up as you were saying this because I was like, "Oh man, this is so it." "As Desmond Tutu once told me on a recent trip to Cape Town, we are only the light bulbs. And our job is just to remain screwed in," like meaning that we all you have to sort of stay grounded in the fundamentals and taking care of yourself so that you have the capacity to then serve is just so critical right now. And so, I hope I hope we can dig into this a little more throughout this podcast.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 15:37
Yeah, I think that, as usually happens, Donna really does a great job of knowledge translation and taking information and applying it to new contexts. And I think she's really touched on something that's incredibly important. And a couple things that rattle through my brain, as I hear her talk, really are the layers of the complexity of that. So now we have people that are very passionate about their work, and they're carrying that load. But they're also passionate about their families, their children as we look younger, but then also the older individuals in their lives. And there's different challenges with that, I think, and you have to consider the human that's involved. And a lot of times for parents, we always want our kids to have a better life. And right now, you have parents that are wondering, right? They're wondering, "Wow, my child is not going to have their graduation. My child is not going to learn this semester, my child might fall behind," and we take a lot of that responsibility and feel it's our job to clear that path and to make sure that they don't experience some of those challenges. Yet, when we're in this time where that's difficult, and from a leadership corporate perspective, a lot of coaches take a lot of pride in kind of knowing where the athlete is headed and clearing the path.
So, I know that you are involved in the sport of golf. And a lot of times, there's a practice round. But before the practice round, the coach has researched that course. And they know what the athlete's going to expect. They know the athlete's tendencies, and they can help that athlete in the practice round to make notes on the course. And right now, I think a lot of leaders who pride themselves in being able to kind of clear that path and having that vision, they're not sure right now. And they want to be ahead of the curve, they want to understand, but everyone's at the mercy of the information that's coming out in the morning. And I think that's a challenge as well. And so, I really do think that they're passionate about it, they care deeply. So, they're going to feel deeply and yet they feel such a sense of ownership and responsibility. And I think all of us right now are, you know, a lot of times it might go back to those core concepts of focusing on what we can control and what's our job and what's our role and again, looking at the golf analogy and in sport, there's a lot of athletes that are there wondering what their training for when the competition's going to be. But there's other people that are meeting every 48 hours to decide that. So, you don't have to worry about that, you know, that's out of your hands.
And I think a lot of us are struggling with, what are the pieces that we don't have to worry about right now. "When can I let go and allow this to be my child's path? When do I need to clear it?" So I think there's a lot of layers and if you do have that person who's passionate about their work, and usually their role is to lead there and someone else kind of does it for the kid part, you know, now that blend is happening and people have responsibility for all of that in totality. Or maybe even redefining what their roles are. If someone gets a lot of their worth and value from their work usually and they may not have work right now, that can be really difficult for them to define it. And I'd like Donna will say one small part about that and then, you know, pass it along.
But I remember when I was away with Hockey Canada and the CEO was talking about an experience that he had, where we were just having those random dinner conversations that sometimes happen when you're in those settings. And I'm not even sure how we got there. But he was just talking about what he was most proud of in his life. And, you know, this is someone who coached in the NHL for a number of years and has a lot of successes. And his answer to that question was, "I am most proud of the time when I was let go by," I think it was, "the New York Rangers. And I didn't have work at that time. And so, I decided that I wanted to be the best dad that I can be. And I'm really proud of the fact that that's where I sunk my energy in, and I really took advantage of that that window in that moment." And it's really difficult because he may also be in a different situation. He may also be in a different situation financially, and other people have different concerns and worries and it's hard to allow themselves to sink in into moments when there's so much uncertainty but they're you know they're interesting reflections anyways.
Matt Johnston 20:05
You bring up such a such a great point in that. I started this podcast with the theme of what happens at home is what people bring to work and what happens at work comes back home and there's just - this concept of compartmentalizing life just doesn't exist anymore and there's all these inputs that impact us and I think over the last couple of weeks that slaps us in the face even more. As I'm sitting here in my dining room recording this podcast by my wife's on the couch reading, I'm getting text messages from work on my phone, as this is going on. And it's just so, so present, and I don't have kids. I just I think that the challenges that are facing parents right now, that are facing people that are carrying for parents, is just so right in front of us. As you're talking with people right now, and calls are coming in, and you're working with groups, where do you even start?
Donna Harris 21:13
I think one of the things that's interesting to consider, and just what you said, right, like on how much things have changed. And we were talking yesterday that reflecting on, you know - usually there's like an adaptation curve we go through where we adapt, and this isn't a curve, this is like, a right angle, right? It's 90 degrees. Our life was going along do-do-do-do-do and all sudden, like, okay, now you're in a spaceship, and we don't know where you're going. And it's like, literally a 90-degree adaptation line. I don't even know if that's a thing. And so, I think we have to allow ourselves the moment to sort of pause and reflect in terms of giving ourselves credit for what we've all just lived through and acknowledge that this isn't necessarily easy, and it isn't known. And we've never had to do this before. And so I think when we go through the What I Need Workshop, we do a lifeline activity with people where they're able to look at the experiences they've had and the journey that they've been on and reflect on where they've come from, to help them understand where they are now. And I think we all need to allow ourselves to absorb the last - it's only been about three weeks now. Just what we've come through, and how we've been forced to adapt in a very abrupt and a very fast way.
A lot of times, we have to adjust to one change in our lives, and it's maybe something we can work through on our own. But I was joking with someone the other day that you know, like, we've all had this change, and we're doing it with our work and our family and everyone who lives in our house at the same time. And so, I think that's the first step, it's just allowing ourselves that that pause, to acknowledge what we've lived through and where we're at. And then there's some tools and stuff that we've been using with groups and with, quite frankly, with ourselves to help us acknowledge where we are. And I'll make one other comment, and then I'll turn it to the two of you to comment. In line with that 90-degree adaptation angle, or curve, or lack thereof, I suppose, is to consider the life load, we call it, piece there. And so, in our day to day lives, there's a load that we all carry, and it's not a negative or a positive. It's just, you know, what is in our daily lives and there's a physical load in terms of the amount of physical work that we do in a day and then there's our emotional load in terms of what's going on in our lives and what we're carrying emotionally. Whether that's happiness and gratitude or whether it's loss or a challenge in that way.
And then there's the environment that we all exist in. And so regardless of what our load was before all those, all those elements are still there. And now there's our normal load. And then there's this pandemic. There's this load change. And so, in addition to that, you know, adaptation, everything is different. There's this - there's a larger sense of load perhaps placed on us. And so I think in terms of the self-care concept, here, it's important to acknowledge that in order to manage all that, so that we're able to continue to sustain ourselves, we need to do some small things each day to limit the cumulative effect on us. And I think it's also important to recognize that the self-care practices aren't going to necessarily take away that sense of, "Oh my god, everything is changed and I'm on this rocket ship trajectory now." But it'll help us to manage it, and it'll help us to, you know, reset ourselves daily so we can minimize the cumulative effect.
Matt Johnston 25:07
That was awesome and there's something I just want to acknowledge before we go on to the self-care practices. You bring up such a great point in this idea of all of a sudden, you've been hit, we've been hit with a right angle. And I just think about our shop at work at our company, what our team has, has dealt with over the last couple weeks from a work perspective, like just the onslaught of new information, of having to go home and take on new processes. What we've had to - the output of things that we've had to do at work. And that is just one component of someone's life, then they're dealing with, then things have at home have changed. You're not seeing your grandchildren. You're not seeing your parents. You're having to self-isolate. And I guess one, just the acknowledgement of like, "Holy. Man, has this been wild." And like, everything that I'm feeling I have the right to feel and it's okay. But also, that - and specifically, I'm thinking about the folks at our shop like, "Holy shit, am I amazing and what have I done in the last couple of weeks?" I just think about those people. I mean, shit has hit the fan in all sorts of ways. And of course, not everything has gone perfectly. We've made mistakes. I've made 100 mistakes a day over the last few weeks. But like wow, have we handled this well. Like, they are amazing. We need to give ourselves credit for what we're going through and you know, continuing to charge forward. Anyways, I just think that's so important.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 27:08
I like what you're saying there, Matthew, as you are such a positive person, you end with making sure that we celebrate the successes. And we really notice what is going well with each other, which I think is really important. I really like that rocket ship analogy. And what I think makes sense, as I hear you talk is understanding that we've never been on a rocket ship before. And so, kind of letting go of our expectations of what we think we will feel or what we think will be challenging or not challenging. And instead, just paying attention and learning and recognizing, wow, you're in a new space right now. And buying yourself a little bit of time to understand who you are. Maybe even connecting to what Donna was saying around maybe revisiting how you've handled challenges in your life in the past. What you know is important for you to be able to withstand change, redefining what you need so you feel a sense of normalcy and control again. And I think that, you know, that takes a little bit of time and a little bit of space. And that's okay. We've never been here before. With my athletes, we use this analogy. When we had an athlete, who is training to get to the Olympic Games, and I used a mountain climbing analogy with Everest, which I stole from a speaker I had in town who was exceptional, which is great.
But we use the analogy of climbing up Everest and being kind to yourself along the way, and recognizing that you've never climbed Everest before, because when you get in that situation where you're doing something for the first time, you're just not sure what's going to come up. And again, there were so many great metaphors that this individual used, and they were talking about the fact that when you climb up Everest, regardless of how unbelievable you are, you're always going to run into crevasses, which are places in the mountain that you aren't anticipating but all of a sudden you fall into a big hole. And he was talking about how that's kind of a natural occurrence that's going to happen. And it's not a big deal if you know who your team is, and you know your process, and you use that at that time. The other thing that was interesting, too, that they talk a lot about is as you're climbing up that mountain, you basically work really hard to get to Basecamp One. And once you get to Basecamp One, what do you do next? And most people say you go to Basecamp Two but actually you don't, you can't climb Mount Everest, you'll never ascent if you do it in a linear fashion.
Because we have to learn and grow and adapt and things take time. And that's a physiological adaptation thing as well. So, what you do instead is you spend a little bit of time at Basecamp One acclimating. Then you go back down to the ground again, then you get up to Basecamp One, and eventually you head up to Basecamp Two. And so, as we're dealing with this uncertainty and this newness, it's really important that we give ourselves time to acclimate, and we recognize the strain that it's taking on us to be and live there. And sometimes we are going to have to take a step back and give ourselves a little bit of time to acclimate before we head up to the top. One of the things that with this athlete that we really wanted to spend a lot of time doing is making sure that we enjoyed the view along the way. Because indeed, we had never been up Everest before. And we've never seen these views. We wanted to make sure to enjoy and savour and take that opportunity to relish in it. And the last part that was really interesting was, they talked about this idea of when you're ascending the mountain, and you get to the balcony level, which is the level where you are ready to submit the mountain and you're ready to kind of go up that next thing, that's a very taxing place, and there's not a lot of oxygen there.
And so, the person that was giving this talk was saying that as you take one step, you know, you have to pause and take three deep breaths, because that's just what it's like up there. It's important, as well, that as Donna alluded to, maybe with our accent of Everest. First of all, not all of us are natural mountain climbers who love new adventures. And so not all of us chose to be on this adventure. And the second thing is, maybe we all weren't given the opportunity to ascend the mountain in a way that allowed for maximum physiological adaptation. We were all thrown in, maybe at the mountain level, or the balcony level, you know, where we're like, "Ah!" And so again, that self-care does really become unbelievably important. Because we just there is not as much oxygen out there, things are new and different. And we didn't have the opportunity to get used to the mountain, or all of a sudden on this mountain, and we're just not sure what's happening and how we got there. And that's kind of where we're at as a world right now.
So, again, it's looking at your resources. The interesting thing about my speaker that came his name was Sébastien Sasseville. And when he showed up to climb Everest - you show up and there's a lot of people that are doing this nowadays, I guess well, not right now. So, Everest will get a break. But there's a lot of groups that want to ascend to Everest, and he was saying that if you showed up at the bottom of the mountain with all the groups of people ascending Everest, he said that if you were to guess who was going to ascend that mountain, their group would have gotten the lowest ratings. There's no way. He had type one diabetes, everyone in his group had some sort of physical difficulty or challenge. And he was climbing Everest because he wanted to show - I guess, when he received the diagnosis that he was diabetic, he was very scared. And he didn't want any child to think that they were limited because of that diagnosis. He really took on these projects to show that he could, so that other people, expanded their minds and didn't feel scared. And that's sort of his motivation. He said that, you know, "We all made it because A, we knew our why. We knew our purpose. I knew why I was doing it." And he said, "And B, we all knew that we had physical limitation. We all knew that we needed each other, and we were honest about that. So, we asked for help along the way." And he said, "Our group of all those people the bottom was the only group who ascended Mount Everest of those tours.”
And so again, at this time, understand who's showing up to the mountain, you know, understand ourselves, understand who we are, what we need from each other, let's support each other. Let's ask for it. You're right. There's not as much separation between work and home right now. And maybe that's a good thing, because we're being forced to ask for help. We're being forced to identify our needs and get them on the table. Because we can hide them right now. And know what your purpose is, what your why is what drives why you want to see the top of that mountain, you know, those things are good as well. So, anyways, that's a story that I I've used a lot with my athletes and in some ways, well, when you talked about the rocket ship, I guess, getting to the top of Everest is the closest to getting up a rocket ship if you're going to maintain any footing on earth. And so yeah, as we adapt and embrace this challenge, I think that's, that's one thing that goes through my mind.
Matt Johnston 33:55
That's inspiring as always, thank you. And there's a lot that you said there.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 34:04
Yeah, I don't know what happens sometimes. It just got away from me, I apologize.
Matt Johnston 34:13
That was amazing. You know, as a side note, there's many times where we're hanging out. and I just think to myself, "Well, I'm just gonna grab a bag of popcorn and just don't stop, Adrienne, keep going." I just want to recorder and a bag of popcorn. So, this is this is part of my secret motivation of these podcasts is I get to record some of these amazing conversations that I have. But there's a couple things that I wanted to maybe expand on what you just said. One of them is this piece of getting halfway up the mountain and you need to take three breaths. So, I want to talk about that. But the last component, around purpose and why you're doing what you're doing. We both spoke to that on the webinar that we just recorded before this and yesterday, so if you could speak a little more to that to the purpose and how you've talked to clients recently in minutes amongst this situation, we find ourselves all in.
Donna Harris 35:26
I think one of the concepts that we've been talking about a lot recently, and actually one of the concepts that we use in the workshop that we do, is we talk about the Simon Sinek TED Talk he did about what's your why or finding your why. And, and that's important, you know, from a day to day perspective in terms of keeping yourself or your organization tied to, you know, why it is you exist and why you do what you do? And one of the concepts we've been talking about lately is instead of what is your why, is who is your why? Because the = self-isolation or that staying at home and living, our interaction is quite challenging for a plethora of reasons and we're as humans wired to be near each other and connected.
I think one of the things that can really help individuals right now, perhaps, is doing a little bit of a reflection on you know, why is this? Why is it important to me to stay home or who am I staying home for? And who am I trying to protect? And framing our behaviour that way can really help to help us to feel better in our current reality because it ties our actions to not just a specific outcome, but a specific human who - or person who - is important to us. And that can really help us focus on our why, but it is It, we've been calling it "Who is your why?" And I think that can help in a day to day environment to sort of ground us. It's one way to ground us in our moment and in our behaviour. So, Adrienne probably has an additional comment around the why piece and being grounded in in your purpose, as well.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 37:27
Well, you know, always a few more comments if the space is provided. I love what Donna said with that. And just taking a bit of a different direction. I think in some ways, we have had a unique opportunity to pause on our lives and really reconnect and spend time thinking about what our why is. I think some people have a closer connection to that than other people. Maybe it's something they haven't thought a lot about recently and that can be a bit disconcerting. I just think it's interesting. Yeah, how do we want to use our life energy, what gives us meaning and purpose? And we know that if we live with meaning and purpose, whatever that means for us, that we can both protect it and ensure we do that enough every day so that we have the energy to sustain ourselves. But we also know that we will be happy, and we'll have more joy in our lives because people who live with meaning and purpose naturally have that in their lives. I think when you connect it to that passion piece, too. You know, again, passion and there's a lot of energy with that passion piece and this COVID-19 something that can be challenging it is that it threatens some of those things for us sometimes and we wonder and worry about them. And so buy yourself some time to reflect or think or, you know, jot some notes down, I think, and help us to really on earth or revisit, or reconnect, or remind or you know, live some of those things that are really of value to us.
Matt Johnston 39:11
I just I love that. There's a reframe there in this concept of purpose and then who am I? Also, who am I doing this for? Like it can be, you know, my wife has said a few times over the last couple of weeks as we go to the grocery store and we've here on social media that there's not there's nothing left, when you go in there's a ton left. There just isn't the lemon that we may be looking for. Like I think, it's in some cases there's just much more inconvenience. And
I think that reframe about the perspective on why it is important to stay home and then Adrienne, as you're speaking to, there's this other opportunity of - we've been forced to take a pause, and how are you going to? How are you going to use that pause? And one of the ways is to is to reflect. Before we go in there, though, I just want to just take a minute to talk about, from a clinical perspective just as a psychologist, because in this last webinar, you spoke to a few things around being aware of it's okay that your body is going to react in certain ways. And that's it's kind of natural. Maybe around this, whether it's, you know, that many of us are feeling anxiety right now. And how do we cope with that? Or how do we make sense of it? If you could speak to that, that'd be awesome.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 40:54
Yeah, maybe I'm not sure I'll answer your question directly, which would probably not be super surprising.
Matt Johnston 41:02
You answer the way you always do; you take whatever the gibberish that comes out of my mouth and you answer what needs to be answered. So, thank you.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 41:10
You feel that way at the end? I don't even know if I remember the question, but I know it's around, yeah, the impact. I think first of all, is the acceptance that we are human beings is important. And human beings are built in a certain way. And one of the words I used was around physiological adaptation on the mountain, and whenever anxiety and things are sticking with us, and whenever that stuff is just there, it should be paid attention to. There's one author who talks about that idea of the fact that our bodies are made up of many different employees. And every employee in our body is meant to do a job, but unfortunately, we label them good and bad. Happy, good. Anxiety, bad. And they just use the analogy and metaphor of that and talk about the fact that, you know, if you're in a workplace and you labeled some people good and bad, they wouldn't like it because all those employees are trying to do their job.
Sometimes when we get into these new situations that are a bit overwhelming, we maybe try not to pay attention to that stuff, or we try and control it, or we try for to not be there. And she talks about the fact that then what we do is, we're just stuffing into the basement, which she refers to as the body. And that's when we start to have like anxiety and those kinds of things that come out in very unhelpful ways. And so usually, it's coming out in an unhelpful way, when we haven't paid attention to it, when we tried to ignore it, when we've tried to act like we're stronger than we really are right now. So, I do think it's important for everyone to recognize that we are not necessarily in a situation we've been in before. And I also had mentioned the fact that some of us love climbing mountains. And you know, when we look at personality, we often talk about state versus trait stuff or personality stuff. And so, there's some people that really are more adventurous and they embrace challenge. They're pretty excited about it. And there, there are other people where that's a really daunting task. And it might be the first mountain they've climbed in a long time.
And so, it's really important. Part A is to understand who you are, and be honest about that and accepting of that, and non-judgmental about that, and to meet yourself where you're at. Because if you saw some other poor dude that was thrown onto the mountain, and you saw them struggling, you'd probably be empathic. And you'd probably look at them and say, "Wow, that guy's really going to hurt himself if he doesn't figure this out." And we'd look at it in a different way, yet with ourselves, rather than spending the time getting to know and observe what's happening and being kind to ourselves, we can often be pretty harsh and really critical. I think that we need to be aware of who we are, and you know, what fitness level we showed up to. Whether that's emotional fitness, etc., to this situation. We may also need to unpack some things. We might have some stuff in our bags. So, you know, Donna alluded to the idea of a lifeline. But we've all had other experiences. And this actually might be similar. And our brain again, we're all human. So, we have these brains that are unbelievable. And our brains remember things, especially when they're attached to emotion. And it does that, it remembers things and situations we've been in, because it's usually really helpful. I know how to lock a door, I don't think about it, because my brain remembers that information. And when we're in situations that remind us of other experiences, then our brain reminds us because it's trying to help. But if we've been in other situations that have created a lot of anxiety and stress for us, or we've been in other places that have been very challenging and difficult.
Sometimes we're not only climbing Everest, but we're also responding reacting to what happened in the past. It might mean a little unpacking. And if we do find that, it's like, "Gosh, why am I not sleeping? What's going on?" Maybe there's other stories in our lives that we've been through, maybe we need to help ourselves understand how we're different now. And how we've learned from that other experience and how that can help us now, rather than becoming something we have kind of packed away in the closet that we're afraid to unearth. So, being kind, spending time listening to our story, not wanting ourselves to be any different than we are because we're perfect exactly as we are, not wishing that we didn't have experiences that we had, because we did, and we can't will them away. We can't ignore them.
We can't pretend they're not there. And really being honest and open to the emotions that we're experiencing in this place, that's very challenging and very new, so that we don't stuff it into our bodies and only have that unhealthy version that comes forward. But rather maybe seeing it as, "Oh, wow, I'm feeling anxious today, huh? I wonder what's going on for me. Oh, maybe I need to take a walk. Maybe I do need to sit down with my child and spend time with them. Maybe I need to? Okay, what's going on? What am I supposed to learn from this? What is that employee trying to do for me right now what are they trying to remind me? Maybe it means that I do have to have an honest conversation about my boss, because this is what's happening right now." But again, we're all trying to ascend this mountain.
And usually it's a mountain of life and we do a lot of solo climbs. But now it's a bit bigger, you know, it's no longer Garbage Hill, it's actually Everest, well, that's a big deal for the Prairies. But yeah, it's a much bigger mountain we haven't been on. And so, some of the tools we've developed are going to be really, really useful. But you know, what, we might need to be collaborative, I might need to admit I don't have that tool, and I might need to learn some from someone. Part of that, too, is being honest and keeping yourself mentally well and in a productive manner. So that was a little lengthy. I apologize. It got away from me.
Matt Johnston 46:47
That was awesome. I, you know, I'm aware of time here. I promise we'll wrap this up very soon.
Donna Harris 46:59
We don't really have anywhere else to be so it's okay.
Matt Johnston 47:06
Well, you didn't want to say that. I'll have you on the line to the rest of the day, you know. But on a daily basis, you're talking to Olympic athletes that have trained their whole lives to participate in the Summer Games, and are now sitting at home, not able to train, which is what they've done every day for the last 25 years. You're also talking to business owners and people in the workforce who are in the same who are in a similar boat in that they're all of a sudden there's been this this pause and the thing that they that they define themselves by, has been has been pressed on pause and there's a lot of uncertainty around that. What do you what do you tell these folks that are doing their part, staying at home but are trying to figure out what's next?
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 48:04
Well, I would say that I'm not sure I tell them anything. I think I try to create space to figure out where they're at and what they need. And it really has been very much a changing landscape. And I do think that you're right, there are people who are absolutely devastated for various reasons. And sometimes I feel their pain. Sometimes I'm tired, and I feel badly because similar to what we talked about, passion and feeling a sense of responsibility. I think you find yourself not wanting that to be the story. But I think now what I've come to is the fact that that is the story. And again, I love African American poet, Maya Angelou, who was asked, you know, when she wrote her autobiography, if she wished some of the things, she experienced never happened to her. And she took a deep breath. And she said that, "I don't will any of those experiences away because every experience has become the wise woman who sits before you today."
I think I'm moving more in that direction of trying to help them understand that this is part of their story. And it's not about getting through because we never want to get through our lives, even the chunks that are really, really challenging because it's all part of the gift of our life. Right? And so, this is part of their story. And I know with one of my athletes, some of our initial correspondence was around the fact that when we bring ourselves to what we do and we understand kind of who we are, that's when we're our best and this is an athlete who's been on a real journey for that and was very devastated because was very ready to do special things. And it's really tough to wrap your head around when the path has suddenly changed. And it continues to change in terms of the length of this.
At one point, we were just talking about that, that you're just going to have space to get to know yourself even better. And I think it's about where you put your energy as well. Because right now is not the time to train and to work on these other areas. They don't exist anymore. And if we sit and long for that, and worry, it can become challenging. So, I think the way I'll kind of put this together is again, this is very different for the context we're talking about. But there was someone in my life who was expecting a child. And along the way, had no indication there was any challenge with that child and the child was born and the child was born with a developmental disability. It was born with Down syndrome. And for them that was very different than what they had expected.
I happened to be over at their place and someone dropped off a poem they found on the internet, and the poem on the internet was very useful. And it said, you know, "Your whole life, you've been preparing to go to Paris, and you've been so excited to go to Paris and you make your plans and you get ready to go to Paris. And you get off the plane and you look around, and you're in the Netherlands." And the poem, the message in the poem is don't be so determined to go to Paris that you miss out what the Netherlands has to offer, because the Netherlands is also a very beautiful country. And so, I think that, you know, sometimes we have these visions in our head, what our path looks like, or what our summer looks like, or what 2020 looks like, or whatever period of time. And you're right, we were really, really excited to live that story. But now we're getting off the plane in a different place. And you know, we're at Everest, or wherever we are, and you know what, there's a lot of beauty that that place has to offer as well.
I think the quicker we're able to switch from that one context and come to peace with the fact that we're in a new place. We're able to really figure that out. And I think that, you know, I also love the concept of becoming. And when I was young, my mom used to read the Velveteen Rabbit, she would try any of those stories, she would break down and never got through them. But she tried. And it's a very beautiful story about becoming. And I think that this is all our, you know, again, usually it's an individual journey where we experience things and we grow and develop and it's a lifelong process of becoming, and now, we as a human race or human species, where we're on part of this journey together, and we have the opportunity to become and learn and grow. And in that story, they talked about the fact that, you know, people who reach their potential or become the best versions of themselves, doesn't happen to people who are fragile break easily. And, now none of us have the opportunity to be fragile or break easily. We're all kind of put into this place. It's a new journey. It's tough. It's not easy. And Donna alluded to that earlier when she said you can do all the self-care in the world. But at the end of the day, there are going to be days where it's hard. And that's okay. Don't stuff it in the basement, deal with it, let it be hard, because that's part of your process of becoming kind of the unbelievable person that you were born to be.
Donna Harris 53:20
I think that's amazing. I have one other idea just to add to that in that same vein, and I live in a house with a dog, and a cat and very active, two girls that are very active, they're seven and nine. And one of the things that we've talked about with some of the people that we work with, and certainly with ourselves is that in addition to meeting ourselves where we are at, and recognizing the opportunity in the moment, I think the other piece that can help us is that we talk about embracing our humanity. And I think in this particular point in time you need to embrace the mess. The mess that is - I'll speak very plainly - that is your house if you live in a house like mine, the you know the mess that is trying to figure out this new reality. And if we can sort of embrace it and meet ourselves at that place, then it makes it easier for us to be in that place and move forward from that spot.
We talked about embracing the mess or adjusting your expectations and I'm not suggesting that you lower your expectations, but perhaps adjusting them is helpful. And so I'm a fairly high energy person and I'm used to having a very full day and then usually puttering around and doing some writing in the evening or doing some additional development work in the evening and I found that since everyone has been home, I just not able to do that. Like I'm pretty spent by the time we get the kids in bed and stuff and so, our house looks like a warzone. Like our mudroom is living up to its name. There's, without a word of a lie, there's a mountain bike, there's 10 pairs of boots, and birdseed, my kids like to feed the birds, like all over the place, and there's a lot of puddles in our yard. And my kids got their rubber boots really messy the other day, and then they went out with our winter boots to play in the puddles. But their liners got really wet. So, I tried to dry them. And after leaving them out for two days, they still weren't dry. I put them in the dryer. And now my dryer looks like a mud hole. I've never had to clean a dryer before.
You know, these things could literally push someone over the edge on top of you know, like trying to manage your job because all these are happening during the workday and stuff, right? But we sort of choose to have the like, "Oh my god." And I laugh at it as much as I can and let it go. And so I'm not perfect at it and there's days where it's harder, but I think if we can embrace the mess in that way that sort of helps us to, like laugh at the things that are funny or even if they're not funny if there's humour in the moment and meet ourselves where we are and sort of recognize where we're at in this stage because when change happens inevitably there's mess and so I think that can really help us by embracing the mess we're really embracing our humanity which is really the best gift I think we can give ourselves in this moment in time.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 56:32
For the record Donna is someone who actually might climb Everest with her entire family. So, you know, she's just doing mini versions on a day to day basis currently.
Donna Harris 56:44
The thank you for the vote of confidence.
Matt Johnston 56:48
That is such a great perspective from both of you. I think that what you've both described is just the range of different circumstances that that people are in right now, all the while we have health care workers who are on the frontlines dealing with this and supporting people.
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 57:19
Yeah, one thing as well, from what Donna said, I almost think we have to redefine what success is for ourselves on a day to day basis and instead of holding ourselves to the standard of what we find valuable in Paris, there might be different things that we need to be successful in the Netherlands.
Matt Johnston 57:41
Amen. Well, you know, I that's about as good of a place to end this podcast off. That was fantastic. Thank you both. Before we head off, are there any parting thoughts that you'd like to share? Delivery recommendations? Amazon? Favorite memes?
Dr. Adrienne Leslie-Toogood 58:06
You know, just promoting Tourism Manitoba. Before this, Matt sent us this beautiful compilation of the beauty that the natural world has to offer with beautiful tune. And my children were watching - trying to - think I have his name written down. James Corden had a special he delivered from his living room where he connected with people around the world. And for me, it was just incredibly powerful. And I guess for me, we're seeing the best of humanity at this time too. And it's so beautiful that people are allowing their true selves to be seen right now. And Brene Brown talks about the idea of having the courage to be vulnerable. And right now, some of us are being nudged into it, but gosh, it's really beautiful to see so many courageous people around that are making all of our lives better. So, thank you to the people in the frontlines who are doing it in that way. Thank you to people like Matt Johnson, he's doing the best he can to help everyone in his company and even through some of their business initiatives Johnson Group's doing in the local community that will take an incredible amount of pressure off a lot of people who do just want to do good but are unable to do so without that little bit of left. So, again, I think there's so many beautiful people in the world and I think we're, we're seeing that in, and I know that I am an appreciative recipient of all that goodness.
Matt Johnston 59:38
Well, thank you, Adrienne, and I'm speaking to two of my favourites in that category. So as always, I can't thank you enough for what you both do in the world. The work you do is so important, I'm feel very lucky to call you friends and colleagues and really appreciate you taking all the time today and all the support you're giving us.
Donna Harris 1:00:04
Thank you. Thank you. It's awesome to be here.