Transcript - Adapting to a Chaotic World With Anne Grady

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Adapting to a Chaotic World With Anne Grady

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:04] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 559 of Live Happy Now. We’re living in a time of rapid and dramatic change, and that requires us to become more adaptable. This week’s guest is here to tell us how to do it. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and today, I’m joined by author and resilience expert, Anne Grady, who teaches people how to break out of reactivity to begin living on purpose. Her latest book, EvolvAbility, teaches her unique formula that blends neuroscience, gratitude, and humor to help us navigate change with confidence and stay grounded under pressure, so we can make decisions based on our priorities, not panic. Let’s have a listen.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:43] PF: Anne, thank you so much for joining me today.

[0:00:46] AG: Thank you so much for having me, Paula. I’m thrilled to be here.

[0:00:49] PF: Well, I’m thrilled to have you on the show. You’ve got this great new book. It’s called EvolvAbility. First of all, the title was intriguing to me, so I had to go a little bit deeper. For our listeners to understand, this is something that you define as our ability to adapt, learn, and grow forward. Instantly, that’s like something, I want to know more about. Can you talk about, first of all, how you became such an expert on adapting?

[0:01:13] AG: Well, the big picture is that I raised a child with severe mental illness and autism and developmental delays that really forced me to have to adapt in the moment and build resilience that I didn’t know I had. What led to this book was a camping trip that I would have done anything to avoid. It’s like, I was the most non-outdoorsy, outdoor person you can imagine. I would have done anything, including have a colonoscopy, to not have to go camping. But it ended up being the thing I really didn’t know I needed, and it led me down this whole road of adapting when there is discomfort. Right now, there’s a lot of it in the world.

[0:01:54] PF: There is. Trying to find that ability to adapt is so difficult, because we’re not taught how to do that. We do learn about resilience, but you teach that adaptability actually goes beyond resilience, or just bouncing back. Can you explain the difference, or that nuance there?

[0:02:14] AG: Bouncing back is returning to your state that you were before, but it’s also how you survive. It’s not how you thrive. It’s not how you create the life you really want. In biology, the term evolvability is an organism’s ability to adapt over time in response to pressure. We are constantly under pressure. Our brain views uncertainty and change as, other than death, it’s the greatest threat of all to the human brain. We’re in a state right now where we have been on such high alert for so long that many of us, our nervous systems have adapted to that and it’s not helpful. It’s this chronic state of stress and overwhelm.

The beauty is these are skills and anybody can practice them and they allow you not to remove any of the discomfort, but build your capacity to navigate through it, to bounce back faster, to recover more effectively, to lead, whether that’s a team, or your kids. It’s really just about learning how to get comfortable being uncomfortable and build the skills to get through that messy middle.

[0:03:25] PF: What’s important to point out is that you let us know that this is not a soft skill. It might sound touchy-feely, but it’s not. You say, it’s really an essential survival skill in today’s world. Can you talk about why that is so important right now? You mentioned our nervous systems. They are overloaded right now. Why is this so essential for us to learn?

[0:03:48] AG: Well, right now our world is changing faster than our nervous system can adapt and keep up, right? Your ability to pivot when things don’t go as planned, to recover, to make meaning of that, and to give yourself a roadmap in the middle of it is what allows us to live with intention, instead of react with panic and profanity, right? What we know right now is that mental health is – I used to think that when organizations talked about mental health, it was a soft skill kind of thing. What we know now is that one out of five adults and children will struggle with a major mental health issue within their lifetime.

Right now, we’re looking at 84% of employees saying that their mental health is struggling at work, and they’re looking for workplaces that can learn to help maximize their mental health. You’ve got seven out of 10 adolescents dealing with depression and anxiety. For so many of us, this has just become the new normal. It doesn’t have to be. We can live intentionally. We can step out of reactivity, but it requires us to be deliberate about how we show up and recognizing the things that are helping us and the things that might be getting in our way.

[0:05:04] PF: What are some of the things that are driving that overwhelm and maxing out our nervous systems? Is it the same for everyone, or is it different factors?

[0:05:13] AG: Everybody has a buffer, right? A resilience buffer. It’s this ability to absorb stressors. Some people have a bigger buffer than others. That could be from childhood experiences. It could be genetic. But there are ways to build that buffer and build that capacity. One of them, one of the most important, I call it an emotional thermostat, right? The first pillar in EVOLVE is emotional aptitude. How do you read, recognize, and respond to emotions to support the life you want, not just react to the one you have?

Your brain loves familiarity so much that it would rather be predictably unhappy, than risk being unpredictably better. That’s why we stay in outdated routines and in relationships that no longer serve us, not because they’re good for us, but because they’re known. Until we are able to recognize how our emotions and our reaction to change is impacting our behavior, it’s very hard to make deliberate choices about anything. I think of it like this, Wayne Dyer used this example. If you were to squeeze an orange, what comes out?

[0:06:20] PF: I’m going to get orange juice.

[0:06:22] AG: Orange juice, right? It doesn’t matter who squeezes it. It doesn’t matter how hard it’s squeezed, that’s what comes out. Well, we get squeezed by life, by fear, by stress, by anxiety. What comes out is whatever is inside of us. The challenges most of us are just operating out of a state of chronic overwhelm and we’re not taking back control to manage what comes out. The first step is learning to take your own temperature. How are your emotions showing up and how are they affecting you? One quick tool to navigate this is something I call a mirror moment. Basically, when you’re in the bathroom and you’re washing your hands, take a minute and look in the mirror and just ask yourself, what am I feeling? How do I want to show up next? Because we let our internal temperature come out through our outward behavior.
Emotions are contagious. They can either calm a room, or they can light it on fire, and you’ve seen this if you’ve ever been in a fight and someone’s like, “You need to calm down.” You’re, “I am calm,” right? We mirror each other’s emotions, whether we realize it or not. The ability to understand how you show up and how your emotions are affecting you is the absolute first step. Emotions are muscles. The ones that we use most often become our default, they get stronger. If you’re in a chronic state of anxiety, it’s easier to fall back to a chronic state of anxiety if you’re not first taking the time to identify what’s happening within you, so that you can respond to what’s happening around you.

[0:07:50] PF: I love that approach. How do we remember to do that? Do we put something on the mirror and ask ourselves? How do we make that a habit? Because I think that check in has got to be game-changing for the whole day.

[0:08:01] AG: Yeah. You are much more likely to stick with a new habit if you tie it to something you already do. You already use the bathroom multiple times a day. If it’s helpful for you, put a sticky note on the mirror that says, how am I feeling? How do I want to show up next? It’s just a quick way. You could put it on the refrigerator, if that’s where you go often. It doesn’t matter where you put it, but it’s the habit of learning how to – You’re almost conducting an emotional audit regularly. You’re figuring out which are the emotions that are dominating my mood and are they the ones that I want? Because if you’re in a chronic state of anxiety, or emotions that are not helpful, or serving you, every time you feel them, you’re reinforcing them. We reinforce what we repeat. It doesn’t mean you have to fake it till you make it. But you first have to know how you feel before you can change it.

[0:08:53] PF: That’s a great starting point. Can you walk us through the rest of your EVOLVE framework? Because that is so effective. It’s beautifully simple, but not easy.

[0:09:03] AG: Oh, that’s right. It is simple, but it is not always easy. I think the important thing to say here is nobody has life figured out. We look at people around us, we see people’s highlight reel on Facebook, or on social media, and we’re constantly wondering like, “What am I doing wrong? How do these other people have a key to this magical, happy kingdom? I’m here, exhausted and overwhelmed.” You’re not supposed to be happy all the time.

I was just interviewed on a show earlier today. The host was like, “I think you should be happy all the time.” I said, well, happiness is just like any other emotion, right? It’s okay to not be okay. There is nothing wrong with – You’re not supposed to be happy all the time. The key is to cultivate emotions intentionally. For example, the first step is emotional aptitude. I want to give you just a quick one more skill with that one. For me, I struggled with anxiety and depression my entire life. I practice these skills every day. I don’t always get it right, because we’re all human and it’s all a practice.

One tool that has really helped me is that when you are feeling stressed and you’re feeling anxious, we try to think our way out of it. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like this? Where is this coming from? What should I do about it? You cannot think your way out of a physical sensation, and stress and anxiety are physical sensations. You have to feel your way out. You literally have to tune into your body, pay attention to your tightening stomach, or your clenched butt, or your tongue shoved up against the roof of your mouth, right? Pay attention physically, intense emotional reactions, whatever they are. Only lasts 90 seconds if we don’t feel them with our thoughts. While it’s contrary to popular belief, you got to sit in the suck. Feel the discomfort. It’s a wave. It’ll pick you up. It’ll set you back down.

The next pillar, values. Defining what is most important, so that you can make choices that reflect it and using it as a filter to help you make decisions, to help you make sense of adversity. O is optimization. How are we making use of the limited resources that we have? How are we optimizing our energy, our attention and our time? Next is leadership. We don’t go through the journey alone, and this has nothing to do with title, or whether you work for an organization, or anything else. It’s how do you inspire trust and create an environment where other people can adapt along with you?

The V is versatility and these all spell EVOLVE. The V is versatility. How can you shift the way you think, the way you behave, the way you approach challenges and your mindset, so that you can meet with the situation demands? The final E in the EVOLVE framework is empowerment. The human brain hates feeling out of control. Agency is this belief that we get to control not everything, but how we respond to the events in our life. I found this one study that I’ve seen for a long time, but it really just brought it back to how powerful this is. They went to a nursing home and they had two groups of elderly patients in this study.
One group was told to make small daily decisions about what they did during the day. So, they could have a house plant. They could choose their activities, what they had for lunch. The other group, all of these things were chosen for them. A couple of weeks later, they look back and the group that had some control had better health, cognitive function, energy, all that stuff, that’s great. But when they looked at it 18 months later, the group that had some semblance of agency and control had half the mortality rate.

[0:12:26] PF: Really?

[0:12:27] AG: Yeah. This ability to feel like we have some control over the outcomes in our life is not just good for your mental health, it’s physically reshaping your brain and making you better, like helping you live better. These tools have been hugely helpful for me, everything from learning how to go on a camping trip, to dealing with my son, to working with leaders at organizations all over the world and helping teams navigate change, they’re all the same skills and they apply across personal, professional and everywhere in between.

[0:13:01] PF: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

[BREAK]

[0:13:09] PF: Now, let’s hear more from Anne Grady.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:13:13] PF: How does that work when it feels like the world is out of control? I’d love to use, for example, with your son. You could not control what his diagnosis was, what all those things going on with him were. I know you uprooted your lives and moved, had so much going on. From the outside, it would seem like everything is outside of your control. How do you then gain some sense of order and control in situations that are completely beyond your control?

[0:13:48] AG: Well, first is understanding you can’t operate at the level of intensity and overwhelm without it having an effect, right? I didn’t realize I had control. I operated in this victim mentality of like, woe is me, it’s not fair, which is true, right? It wasn’t fair. That thought’s not serving me, and what ended up happening is the level of stress and overwhelm led to a tumor in my salivary gland that left me with facial paralysis for a long time and a whole bunch of other health things.

I had to start by going, what is one thing in my influence of my control? Can I make one call? Can I go brush my teeth? Can I choose what I want to watch on TV, instead of it being chose for me? You really start so small. But we all have this locus of control. The locus of control refers to how you explain the events in your life. You’ve got two sides of this continuum. An internal locus of control is, I don’t control what happens to me, but I 100% own my response to it. An external locus of control is the world keeps happening to me. It’s not fair. I can’t get out of the victim’s cycle. When you’re stuck in an external locus of control, the world is happening to me. It usually comes from one of two places, blame or shame. Blame is if I had a better boss, if I had a better spouse, if I had a better situation, then I would be okay. Shame is I’m just not good enough. It must mean I deserve this.

Neither help you. Both keep you stuck, and both are in this victim loop that keeps you perpetually stuck in that same helpless state. Agency is this belief that no, I did not control my son’s illness, but I do get to control the boundaries that I set up, the respite care that I hire, the way I build this skill of acceptance. I hear people all the time and I’m guilty of it too, right? This is human. But if only my husband would be this, and if only my boss would do this, and if only my kids would do this, that relinquishes all of your control to everybody outside of you and creates powerlessness. You have to accept people in situations as they are, not how you wish them to be before you can work on shifting your response to it. The most critical skill when you’re in a situation that sucks is going, okay, it is what it is. Given this, what’s next? What’s one thing in my control? Start small. Anything.

[0:16:20] PF: I love that, because right now a lot of people feel things are so out of control. They’re not happy with what’s going on.

[0:16:26] AG: All you have to do is turn on the news to feel that way.

[0:16:29] PF: Exactly. There is no escaping it. There’s so much then division that comes with that, so much anger, so much rhetoric. How does someone start finding that one thing that they have control over to start turning that around?

[0:16:44] AG: Turn off the news. Doesn’t mean you can’t read it, or be aware of it, right? You’re not putting your head in the sand, right? Stop breaking news in the background on CNN all day, or Fox, or whatever you listen to, right? None of that information flowing at you is helping you feel and live better. Take control. Turn off your notifications. Don’t live on social media. It’s not the real world. The algorithms in social are created to feed you more of what you spend more time on.

[0:17:16] PF: Right.

[0:17:17] AG: If you are looking at all of the things that are happening with politics and ice and you name it, right, just throw anything you want out there in the news. You watch that clip on Instagram, it feeds you more of it. It’s confirmation bias. We’re feeding this negativity, right? What is one thing you can do to take back control? Check social once a day and comment on other people’s things. You don’t have to post what you’re eating, or that you’ve decided to take a break from social. No one cares, right?

[0:17:46] PF: They’ll figure it out.

[0:17:46] AG: Either way. Do things that put you back in the driver’s seat. It could be take a five-minute walk. Four minutes of brisk exercise, reduces your risk of dying from cancer by over 30%.

[0:17:57] PF: Oh, my gosh.

[0:17:58] AG: Four minutes, right?

[0:17:59] PF: We all have four minutes to spare.

[0:18:01] AG: You don’t have to join CrossFit, right? But in the time you watch a commercial, or run around the house between it, what you’re doing is you’re changing your body chemistry. We typically wait to feel motivated to do something. It’s backwards. Action creates motivation. Take action on anything, anything. Turn off your TV, listen to something uplifting, have a call with a friend, build the skill, social connection, gratitude, humor, self-care, all of those things. Set boundaries, right? Self-care is not a bubble bath. It’s a boundary. Be deliberate about what you allow in your space.

Now, when you have an immovable object, like Evan, my son, I couldn’t say, don’t come in my space. You’re negative and you’re toxic and you’re hurting me. I couldn’t do that. He’s my son, right? But I did have to create mental boundaries around what I was willing to tolerate and when I needed to walk away. I had to create boundaries that sent him to a school that could help him, even though it took our entire life savings and I felt like I was failing as a mom. The choices aren’t always easy, but you always have a choice.

[0:19:09] PF: That is a great point to bring up, because right now we are oftentimes facing what feel like impossible choices. It’s like, if this were multiple choice, okay, none of them are the choices, the answers I want. How does the practices of gratitude, of humor, you’re very big on that. You talk about the neuroscience of using those things. How does adopting those practices change the way that you react to the answers we don’t want?

[0:19:38] AG: I’ll give you a two-part answer. One, anything you’re doing to signal safety to your brain makes it easier to default there. Anytime your brain feels safe, you think clearly, you regulate emotions, you can focus, you can do all the hard stuff, right? Anything that puts your brain in a state of safety, that’s why gratitude, social connection, laughter. When Evan was hospitalized and we had an absolute emergency crisis after I dealt with the crying and the anger and all the emotions, I watched a stand-up comic. Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to laugh to access higher level thinking.

When you’re practicing gratitude, or you’re spending time with friends, or you’re being mindful, or laughing, right, your brain is in a state of safety. The more often it’s there, the easier it is to return there. The second pillar of the book is values. This one is your mental lens to make decisions and deal with the hard stuff. Most of us, when we’re in a situation where we don’t know what to do, we weigh the pros and cons, we’re thinking about like, “Okay, what should I do? What’s the best answer?” I want to flip that script for you.

In any situation, identify what is most important. For example, we were faced with having to send Evan 2,000 miles away to a therapeutic boarding school and spend our life savings to do it. There was nothing anywhere close in Texas that could help him. Well, I vacillated daily. It kept me up at night. It was the worst decision I’ve ever had to make. But what was most important? Family. What decision reflects that? Well, no matter how much it hurts, how much it costs, the right decision is to get Evan the help he needs, so he can get the help, and so our family can heal.

When we make decisions based on our values and what’s most important, it keeps us grounded when everything is spinning around us. One of the things a family can do very easily, and we did this with ours, is you get everybody at the table and write down a list of all of the values that are important to you. Then have your family, everyone vote on their top three. Those with the most votes become your guiding values. Now, just the value itself, it sounds great. But if you don’t have behavior behind it, it’s just a poster, a bumper sticker, right? What does family, that value look like? It means we make hard choices, not based on convenience, but based on the health of our family. Or if respect is your value. It’s not just how you talk to each other when everything’s hunky-dory. It’s how you talk to each other when you’re hungry, and tired, and pissed off, and you’re overwhelmed, right?

That becomes your litmus test. The question is, could I watch you? Could I pay attention to your decisions? Could I pay attention to your behavior and know what you value, based on your action, not your words, right? That makes everything easier because the world can spin around you. But if you’re grounded in what’s most important, that guides your decisions, that guides your behavior, it guides your priorities, but most helpful, it helps make sense of all the messiness, right? Like, I didn’t want a situation where I had a son who struggled as much as Evan. Nobody wants that. What can I extract from that based on my values? Well, I went from being a victim of my life to a volunteer. The second I learned that I could talk about mental health, and it could make somebody else feel not so alone, or I could write four books and donate a portion of all the proceeds to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or I can testify in front of the Texas legislature, right? It doesn’t take away the situation, but it changes how you carry it. So, your values give you an anchor.

[0:23:15] PF: You bring up that adaptability and evolvability, it’s not just a nice to have. It is essential for happiness and well-being. Can you talk about what the science says, about how those influence how well we’re going to live our lives?

[0:23:34] AG: think about it from a work perspective. By the year 2030, 40% of all the skills we have are going to be outdated, right? From a personal life perspective, you have to stop and ask yourself, is what I’m doing creating the life I want?

[0:23:51] PF: Love that.

[0:23:52] AG: And if it’s not, start small. We try to overhaul our life. I’m going to go to the gym. I’m going to get in shape. I’m going to go to therapy. I’m going to be positive. I’m going to read all these self-help books. By day two, you’re exhausted. You have a beer in one hand, a cheeseburger in the other. You tried to be healthy. It was yucky. Go back. All right.

Adaptability, when I say it’s not a soft skill, it’s a survival skill, it’s because the world is changing. If we don’t change along with it, we will end up in this chronic state of unhappiness, overwhelm, burnout. It’s not just a performance imperative. It’s a health imperative. We have to adapt as fast or faster than our environment, and it is nothing but a skill.

[0:24:35] PF: The environment is changing very, very quickly. Where now do people start? If someone’s like, “Okay, that’s great. But I’m still overwhelmed, and I want to start.” She said, “I got to start small, but I don’t know where that is.” What is the thing? I know we’re going to give them – you’ve got a great quiz about how adaptable are you. We’re going to share that with our listeners, but where can they start right now?

[0:24:58] AG: One of the things that causes chronic overwhelm is the number of decisions that we have to make every single day. What do I eat? What do I watch? What do I wear? What do I respond to? All those things. One simple thing that you can do to preserve your cognitive, physical, mental energy is to pick one decision that you make every single day and simplify it with a go-to solution. I pick out my clothes on Sunday night. I eat eggs every morning. Is it boring? Yes. Does it save cognitive bandwidth? Because I don’t have to think about what else I’m going to eat. Yes. Eliminate hard decisions by picking one simple thing. What is something else that you can do every day? Take a 10-minute walk in the morning.

Now, I am not an exercise fanatic, even though I know the impact it has on your mental and physical health. Every psychiatrist I’ve had, by the way, I was diagnosed with depression very young, and every psychiatrist I’ve ever had is like, “You have to exercise.” In my head, it’s like, yes, I know I want to like my body. That has nothing to do with it. 10 minutes, a 10-minute walk in the morning outside, one, the sunlight balances hormones and resets your circadian clock, so you sleep better. We can’t operate in sleep deprivation. It just doesn’t work.

The other thing it does, when you take a walk outside, not on a treadmill, you’re watching the world pass by you very quickly and your eyes dart left and right. That’s called optic flow. It’s similar to, if you’ve ever heard of EMDR therapy, where you’re desensitizing traumatic events in your life, the way that you do that is optic flow. When the world is passing by you, it reduces activity in the amygdala; the threat center of the brain, making you less likely to perceive things as critical, or skeptical, or negative, making you more emotionally responsive, not reactive.

What’s another quick thing you can do? Practice gratitude every day when you brush your teeth. When you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, think of three things you’re grateful for. The key is they have to be unique, can’t be the same every day, and you have to use the word because. I’m grateful I have running water, because –

[0:26:59] PF: Oh, I like that. That’s a twist.

[0:27:01] AG: – last week when the ice storm came in, we didn’t have any and it was a pain to brush my teeth. I’m grateful that my dog is doing okay. He’s 15. He’s had some health challenges. I’m grateful he’s laying on the floor right next to me, because he makes me feel good. It doesn’t matter what the gratitude is. When I had facial paralysis, the doctors at MD Anderson said, “Your nerve is too damaged. It will not recover.” I asked my surgeon, what can I do to get my face to come back? He said, “I need you to practice gratitude.” I was like, “No. I mean, physical therapy.” He said, “I know, and I mean, gratitude every day.” Sarcastically, I was like, what do I have to be grateful for that my son’s in a psych hospital, that my face is paralyzed, that my career is over? Really, tell me. I mean, man, he put it in perspective. He said, be grateful your son was able to get the help he needs. Most kids can’t. Be grateful that your story is something that might help other people that are respond to stress and deal with their sick kid. Be grateful you have a career, where you’re able to share that wisdom with other people.

When he said that, it’s like, you could have the shittiest situation happening in your life and we all have them, but there is always something that is also right. Our brain naturally gravitates. We have a negativity bias. It’s a built-in protection mechanism. Our brain naturally gravitates toward what’s wrong. What you want to do is train your brain to offset that by also looking for what’s right. You’re not ignoring what’s wrong. You’re not wearing rose-colored glasses. Gratitude not only changes your brain, it changes your blood pressure, your immune system, your risk of cancer, your ability to heal, inflammation, aches and pains, obesity, digestion. I mean, the list goes on and on. These are not just fluffy practices. These are science-backed strategies that build your adaptability muscle. When you can find what’s right in a situation, even if the situation sucks, you’re making progress.

[0:29:03] PF: Anne, that is so terrific. I wish we had another hour to talk, because I can’t emphasize enough how packed with information your book is, how helpful, and how timely it is for the world that we’re living in. I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking with me about it. As I said earlier, we are going to give them that worksheet, so they can see like, “Where do I need some work? How am I doing?” We’re going to tell them how to find you, how to find your book. As I let you go, what is it that you really hope every listener out there took away from this conversation?

[0:29:40] AG: I want every listener to know that as hard as life can feel, you always have a choice about how you respond to it. Venting, complaining, being frustrated has a moment. It has its place, but getting stuck there reinforces what you don’t want. You don’t have to be toxically positive. I want to throat punch those people. You’re not supposed to be happy all the time, right? But you can focus on what you have control over. You have control over how you show up. You have control over how you make decisions based on what’s important, how you protect your boundaries. You have control over how you influence other people, how you think, how you behave, and most importantly, the agency that you have.

I hope everybody knows, it’s not hopeless. We’re living in a tough time. We’ve lived in tough times before. We’ve gone through depressions and wars and horrible, horrible things. You just didn’t have round-the-clock social media coverage reminding you of the things. Take a break from it. Also, look for what’s right.

[0:30:44] PF: That’s beautiful. I can’t end it a better way. Thank you again. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate this book. I look forward to sharing it with our listeners.

[0:30:54] AG: Thank you so much, Paula. It’s been a pleasure.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:30:59] PF: That was Anne Grady talking about how to develop adaptability. If you’d like to learn more about Anne, follow her on social media, download her free EvolvAbility Index to see your current level of adaptability, or check out her latest book, EvolvAbility, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.

That’s all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Anne’s EVOLVE framework and how emotions shape our reactions.
How to reduce overwhelm and navigate uncertainty with intention.
How simple, science-backed practices — like gratitude, humor, and setting boundaries — build adaptability over time.

Visit Anne’s website.

Check out her Anne’s newest book, EvolvAbility: Growing Forward When Life Goes Sideways.

Download Anne’s free EvolvAbility Index to see your current level of adaptability

Follow Anne on Social Media:

- Facebook: @AnneGradyGroup
- X: @AnneGradyGroup
- LinkedIn: @anne-grady-group
- YouTube: @AnneGradyGroup
- Instagram: @AnneGradyGroup

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