Rest as Resilience: How to Mindfully Recharge and Optimize for Success with Alexis Jeffries
Welcome to resiliency the podcast, the place for stories, strategies, and inspiration around how to embrace change, overcome challenges, and redefine resilience in today's ever evolving world. I am Jen Quader. I'm a strategic communicator and CEO of a company called the SMART Agency. I am joined by my brilliant and illustrious cohost, doctor Kelly Culver. She holds a PhD in strategic resilience from the Paris School of Business, and she's a widely recognized international business consultant with her company, the Culver Group, and that is based in Canada.
Jenn Quader:She is our Canadian princess. Our show is a global podcast that brings together diverse, intelligent individuals who inspire and educate and motivate our audience so they can find their own inner strength in everything from the minutia of everyday life to world altering problems. And today, we are really honored to have an incredible guest, miss Alexis Jeffries. She is a tech marketing and entrepreneurship guru, you guys, and also an educator, which has a really special place in my heart. And she has a really long list of accolades that I am honored to share with you.
Jenn Quader:Miss Alexis Jeffries is a technology product strategy executive and also serves as a marketing and advertising consultant for several Fortune 500 companies. Alexis is also the expert in residence and adjunct professor of technology and entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California, USC Marshall School of Business. And if you thought that was all, she also sits on the national board of directors of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, NFTE, and she serves on the presidential advisory council for the American University of Paris. Now beyond that, Alexis got her start reporting as a personal finance journalist, and she's written for some amazing publications like Money, The New York Times, Essence, Black Enterprise, CNN Money, and many, many others. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science from Northwestern University.
Jenn Quader:She also holds a master's degree in global communications from the American University of Paris, where we had the opportunity to meet her, and also an MBA from the University of Southern California. This is a wonderful, ambitious, driven, and accomplished woman. And beyond that, you guys, beyond all of these accolades, she's working to publish a children's book. Talk about a whole human beautiful life. Miss Alexis Jeffries, welcome.
Jenn Quader:We are honored to have you today.
Alexis Jefferies:Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited and honored to be here.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Alexis, welcome. Jen and I are in two different places. I'm in Canada. She's in The US. Where in the world are you today?
Alexis Jefferies:I am also in The United States, and not that far from Jen, actually. So, I live in Los Angeles, which is where I'm based, I'm originally from. I've lived in a lot of different places, but I I spent a lot of years trying to get back to LA, so I'm really happy to be here.
Jenn Quader:It's a great place to be.
Alexis Jefferies:Especially when it's cold because it tends to be a little little bit warmer. So, you know, when in doubt, I'm gonna choose the warmth. Sorry, doctor Culver. I apologize. I know Canada, you know, gets a little chilly.
Alexis Jefferies:I know.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Well, no. Actually, it's 35 degrees today. That's why I look like this.
Jenn Quader:And yet again, 35 degrees to us would be freezing because, of course, we're on a whole different system. Yeah. Right.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Right. Right.
Jenn Quader:Let's kick it off with, what does resilience mean to you?
Alexis Jefferies:It's a a great question. And again, thank you both for having me. I'm really excited to to talk about this because of my own shared experiences trying to learn about resiliency, but also being able to to share this more broadly and what was our, TED experience in Paris. But for me, and as I shared in my talk, rest is really the core of resiliency. And so for me, resiliency is about being able to push forward despite challenging circumstances, but you can't do that if you're exhausted.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? And so I I have done my own exploration, and research into, well, what then does it really mean to be able to to take rest? So that way you can be resilient, right? One has to be get the other. And rest is actually, this very simple concept that we oftentimes get wrong, or it seems very complicated for us.
Alexis Jefferies:And that's largely just because we don't know what it is and how to take rest. And so rest is really about, just generally ceasing activity and being still. So that way you can replenish and refresh yourself and recover from a previous state of full on, you know, going hard. Right? And so for me, being able to rest efficiently and thoughtfully begets the ability to be resilient, which is to continue to push forward despite challenging circumstances, which are is the nature of life.
Jenn Quader:Beautifully said, you know, and and also just something that is so, I'd say, counterintuitive, which which I think where therein lies its brilliance. Right? Is is that this is this is against the grain. So can you speak to that a little bit? And and, again, I'll remind our listeners that you are, not only work in the corporate sphere, but you're an educator, so you're working with students, I assume.
Jenn Quader:Are you working with both graduate and undergraduate students?
Alexis Jefferies:I do work with both, but mostly graduate students, at the MBA level.
Jenn Quader:Amazing. So you're working with these people who are are just beginning to craft these big careers for themselves. So how do you how do you approach that counterintuitiveness? How do you approach the fact that you're telling them to slow down while speeding up?
Alexis Jefferies:Yeah. I mean, I think that students, people, human beings who are in school at really any level are, somewhat at a crossroads. Right? When you are in middle school, let's say, you're trying to decide, well, what type of person do I wanna be in high school? Right?
Alexis Jefferies:Like, all the movies and television shows are about kids in high school and Friday night lights and whatnot. And you're trying to think about how do I rebrand myself? Who do I wanna be? What kind of student do I wanna be in efforts of building whatever your future is gonna look like? Then when you're in high school, it's kind of the same.
Alexis Jefferies:Well, do I wanna go to college? Do I wanna work? Do I wanna go to the military? Do I wanna start a business? What are the the paths and avenues for me to explore at this age?
Alexis Jefferies:Who am I gonna be once I reach 18 and become a quote unquote adult? Right? And so we're constantly asking ourselves that question. And students, once they get to the collegiate and graduate levels, are on the same journey yet again. Some of them who are graduate students, in my case, who may have had some work experience and had the opportunity to explore what they wanted to do, they're at a a kind of a crossroads, a fork in the road around, like, I don't think I really liked what I was doing.
Alexis Jefferies:And the average MBA student goes back to school to switch careers. Right? And so it's it's an opportunity to take a few years to sit back and say, what is it that I actually wanna do and more importantly, who I wanna be? And I think that that's what I always encourage students to continue to ask themselves that question even beyond the classroom. So once they walk across the stage, there's always an opportunity for asking, what do I wanna do and who I wanna who do I wanna be?
Alexis Jefferies:I have personally experienced that a lot because I've had, as you shared, many different careers. I've been a journalist. I've been an advertising executive. I've been a product strategist. I've been a consultant.
Alexis Jefferies:I've done all these things. I've been an educator because I was willing to constantly ask myself, who do I wanna be? Like, I'm feeling like I wanna shift. And that's part of resiliency is being able to constantly ask yourself the hard questions and then be able to make the pivot if necessary if you decide, I wanna be someone different. I wanna do something different, and I'm gonna go for that.
Dr. Kelly Culver:As you've eloquently said, you have to be able to listen and pick up all of the cues to know when it's time to change the track. You know, we stay on track, but sometimes, to be resilient, we have to change a track. And we have and there are cues out there. We have to listen to them. And sometimes that means being comfortable sitting in the silence.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Now how do you do that, and how do you help your students learn to be comfortable sitting in the silence? Because the cues only come when we're really quiet.
Alexis Jefferies:Love that. Literally rest. Right? Like the the whole resonance around this concept of, well, how can you sit in the silence and and learn to listen and to even ask yourself the hard questions if there's a bunch of noise going on, if there's a bunch of, but, god forbid, chaos going on around you, then you're just like, how do I make sense of anything if I'm if I want to move forward if I haven't been able to sit in the silence and rest? And so that's a lot of what I have tried to explore and also, teach others is around asking yourself those questions requires you to take some space, and that requires you to get your rest via sleep.
Alexis Jefferies:It requires you to get your rest via pursuing things that actually fill you up. So whether or not that's taking a vacation or taking a walk, something very simple. It doesn't have to be complicated and expensive like taking a vacation. It can just be whatever you need to do to replenish yourself so that way you can have the space and the silence necessary to explore, to do those deep dives. And I think the the root, I will say, of being able to ask yourself those questions is, one, to know that you should be asking yourself those questions.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? That you have the safe space within yourself to ruminate and then whatever you decide, be willing to action on. So it's always a multi step process. But to your point, doctor Culver, it's about, hey, look, giving yourself some space and and being silent and still to ask yourself those hard questions. And then whatever I've come up with after I've taken my space, now I'm going to do.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? So it's a two part process.
Jenn Quader:I think that that the process part of that is what is so valuable for other people. Because when when, you know, if I'm someone who looks at your career, Alexis, and I'm young and I haven't, I I might be like, boy, there's no way I could do all that she's done. You know, you have you've All over the place. Exactly. And you you've reinvented yourself over and over, and I love how you tie these kind of academic achievements also to these these reinvention points in people's lives because people do constantly come to these places where they say, I don't know what I wanna do next.
Jenn Quader:And I think that what you're doing is you're giving permission to say, yeah. Sit in that. It's okay to not know. And then I I wanna just restate, for for our listeners kind of this clear process that that I understood, which is to say, number one, you gotta make the space. You gotta make the space to rest.
Jenn Quader:I heard you say sleep. I heard you say doctor Kelly, I heard you say silence. You have to make that space for yourself, and then you have to know to ask. And Alexis, I I I think that's a place we can dive into more is is how to determine those questions to ask and to make sure that that that you are finding for yourself, that place of resilience. And then I love be willing to act because that that's a place where I I always see resilience as forward momentum, but it's a place that doctor, Kelly and I talk a lot because she talks a lot about resilience as a mindset.
Jenn Quader:And, really, in my opinion, it's chicken and egg. You you gotta have the mindset to have the action. Action. You gotta have the action to have the mindset. What what do you ladies think of that?
Jenn Quader:I open the floor. Doctor c and or Alexis, what do you guys think?
Alexis Jefferies:I mean, I love it. I don't even think that I ever thought about, you know, the the process of resiliency and or rest in that sort of formulaic, format. And I I really love that. I do agree that I think it's kind of this three step process of sitting. Right?
Alexis Jefferies:So that's kinda like the taking the space, asking yourself the questions and being willing to do it, and then do. Right? So the sit, ask, and do is a three pronged process, that we need to begin to give ourselves more permission to do. Right? To your point, I think we get a lot of imposter syndrome.
Alexis Jefferies:We get a lot of fear around, well, what happens if I take some space and and let it be known that I don't know what I'm doing? Right? What if it's revealed to other people that I don't have it all together? That comes with a lot of judgment, a lot of shame. People think that they're supposed to be supposed to be at certain places in their life based on their age or career accomplishments or whatever.
Alexis Jefferies:And I think that we have to work as best as we can to get past this concept of should, in order to move forward positively and and be resilient. Right? This is where the resiliency comes in, is we gotta get past the hard, hard fears that we have in order to get to a place where we're moving forward.
Dr. Kelly Culver:It's the rest recover, recuperate, reenergize. You know, there's lots of these re words. And I remember talking to a marketing, director a year ago, and I said, We need to rethink the idea of resilience. And she said to me, No. It's too hard.
Dr. Kelly Culver:When you put r e in front of a word, that means that the person you're talking to has to do something. And I said, But isn't that
Alexis Jefferies:the point? Yeah. Yes.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Isn't that the point? So I want you to reimagine, rethink, resituate, reenergize, revitalize. That's a doing. That's an action. Because if you don't act, you can't achieve something.
Dr. Kelly Culver:And sometimes it's hard.
Alexis Jefferies:It's always hard. I think it's always hard. Right? But, you know, I think people who are resilient do hard things. Right?
Alexis Jefferies:And they give themselves the permission to do hard things. I I tell my my students as well as myself all the time, feel that fear. Right? Because fear is an emotion, and we were blessed with a range of emotions that oftentimes we don't tap into or use because they're scary or for shame or whatever. But you can't feel happiness all the time.
Alexis Jefferies:You can't feel, you know, silliness all the time. So why are we afraid to feel fear? Why are we afraid to feel anger? Those are fleeting emotions. So they're passing and they're never in a constant state of existence in our experience.
Alexis Jefferies:So feel the feelings and the emotions because they're valuable for you to know how to act and respond to them. And then whatever you're fearing, do it anyways. So I always tell my students, I write it on the board as soon as I I start a a school year. It's like, feel the fear and do it anyway. Because it's gonna be hard, but you can't escape hard things in this life.
Alexis Jefferies:You are actually more resilient when you face the hard things and you do it.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Brilliant. Brilliant.
Jenn Quader:Amen. It's it's really I'm I'm looking for this, I was looking down below me. I have this post it note.
Alexis Jefferies:A little a ding a ding bell.
Jenn Quader:I'm like, ding ding. Because yeah. Because I where yeah. Ding ding. I need to try it.
Jenn Quader:Yeah. Because really what you bring, this element of fear is huge. And the little poster note I was looking for says, you can look at fear as forget everything and run or face everything and rise.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Yeah.
Jenn Quader:And you're inspiring your students from day one. Face it, face it, and rise. And then beyond that, I wanna say this, and I think this is will be a very nice tee up to get us into miss Alexis Jeffrey's wonderful TEDx talk, which is the the talk that brought us together. But, doctor Culver, you brought up this re, you know, resilience, reread, renew, re, revitalize, etcetera. There's another word within all this, and it brings me back to the simplicity of, Alexis, of your formula, sit, ask, do.
Jenn Quader:And that reword is remember. Mhmm. Because all we have to do is remember who we are, And we have to remember that outside of the confines of what we think we should be, as you said, Alexis, of what we are afraid of. We have to remember. And when we get quiet and when we rest is when we can remember who we are.
Alexis Jefferies:I I love that. I when I hear the word remember, I think of remind. Right? Remind is the semblance of renewing your mind to think differently, to operate and move in a different way. And to doctor Coher's point, it's not necessarily a bad thing that you have to do something different.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? But as the the colloquialism goes, you know, in order to get something different, you gotta do something different. And so I I think it's important for us to remember and to remind ourselves, ourselves, that we have the capacity, that we can do it. It will be scary, but you've done scary, hard things before. So what makes this any different?
Alexis Jefferies:We just have to renew our mind in that way.
Jenn Quader:I love that and think it's the perfect intro because it's reminding ourselves to do it, but it's, as you just said, it's remind. It's it's reshifting the way we think about it. With that, I wanna invite our listeners in to listen to a a really, a a a eye opening take on rest as resilience, that miss Alexis Jeffries presented during the TEDx event back in March of twenty twenty four at the American University of Paris. I will remind our listeners that we will listen through the talk, and then please stay tuned because we'd like to delve into more of what Alexis researched and how she was able to put this talk together and and find out a little bit more just after. But with that, I want to invite you all to have a little rest and to tune in to this really insightful and powerful talk entitled Rest as Resilience, How to Mindfully Recharge and Optimize for Success, by Alexis Jeffries.
Alexis Jefferies:Have you ever been in a situation that was fear inducing and stressful, and in response, you were neither stressed nor afraid? Can you imagine facing off against a lion or a bear and not only fail to register fear in your brain, but actually just calmly walk away in the opposite direction of that impending threat? It is quite rare to respond to a traumatic external stimulus in such a casual, relaxed fashion, as most of us would have been paralyzed by fear or simply blacked out from the pressure of having to make such a sudden and unexpected flight or fight decision. Now while I cannot claim to have been accosted by a lion or a bear, despite living in the hills of Southern California of which there are many roaming around in the wild, I can attest to having had a significant experience that for me was somewhat similarly traumatic or stressful. I was laid off from my job.
Alexis Jefferies:Now I know many of you may be thinking that a job layoff doesn't exactly equate to the same level of stress caused by a line or a bear attack, but I can assure you that the pandemonium around my company and industry's sudden streak of layoffs struck a familiar chord in the hearts and lives of many, sending folks into a spiral of flaring, rushed resume building and job application filing, oftentimes just mere moments after being let go from years of loyal employment. For me, here's how it happened. I woke one morning to a urgent email invitation to attend a company wide town hall where to my surprise, we were going to be notified about layoffs happening moments later. They said that some folks would receive emails letting them know that they were cut. Others would receive emails letting them know that they were safe.
Alexis Jefferies:When I checked my email, I was cut. And my natural next response was I made myself a cup of coffee and breakfast and I ate. That's it. Simple. No pressure.
Alexis Jefferies:No stress. No dread. Just a cup of coffee and a perfectly toasted bagel to jumpstart my morning as though it were any other day. Now, how is that possible? You might ask.
Alexis Jefferies:Everyone else was frantically drafting goodbye emails or transferring personal documents off of work computers, while I was just casually indulging in a little bit of television and enjoying my breakfast. You must have hated your job. That's why. Some might think. Right?
Alexis Jefferies:But the reality is actually quite the opposite. I loved my job. I loved where I work, and my team and colleagues were some of the best I'd ever had the privilege of working with over the entire course of my career. So what then would have caused such a lack of panic to a sudden change in circumstances? Well, the truth is that my brain simply couldn't register any stress or panic because I was just so overloaded with work.
Alexis Jefferies:If I had to describe that feeling of job loss, the word relief comes to mind. From working multiple jobs to building side hustles to mentoring and coaching, teaching, public speaking, hosting events, and caring for family and friends and the like, I was simply burnt out. While I had peers who were instantly on job boards looking for their next opportunity, all I could muster up the energy to do was make a cup of coffee. I simply needed rest. And it wasn't until that moment that I recognized how impactful rest truly is, not only for our mental and physical health, but for our ability to maintain peak performance in pursuit of both our professional and personal goals.
Alexis Jefferies:See, the constant demands of life from work and family to all sorts of commitments that we make and all sorts of responsibilities we've taken on has kind of landed all of us on this proverbial rat wheel trying to maintain pace in order to keep moving forward. It is as though if we were to slow down or even stop and take a break that we would lose momentum or worse lose ground. Although, even in science, that's not exactly how things work. For example, sir Isaac Newton crafted this very concept when working on his three laws of motion with the first law being an object at rest stays at rest, or if in motion, an object in motion remains in motion at a constant velocity until acted on by a net external force. Basically, if you're running a race, you can't exactly expect to slow down or stop and take a break to catch your breath and expect to cross the finish line first.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? At least that's what I thought before my job lay off. See, my job as a marketing executive at a large global technology company was pure motion. I was often running, sometimes literally, from meeting to meeting, drafting presentations and strategy documents, building business cases and writing performance reviews, leading team offsites and or planning team happy hours that actually at the end of it weren't all that happy after an extensive and exhausting workday. My team was oftentimes so busy and had so much responsibility that we literally developed a burnout work stream to help support each other in preventing, well, burnout.
Alexis Jefferies:We wrote articles, and shared them with each other with helpful tips and tricks to avoid depleting ourselves. And at the end of it, the irony is that we spent so much time writing and researching these articles that we had added yet another item on our to do list, leading to more burnout. For me, I was going at a breakneck pace in my career, constantly looking for the next opportunity to make more impact or secure a larger performance bonus. Per Newton's law, my motion continued at a constant velocity until acted on by a net external force, a massive company layoff that I didn't see coming and couldn't prepare for. Now if not for this unexpected change in job status, I would have certainly continued at that same harrowing pace until exhaustion or stress would have landed me in the hospital or worse.
Alexis Jefferies:See, my object, my personhood simply needed to be at rest for a while and stay at rest until I could recover and get back at it again. And it took a layoff at this pivotal point in my career for me to recognize that what was actually happening to me wasn't slowing down my pace in the race at all. It was actually preparing me for the much needed, much needed break that would help me prepare for the race ahead. Now it doesn't have to take a massive or transformative experience for us to recognize this critical key life concept. Are you ready for it?
Alexis Jefferies:Great. Rest is the leading ingredient for resilience. See many think of resiliency in life and work as a cut and dry test of one's ability to work hard and push through and keep going against all odds. And to some degree, that's fair, but it's much more likely a definition for endurance than it is for resiliency. Merriam Webster defines resilience as simply being one's ability to recover from and or adjust easily to misfortune or change.
Alexis Jefferies:The definition literally tells us that recovery is a core part of being able to develop resilience and overcome stressful situations. So is rest not an active component of recovery? Without rest, there can really be no resilience. So what then is rest? It is simply defined yet increasingly difficult for us to achieve given today's time constraints and demands on our physical resources.
Alexis Jefferies:But simply put, rest is ceasing activity and being still in order to refresh, replenish, and recover. Straightforward. Right? Not too much. Studies published in the Journal of Ergonomics and the Harvard Business Review abound with data and evidence of workers and societies around the globe that have transitioned from a work culture into a workaholic culture, suggesting that rest is commonly misunderstood and even harder to come by.
Alexis Jefferies:See, taking rest is simply not something that most cultures celebrate globally, and it's really no surprise why that's the case. Starting at an early age, we commend that ambitious student for staying up late, burning the midnight oil, trying to finish a project, trying to pursue that ever elusive a plus grade. Or we celebrate the entry level analyst for staying late in the office, picking up the slack for the rest of the team, silently acknowledging their grit and resilience for going the extra mile. While we do all of this rewarding of overworking by calling it resiliency, we're actually missing a key understanding of how overworking works against us in biology. Homeostasis is a fundamental biological concept which describes an organism's ability to continually restore and sustain itself for the maintenance of its own well-being.
Alexis Jefferies:Now when we overload or overwork or overextend ourselves, we're actually doing ourselves more harm than good because we're wasting immense amounts of energy in order to try to get back to homeostasis or balance. And to add insult to injury, our technology has made it so much easier to become workaholics and for our cultures to reward us for constant motion rather than periodic rest. We've somehow deemed taking breaks or finding time to replenish as lazy and unproductive. And the concept of self care seems only reserved for those with vast financial or time based resources, access to luxury spas and enough disposable income to justify expensive purchases like high end teas or robes to cozy up with whenever we get the rare opportunity to shut down our laptops or put down our cell phones. Let me be clear about something.
Alexis Jefferies:Rest and self care are not the same thing. Sure. Your body would appreciate self care, but rest is a requirement for continued performance, less burnout lead to your untimely mental short circuiting. You need rest to remain resilient. So how then should you get it?
Alexis Jefferies:I believe there are three key ways to rest in order to become and remain resilient. Are you ready for them? To start, you can sleep. No, really. Take a nap.
Alexis Jefferies:According to the US Centers for Disease Control, only one in three adults actually gets the appropriate and recommended amount of sleep every night. Now, specifically for Americans, Americans were having trouble sleeping long before and ever since the global COVID nineteen pandemic. According to a study published a few years ago in the journal of Sleep Medicine, about one in three participants had some sort of clinical chronic insomnia symptoms, and nearly one in five had an insomnia disorder. This data, which is actually rates double what they were pre pandemic. Now this data actually suggests that there is in fact a global sleep crisis.
Alexis Jefferies:And therefore, it's not all that surprising why the TikTok girlies are serving up recipes for sleepy girl mocktails in order to help their followings catch some z's. While there are all sorts of factors that affect one's ability to get a restful night's sleep, the value of sleep as a critical driver of rest is really undeniable. If you cannot rest, you cannot continue. Next, you should take a break either before or after a nap, it's fine. Now taking a break doesn't just look like indulging in your favorite candy bar or taking a walk outside so much as it pertains to anything you can do to for a short period of time to help lighten your cognitive load.
Alexis Jefferies:See, after every ninety minutes of intensive focus and work, your brain basically shuts down or slows down to near base level performance. Think of your brain like your computer's hard drive. One moment, it's working like magic or arguably like new, but then you open up a program that requires a lot of RAM to be used. Or you open up another tab next to the 100 tabs you already have open on your web browser. And suddenly your computer starts to slow down and make funny noises glitch and overheat.
Alexis Jefferies:Newsflash. This is basically how your brain works. Too many tabs open or programs running leads to slower performance. So after ninety minutes, give it a rest. Go outside, get some fresh air or some natural sunlight if that's available to you.
Alexis Jefferies:Or you can consider having lunch with friends and coworkers and not at your desk. Beyond the ninety minutes, you can take a vacation just to get a different change of scenery or a new environment. Whatever you find enjoyable to do within a break from a ninety minute intensive power working session will be a welcome reprieve for your brain in order to replenish before yet another sprint. Lastly, you can focus on what's important, thriving, not striving. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who unfortunately got laid off in and around the same time that I did, and her words rang out like a megaphone on our call.
Alexis Jefferies:She said, you know, I think I'm glad I got cut. I don't wanna strive anymore. And it was this concept of striving that really resonated with me. I mean, weren't we taught from a shockingly young age to always strive for the best to achieve the greatest amount possible in our limited time here on this planet. For me as a lifelong overachiever, it almost seemed foreign to me that I would spend any time in my life or work not striving.
Alexis Jefferies:However, as I sat with her words, I began to recognize that being in a constant state of achievement orientation is actually the antithesis of rest, which it means which means we can't actually expect to strive and be resilient at the same time. Why not? Well, to be forever striving will lead to inevitably missing out on the experiences and the people around us simply as they wouldn't be our target focus. See, to strive is to have tunnel vision on a goal. But have you ever thought, what happens outside of the tunnel?
Alexis Jefferies:The problem with striving and not resting is that it leads to burnout that is more than just mental or physical. It's relational. If we're always striving towards the next goalpost or milestone, we never really stop to take in the force for the trees as the saying goes and live presently in the experiences for what they are. See, we live in societies where we're constantly on our phones, interacting more digitally than we do in real life. It almost seems as though our screens give us more comfort than a hug would from a family member or even a stranger.
Alexis Jefferies:So instead of spending so much time looking down at our devices, maybe we should consider looking up and looking around and experience life for what is happening around us. Rest gives us the mental fortitude necessary to be present and fully invested in the experience of living. The only thing we should strive for is to be present and accounted for during life's happenings and to relate to the world around us in ways that are both meaningful and impactful. For me, once I had the realization of my layoff actually set in a few weeks later, I too desired to fling myself into a very comforting state of sheer panic, but I never really got the chance to do so. I had too soon started enjoying pressing the snooze button, sleeping in a few minutes later every morning, or enjoying a glass of wine at lunch, going outside to catch some sun on the patio when I didn't have to be on a Zoom call.
Alexis Jefferies:I took rest before I could even panic about being jobless, and I found myself much more ready to take on the challenge of finding a new job when the time came. When I did return to the working world, I was replenished. I was revived, and I was resilient. I had made it through the mental fog that unemployment easily produces, and I came out victorious. And for all of you, I hope the same, not a job layoff, but that you might be fortunate enough to have an unexpected net external force throw your constant state of motion just slightly off balance and lead you toward a more sustainable way to live.
Alexis Jefferies:One that includes rest, breaks, sleep, thriving, and many more memories you can recall fondly in the days to come. Thank you.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Oh, Alexis, it's absolutely brilliant, as it was when Jenna and I watched you
Alexis Jefferies:in the
Dr. Kelly Culver:dress rehearsal and then, again, as we saw you on the day of the TEDx. It feels
Alexis Jefferies:so long ago.
Dr. Kelly Culver:I know. It feels like decades, but just a few short months ago. And I was really struck with all of the re words that you used at the end, revitalize. And I'm thinking you used the word sustainable, and it's almost like your your talk is about teaching us how we can have more sustainable impact in our lives and in our world. So many lessons to take from what you've said.
Dr. Kelly Culver:How has the TED Talk changed your life?
Alexis Jefferies:Wow. What a a great question. I think it's really given me the opportunity to have more conversations with people that I would not have had access to otherwise. Right? And that in particular, refers to the large swath of people who have gone through layoffs over the past several years and are still going through them.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? I come from the technology industry, and so across big tech, there are layoffs happening even now, and and I've had the opportunity to to be invited to discuss some of the opportunities in the layoffs that happen, for those who are having to experience that, and hopefully revitalize and encourage some folks to think of this opportunity as such, as an opportunity and not as some dire, drastic situation, that they are facing and having to endure. And that, mind you, is a very privileged position to be in and that you can tell someone, oh, you'll be fine, and they don't feel that way in the moment. They're like, what am I gonna do? I need income, and I may not be able to sustain myself for all that long.
Alexis Jefferies:But it's really about letting them know you get the opportunity to take space now. Right? So, like, when you didn't get the opportunity to do that because you were working until midnight or who knows when in order order to get a project done that you may not have been that passionate about in the first place, but you had to do it in order to keep your job and keep your paycheck. Now it's an opportunity for you to, if only for a little while, take the space. And as, you know, Jen sort of helped us define earlier in our talk that that's really the first step.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? Is sit down and take the space so then you can start the process of asking the questions and then doing, whenever you do find a new job.
Jenn Quader:What a brilliant way to turn something difficult into something resilient and then make it a platform, Alexis. Because that's really what you've done is you've and and and because what you're speaking to is not just, hey, the importance of rest. We started the conversation with that. But what you're really speaking to is the importance of rest when when there's a tidal wave. And that's what's happened in the tech industry is there's been a bit of a tidal wave, as far as as restructuring and how things are are are happening.
Jenn Quader:And I I I find it interesting from your perspective, not only having been in the tidal wave, but as as I'm saying, kind of leading the charge to be able to see, hey. There's a different way to handle this. Now you and I had a chance to have a discussion after the TEDx event. And one of the things that you shared with me was that, the TEDx itself, I think everybody knows there's a certain time limit on it. And so all of us had to kind of edit down our talks to a certain amount.
Alexis Jefferies:Yes, sir. Let's see.
Jenn Quader:Keep it short. Keep it in those 10 you know, we we we all were fighting on that tech rehearsal day to get it down. But there there was an element or a layer, to your talk, but not only that, I'd say to your platform, to your research, and that you said didn't quite make it in because of that time limit. And I wanna open the door to that discussion because it is so important, and it's something that is very real in our world today. And so the question is this this tidal wave, as I call it, of layoffs, this this new way of of approaching these challenges, is this disproportionately affecting black and brown people?
Jenn Quader:And if so, why and what can we do about it? What what what's your take?
Alexis Jefferies:I do think that it's something that most, corporations aren't really exploring and researching because they don't want to find out the truth of the reality of these layoffs. But starting during the pandemic, and ever since, there there has been a significant, and disproportionate effect on both women and people of color via layoffs and via the restrictions that happened during the pandemic. Right? Like, if people can't successfully go to work or school and leave the house, right, without worrying about what happens with the Internet and their kids, and they are perhaps the sole provider for their family or the majority provider for their family, this, you know, significantly affects their income and their ability to provide for the family. Right?
Alexis Jefferies:And so when it comes to the massive rounds of layoffs, black and brown people are already, you know, the the least heavily represented percentage of tech workers across the industry. And so when you are doing mass layoffs and and cuts across the board, those people are going to be just, proportionally affected. And no one's thinking about, hey, look, let's say that this person I'll I'll I'll call her Shelly, not to be confused with doctor Kelly. Let's say that Shelly, you know, is, a graphic designer at a tech company and she gets laid off, but, you know, she's a black or brown woman, and it takes her a long time, arguably a year, to find another role. The downstream effects of her being out of work for a year, whereas her peers can get other jobs more quickly, not only affects her income and her savings account because she's burning through that, but it also affects her retirement because that's one year of retirement income that she doesn't get the opportunity to invest.
Alexis Jefferies:And that disproportionately affects her and her ability to retire at the same rate and or timeline as her peers who either got jobs more quickly or didn't face a job loss at all. Right? And that's a systemic issue where, on average, black and brown people already cannot retire at the same rates or even expect to retire because we don't have the income to do so. So just one year of unemployment significantly affects people's long term trajectory for their life. And and I wanted the opportunity to, kind of pivot the conversation to say, hey, look, while you are facing very real financial challenges during, this period of unemployment, and some call it fun employment.
Alexis Jefferies:And and it's fun up until a certain point in time, right, when it's not so fun anymore because you don't have any money. I I want it to be an opportunity to be used. Right? Time is the greatest asset that we have that we cannot give back. You can get money back.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? And so when we are so focused in this life on, oh, I gotta get money, that seems to be the most valuable asset. And, oh, I need a job. Well, what about time? The asset of time is something that you are exchanging for the money.
Alexis Jefferies:So when you're not getting the money, guess what you have? You have the time. And so let's use our time wisely to figure out who we want to be, what we want to do, whether or not we want to go back into the same career that we had before and just be more mindful and take taking the rest, strategically and not just sitting moping around. It sounds bad, but that's a long winded answer to say that, I I want specifically people of color and women of color to be empowered to know that there is an opportunity for you to use your time, and not just for a corporate entity. You can use it to give back to others in your family and communities of which oftentimes we already do, but you can also use it for you.
Alexis Jefferies:Start that business that you were afraid to start. Right? Become that consultant that you're afraid to become. Write that book that you're afraid to write. Do the things that you wouldn't ordinarily do because you use the excuse of, oh, I've got so much work to do at my job that I don't have the opportunity or the value of time, the gift of time to do now.
Alexis Jefferies:And now I'm like, you got the gift, so make it count.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Can we just stay in this theme, though? Because, like, you've said some really interesting things. And I know in your discussion with Jen around rest and time and women in leadership roles and being disproportionately displaced in the tech industry, in particular, people of color, black and brown people, and black and brown women in particular. You mentioned something to Jen that I found was really interesting. And it's like, so as a black woman in business, why do you feel that people of color have a harder time finding the time to rest or giving themselves the permission to rest?
Dr. Kelly Culver:What is that all about, and how can we help to plug that gap and solve that problem?
Alexis Jefferies:It's a great question, and I don't know that I have the best answer for it, but from the historical perspective, I mean, let's just take the the the start of, you know, the industrial revolution and now people are working on farms in rural places and are going out into cities and metropolises and getting quote unquote corporate jobs or jobs in the big cities, so much so that even after World War II and women start to get into the workforce more heavily, and then in the seventies, we have all of this empowerment and women are starting to take on even more codified corporate jobs. Right? There is this development of a work culture, right, which we didn't necessarily have in the same way previously. Right? But if historically black and brown people have either been immigrants, voluntarily or involuntarily via slavery to this country, and or across the globe.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? They are heavily institutionalized in their discrimination against those those people. So if those individuals are getting into the workforce later after, you know, different policies have, been opened up for women to go to work, then black and brown people get the opportunities to go to work. And then they're already generations decades behind. Right?
Alexis Jefferies:In terms of being able to sustain themselves and, or, or, or build up enough income to buy homes. There's, you know, redlining and all of these restricted covenants that prevent black and brown people from being able to amass wealth is the long story short. Right? And so in that work corporate culture that has been established that was never built with women or black and brown people in mind, it is really no surprise then that when layoffs, large corporate layoffs happen, the people who are least valuable are the people who were not the system wasn't built for, and those people by design get dispensed of. And so when we're thinking about how to encourage those individuals who are participating in a system that wasn't built for them, how we are trying to encourage them to keep going and to be resilient, it is hard because they're playing a game that wasn't designed for them to play.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? Like if I'm, you know, five foot nothing and I'm trying to be drafted into the NBA, that's gonna be a very, you know, uphill battle to climb. Right? When everybody else is well over six foot, whatever. And so that's kind of how it feels as a a woman and specifically a woman of color in the corporate environment is that I'm in these rooms where no one looks like me.
Alexis Jefferies:I'm having conversations with people where it's a lot easier for them to talk over me because they're not used to having me in the room. The room wasn't built for me. So I have to make sure that I am taking rest and taking space to replenish myself to go forward in the, you know, for better or worse, battle of operating in spaces that weren't built for me to try to carve out my own space that can in fact be built for me. Does that make sense? I hope that
Jenn Quader:answers your question. It does. And, like, I'm so in on this basketball, like, idea, and I'm not a bad I'm not a sports person at all. But I want to make one, frankly, visual correction on it. And I shouldn't say correction because it's your vision, but I don't think you're five foot in the room full of basketball.
Jenn Quader:I I think you're eight feet tall, and you have all the skills that everybody does, but you but you have your hands tied behind your back or you have or you can't use your right leg. You know? Like, I I I think that the the the visual is right to say there's a game. It's been played for a long time, and I have the right skills, but I but but I look different. And not just physically.
Jenn Quader:There's a physical black and brown people, but it also I I look different because my background was different. Because I went to school at a different place and I was raised in a different way. And I think that there is an an openness that that has to be adopted in order for everyone to recognize that. And the one thing I wanna say is when you speak to the historical aspect of it, I mean, look, I'm I'm a I'm a woman. I'm not a black and brown one, but I or, or black or brown one, but I but I'm I'm a woman with the rest that says, I get mad when I hear this.
Jenn Quader:I get mad when I hear about this push down of, you know, keeping people where they need to be and redlining and and these historical things. And so I wanna ask, when you're mad, when you wanna get in the game, I'm eight feet tall, I can play your game. Like, how do you get someone who sees that anger and who sees that societal problem and get them to not do the effort and get them to not come in swinging? How do you how do you approach that from that lens?
Alexis Jefferies:One, I think anger and and, you know, upset is actually a very healthy emotion that we need to learn how to harness and use more effectively. And it doesn't always have to show up in terms of rage, but it can show up in terms of strategy. Right? And I that's kind of something that I I try to encourage, others, friends, peers, mentees, students, parents, everyone who I know, to consider is that I, by nature and by training, am a storyteller. Right?
Alexis Jefferies:I studied journalism. I was a professional journalist for many years, and I even do that now in my consulting work. And so it's all about telling the story of whether or not you are qualified and prepared to do a job that the person across the table from you questions whether or not you are qualified and prepared to do. Right? And so that is all in storytelling.
Alexis Jefferies:It's it's no different than being able to be a salesperson and sell your business, sell your services, sell your wares, whatever it is, you have to be able to tell a story and paint a picture for people why you deserve to be there. And that is an evergreen part of life, why you deserve to be someone's friend, why you deserve to be someone's romantic partner. It's all of the things around storytelling. And so I think that when we think about, that skill set and crafting a story that would resonate with the person across the table from us, that is what I want to remind, women and specifically women of color to do. There's there's this thing colloquially called the black tax, which is this presumption that, in systems and in cultures, institutionalized cultures that were not built for black people, that we have to work twice as hard or more in order to get, you know, half as much.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? We have to do this work to prove ourselves. And I do believe that that has been proven in in many industries, maybe not all, but in many instances. Right? However, I think part of that is what we need to do is shift the narrative around, hey.
Alexis Jefferies:Look. If I can tell a story though, can't lie, but if I tell a story that is accurate and reflective of who I am and what I bring to the table, everyone has the ability to be convinced. Right? It's in our nature. It's in our, you know, our psyche to be we like stories.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? We are a story telling people. Right? And the human species. And so I think that if we move ourselves away from this concept of I have to work hard in order to get what I want rather than I have to tell people who I am and craft a narrative that resonates with someone else, I think it is an easier skill set.
Alexis Jefferies:Actually, I don't think it's harder, but I think we'd it's an underutilized one that I want us all, women of color, people of color, women, immigrants, you know, LGBTQ plus, whomever considers themselves to be a part of a disadvantaged population to move towards. Tell the story of who you are because somebody wants to hear it and somebody cares enough to then give you the access and the opportunity. And that's really all it's about. You don't have to, you know, push a boulder up a hill if you don't have to, if you can convince somebody at the bottom of the hill to give you a ride up.
Dr. Kelly Culver:I love it.
Jenn Quader:I'm like raising the roof over here. Yeah. Doctor. Kelly, tell us what you're thinking.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Oh, I'm well, that's the takeaway. You know, that is that's the real, that's the short. It is absolutely brilliant. You're so right on that. And it's the narrative and how much Harvard's teaching public narrative now.
Dr. Kelly Culver:You see? And CEOs are flocking to these courses because they need to learn how to tell a story so that they can remain relevant in the marketplace and they can connect their purpose with the consumer or the person who wants to consume what they have, whether it's their story, their product, their system, their process. It doesn't really matter what it is. And you're here saying, If we could just tell our stories in a way We know people want to listen. Like, you think of around the campfire at night.
Dr. Kelly Culver:What are you doing? You're telling stories. You're kids underneath the tent. You're just trying to scare each other with ghost stories. We tell stories, and we love it.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Resilience of the podcast is a story. I love what you've just said. It's so simple, but so darn hard.
Alexis Jefferies:It's so true.
Jenn Quader:Well, and and all it it is it is simple, but it is worth it. And I think that's what what I take from what you just said also is the the question was kinda how do we how do we break into this societal thing and the, you know, the societal infrastructure that holds us back. And the answer is that storytelling is that fluidity that that goes through all of the you know, I'm seeing it as like the, structuring, you know, the the the scaffolding. But more than that, you've also given me an answer, Alexis, and all of our listeners an answer, I think, to something that we talk about this a lot at the SMART agency. We say, you know, when you're when you are trying to to share an idea, share a story, what people really care about is we call it WIFM.
Jenn Quader:What's in it for me? Right? What's in it for me? And what you what you just shared is, hey, I I think you said Shelly was was our was our person who was working in tech. Oh, I'm sorry.
Alexis Jefferies:That's what I was like. Shelly Kelly.
Jenn Quader:But hey, Shelly, listen, it's worth it to sit and ask and then do because if you slow down and rest first, you will find your story. Your story is within you. And so there's really a what's in it for me is if you go too fast and you just try to fight the scaffolding, the scaffolding's gonna stand. But if you find the story first, that that is such a clear, benefit, Alexis, to your to your strategy, which is rest first so that you have what it takes to go in and do it. I I think that's really, applause.
Jenn Quader:Applause for Alexis Jeffries.
Alexis Jefferies:Thank you. I I appreciate it.
Jenn Quader:I wanna ask though about there there's another part of this because it it's not just about, like, again, who we are and what we look like. I think there is this disproportionate effect for black and brown people, but there's also a generational effect. And a lot of that you and you mentioned this in your talk. It relates to technology. It relates to this twenty four hour news cycle, to this this pressure that that goes beyond really that scaffolding or structure, and now it's it's all of society.
Jenn Quader:And so I wanna ask, you do a lot of research on this within your position as adjunct professor at u USC. What have you learned about why people are having a harder time relaxing, and what can you share with us through that lens of kind of technology and demands that that might be useful for our listeners to know?
Alexis Jefferies:Again, part a lot of this is tied to this concept of work culture. Right? And I I talk about it in the talk that we've transitioned from a work culture to a workaholic culture. Right? And that has been tied to, corporate demands on performance.
Alexis Jefferies:It really all started in, I wanna say, the seventies, and I can't remember the guy's name, but there was a, an economist or perhaps he's a treasury secretary, of The United States where they made a recommendation that corporate profits should be tied to CEO performance. Right? So or a CEO pay should be tied to corporate profits. Right? So if a company is public on the markets, and it's doing really well going gang gangbusters, so to speak, that CEO should get more money because he's helping the company make more profit.
Alexis Jefferies:And by extension, the shareholders are making more money. And so they should give him more because he's doing a good job. Pat him on the back. Right? That creates this work culture that then trickles down to everyone else.
Alexis Jefferies:Because if the CEO wants his paycheck to be as big as big can be, guess what? He's going to make expectations and demands, arguably, on his employees from the rest of the c suite on down to make sure that we're making it happen so I can get my money. Right? And that level of culture transitions into, well, hey, look, I have to work to an exhaustive end to ensure that not only I help the CEOs pay, which we never really think about, that this is why you're working so hard is so that way a CEO can make more money, but so that I can keep my job. Then it becomes a scarcity mindset where I am going to do this level of work, extraneous work, in order to be able to keep the very little thing, the most important thing that I feel like I have, which is my means to pay my bills.
Alexis Jefferies:And as that culture has pervaded every industry globally, and and it used to be just kind of a American and or arguably North American thing that has transitioned into a European culture where people don't take as many siestas or breaks anymore or they're cutting PTO across the board, pay time off, across the board for many companies that were founded in various countries, not just American companies based abroad. That work culture, which has transitioned into a workaholic culture, makes people feel as though they can't rest. They can't afford to take a break because their job and their livelihood depends on it. But when we step back and think about what that's actually tied to, if you think about how, well, I'm working so hard and working my tail off and nearly putting myself into an early grave, so that way the CEO can make more money. I could go be a CEO and do the same.
Alexis Jefferies:I could go start my own business if I'm gonna have to work this hard. Right? It opens up all of these other possibilities for people to be able to explore the reasons why they're doing what they're doing and ask themselves, again, to do the ask, whether or not it's required. This level of work, this level of effort is required. So to this is a long winded answer to your question around many multiple generations have endured this.
Alexis Jefferies:I've watched my mother who was a sales executive for, you know, eons, for decades, endure this and nearly have heart attacks as a result of the stress and the pressure to make sure that she could provide for her family and maintain her job. Right? Because it was all tied to performance. And so when you think about, well, what am I really doing this for? Do I have to endure this?
Alexis Jefferies:Is there another route? That is something that I think we should be challenging more people to ask themselves, that corporations will never encourage themselves to, encourage you to ask yourself because then you'll probably leave. Right? You will probably not want to do that job anymore because there's no reason to be working this hard. And and it's a a multigenerational problem.
Alexis Jefferies:I don't know the answer. I don't know that any of us have found an answer, but I think it starts with encouraging people to ask the question, to do some resiliency training, to have resources like this podcast and or the forums like a TED Talk, to be able to explore, hey. Look. Does it actually make sense for me to go off the deep end for this company that will very easily and likely turn around and lay me off because I'm a dispensable, you know, resource? I I'm just very expensive for them, but I my humanity maybe is missing.
Alexis Jefferies:And so I just want to challenge people's presumptions about work and whether or not they have to do the things that they have been told culturally they have to do in order to be successful.
Jenn Quader:It's an important mouthful that you just said. Like like, so much of a I mean no. But but and I mean that in in in the best of ways, Alexis, because sometimes you to get it all out, you have to kind of go and and and get that idea out. And you're speaking about multigenerational kind of, what do they call it? Like, in in Buddhism, like, it's the opposite of aversion, like attraction or, like, it's it's like it's it's it's beyond a habit.
Jenn Quader:It's almost it's an addiction. You're calling it workaholism. And I think that that definitely is fed. And then there's kind of this other narrative of, like, the, the human less corporation, the faceless corporation, the CEO who's taking, you know, more than their share and that kind of stuff. And I think, obviously, we see that existing in some American companies.
Jenn Quader:I I I don't know what. I I'm not that's not my area of expertise. But I think that we also see and, you know, mine comes from, like, I'm a small business owner. Then we also see companies trying to, like, redo what does that work culture look like in 2024? It is different.
Jenn Quader:There's, you know, in my space, my my day job is focused a lot on commercial real estate, which we've heard a lot about office properties and what is that going to be. And so so I'm seeing it a lot through that lens. But to tie that back to what you're talking about, which is kind of the person's role, you know, you let's tie it all the way back to the narrative. You said I'm a storyteller, and today we all have to be storytellers. And so now not only do I need to see my role, like, as what can my next job be, but it's also and and what does it serve?
Jenn Quader:What what is the greater good at serving? And so and that is another benefit of slowing down and resting. Instead of, as you mentioned, you talk about your friends who hit that job board so fast, we who knows where you might land in another, faceless, famous corporation. And I think that, there's a lot of research that's pointing to today's workforce looking for companies of all sizes that really stand for something. And that it's not posturing.
Jenn Quader:It's not I'm sure that there's plenty of that happening, but there are companies out there who are really trying, I think, to look at the whole human experience of work and how to make people reengage with it in a way that, Alexis, to your point, giving yourself to a company doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it can be a bad thing. If if you're being taken advantage of, it can be. But giving yourself to a company can be a beautiful thing as long as it is your choice to give it. You know? So I I I I'm really kinda pouring thoughts there.
Jenn Quader:To get to a question, I'm gonna ask doctor Kelly Culver to jump in because you've been listening to all this. What do you what do you think? Where where is this taking your brain as it relates to resilience and and and and our listeners and how they can benefit from Alexis's really unique perspective here?
Dr. Kelly Culver:Alexis is right that we're I mean, we're in a global the last four or five years, we've been in in a huge upheaval. You know, we've had COVID. We've had changes in technology. We've had acceleration with AI. We have the war in Ukraine and in The Middle East.
Dr. Kelly Culver:It's just like it's this uncertainty. And every day, there's something new that's happening, and it's moving at a pace that we're not used to. And I find sometimes when we're uncertain, we freeze because we don't know what to do. And freeze, you know, you hear me argue in this podcast, no, you can't freeze. You have to act.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Because if you're a CEO and you freeze, your organization comes to a standstill, and that's not okay. You have to lead through the chaos, lead through the uncertainty, navigate through the storm, if you will. But there's another side to that coin that I think Alexis has given us. And sometimes that freezing allows insights that you would never have had the privilege of having come into your head because you're open and you're listening. And we're seeing a change around the world on what the future of work looks like.
Dr. Kelly Culver:And it's a tough one. Again, it's a it's a tough thing. Like, by 02/1930, we're going to have 85,000,000 jobs unfilled because we don't have the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time. It's a 6,000,000,000,000 US dollar impact on the global marketplace and unrealized revenue. That's a big deal, and that's something that people should be thinking about and and and may be freezing, but it comes back to the issue of work.
Dr. Kelly Culver:How do I tell my story to position myself in the right way that's meaningful for me and relevant to the organization I'm choosing to work for? It's a different narrative than we've had in a really long time. Like, I remember in the nineties here in Ontario, we laid off people right, left, and center because we were moving I was in government at the time. And we were moving from doing everything. We're going to be pilots and steering, and we're not going to do the work.
Dr. Kelly Culver:And it was a huge shift in terms of getting away from sort of the manufacturing into the professional services. And that hurt for ten years. That's a change in the economy, and it hurt. And I think you're giving us some similar lessons on we need to look at these opportunities in different ways. Jen, what do you think?
Dr. Kelly Culver:Is it time for rapid fire questions?
Jenn Quader:I'm ready. Alexis, are you ready?
Alexis Jefferies:As ready as I'm gonna be, you know? Okay. Build the fear and do it anyway.
Jenn Quader:That's right. That's right. This will not be a lion or a bear.
Alexis Jefferies:Okay. No. Great. Okay. These are easy.
Dr. Kelly Culver:These are easy. So what's your favorite movie or TV show that makes you feel resilient?
Alexis Jefferies:Oh, my favorite movie that makes me feel resilient is probably my favorite movie, actually. It's sister act two, back in the habit with Whoopi Goldberg. I'm dating myself here, but that is my all time favorite movie, and I definitely feel like there's a lot of themes around resiliency in that particular film.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Alright. Now what's your favorite song or music that makes you feel resilient?
Alexis Jefferies:Oh, you know what? I think it's a real kind of, like, girl power anthem. It's Sierra, who I love. Her song Level Up. It's good for reminding yourself to, like, get after it and level up.
Alexis Jefferies:So that makes me feel resilient.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Can you tell us what was the last thing that made you laugh out loud? Like, that you don't have to sense her or something like that.
Alexis Jefferies:Yeah. No. Fair. Fair. No.
Alexis Jefferies:My cats. So, yes. So I'm one of those childless cat ladies. But it's funny. I I recently got a cat, another cat, for my cat.
Alexis Jefferies:So I want my my first cat, Amelia. She's the the sweetest, little, most introverted girl, and I've had her for a while. And I was like, oh, she's a little bored. So I decided to get her, little brother who is rambunctious and got a lot of attitude and energy. And they will just have these little sessions where they're sitting on the couch next to each other and just kind of doing that, just kind of hitting each other a little bit.
Alexis Jefferies:And I was like, I don't know if this is violent or if this is playful. And so it just it makes me laugh out loud to see that my whole selfless rationale for getting another cat wasn't because I needed another cat. It was for Amelia. And so I wanted to get her a cat, and so now I feel I feel a good amount of, joy watching her enjoy having a little brother. And
Dr. Kelly Culver:Amelia is thanking you right now. We know that.
Alexis Jefferies:Amelia is very grateful. Even when her younger brother, his name is Carl, Carl is quite the prankster. And he yeah. He's he's quite the prankster. He will stand on top of the little litter box cabinet and wait for her to come out so he can, like, pounce on her.
Alexis Jefferies:And I'm like, that is, you know, violence. You gotta let people come out of the restroom in peace, you know? Do their thing.
Jenn Quader:That's some younger brother stuff right there.
Alexis Jefferies:He is. He's a cool little brother.
Dr. Kelly Culver:I like Carl.
Jenn Quader:What a joy. Yeah.
Dr. Kelly Culver:I think I like Carl.
Jenn Quader:Yeah. I feel for Amelia.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Yeah. No.
Alexis Jefferies:Yeah. She she's feeling like, gosh. She's got a lot of energy. And I was like, yeah. Well, he's he's a young spry little cat.
Alexis Jefferies:And so she's like, yeah. Okay. Well, I guess if that's what we signed up for, then that's what we're working with. So
Jenn Quader:As long as he gives her rest.
Alexis Jefferies:You know, she's not getting much rest these days.
Dr. Kelly Culver:One of the things that we like to to ask our guests is, what is a question you'd like to leave for a future guest?
Alexis Jefferies:Yeah. My question for our future guest would be, do you feel you've uncovered or tapped into, discovered your purpose? And if so, what is it, and are you working in it right now?
Jenn Quader:Good one.
Alexis Jefferies:Yeah. I I will preface that I tend to ask that question because people will say all the time, yeah, I think I, you know, discovered my purpose or, you know, I'm trying to to find it, and then I always ask the latter part, well, are you working in it? Or if you haven't discovered it, might you already be working in it and you just never considered that to be your purpose? And it gives people this rationale for, like, well, hey. If it's my purpose, if it's what I was kind of born to do and born to give on this planet, shouldn't I be doing it?
Alexis Jefferies:Shouldn't I be doing it every day? And I've talked to a lot of people who are like, yeah. My purpose is, you know, to have a family, for example. And I'm like, alright. Well, are you trying to get out there and have a family?
Alexis Jefferies:And it's like, well, you know, if it's in you, you'll be doing it, and you'll be moving in it. And so that's what I always wanna encourage people to do is whatever comes in you and you've got to give, that is more likely your purpose and not just a thought or a thing that you want to do and accomplish. It's not just a goal, it's a purpose, and they are different.
Dr. Kelly Culver:Well, Jen, we do have a question from I think maybe you should be the one asking us.
Jenn Quader:Is it for me?
Dr. Kelly Culver:It's for you.
Jenn Quader:Forgive me. I was waiting. I always like to give doctor Kelly a lot of good space in case she has questions. No. But I would be delighted to ask our final question.
Jenn Quader:Alexis, what a wonderful guest you've been. We so appreciate all of your all of your thinking and wonder, and I really appreciate that last question you asked. This last question is one that was left from a prior guest, and it's it's a real serious one. Here we go.
Alexis Jefferies:Gotcha.
Jenn Quader:What do you wanna be when you grow up?
Alexis Jefferies:Oh, yeah. That's great. Because as evidence from my career trajectory and all the places I've lived, I it took me a long time to figure that out. But what I think I have come to discover across all of my careers, and we talked a lot about it today, is that who I am as a storyteller. So what I want to be when I grow up is to empower other people to tell their stories authentically and give of themselves in the world.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? So my my core, what I call my five core tenants, Right? They are the makeup of what I consider to be my purpose. They are access, progress, service, justice, and impact. Those five things, if I'm asked or given the opportunity to do something and it doesn't ladder up into one or more of those five things, I don't do it.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? Because it's not tied to my purpose. And so I consider my purpose really to be storytelling, so I want to empower and give access and make progress in other people telling their stories so that way they can uncover their purpose and give unto the world because we were all here to give something. So that's what I'm here to do.
Jenn Quader:Amen. Alexis, you have inspired me to to live in my purpose, and you've really inspired, I think, all of us to to look at resilience in a different way through through the lens of taking a beat and taking a breath and really, finding ourselves in that. I cannot thank you enough for all that you have have brought to our podcast today. If our listeners would like to find you, interact with you, learn more about you, I would like to tell them that that Alexis does a lot of speaking. She does a lot of different podcasts.
Jenn Quader:Where can they follow you? Where can they find you online?
Alexis Jefferies:Sure. So, feel free to specifically follow me and connect with me on LinkedIn because that's where I post a lot of, like, my professional exploratory things. I'm currently partnering, with Soho House to do a series around, exploring purpose. And so we're bringing a lot of different guest speakers and things of that nature. So that's another place that you can find me if you all are Soho House members.
Alexis Jefferies:And then there will be more news and announcements about things coming out in the future, including said children's book that was mentioned earlier. So
Jenn Quader:Can you can you give us one little tiny little peek, like an insight into the children's book, please? Just just as we sign off.
Alexis Jefferies:Sure. So, working title, so I won't share the title. But what I will share is the premise, is really around encouraging young people, school aged, children, to explore entrepreneurship. It's specifically, young girls and people of color. We oftentimes find ourselves, and we talked a lot about it on this, talk today, about thinking that we have to do things that are kind of inside the box.
Alexis Jefferies:Right? We gotta go graduate from college, and then we gotta get a job in this corporate sector. And we don't explore because we don't take the time to ask ourselves, what is it that I really want to do? What is it that I really have to give? And so entrepreneurship, is an alternative means by which I can, explore who I wanna be and what I've got to give, and I want to encourage young people to tap into that at an earlier age.
Alexis Jefferies:And it goes beyond the lemonade stand. So, it's a children's book about a a young girl who is starting a business.
Jenn Quader:I'm enamored. I cannot wait to see it on the shelves. I will definitely be a customer. I think, it it is so well aligned with what you've talked about about the changing work culture and about, a changing lens through which to do it. So, Alexis, please keep creating, keep sharing.
Jenn Quader:We thank you for for joining us. And to all of our listeners, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Please subscribe, follow, become part of our community. We do this for you and with you, and we really, find that it is a a place that really warms our heart when we get to hear back from you.
Jenn Quader:For me, you can find me online, jenquater, at jenquater.com or at my company, thesmartagency.com. You can also find me on all the social medias at jinquater. And then our wonderful, amazing cohost, doctor Kelly Culver, you can find her through her company, the culver group dot c a. That's dot c a for Canada. You can also find her on LinkedIn and Instagram as at doctor kelly culver.
Jenn Quader:And then find us, guys, resiliency the podcast. You can find us online resiliencythepodcast.com. You'll find us on all the social channels. Listen, interact. Again, we love you.
Jenn Quader:We encourage you to rest, to take the time to find your own reinvention. And again, with that, thanks for listening to Resiliency the podcast. Have a beautiful, resilient week ahead.
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