Episode 336 – Guest: Deborah Gilboa, MD
Guest: Deborah Gilboa

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Kelly reconnects with Doctor Deborah Gilboa (Dr. G), a go-to expert on raising and educating respectful, responsible, resilient young people. She has a new book “From Stressed to Resilient: The Guide to Handle More and Feel Less.” Also, Deb used to work for Kelly at The Second City as a stage manager before she went to medical school.

Follow Dr. G on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.

So the first myth you bust in this book is that stress is always bad.

“Resilience is what we’re aiming for here, because it is the antidote to stress. Resilience is the ability to navigate change and come through it with integrity. And basically come through it as the kind of person you mean to be. But if you think stress is a poison and I should be avoiding it; I should be kicking people out of my life who stress me in any way, and if I cause stress in anyone else’s life I’m the villain, you become stuck in discomfort forever.”

We talk a lot in our work about becoming comfortable with discomfort, but that fights a behavior trend in some of the generations in the workplace today.

“Managing discomfort is a skill and the dichotomy that especially Millennials and Gen Z are facing – but the truth is pretty much everyone is facing – Is that we have a lot of lore around about trusting your gut. We do talk about in improv trust your instincts, but your gut feeling is different than instincts. Instincts are what feels true to me. Your gut feeling is am I uncomfortable? We’ve spent now almost two full generations as parents trying to shield our kids from discomfort because we can, and accidentally giving them the idea that if they’re uncomfortable something is inherently fundamentally wrong. And that’s another lie: discomfort means you’re growing. It may suck, but it is often valuable.”

We’ve talked to quite a few people about the power of saying “no” on the “yes, and” podcast.

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“We’re just we’re talking about saying yes to anything that aligns with your priorities. We set boundaries so that we can put our energy towards our own mission, towards our own goals.  And if people come at us with extraneous stuff that is both avoidable and not focused on our priorities, then we get to put up boundaries and say no. Sometimes stress comes at us, change comes at us and we have a choice to say yes, and or no.”

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