In this powerful solo episode, Kristen dives deep into one of the most essential traits for success and fulfillment—emotional resilience. Far from being a vague buzzword, Kristen unpacks what resilience truly means, why it matters, and—most importantly—how you can measure and grow it.
She introduces the Six Pillars of Emotional Resilience, a framework designed to help you navigate discomfort, manage stress, bounce back from setbacks, and lead with more courage and clarity in all areas of life—from business to relationships.
Whether you’re a business owner, a growth-minded human, or someone who just feels emotionally exhausted from trying to hold it all together, this episode offers the clarity, validation, and practical tools you’ve been searching for.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- Why personal growth often feels subjective—and how to make it measurable
- The difference between “feeling goals” and outcome goals
- How emotional pain registers just like physical pain—and what that means for your nervous system
- The 6 measurable pillars of emotional resilience and how they apply to your life
- How to shorten your recovery time after setbacks, stop spiraling in shame, and actually take aligned action
- The surprising power of asking for support and why hyper-independence might be silently burning you out
The Six Pillars of Emotional Resilience:
- Stress Adaptability – Staying emotionally regulated in real-time
- Cognitive Flexibility – Reframing rigid thinking and embracing nuance
- Emotional Recovery Time – Bouncing back from emotional setbacks faster
- Self-Trust & Confidence – Trusting your decisions without needing external validation
- Growth Actionability – Taking aligned, consistent action even when it’s hard
- Social Support Utilization – Letting others in and asking for help without shame
Take action:
If this episode hit home, send a three-minute message to someone you care about. Let them know they’re not a burden and that you’re available to listen. Want to measure your own resilience? Head to the Sondera Membership and take the Emotional Resilience Index: And REMINDER: Kristen is back in the coaching seat! Starting November, we’re offering a new membership tier called the Sondera Signature Membership and it includes LIVE weekly coaching with Kristen. If you’ve ever wanted direct guidance beyond the strategy—this is your moment.
Join before November 1st to lock in the special pricing: Sondera Signature Membership. Just want the DIY Sondera Membership? Click here!
Timestamps:
0:00 – Introduction: What is resilience, really?
2:00 – “Feelings goals” vs. outcome goals
8:30 – Why discomfort feels like danger to your brain
14:00 – Pillar 1: Stress adaptability
19:15 – Pillar 2: Cognitive flexibility
25:30 – Pillar 3: Emotional recovery time
31:30 – Pillar 4: Self-trust and confidence
35:00 – Pillar 5: Growth actionability
40:00 – Pillar 6: Social support utilization
49:00 – Real client wins and emotional resilience growth metrics
53:00 – Final encouragement: Be someone who offers three minutes
“If we don’t have the tools to handle discomfort, we will always retreat to comfort—end of story” – Kristen Boss
Transcript for episode 235 “The 6 Pillars of Emotional Resilience or Inner Grit
Kristen Boss (00:03):
I see you with brand new eyes. I’ve never been so sure take my, you are listening to the Kristen Boss podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning.
(00:58):
Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast This week I’ve got a juicy one for you. We are going to be talking about resilience, and I think there’s a lot of thoughts out there about what resilience actually is, inner grit, and I think we have some myths and misnomers about it. But what if I could tell you there is actually a way to grow your resilience and not just grow it, but measure it and track it so that you can actually see I am becoming more resilient. That’s what I’m excited about today because I think oftentimes when it comes to personal growth in areas where we are growing and changing, I feel like growth can feel very subjective, which is why it’s really important to have other many ways to measure success. I have a good friend of mine. She says she has outcome goals, and then she says she has feelings, goals, and I said, Ooh, tell me more about that.
(01:53):
She’s like, well, I have goals of how I want to feel after doing something, regardless of the actual metric assigned to it. It’s like, well, I want to feel accomplished. I want to feel proud. I want to feel gratitude. And when she mentioned feeling goals, feelings, goals, to me, I’m like, as somebody who’s constantly chasing data and looking to the outcome, often I will look to the outcome to inform how I should feel. So if the data looks the way I want it to, I can feel good. I could feel confident. If the data doesn’t look the way I want it to, well then I’m suddenly in a bad mood. I don’t feel good. I mean, think about this is how I felt about my relationship with the scale for a long time. My mood would be entirely dependent upon the numbers that showed up on a scale whenever I stepped on it.
(02:46):
And I think there can be other factors that we have. You might not have that relationship with the scale, but there might be something else in your life where you let that thing tell you how to feel about your day. It will absolutely set the emotional tone of your entire day. And I don’t know what that is for you. I have a couple areas where I’m always working on that, but I love the idea of a feelings goal. But more than that, it’s okay. When we are talking about doing things that are difficult and hard, and a lot of people in my audience are business owners of some kind or they deeply care about personal growth. That’s why they listen. That’s why they tune in. They care about doing things. But here’s the thing is anytime we’re trying something new, we are venturing beyond our comfort zone.
(03:33):
And I’ve talked a lot about the nervous system, and here’s what I’m going to say. Outside your comfort zone is essentially just an absolute, what do I want to call it? A mind zone, like a landmines of triggers for your nervous system. When we leave our comfort zone, we’re essentially saying like, yes, I’m willing to put myself in a position that is going to have me feel uncertainty, doubt, fear, frustration, disappointment, all the negative emotions that our nervous system and our brain works really hard to protect us from. Because emotional pain and physical pain, our brain registers it in the same regions in our brain. Isn’t that crazy? Like touching a hot stove and the fear of failure or judgment or disappointment, it all registers the same in our brain. So it’s so interesting. We can have this desire to go do big scary things, but we also have our internal wiring that is designed to keep us from doing those things.
(04:38):
So we literally have two parts of ourselves that go to war with each other. And so this is why learning to build resilience is so important because it’s not if you’re going to have a setback, it’s not if things are going to go wrong, if you’re going to be disappointed, it’s like no win. Welcome to life from Princess Bride. I put this in my book, pivot to Purpose. I said, that line in Princess Bride life is pain highness, and anybody who’s telling you differently is selling you something or is lying to you. And it’s true. Life is pain. And I even heard this great statement that said, as parents, we have a desire to, we want our children to be happy. And then I heard somebody frame it differently and they say, I think the greatest responsibility we have as parents is to equip and teach our children to bear up under suffering well, so that when suffering happens, they do not collapse, that we equip them and give them the tools to bear suffering.
(05:39):
Well, I want you to think about that. And I think some of us, if you were not taught or given the tools of how to bear up under suffering, we will naturally go into a self-protective state. We will move away. We will shelter ourselves, we will hide, we will, and I think to use personal development, cliche language, we will quote, play small. Well, I think we should remove the shame around it and realize, hold on. We only play small when we lack the tools to use when we’re playing big and all of the discomfort that comes with playing big. If you don’t have the tools in place to care for yourself or support yourself, when the pressure mounts, when the conflict and the suffering happens because it’s going to happen, of course we are going to retreat to the place our brain feels is safe.
(06:37):
Of course, we do that. And so we will find ways to retreat to safety even if it looks like self-sabotage, even when it’s in direct opposition to the goals we write down and say, yes, this matters to me so much. Or yes, I want to be healthy. Yes, I want a good marriage. Yes, I want money in my savings account, but we will default to the things that give us comfort unless we have tools that help us when we are in discomfort because without the tools, I’m apologize if I am talking in circles. I just really want you to grasp this. If we do not have tools to handle discomfort, we will always retreat to comfort, end of story full. Okay, so this is what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the six pillars of emotional resilience. Now, hear me out when I say emotions.
(07:33):
Some of you might be like, I don’t do emotions, I don’t have emotions. What are those? Okay, your stress resilience index, I don’t care what you want to call it, but I promise you part of being a human is you do have feelings. I promise you have felt, and maybe you’re just like, I just know anger and disappointment and apathy. All of these are feelings, and I always surprise people. We have this in our membership, and I had it in my last course too, but we had something called a feelings wheel. And most people are able to identify, I think it was like 10 to 12 emotions, but when they actually looked at the feelings will, they would be shocked to be like, wait, there’s this many emotions. And it’s like, yes, and learning emotional literacy to identify our discomfort. That’s all it is. Emotional literacy is being able to name discomfort so we can pick up the right tool.
(08:28):
So if I’m angry, I’m probably going to need a different tool than when I’m sad. If I am embarrassed, I’m going to need a different tool than when I am anxious. Does that make sense? It’s like different feelings require different tools. And I want you to think of this exercise as kind of building your awareness around what resilience is. There’s actually six pillars to emotional resilience, and I’m going to unpack each of these pillars so you understand what actually makes resilience. What is emotional resilience and why is it absolutely so vital to success in all areas of your life, not just business, but your relationships, your health, how you manage your money, how you approach your careers, how you approach conflict. You’re picking up what I’m putting down. Cool friends, then let’s get to it. So the first pillar to emotional resilience is, I even have my little paper here because I don’t want to forget any of them.
(09:29):
The first one is stress, adaptability, and that is essentially your ability to regulate your emotions while you’re under pressure in real time. So imagine yourself in a moment. I will never forget if you have littles, it might be easier to remember, but I’ll never forget when I had taken my daughter to a birthday party to Chuck E. Cheese of all places, and I remember leaving Chuck E Cheese feeling overstimulated. I just remember seeing lights and noise, and there’s cupcakes and sugar and it is crazy, and my daughter can get sensory overwhelm just like I can. So when we left the restaurant or whatever it is, I had to stop at the grocery store and I knew I had this feeling in my gut like, Kristen, just take her home. She’s overstimulated. But I was like, ah, it’s just on the way home. No problem. Biggest mistake.
(10:26):
I should have trusted my gut. I took her to the grocery store and it was the most catastrophic meltdown of all time. And so in that moment, I’m trying to give a very vivid picture of being able to regulate emotions under pressure. So my child is having a full blown screaming meltdown on aisle two, and my brain is offering, everybody’s looking at you, everybody’s judging you as a parent. Everybody thinks you’re the worst mom right now. How embarrassing. And I think at the time she was like, I don’t know, five. And so her brain is literally melting down from too much stimulus happening. She doesn’t have the tools to calm herself, and so in that moment, it’s just she was having a massive cry for help. However, in that moment, my brain’s on fire too. My brain is like, must exit panic. My heart rate’s up.
(11:23):
I’m stressed out. I’m angry. I feel inconvenienced, I feel embarrassed. I’m sure I wear something called a whoop band that tracks your stress levels throughout the day and your heart rate. It’s like your Apple watch, but on steroids, I am positive if I wore a whoop band in that moment, it would’ve had my heart rate through the roof. It would’ve measured my strain at an all time high. Here’s what I mean about stress, adaptability in that moment. I had to remember sitting on aisle two with her and I was on the verge of crying, and I told myself, if I’m overstimulated, she is too. And I remember just sitting on the floor on aisle two, and I held her. I just hugged her, and I was only able to do that because I was able to calm myself and get out of my heightened fight flight response.
(12:19):
My nervous system was on fire, and I was able to, because I was a calm presence, I was able to help regulate her. So stress, adaptability is really your ability to have increased self-awareness. Understand, oh, this is how I’m feeling. This is what’s going on in the moment. A lot of times we will have that hindsight, but being able to do it in the moment and realize, oh, I see what I’m doing here. Oh, I see what’s going on. So it’s being able to handle our emotional triggers with greater calm and reflection. It’s being able to take responsibility for our emotional reactions when we don’t respond, but we react from the intense stimuli that we’re dealing with or our ability to recover faster from emotional dysregulation. So let me give you an example. When I used to have, I’ve done a couple posts in my time that created a lot of heat, a lot of heat.
(13:21):
One of ’em, I remember doing a post on, what is it called? MMR or whatever, that thing that was super viral at the time, and I probably needed two more days to sit on it before I made a reel, but I think I was in my own fight response and I mean it got heated. Now are my point. Do I still stand by my points that I made back then today? Yeah, I mean, I think that’s neither here nor there. However, I was a dysregulated mess for a week. I felt I couldn’t eat. I felt like I had a pit in my stomach. I constantly felt like I was going to throw up. I had headaches. That was how dysregulated I was from the constant intake of comments. Now, I have since done posts where I would do that and instead of it being a week of me feeling dysregulation, now it’s maybe a day.
(14:20):
This shows that I am growing my capacity to handle emotional and stressful situations or to handle triggers because I’ve given myself the tools and the resources to do so. This is what I mean of faster recovery time. The goal is not to not be a triggered human being. Your triggers actually serve you. The goal is to actually be somebody that recovers from it faster. Okay, so pillar one, stress, adaptability. Pillar number two is cognitive flexibility. That is your ability to reframe or shift perspective and adapt mentally. This is essentially showing your willingness to challenge any preconceived beliefs You have challenge rigid or unhelpful thinking. So oftentimes when we have believed a story or a thought for a long enough time, it no longer feels like opinion. It feels like fact. It becomes deeply ingrained, and then our brain builds biases in order to protect that fact.
(15:21):
Our brain wants to, our brain desires certainty, and anytime we’re in the gray, that’s why we tend to default to black and white thinking because the gray area is really uncomfortable psychologically for our brain. Our brain finds a lot of safety and certainty. If there’s not certainty, then I don’t know how to mitigate risk or those things. So it’s the ability to let go of rigid black and white thinking and be willing to look for nuance, look for the gray, or even shift your perspective even if it goes against a long held bias. I feel like this could be a whole episode in and of itself of what if I could rate society on cognitive flexibility? It’d be a low score my friends. All I see people is, and I do think sadly, our culture is informed by algorithms because your algorithm is conditioned and trained to show you to confirm your own bias, it’s not going to show you things that you disagree with.
(16:26):
And if it does, maybe it’s like one in a thousand, but most of the time the algorithm is serving what it knows you like seeing. So what happens is we all become less cognitively flexible because we’re not exposed to diverse thought, diverse opinions. We’re not putting ourself in places where we’re asking, Ooh, maybe do I need to see this differently? Am I wrong in this? But let’s just go to instead of social media and culture, let’s just go within your everyday life and your ability to even shift your perspective with how you are perceiving something in real time. Maybe your willingness to apply new perspectives to previously stuck patterns. So one might be like you have held a long belief of like, I’m not athletic enough to do that. I could never run a marathon. I’m not not athletic. I’m not athletic, and your brain has been very busy collecting evidence for that your whole life.
(17:23):
And let’s say you trip and fall somewhere and you’re a little clumsy. You’re like, see, look, that’s evidence why I’m not athletic. So being willing to be like, okay, I am not trained as an athlete, but I’m willing to grow in this area or I’m not. We have this rule with our kids where we’re going to say, if they’re going to say, I can’t, we have them say they have to say it yet. I don’t know how to do that yet. We don’t let them speak in definitives about themselves when it comes to negative thoughts. But oftentimes we do think of ourselves in definitive statements. I’m not good at that. I could never, I’m not this. I’m not wired that way. It’s the way I am. Well, when you’re deciding that what you’re actually, that’s cognitive rigidity, not flexibility. And what actually is shown that with age, we tend to be less flexible, not because your brain calcified with time.
(18:19):
It does calcify if you don’t use it, but it’s often because we don’t want to experience the discomfort of cognitive flexibility of being willing to sit in those spaces and be like, maybe my preconceived ideas might be wrong. Another way of cognitive flexibility is maybe shifting goals or actions when your original plan maybe no longer serves you. And so letting the ego go and be like, okay, I’m not going to do this just to prove to someone else that I can do this when this no longer feels aligned for me or whatever. I had to let go of that when I made my business shifts. I’m not going to stay in a business because I feel like I owe it to others when I know I’m being, it’s time to expand or whatever. So that’s pillar two. Cognitive flexibility. Pillar three is, and I kind of touched on this in stress, adaptability, it’s your emotional recovery time essentially, it’s your speed and effectiveness and bouncing back from emotional setbacks.
(19:19):
So you go for a big goal, you completely miss it. How long is that knocking you out? You’re going to fall off the horse. It’s a matter of how quickly you get back on your emotional recovery time is like, okay. It used to be when things didn’t go to plan, I wouldn’t get on the horse for three months. I would shame spiral. I would avoid it. I would tell myself, this isn’t my thing, and it would take months for me to build up the courage to get back on the horse because I’m so afraid of falling off. Two, eventually like, hey, now it’s not three months, it’s like a week or now it’s two days. Now it’s an hour. And so it’s really about taking less time to recover from disappointments or setbacks. How long does a setback actually set you back? I think I have another episode coming where I’m going to be talking about the critical failure feedback loop and why oftentimes we exit the loop too quickly and we lose all of our lessons because we’re so afraid of experiencing disappointment.
(20:22):
Another form of emotional recovery time is avoid spiraling into shame or shutting down for extended periods, rumination and how quickly you’re able to reengage with your goals after an emotional disruption. So maybe your business is going fine, but how long will a personal emotional crisis disrupt your business? How long will that happen? Your ability to bounce back for that? Again, using reflection instead of rumination. And I find rumination is when you are in a negative loop to reinforce a negative bias about yourself, it doesn’t build confidence, it takes away confidence. Whereas reflection is rumination. You’re sitting with judgment, whereas reflection, you’re sitting with curiosity. You’re asking like, okay, what could I have done better? Okay, why did I do that? Okay, that’s good. What could I do differently next time? It’s seeking to understand ourselves better, right? Okay. Pillar four is self-trust and confidence. Essentially, it’s your internal sense of your own capability and follow through.
(21:32):
So being able to make confident decisions with less second guessing, a demonstrated belief in your ability to handle challenges, acknowledging your wins, all wins, not just wins that are measurable. Again, kind of the feeling goals, right? Oh, I’m really proud that I accomplished or got those things done. They weren’t perfect, but I got them done. Showing increased trust in your own voice, your instincts and your choices. Another area that this kind of shows is initiating action without needing external validation, without pulling the audience. Some of you in your life, you cannot make a decision about dinner without pulling the audience because you have silenced your own voice for so long that you don’t even know how to trust it. And so every decision feels like life or death. Who am I going to disappoint? Am I going to disappoint myself? And if this goes poorly, then everyone’s going to see it as my fault, and then I’m a failure and then I suck, and then I can’t trust myself with decisions and they stay there forever and ever and ever. It’s the idea. And I was telling someone I love who’s very close with me, they were just like, I just spiral in indecision.
(22:50):
And I said, is it because you’re afraid of making the wrong decision? And she’s like, kind of. And I said, or is it because you’re going to be a complete a-hole to yourself when the decision if it doesn’t go to plan? And she’s like, oh. I was like, well, I’m just curious. What’s your inner dialogue when you make a decision and it doesn’t go to plan? Do you spend weeks beating yourself up and telling yourself that you suck and you feel shame? And she’s like, yeah. I was like, okay, what if I were to tell you that that’s what your brain is avoiding? Because if I knew I was going to do something and and I put a toe out of line and there was somebody that was going to be bullying me at the end of it, then I’d avoided too. And she’s like, I didn’t even realize that I was my own bully.
(23:33):
I was like, you are mean. You’re so mean to yourself. And I was like, and if you’re mean to yourself, then why would you hold anyone around you to the standard of respecting you when you won’t respect yourself? And she’s like, I feel very seen. Right? But it’s just like this idea of self-trust. I think self-trust and self love, not like I’m not self-absorption of a narcissism. I’m talking like a healthy love of self where you’re like, I care enough about myself to honor myself and honor my voice and honor my decisions and trust my intuition. And so maybe it starts with small things. Listen, don’t start self-trust exercise with a serious life or death scenario. Start with something small where you’re like, there’s no shame for it, but here’s what I’m going to do and I’m going to show myself kindness. No matter how this plays out, I’m going to show myself kindness.
(24:35):
So, and confidence is huge. I’m actually curious how many of you view are purposely downsizing your goals or the things you want in your life because you lack self-trust or confidence? You’re like, I want the thing. I don’t trust myself to get the thing. In fact, I have such depleted self-trust that if you were to ask me if I could do a trust fall with myself, I’d probably let myself fall on the ground face first. I’d be like, oh, well, okay. Our first exercise then is building self-trust. Okay, so that was pillar four. Pillar five is growth actionability. This is your ability to take consistent aligned action. And some of you have all kinds of drama about this. I know this because I’ve worked with so many people where this is where all their shame lives. They’re like, I know all the things. I want to do all the things, and I suck for not doing the things.
(25:29):
But hey, we’ve been talking a lot about the nervous system, and there’s a reason why you don’t do the things. And again, if you don’t have the right tool for the right moment, then what is it? You’re bringing a knife to a gunfight type of thing? Oh, that was really violent. But I’m just saying like, okay, you’re bringing a sledgehammer to a, this is not working out well. You’re bringing sledgehammer to a job that just requires a screwdriver. You can see how little house projects I do. I’ve just embarrassed myself. Alright, enough of that. All right. So if you don’t have the right tool for the right moment, then it makes sense when you feel ill-equipped and that doesn’t help your confidence either. Do you see that, how that goes? Right back to pillar four, some of you have no confidence because you’ve been taking the wrong tool to the wrong project for years, and it’s like, no, we just got to give you the right tools.
(26:28):
That’s it. So growth actionability is following through on agreed upon actions or plans, taking meaningful risks outside your comfort zone, showing progress around your awareness with self-sabotage or having behavior change, practicing self-discipline and building new habits with improved consistency, keeping your momentum even when motivation is low. Guys, some of you create aspirational action plans. And what I mean by that is when you create a plan, you create a plan on betting that you’re going to have the best day, that you’re going to wake up feeling a 10 out of 10. There’s going to be no conflicts in your schedule that no one’s, your dog’s not going to throw up and need a vet visit, your husband’s not going to need an emergency. Hey, can you come and pick me up at work? Or your kids aren’t going to need something like you’re betting on perfection.
(27:27):
And because your plan is built on an idealistic aspirational day, the moment something goes sideways, your plan falls apart. And then instead of getting something done, nothing gets done. So I’m like, no, no, no, no. What is your minimum viable plan that can still be accomplished on a dumpster day? You can have a diva day where you’re like, dang, I’m feeling on fire. Let’s go. Let’s get stuff done. I’m like, give me a dumpster day. Tell me what can be done minimally on your worst day. Because even then you’re like, I created a plan for this, and if I’m able to do more than what I put on my dumpster list, great, now I feel even more accomplished. But too often we do aspirational planning instead of actually doing strategic planning, being like, hold on. What’s everything that could possibly go wrong? And what’s my contingency plan for that?
(28:18):
Okay, so that was pillar five, growth, actionability. This all is part of your emotional resilience. And lastly, and so important for my hyper independent, I don’t need nobody firstborn. Let me just do it myself. Besties, I’m calling you out. Pillar six is your social support utilization, your ability to seek and receive and use support from others. Some of you have been so disappointed by people who weren’t there for you earlier in life that you’re like, instead of being disappointed and counting on someone, the one person I can count on is me, so that I’m never disappointed. But friend, you are probably so damn tired. I see you and I want to reach through and just hug you and be like, listen, we are not meant to do life alone. We are meant to do life in community. We are not meant to do life in isolation.
(29:21):
In fact, did you know that after the pandemic we have the World Health Organization said, we are dealing with an epidemic and it’s the loneliness epidemic because people are, while we are more connected than ever online, we are more isolated than ever. You are not meant to do things alone. And maybe it doesn’t start with a big ask for somebody, maybe it just starts small. And I will tell you, this was huge for me. I don’t think I realized how hyper independent I came, I became until I realized I was collapsing under the weight. It wasn’t until, I want to say it was after the blowup and everything, my husband and I were sitting down, and I think it was, I don’t know, maybe five months after the major crisis and life blowup where I was telling him how I felt. And he was, he’s like, I had no idea that you were feeling that way.
(30:19):
And I was surprised. I had no idea I was holding it all in. I thought I was saying I was suffering. But when I look back on it, I’m like, yeah, I never told him I was hurting. I never told him like, Hey, I am buckling under the weight of this. And so my work this year has just been learning to honor and voice and not making myself weak for saying, I’m tired. It’s feeling heavy today. Can you help me? I’m feeling stress. And I don’t think I realized how much I thought that as weakness until I gave myself permission to just speaking it out and letting somebody, and it wasn’t even my husband’s fault or anything. It is not that he’s not an incredibly reliable man. I just had my own internal narrative of just like if anything’s going to be get done, it’s going to be me not realizing I was isolating myself and causing a lot of pain.
(31:18):
So social support utilization is huge because it’s about you reaching out instead of isolating during hard moments, reaching out instead of isolating. Do you have somebody that you can call? And just for five minutes now, I kind of shared in my healing episode that I did recovery. I did a 12 step program. And one of the things that we did in that is I joined a support hotline. And it was you can make yourself available. And I think it was called, it was like a three, three or a four four. And the whole goal was when you were having a moment, you would drop in the chat like, Hey, is anybody available for an open share? And they would say either they want feedback or they don’t. And I used to make myself available, or during windows of time, especially in the early part of recovery, when things were just so heavy and hard, I was like, well, I’m going to make myself in service to others and I’m going to reach out when I’m there.
(32:20):
And I will tell you, I was shocked by how beautiful it was to have to make myself available and to have strangers say, is anybody available for outreach? And I would say, yep, I’m available. And depending on what they were asking for was feedback or not, we’d introduce ourselves and then I would put my phone on mute and let them talk. And at the end of three minutes, I would affirm them and be like, thank you so much for sharing. That was so brave, really proud of you one day at a time. And then I would turn around and share my three minutes. And there was something about being less lonely, and what you’re doing is sharing the load and you don’t have to do it alone. And so there was something beautiful about being the person who made themselves available from a place of service and being like, I’m here.
(33:13):
B, there was something beautiful about reaching out and somebody somewhere across the chasm reaching back out too and saying, yeah, I’ve got three minutes, three minutes friends. And I always felt a difference. Three minutes, you have three minutes to send someone a text and be like, do you have three minutes? I just got to get this off my chest. I don’t need commentary. I don’t need advice. I just need somebody to share this with. And if you don’t, maybe there’s some people in your life where it’s like, Hey, I really respect you. I like you. Can we get to know each other better? Are you intentionally building a community around you? And if not, I want to encourage you to do that. I want to encourage you to join a meetup group, join a book club, find something you love, and just connect with people.
(34:03):
For me, the easiest place to do that has been on the sidelines with a bunch of sports moms, and that’s who I end up connecting with because we’re cheering for our kids on the sidelines on the weekends and hearing what’s going on in their life. And so I feel a kinship with my sideline moms. And so that’s where I feel a sense of community. And it’s been really sweet. Some of them know about my business, some don’t. Some find me later. They’re like, I didn’t know you had a podcast. And a couple of them had heard my recent podcast and they’re like, they would send me sweet messages and be like, I didn’t know you were struggling. I wish I had hugged you. And so again, the beauty of letting people in, so sharing needs or emotions with others. Another healthy way of showing social support utilization is your ability to have improved demonstrating, improved boundary setting or relational assertiveness, your willingness to connect and start conversations.
(35:02):
Another big one is accepting help without guilt or defensiveness or making yourself wrong for it, and essentially feeling more supported and connected with others. So friends, these are the pillars that actually measure how emotionally resilient you are. Because if you feel, if you are able to regulate emotions under pressure, if you’re able to reframe and shift perspective from old and rigid thinking, if you’re able to bounce back from emotional setbacks, if you are able to have an internal sense of capability and follow through, if you’re able to take consistent and aligned action, and if you are able to seek, receive, and use support from others, these are the six pillars. Can you imagine what is available to you when you become somebody who is emotionally resourced at this level? What do you think is available to you? Because I will tell you, the people that have these pillars are the people.
(36:04):
They’re not more talented than you. They’re just willing to build up their skills in these six pillars. That’s all. They’re just willing to get a little uncomfortable and be like, I’m willing to grow these things. I’m willing to do these things. And so this actually, what I actually just walked you through is what we call our emotional resilience index. And while I shared with you what those pillars are inside of our Sondera membership, whether you’re doing the DIY tools or you’re in our signature that has the coaching, we actually have a dashboard where you can take this and you get, we have a number of questions. You kind of do this quiz and you score across these six different pillars and your dashboards keep, keeps track of how you scored. And then after you start utilizing the tools in our library, bringing awareness to your patterns, learning to retrain and rewire your brain, learning to acknowledge what’s actually happening, learning to regulate when you are dysregulated, what we have noticed is in, we’ve even had some people double their scores in 30 days, and it’s so exciting and rewarding when people actually look at the chart and they see every pillar growing.
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I want to say we just had one client just recently, I think I want to pull it up and I’m going to go to my coach channel because our coaches are always celebrating our client progress. But let’s see here. Someone took a life audit score when they first joined us, and that was again, your overall life fulfillment and health across six different pillars of your life. In June, it was 158. In August, it was 210. Their ERI when they first started was at 200, and it went up to 255. We have another client we want to say we just celebrated her the other day. Okay, this one’s, oh man, this one’s exciting. From the very beginning when she started working with our, she was doing our private one-on-one coaching, but she had access to the tools. Her ERI score when she started was in 88, and I think four months later, five months later, she had more than doubled.
(38:16):
She was 168. The biggest area of growth was, oh my gosh, was that this is beautiful. Her social support utilization went from a seven to a 24 and another one that doubled. Oh man, amazing. Okay, here are the biggest areas of growth. Her self-trust and confidence went from a 12 to a 30. Her growth actionability went from an 11 to a 29, and her social support utilization went from a seven to a 24. I mean, nearly every single category, they just saw explosive results. And this isn’t just limited to our two clients. I mean, we are hearing, because again, we want people to be able to measure change and know, wait, hold on. It’s not in my head. I actually am doing better. And the data proves it. The data never lies. So friends, I want to encourage you whatever pillar that’s stuck out with you today, I mean, we have our DIY tools.
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If you want to join us, you can join anytime. And then we have access to weekly coaching if you want the signature membership where you can, I’m coaching in there and you can have access to learn how to integrate these tools. But friends, this is, I think if you were to hear anything today, I would hope that you learn just how powerful it is to give someone three minutes of your time. And if there’s someone you love in your life, take the initiative and send a text to them today and say, Hey, I just want you to know you’re someone I really care about. And if you ever need to just offload or get something off your chest, shoot me a text. I have three minutes for you. I can give you time. I’m happy to do that. You are never inconveniencing me. And I have done this with a couple of my friends that I know have had a hard year, and I sent them both messages.
(40:01):
I said, I just want you to know you are not a burden to me. You are not an inconvenience to me to let me be your friend. And so sometimes people actually need to hear that from us. Like, Hey, you are not a burden to me. Sharing how you’re feeling or what you’re going through, it is a privilege and an honor to be your friend. Because if I’m only your friend sharing a margarita at Chili’s, then anybody can do that. But the ability to hold space for you for three minutes when life is hard, that’s where friendship is. That’s what community is. That’s what support and social support utilization is, and that’s why it matters so much. Alright, friends, I hope you found this episode valuable. If you want to check out our sandara membership, you can check it in our show notes. So excited for the new members that are joining and we will see you guys in the next episode. Have a really fantastic week. That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristenbos.com. It starts.
