Resilience, vision and innovation

/

Keywords

Resilience – Vision – Innovation – Sudan – Digital Economy – Social Enterprise

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Aziz Musa, a transformative leader in the digital marketing realm, talks about his story which led him from Blackpool, to Dubai, Sudan and finally Egypt.

As the youngest public company CEO in the UK, Aziz had already made significant strides in the corporate world. However, in 2017 against a backdrop of political unrest and war, he founded Cush.Digital with the vision of building both a social enterprise and the digital economy in Sudan, 

In this podcast Aziz shares his experience of living through a civil war in Sudan and of having to relocate to Egypt. The process of leaving Sudan during the war was difficult and he discusses how he approached some of the decisions he had to make for his family and employees. This includes evacuating people from a war zone, going through military checkpoints, crossing the border, providing employment and support for families.  He also shares some of the background to his business life and talks about growing a digital agency through client satisfaction and how his company trained over 4,000 people in Sudan in digital marketing, on a pro bono basis.

Main topics

  • The importance of making deliberate decisions and having a higher purpose when facing adversity.

  • Planning ahead and being proactive in managing anxiety and building resilience.

  • Creating a social enterprise alongside a business

  • The 10th Man Experiment

  • Why we need backup plans and to be prepared for changing scenarios.

  • The importance of having a plan to manage anxiety and build resilience.

  • The process of using logic and expertise to determine the real threats.

Timestamps

1: Introductions (00:02-01:41
2: Aziz's Background and Work (01:41-04:01)
3: Aziz's Experience of War (04:47-09:00)
4: Escape from Sudan (09:18-14:37)
5: Building Resilience and Managing Anxiety (14:37-19:17)
6: Planning for Unlikely Scenarios (19:52-23:15)
7: Aziz's Work and Contact Information (23:58-27:33)

Action items

   You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Be inspired by success ... and failure

/

Keywords

Resilience – Success – Failure – Vision - Goals

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Jim Harshaw, a personal performance coach and host of the Success Through Failure podcast. Despite humble beginnings as the son of a construction worker and secretary, Jim became an NCAA Division I All-American wrestler and later the youngest Division I head coach in the country.

Jim initially struggled to achieve his goal of becoming an All-American wrestler but on the eve of his last season as a senior wrestler, he gave up on obsessing over the outcome and instead focused solely on putting in his best effort without worrying about whether it would lead to achieving his goal or not. This mindset shift allowed him to perform at his best and enjoy competing more than ever before.

Now as president of The Harshaw Group, his performance coaching firm, he has helped CEOs, entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 leaders, and athletes from the NFL, UFC, NCAA, and Olympics maximize their potential, build high- performing teams, and increase resilience by leveraging failure for successim. Jim emphasises that while having a vision and goals are important for success, it's equally crucial to let go of any fear or fixation on outcomes so that you can focus fully on performing your best in each moment without being held back by anxiety or pressure.

Main topics

  • The elements of the four-part framework for success

  • The importance of mental focus, hard work, and inspired action.

  • The importance of focusing on the process rather than the outcome.

  • How creating a vision in all areas of life (relationships, self, health, and wealth) is critical for setting goals that align with one's purpose

  • The importance of failure in personal growth

  • The need for infrastructure to support resilience in real-world situations

  • The difference between hard work and inspired action and the significance of having both in alignment with one's vision.

  • The importance of having a clear vision and values to create an environment of excellence.

  • Why having goals, micro-goals, coaches, and people around you is essential for achieving success consistently.

Timestamps

1: Introduction to Resilience Unravelled - 00:00-00:33
2: Four-part framework for success - 05:35-11:11
3. Applying the framework - 11:11- 17:57
4: Mindset and Performance Psychology - 18:22-22:43
5: Learning and Growth - 25:17-26:32
6: Conclusion and Call to Action - 27:39- 34

Action items

Visit Jim’s website, jimharshawjr.com/resilience to schedule a 30-minute conversation about how the framework applies to your life, or to listen to some episodes and access the action plans from those episodes.

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Setting a vision for success

/

Paola Knecht is a certified leadership, transformational, and self-development coach with fifteen years of experience working in leading-edge global corporations, including Viatris and Syngenta. She has recently published her first book The Success Mindset: Take Back the Leadership of Your Mind which challenges the mainstream view of success and asks her readers to redefine success so it is truly meaningful to them.

In her research, Paola looked at the difference between people who are extraordinary and reach things no one thinks are possible and people who don't achieve everything they want to. She feels that many people are living against an externalised idea of what success looks like rather than what matters to them and that they are following a definition of success that was not really defined by them but comes from external sources.

Paola thinks the first thing to consider is what success look like for each individual. For her, success is about discovering and following a vision and really thinking about what makes life meaningful. Not in terms of houses, cars or money because even though you may have reached certain milestones in the corporate world, it doesn’t mean you were successful in your own terms. You may have achieved all of the things you think you should have done but you still feel empty or stuck, don't find meaning in your life, feel bored or fall into the trap of never ending consumption. It’s about who you are rather than what you have.  

At different points in your career there is a chance to reset. Paola left Mexico because she wanted to travel. When she was a child her father gave her a globe which she used study. She graduated in engineering so when she had to choose where to continue her studies study she choose a Masters programme in Switzerland which gave her the opportunity to see more of Europe. Paola’s vision was that she wanted to see more of the world.  She feels we all need to set a vision for ourselves and that one way of doing this is reflecting back on what we enjoyed doing when we were children, before we took on responsibilities, followed other trends and disconnected from activities we loved. This can still be relevant as you get older. Not everyone will be clear on what they want, others are still not sure or discover they aren’t happy doing what they are doing and don’t know how to make the changes they need.

Paola thinks that resilience is something we are all born with, that's an inborn trait. This resilience muscle provides us with a self succeeding mechanism but as we get older and grow out of our inner self we tend to listen and comply to other people.  We forget our resilience muscle and don't ‘train’ it any more so become people pleasers who try to live in a world were we are liked by others and fill their expectations, Then, when a big challenge comes along we find ourselves helpless, asking ourselves ‘what do I do next’, ‘I don't want to fail and my self image be ruined’.

A way of growing resilience is to stop people pleasing. Always working to be liked gets in the way of understanding yourself and having your own sense of self. We need to learn to let go of peoples perceptions of us -  if we don't have our own vision, everyone’s else version of us becomes important.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more about Paola at www.my-mindpower.com

Her book is available at https://www.amazon.com/author/paolaknecht