S3E3: Manage Stress and Become Unflappable With Dr. Bridget Cooper

About Dr. Bridget Cooper in her own words: I'm a cage rattler; a coach, speaker, and author with over two decades of experience helping teams and leaders think and communicate more clearly and strategically so they can work and navigate problems proactively and effectively. I work with clients to overcome the attitudes, tactics, and patterns that derail their success through down-to-earth insights and action plans. I do this through coaching, corporate consulting, and leading workshops that guide and inspire people to live more authentic, peaceful, and powerful lives. My mission is to change the world, one life at a time.

I'm an informative and engaging speaker and collaborator who revels in authentic, thought-provoking, game-changing conversations.

https://drbridgetcooper.com/

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Stress

• Stress = (What we seek to control) MINUS (What we can actually control)
• Notice where we focus our attention: is it on things that we control or not?
• Drama comes from focusing on what others do that upset us, rather than looking inward

Conflict

• Stress and conflict can create a vicious cycle
• Interpersonal conflict and intrapersonal still both stem from self
• Other people are indeed problematic, but we don’t have as much control or influence

Influence

• We have most influence over ourselves
• You’re most likely to influence others with lion energy rather than squirrel energy

Change Your Behavior

• Awareness: identify what’s triggering you
• Acceptance: this is where you are because of your decisions, change could involve loss
• Assessment: what will change encompass, what’s necessary?
• Action: put pen to paper and make the change
• Adjustment: assess and change course as needed

Curiosity may be more powerful than certainty

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Leadership Voyage
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email: StartYourVoyage@gmail.com
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Transcript

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Jason Wick: Alright, everybody! Welcome back to another episode of leadership voyage. I am pleased to be here with Dr. Bridget Cooper, Aka, Dr. B. Dr. B. It's great to be with you today.

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Dr. B: Oh, my goodness! So great to be with you, Jason! Thanks for having me on the show.

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Jason Wick: Absolutely, and we were just talking a second ago. We were trying to get together last fall, for whatever circumstances it didn't happen. So it's a long time coming. It's worth the wait. We're gonna get into some really fun stuff today. So once again, it's really nice to see you.

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Dr. B: Super excited.

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Jason Wick: So kind of the impetus for this discussion, in the first place, was, your most recent book. I think you've got at least 7 or so books out there. Something like this, right? And the most recent book you've written is unflappable.

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Jason Wick: How smart people quit overthinking ditch the drama, and thrive at work. And I'm really looking forward to getting into that, because I think a lot of people will be able to relate to what you bring up.

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Dr. B: Thank you.

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Jason Wick: Before. Yeah, before we do that, I have to read a little quote that's early in this book. And the quote is, I'm hell bent on changing the world, one life, one audience at a time, because I know firsthand the cost of suffering, of stress, overwhelm, and drama.

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Jason Wick: Could you share with us. What kind of led you to this mission.

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Dr. B: Yeah. So you know, I think our earliest experiences inform kind of the rest of our lives if we dig to them. You know well, and for me

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Dr. B: I know that all of the upbringing experiences, all of the stress, the the trauma, all of it, came from one main source, which was the people who were entrusted with my care. The people that I entrusted in relationship

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Dr. B: did not understand where their own power started and ended.

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Dr. B: and therefore they either gave away their power to other people, and that myself included, or tried to take power from others, myself included. And so learning about where we begin and end, and understanding where our power comes from, where our influence can be best directed, became a life mission for me, because I found that if I could be clear about that.

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Dr. B: that if other people could be clear about that, then they could really just version with the the power and influence they could have in their lives and really realize those successful experiences. So that was what it was for me. It was really it's it's in a very driving passion that I have about looking at complex problems and finding more simple, clear solutions that empower

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Dr. B: people to make a difference.

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Jason Wick: Thanks for that response. I think.

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Jason Wick: you know, hearing you use that p word power. It's it's a very I mean, it's a little. It's kinda hard. Shouldn't use the definition of a word in its own definition, or use the word in its own definition.

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Jason Wick: Powerful word powers. But.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: I.

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Jason Wick: It's really interesting to hear you talk about understanding where people can see how their power starts and ends, and the.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: That that has on themselves and others. And I think we're going to

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Jason Wick: touch on that right away here with some of the things that come up

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Jason Wick: in your book. And I, what I wanted to start off with was stress.

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Jason Wick: yeah, okay.

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Jason Wick: So everybody hang with us here. Right? Some of this stuff is pretty deep. It is right.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: But but it it affect. You know we don't just have a work person and a personal person. And then it's a person right? So you talk about stress and how managing or not affects the quality of our interactions.

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Dr. B: Yes.

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Jason Wick: And you will you outline this mathematical equation, which isn't too complicated for those who are not really into math. But could you explain that mathematical equation for us.

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Dr. B: Yeah. So I always joke when I do presentations. I do a lot of keynotes and workshops across the country, and I talk about I was not a math person. My mom was an accounting and finance Major. My sister was a math major, and I I don't know what DNA I got, but I did not get the math, Jean, and so I make my. Whenever I do a mathematical equation, I always make sure I can count it on one, maybe 2 hands, you know. That's about all I got. If I have to expose my toes, we're done. We're just done.

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Jason Wick: Good rule! I like it.

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Dr. B: Yeah, yeah. So I, I look at stress as being a very simple mathematical equation. It is the difference between

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Dr. B: what we seek to control

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Dr. B: and what we can actually control.

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Dr. B: So we're looking at, what can I actually control versus? What am I trying to control? And in that difference in that gap

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Dr. B: is where we feel stress.

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Dr. B: And so if we're looking at, you know, perhaps going to, you know, driving to the to work in the morning, and we get behind somebody, and there's a traffic jam, and we're like honking our horns or in our heads. We're saying all sorts of things like, Oh, come on, hurry up, move over! Get there right. That stress is originating in us.

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Dr. B: In us. Wanting to be able to move traffic, be able to get to a location faster when we don't have control over that.

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Dr. B: And so for me, when I'm looking at, how do we mitigate stress? Part of it is, where are we focusing our energy and attention?

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Dr. B: And when we focus our energy and our intent intention in what we cannot control, we are going to feel more of the negative stress can be good stress feeling like, Oh, I I've got this deadline, and I'm I'm pushing toward it great. If we have all of the things at our disposal to be able to accomplish that goal and hit that deadline

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Dr. B: when we don't, then we feel very ineffective stress. So for me, it's focusing people on what is it that you can control? What is it that you cannot? And putting our energy investing our energy and our focus in those things that we can actually have some dominion over.

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Jason Wick: It strikes me that there are probably a lot of things we're focused on that are out of our control. But we're not really even aware that that's what we're focusing on, right and.

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Dr. B: And that's so much where drama comes from.

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Dr. B: Right is we get we get into some sort of, you know, interaction with another person, somebody we're working with or for working for us. And we're putting all of our descriptions, all of that narrative that we're describing to someone else around what that person is doing or not doing that is causing us this disruption.

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Dr. B: And we can spend days, hours, months, years, Melania lifetimes right on that focus. But that gets us no further toward rectifying that drama.

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Dr. B: And we need to go inward. We need to put our focus and our attention inward, to be able to determine. What am I in charge of in this experience? Because if I focus on them

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Dr. B: great, I'm gonna have a lot of things to talk about at the bar right. But I'm not gonna be any closer to figuring out how to challenge and change the situation. Right? I gotta go inward. I gotta figure out how I'm doing things that could be having some contribution toward where I'm finding myself.

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Jason Wick: But come on, what fun is that? I mean.

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Dr. B: Jason. I am down for the stories right, and my my clients get so because they do a lot of coaching, and my clients know, at one or 2 tries. They're like, Okay, I know exactly where Dr. B. Is going to come in at

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Dr. B: when they come to me, and they're saying, you know, you are not gonna believe what so and so is up to. And I'm saying, Oh, I can actually believe it. I can absolutely believe it, and the more time we spend on how incredulous you are that this is happening, the more time we're wasting, and you actually getting to the other side of what's painting you. But, hey, I'm down for you. Wanna spend half our call talking about the other person I mean have at it. But we're not gonna move.

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Dr. B: move the needle in how it is that you are performing and experiencing where you spend most of your time. If we focus our direction, there.

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Jason Wick: Yeah. And you kind of framed that up top about calling it, you know, drama. And I think that sounds like the perfect word to describe, putting your focus on those things out of your control or on the other person.

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Jason Wick: And when you're talking about this this equation for stress and the things that are out of our control when we focus on

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Jason Wick: those elements that we don't control.

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Jason Wick: And we have the result that is stress bad stress, I suppose. Then conflict comes in to the equation, and that's what I'm sure you spend time talking to your clients about. You know, when we talk about in your book, at least, right is talking about the connection between relationship between stress and conflict and this vicious cycle that it can create, presumably out of my control. This person's acting this way.

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Jason Wick: It's stressing me out. I'm mad at them. It's stressing me out, and we go on and on and on, right.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: You talk about intere personal conflict and intra personal conflict. Those who have heard you speak here for the first few minutes already are gonna sense that you are focused on what we can control.

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Jason Wick: And the note I had written down here is, even though we talk about inter and intra-personal conflict. It almost always comes to be about ourselves, doesn't it?

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Dr. B: Yeah, you know, it's not that other people aren't problematic. I we could spend again hours, years

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Dr. B: talking about the problems and the dysfunction that exists within other people absolutely. But we don't have control there. We have influence there, but we have a greater degree of influence there. When we focused first on what we can control when we are self regulated, when we are taking, you know, strides in developing our own internal mechanisms on management.

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Dr. B: managing stress on. You know, looking at what our cognitive distortions are on understanding, where we're accountable on self compassion. All of those things build our internal resource, center our intra personal conflict Resolution Center, and then we can direct our attention better

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Dr. B: at managing what is happening with other people.

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Dr. B: You know, if we think about you know you're a dad. I'm a mom with our kids, and we can equate many of our coworkers, bosses, and employees right to children, right? And ourselves, too. Right. So we can act like big kids. But when we are not in charge of our own self.

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Dr. B: it is so much harder to navigate the challenges that we have with those we're in charge of.

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Dr. B: So our children, if they are dysregulated and we are dysregulated. Oh, welcome to the chaos!

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Dr. B: But when we are regulated. We can hand over some of that regulation, some of that calm, some of that clarity, some of that direction, and a positive, you know space to other people. So it really does start with us. And if everybody got that memo, if everybody picked up a copy of unflappable and start using the tools in it, focusing on themselves first.

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Dr. B: and I have a whole bevy of of tools and tactics on handling other people. This is, it is not vacant in that area.

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Dr. B: But if we were all focusing there first.

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Dr. B: boy, would the issues that we're having with other people diminish? Because if all of us were doing this in tandem.

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Dr. B: you know. There we go to world peace, and you know, you know, a a flow, a life of perfection which we're not going to get to. But we're gonna we're gonna try for unflappable, anyway.

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Jason Wick: What you're describing sounds very empowering to me, right? And I would say, that's where it sounds like they come back to. How you opened this conversation, which is by identifying where we can control, which is kind of inherently where we have the most influence. That's how we embrace the power we have. Is that right?

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Dr. B: Yeah, and absolutely. And I think you know, when I talk about and I and I do this also in my workshops, I talk about the difference in like the animal kingdom between a lion and a squirrel.

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Dr. B: Right now you don't see a lot of lions getting hit by traffic right? You see a whole lot of scrolls. And again, part of it's where they're occupying their space right. But

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Dr. B: squirrels. Their energy is not in being calm and clear and intentional. I mean, you think about 80% of their the nuts they never find again. Right? They turn into trees, you know, and so but a lion before a lion act, a lion surveys its surroundings, it comes to a point of real clear direction and intention.

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Dr. B: and then it moves. So if I'm gonna follow one or the other. I'm gonna be looking to follow someone who's got lion energy, not someone who's got squirrel energy. And that's where our ability to kind of what I call control light, which is. But I wanna control those people in my environment. Alright great. You know what you can do. Get some lion energy going on in yourself, and then other people are more likely to follow.

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Dr. B: Follow you, and you are more likely to have influence, which is control light. It's like the control over other people that isn't really control. And then you can see the needle moving in those interpersonal dilemmas.

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Jason Wick: I love it, and I think the analogy of the lion versus the squirrel is is very easy to capture to. I mean, we all have images in our mind. I'm at seeing that lion just sitting there kind of chilling out, looking around all these little pesky insects on them, and they don't really care. And they're just kind of surveying everything and deciding.

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Dr. B: What to do.

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Jason Wick: Next, whereas the squirrel can't decide which direction to run in the street. Right? I mean.

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Dr. B: Yeah, we've all slammed on our breaks a considerable number of times, and trying to figure out how to avoid the squirrels in our midst right? And I think you know, we all have squirrel energy at times. Right? We're all like, you know, bouncing around. Jump in between things, you know, and it's not that we never occupy those places. It's just where do we want to occupy the most significant amount of our time?

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Dr. B: And for me it's in line energy, right? It's in that calm. It's in that clarity, that intentional behaviors. And that's what I'm flappable really is based in is is starting understanding where stress comes from understanding what can mitigate and increase stress. So we can balance that well moving into what we can control, what we're in charge of. And then, once we've positioned ourselves from a place of

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Dr. B: strength there, then, focusing on, how can we then use that strength, that clarity, that centerednesscom, that unflapability to be able to help our interactions with others go more effectively and productively.

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Jason Wick: Wonderful.

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Jason Wick: So we're setting that system up. And when with unflappable and and your teachings, we, we've got tools that we can eventually put in play here. So let's talk through an example. And I wanted to start with a hypothetical. But right now, in the moment I think I'm gonna go with my as a personal example. So I worked with someone

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Jason Wick: 20 years ago, and what would happen is they would come in to to the office, and they would eat their breakfast. Okay? And we sat a few feet from each other and they come in. They'd put their feet up on the desk.

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Jason Wick: They grab their cereal, and they're chomping their cereal.

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Dr. B: Yeah, yeah.

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Jason Wick: For whatever reason, right, this just irritated me right.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: And I mean I I I guess other people will identify it in some form, whatever that is for them. But I'm like every day, even before it happened. I'm already like.

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Jason Wick: Oh, my gosh! What am I? Yeah.

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Dr. B: Is Bob gonna do today? That is, what does he have to say about Captain Crunch?

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Jason Wick: Right. You're going to.

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Dr. B: Have grief nuts for crying out loud right.

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Jason Wick: That's I love it so.

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Jason Wick: if I understand the some of the concepts in the book correctly here.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: We kind of can get into this victim. Mindset.

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Jason Wick: Right in something like this.

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Jason Wick: So what? What would you tell us or me? I'm here. What? What about that situation was in my control or was in someone else's control. If they have a similar situation that I haven't wasn't focused on.

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Dr. B: So let's go into our time traveling machine. Right? I'm gonna do a little, you know. Mr. Peabody, right? You know, and we're gonna move ourselves back whatever number of years that was when we're gonna call him. Bob.

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Dr. B: Bob is gonna be coming strolling into the office any minute now, and he's gonna plunk down on the seat. He's gonna kick his shoes up on the table and he's gonna start chomping next to you right now a a setting aside. And I'm gonna put a PIN in this. There are some people who haven't. There is a neurological disorder that can make the sounds of people eating right? Actually make them disregulated. So let's put a PIN in that.

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Dr. B: That's not the problem at hand. Because if that's the problem at hand, we've got another whole different set of systems that we're gonna have to.

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Jason Wick: Fair enough.

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Dr. B: Employee right? But if it's just a matter of this is something that just really irritates me. Okay.

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Dr. B: so first of all, noticing the noticing comes first. We talk about my, I have a in this book, also in my third, yeah. Third book I, I lose track. This is Number 7. My third book is stuck you, and it talks about the change process and deep dives into it in the 5 stages, and the first stage is awareness which is being aware that you even have this irritation, that that is the identified problem that your id

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Dr. B: identifying. I'm focused on this guy's behavior when he comes into the office and it and it's making me upset. And it's deregulating me. It's getting me into a bad mood, and it's setting off my day in a negative spin.

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Dr. B: Okay? So then, alright. So what am I actually in charge of understanding where I'm coming into this? So if he's coming into the office, and you're already braced right? You're ready for battle, like. Here he comes. I can hear him coming down the hall, and already your cortisol is jacked up in your brain. A lot of what I got I talk about an unflappable is really at a cellular level.

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Dr. B: How we are doing ourselves and other people a disservice by not respecting how we are set up from a at a brain level

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Dr. B: and not doing the things that we could be doing differently to be able to regulate ourselves better. So just preparing for Bob to walk in the door and being negative about it and being on guard about it. You've already set off a cortisol spin. You've already got your adrenaline pumping. Your your breathing rate is probably faster and more shallow. Your heart rate is up right.

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Dr. B: and you're already in it. And then you're putting your focus and and part of our brain that focuses our attention on something is called the reticular activating system. And it puts our focus on what is going to happen in any given moment. So when we direct our attention at something negative that is coming into our experience. We're going to put all of our energetic and attentive resources

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Dr. B: at there. So what I would say to that earlier version of you is first of all, notice that the tension is happening, and direct your attention at trying to reduce your tension. Going into a body scan, dropping your hands to your knees, you know, like loosening your grip, noticing your breath, trying to come to a happy

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Dr. B: placing yourself right? And then there are some tactical, practical things which is, once he's come into the office.

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Dr. B: direct your attention at something else. Put headphones in, put a little music on low right notice other noises in your environment, or start stopping your attention at noises and look at visions and information right where you focus your attention, everything grows. And so I would be asking that the other thing that we would deep dive into if I were your coach

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Dr. B: is, what is it about that behavior that is triggering off that response in you. Did you have an earlier iteration of this in your family? Did you have a friend who used to do this and was careless, and then broke your trust. And then, now, every time a person who who approximates that person comes into your purview.

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Dr. B: you're now really amplified in your response. So we'd be dig digging into some of those things that are happening inside of you

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Dr. B: that are creating that stress response. And that's where we'd start, and then we might, if we were getting into the inter personal side of you, done all the intra personal things you could think of to do. You might start having conversations where you were finding things that you liked and appreciated about Bob.

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Dr. B: so you could say in the grand scheme of things. I like 10 things about Bob. I don't like 2 or 3 things about Bob, so let me focus there. The other thing I could be doing is I could be talking about with Bob, about, hey? By the way, it's really I don't know if you've ever noticed how like the whole place you could drop a PIN, and all that we could hear is the crunching of cereal.

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Dr. B: May I request? Is there any way that, like

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Dr. B: the break room, or the Oh! And the guy might be like, Oh, dude! I had no idea that was bothering you. I can't hear it, cause I've got my headphones, and I'm just. I'm focused on something else. I didn't know that was bothering you. Maybe he doesn't respond like that, and you have to just go on your merry way and find other ways to manage that expectation that he's going to do anything differently than what he's ever done in the past.

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Dr. B: And so often we create our own drama in our own stress, in expecting other people to conform to our ideas about how things should be going. Instead of anticipating that people are going to be exactly as they are.

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Dr. B: because we are too

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Dr. B: right. We don't do things to conform ourselves to everyone's expectations of us. And if we are, boy, are we making ourselves really stressed out because those can change on a dime? Right? So we shift those expectations.

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Dr. B: And we see

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Dr. B: so such a better experience of our own work and life.

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Jason Wick: That's a really

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Jason Wick: powerful and in depth. Answer, Dr. B. So thank you for no. Seriously thanks for.

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Dr. B: You're welcome.

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Jason Wick: Through all of that, and and my hope is that

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Jason Wick: people can kind of relate to it, cause what I find really interesting. Listening to you. Describe all of these facets of what I should go through or accept and be aware of, and this other person's behavior.

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Jason Wick: There's nothing in this encounter that the other person had

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Jason Wick: anything to do with me from their point of view. Right? Kind of like, back to your original example of going to work in traffic.

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Jason Wick: It strikes me that we. We tend to think that the rest of society has come out of their homes this morning with the vendetta of not getting me to get to work on time.

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Dr. B: Yeah, when we ascribe intention to other people's very

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Dr. B: subconscious, unaware behaviors, we vilify other people, we put our power in their hands, and we are then at the mercy of whatever

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Dr. B: behaviors they are going to display.

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Dr. B: So if I think that the person who cuts me off in traffic meant to do me harm, was irritated and coming at me, I'm going to feel a stress response.

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Dr. B: I'm going to feel agitated and aggressive if I'm thinking, boy, that person. Probably maybe they just had a bad day. Maybe they're rushing to work because they woke up late. Maybe they're sick and they didn't even see me coming right. They're just like they sneezed, and they just lost sight of something right, like so many other things could be happening. But when we ascribe an intention.

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Dr. B: we naturally square off against other people.

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Dr. B: and that is rooted in expectation and expecting people to anticipate or be focused on us when usually, as we are. We're just focused ourselves on getting through the day.

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Dr. B: And whatever that means for us, whatever you know, whatever strategies we have to do, that, whether they be positive or negative or neutral.

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Dr. B: we are just trying to make it through our day. And so is everybody else.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: Love, that.

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Dr. B: The world does not circle around us even as much as we might think that it does. It absolutely does not.

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Dr. B: you know.

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Jason Wick: It does not. And as you're suggesting, as soon as we

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Jason Wick: vilify, we're giving away that power, because, as you've suggested, the power is most influential when it's focused on what's closest to us.

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Dr. B: Right if somebody else is the villain.

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Dr. B: Then, just looking at all of the the stories that we have all the tropes in movies and and animation is, if there's a villain, there's a victim, and there's a hero.

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Dr. B: right? If we box people into those roles, then who's the victim in the scenario. It's usually us

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Dr. B: right. We're usually at the at the mercy of someone else's bad behavior, and the more we calibrate to that, the more we see other people is trying to do us harm, even if they are trying to do us harm, but focusing our attention, how bad they're behaving, the less we're focused on where our agency is, where our power is and what we can do to

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Dr. B: correct the situation.

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Jason Wick: There's a question that's been kind of lingering in the back of my mind for about 10 min here. And you, you know I've talked to several people on this show over the last few years, and many of them are coaches around a particular functional area. In most cases.

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Dr. B: It says, okay,

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Jason Wick: But I think I wrote you an email in the fall when I was reading this book, and I think I said something like I got to be honest with you. Dr. B.

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Jason Wick: This book is really hitting me hard, you know it. It's some things to like actually read them, and not just like, try to read it academically, to prepare for a guest, but actually to read it and think about myself. I was like, Oh, God, okay, like I didn't feel amazing. It was like.

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Dr. B: Okay, right? It was.

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Jason Wick: Hard to be on.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: Reading it.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: Question, though. That's that I want to say is, I've interviewed a lot of coaches, and it's about functional areas. But you're maybe the first, or one of just a couple

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Jason Wick: who are really getting to this deeper level with with a very schooled point of view. And what I wanted to ask you is.

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Jason Wick: where does the line of coaching end and therapy begin?

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Dr. B: I love that question, and I get that question a lot, because I you know, I tell my story about how I got to being a coach, and I've been doing it for 20 years. Next week.

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Jason Wick: Congratulations.

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Dr. B: Yeah. And I, you know, I came to it because I call myself Goldilocks. So I started off and I did human resources where I thought I was going to be helping people with their careers. I was going to be coaching and assisting them, and what I found that in the Hr. Realm that I was in, and I was a number of different hats in that it was very transactional and very business focus and very

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Dr. B: dry. And I thought, Oh, this beds too hard, you know. So I went. And I said, You know what? I'm gonna get a counseling degree. So I went for my marriage and family therapy degree, which is based in systems, theory, understanding the the human's role in a system, the power dynamics, the the roles and expectations, and all of that, and that gave me such a rich understanding of humanity, and groups and systems

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Dr. B: and and clans.

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Dr. B: And then I got into that bed and man. I'll tell you, Jason, it was too soft. There was so much like, Whoa, okay, we're going back into your family. We're like doing this hard work. I was in my mid twenties. I was like dude. I gotta clear out my own residual trauma. Yeah, this is too much. Bed was too soft. So then I went back, and I got my doctorate and educational leadership.

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Dr. B: and that led me to this idea of looking in my in my executive and corporate experience and higher education experience. It gave me an understanding more of how people were working together, how the person came into that. And I thought, you know what this allows me to be a coach? This allows me to take my deep understanding of humanity, of how people are are working within their family systems the stuff that they bring from that

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Dr. B: and bring into adulthood and positive and negative ways, and really help them be different. So when I people are asking me about. You know my ideal client. It is that executive that knows that something is standing in the way of them. Getting to their next step or something is blocking them from really enjoying the work that they're doing. And they have this nagging suspicion.

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Dr. B: It's something deeper than understanding how a balance sheet works. It's something a little more like in the gut, right? There's some, you know, sensitivity that they have, or there's some lack of confidence, or there's some aggressiveness or some dysregulation, and they're like, I don't wanna be in therapy for this, but I know that I need to be able to

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Dr. B: to dig into this a little bit deeper. I need to trust someone with this piece of me so that they can change this.

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Dr. B: And so the difference for me when I look at that. So I know I've been trained as a therapist, but I work as a coach is a couple of things one, if there is a mental health disorder, whether it's depression clinical anxiety or some personality disorder, something that is disruptive. I am going to mandate that they see a therapist for that, because they have the current training, the best and the brightest of that training to be able to identify.

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Dr. B: I regulate, medicate and treat that, and I don't want to. I want to make sure that my client is well taken care of.

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Dr. B: Therapy also tends to go as go deep right? They go real deep. Now I go as deep as I need to, and when I get into some of my contracts that we talk about some of my other approaches. There can be some deep, powerful moves, but I'm going deep. And then I'm popping people back up because I'm focused on figuring out where they can go from here. So in a lot of ways, therapy has caught up to that

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Dr. B: right, there's a lot more therapists who to me are doing a lot more coaching

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Dr. B: right? You know whether it's Cbt, dbt, you know, some of that stuff like those modalities are much closer to coaching, so we're kind of converging, I think, but there is for me a difference in in the level of disruption that that person has in their life, and I wanna make sure they have support, and I've turned clients away and turn them to therapists so they can do some of that deeper work and regulate and medicate if they need to before they get to me.

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Jason Wick: Great answer. Thank you for all of that, and I think I do appreciate the the Goldilocks analogy, right cause you found your ideal fit which is ultimately enabling you to have the greatest impact on other people. So wonderful.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Dr. B: yeah, thank you.

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Jason Wick: Before we start to wrap it up, because the time goes very fast.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: Yeah, you kind of alluded to.

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Jason Wick: When we are going through my example, you started with awareness and touched on some other things. You've got this 5 step framework that you referenced in the unflappable book awareness.

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Dr. B: Right here, beautiful.

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Jason Wick: Very good

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Jason Wick: awareness, acceptance, assessment, action and adjustment. And we're not gonna have time to step through all that in detail. But what I would love you to be able to highlight for everyone. Listening is

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Jason Wick: ultimately, if someone embraces this framework, what does that look like for them? What are the changes look like something like that.

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Dr. B: So first, as as we talked about in that earlier example, just the awareness that there's something wrong, there's something that is out of sync something that could be better, something that isn't working for me. That's a pretty clear step, but it can take a a deeper dive than some people know how to do, and that's where a coach comes in. And then the next is this acceptance piece, and this is a big one, because it's not just acceptance

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Dr. B: that I have to make this change. It's acceptance that I got to exactly where I am as a direct and predictable result of all my experiences and decisions to this point. So if I want the future to be different, I'm going to have to do something different.

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Dr. B: and also the acceptance that things are going to change, and often with success comes loss.

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Dr. B: We leave people behind sometimes when we make positive changes for ourselves, because if we change a dynamic that has been unhealthy and dysfunctional in the past, and the other person isn't on board to do some changes of their own to make that different, you can lose relationships. So there's that piece of acceptance as well. And then there's this piece of assessment. Okay, so what is the change going to? What is it going to encompass? What.

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Dr. B: what are the steps necessary? What are the aspects? And again, working with a coach, can really help you identify what those pieces are with the you gotta do them. And what are the bonus pieces? And then there's the action step, which is where all the fun happens, right where you're actually putting, you know, pen to paper. You're putting, you know your foot on the gas, and you're taking action. And throughout that, and at the end of that there is this adjustment.

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Dr. B: and there's also assessment you kind of they. They don't always go and exact, you know. Just leave a step, and you never go back. But you're doing an assessment throughout. And at the end of how did that work? Did I have my my focus on the right thing did in doing the the action. Did I realize that actually, there's this other piece that I didn't see before. Now I need to go back and kind of go through those steps again

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Dr. B: to get myself in a little bit different direction. I thought it was, you know, changing the organization of my staff and and and putting myself more in a a strategy space. But I'm realizing it was really that I didn't know how to interact with my staff. And now I have to go back and kind of figure out how to be a better manager. Right? So it could be that sort of thing where you have to recalibrate. But that's what that is. That adjustment pieces at the end.

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Jason Wick: Great.

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Jason Wick: I also liked how you talked about kind of assessment as a kind of a continual thing throughout the process.

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Dr. B: Yeah, that's that.

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Jason Wick: That's great. Yeah. Love that angle.

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Dr. B: Yeah. And we know that right? We're always assessing we're always taking inventory, taking stock and going round and round. It's a very iterate process. I tried to make it structural in a sense of you could follow it sequence. But we know that we aren't. We're messy. We're just. We're just messy. Yeah.

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Jason Wick: Okay, Doctor B. Before we get to let you tell us where everyone should go to learn more about about your work.

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Dr. B: Absolutely.

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Jason Wick: Every guest the same question at the end of the conversation, and that question is, what have you learned recently?

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Dr. B: Oof

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Dr. B: what I have learned recently.

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Dr. B: you know I learned this all the time is the more I know, the less I know right this idea that the more curious I get, the more I realize where there are more places I need to learn more things. And I I think that's been a continual thing for me of being very taken, and I talk about I promote it, being having a curiosity stance. But that's changed for me, because I think in my younger years I had this sense

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Dr. B: that I had to have all this knowledge. In order to move forward. I had to know everything and be certain of things. And I've just been learning more and more. And maybe it's just, you know, hitting my fifties that

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Dr. B: I really there's so much more that I haven't tapped into so many more people and perspectives that I need to to and embrace and engage with, so that I can be

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Dr. B: smarter and better every day.

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Jason Wick: Thanks for sharing that it keeps us humble, doesn't it?

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Dr. B: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And also really more more effective. I think a lot of leaders, a lot of people get real uncomfortable at this idea of what? What do you mean? I have to be certain. I I can't just be curious. I have to be certain.

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Dr. B: And how powerful it is to be

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Dr. B: curious. Instead of being certain I've seen transformations with my executive clients when they've taken that tack, and it's changed their entire leadership journey for the for the good.

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Jason Wick: Love that

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Jason Wick: good thanks for sharing that.

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Dr. B: Like you.

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Jason Wick: So for those interested in in your work, your services, or the book unflappable, where would we like to direct them?

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Dr. B: Well, you can great go right over to Dr. Bridget Cooper, Com, that's DRVR. IDGE, TCOP. ER com. I assume it'll be in the show notes.

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Dr. B: and you can click on, you know. Grab a few minutes with me. Talk to me about, you know, coaching or consulting or training keynoting things like that. And there's also a link to buy unflappable and to join my unflappable community. I will not pummel you with with with stuff, but I will send you some some free bonus tools that couldn't make their way into the book, and also just kind of keep you posted on book discounts and upcoming events and

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Dr. B: things that just occurred to me that might be helpful to those who are looking to be unflappable.

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Jason Wick: Great Dr. Bridget cooper.com. You said right, Dr. Bridget Cooper, perfect.

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Dr. B: You got it.

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Jason Wick: Okay, well, it's been my pleasure to talk with you today.

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Dr. B: And mine.

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Jason Wick: Dr. Bridget Cooper, Aka, Dr. B. Aka Goldilocks. I'm gonna throw on the end there. Given the journey.

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Dr. B: Yeah.

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Jason Wick: But thank you so much for your time. Today, I'm sure people are gonna get a lot out of this. And the self reflection of of all of this is super powerful, and gets us all on that journey to being more inflable. So thank you so much for your time today.

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Dr. B: Got it. Thank you so much, Jason, take care.