The Salt Sessions

Transcript

0:09
Hi, I'm Bev Salt and welcome back to the Salt sessions.

0:14
Today I have with me Laura Chamberlain.

0:17
She is a professor of marketing at the University of Warwick.

0:21
She's also the founder of Think Talk Thrive.

0:26
Laura, I'm sure you can do a much better job than me introducing yourself.

0:29
So please can you introduce yourself to our listeners.

0:33
Thank you, Bev, and hello everybody.

0:35
As you say, I'm a professor of marketing at the University of Warwick at the Business School.

0:40
I also run my professional development company, Think Talk Thrive, where I work with companies running workshops on like a wide range of professional development areas.

0:51
And I and I do a bit of coaching.

0:53
I wear quite a lot of hats, so I'm also a columnist for Marketing Week.

0:57
I'm a speaker and I'm also the Co founder of Esteem with Anna O'Riordan, where we help marketers to build like strategic confidence and ensure marketing delivers real impact.

1:09
And we do that through a range of like training, but we also help marketers themselves to develop their professional skills and their expertise.

1:17
And we also work with wider businesses to unlock the value of marketing.

1:19
So there's quite a lot of different things that I do, but I would say my work kind of fits into two camps, so marketing and professional development.

1:28
But the thing that really buys everything together is the idea of human potential.

1:32
I love helping people to find and fulfil their potential, whether that's sort of in the education space, in the marketing space and professional development.

1:40
I think Laura, it's safe to say you wear many hats.

1:46
I do.

1:47
My hat stand is quite full.

1:50
So we're here today to discuss Laura's book.

1:54
It's called Brilliantly Bouncy.

1:57
It's a self-development book.

1:59
Am I right saying it's a self-help self-development book or is it?

2:03
Yeah, that's kind of self-help genre is where it kind of sits.

2:07
Yeah, yes, yes.

2:09
The book was published in April 2025.

2:13
We are now in September of 2025.

2:15
By the way.

2:16
All right, up until I read the book, my interpretation of the word resilience was pretty much about how quickly you bounce back following a setback.

2:28
And I think that's quite a common interpretation of the word as well.

2:32
So in your book, you set about redefining the term resilience.

2:37
Was there a moment or spark that made you decide you had to write this book?

2:43
And who is book for?

2:46
Lots of things to talk about there.

2:48
So the, the book is actually a culmination of years of first thinking and then work.

2:56
So I have a really personal story about resilience, which I do tell in the beginning of the book.

3:04
And I'm not going to go into it too much here, but you know, I, I had some pretty awful things happen over a period of time, probably about over 10 years ago now.

3:16
And when I came out of that negative time, my boss actually turned around to me and said, oh, you're one of the most resilient people I know.

3:24
And he meant it absolutely as a compliment.

3:27
He absolutely did.

3:28
But I just felt so exhausted and like he'd just given me this like, grim badge of honour.

3:34
And that really stuck with me.

3:35
And because I'm an academic and I can't help it, I sort of went away and thought about it and then started researching the ideas around resilience.

3:43
And that morphed into me talking about resilience and through my coaching work, helping people with resilience.

3:49
And so I've been working in this field for a little while current really, and a lot of people are thinking about resilience.

3:57
And so I was sort of getting booked to run more workshops and things like that.

4:00
Against that backdrop, I decided that it was time to put everything down that I've been thinking about in the book, brilliantly bouncy.

4:08
And I think there were just on the point around the professional piece, when you look at the World Economic Forum and they have listed resilience as one of the skills that are gaining importance in their 2030 report.

4:20
It's something that's in skills frameworks, you know, it's something that's kind of becoming a hot topic, yes, but something that's becoming kind of more formalised in terms of the professional development space as well as the individual space as well.

4:33
So all of this prompted me to write the book and I didn't want it to be an academic tone.

4:38
So if anybody's thinking, oh, it's a professor writing a book, it's very much written in my tone of voice with my questionable sense of humour.

4:45
And I wanted it to be accessible and helpful to people in their in their everyday lives.

4:53
So that's kind of where the book itself comes from.

4:57
But in terms of the bouncing back thing that you mentioned and, and positive resilience, I also realised that traditional views on resilience.

5:07
So we're grounded in that negativity.

5:09
So you think about all the terms we use around resilience, like gritting your teeth or just push through all of those kind of things.

5:18
They all feel really negative and, and heavy.

5:20
And I realised that actually we could have a positive approach to resilience.

5:24
It didn't need to be negative in in that way.

5:28
And that's actually partly why I called the book, Brilliantly Bouncy because I didn't want people to think that they had to bounce back.

5:35
Because to me, bouncing back is to where you were before.

5:37
And if you've had something that's happened that's meant you've needed to be resilient, something would have changed.

5:42
So you can't go back to where you were before.

5:44
And some people talk about bouncing forward, which is this like unrelenting momentum.

5:49
And for somebody who's really busy with a very full life, very chaotic full life, that felt like something that wasn't going to be achievable or attainable.

5:58
So the reason I called the book Brilliantly Bouncy is because I really want people to find their own way of bouncing that fits into their lives.

6:06
And however, whatever the shape or form that that looks like.

6:10
And I think the idea around positive resilience is rooted in this idea that we build resilience when times are good, not just when crisis hits.

6:19
So sorry, I went on a bit there.

6:21
You asked one question that was kind of touched on a number of different things.

6:25
But I want to reframe the way that we think about resilience and the way that you look at building resilience.

6:33
And before you mentioned, you know, how you used to think about resilience, Bev.

6:36
But you know, if I said to you before you'd read the book, you know resilience is important.

6:42
So how would you go away and, and build resilience?

6:44
What would have been your response?

6:47
Oh, that's a tricky question.

6:50
I would have thought maybe my support network would be a help.

6:57
I'm thinking back to times when I had to build my resilience.

7:02
One of the most challenging times in my life, Laura, was when I had my first daughter, my first born.

7:09
So she was born 12 weeks premature because I had severe preeclampsia after her birth.

7:15
That was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.

7:19
And I don't think I could have got through it without the help of my family and my friends.

7:26
And even acquaintances that I didn't know so well just turned up in hospital or wrote me messages and said I've gone through a similar sort of experience.

7:35
And here are a few things, a book that you might want to read.

7:39
And so I would say my support network, sorry, that's a long way to answer the question.

7:45
No, it's a great way to answer the question.

7:46
And, and you've read the book, so, you know, that's something I absolutely pick up on in the book.

7:52
But it's so interesting because we don't necessarily think about resilience.

7:55
And since something really quite awful happens, you know, we have a negative experience and whatever that might look like.

8:02
And I'm, I was really sorry to hear of, of your experience, Bev.

8:06
You know, as a mum myself, and I've had my own stories around my children entering into this world.

8:11
It's, it is a really, really tough time.

8:13
So to have, you know, complications on top of that is, is really difficult.

8:18
But it's interesting because we, we don't automatically think about resilience until we're in a crisis moment or until we need to call upon our resilience.

8:26
And it's only that reflection point, looking backwards, where you think, oh, what actually did really helped me.

8:32
And as you say, other people are hugely important.

8:34
So I call it kind of like a resilience ecosystem that we create around ourselves.

8:39
And that's completely at odds with a lot of the stereotypes or received narrative around resilience that, you know, you have to be strong.

8:47
And it's kind of like this lone wolf kind of feeling, whereas actually you get strength from other people when you when you need it.

8:55
And it was really lovely there when you also said as well around how strangers, people you didn't know, also helped you in that moment.

9:01
And I think there's huge power in how human beings can help one another, often unknowingly or sort of not from a place of, you know, connection or, or a relationship, but actually just, you know, general goodwill.

9:16
But that will have built your resilience in that moment.

9:19
But what I would also like people to think about is how we build our resilience when times are good, so that if we do experience something bad happening, we're in a better spot to deal with it.

9:30
And so just on that point around relationships and friendships and, and people around you being so hugely important, you know, if we invest in those relationships and we really think about who is what I call a radiator in our lives, then if we need to call upon them, they'll willingly be there and they will bolster us up.

9:50
And that's hugely important.

9:51
I think when it comes to resilience, it also translates into the work context.

9:55
So I do a lot of work with organisations around helping teams become more resilient and building cultures of resilience at work.

10:03
And you know, it's absolutely around how you can work with one another in order to have this culture and, and teamwork around resilience that that builds strength in in organisations.

10:16
That's interesting.

10:17
So when you wrote this book, who is it for?

10:20
Who were you aiming at organisations or individuals?

10:24
You did ask that before.

10:25
And I completely forgot to answer that bit of the question.

10:27
So well, the book itself is for everybody.

10:30
And I say that sort of really glibly because everybody's always, always going to say their books for everybody.

10:34
But I call it the secret club.

10:36
When I was writing the book, I was thinking about exhausted professionals who are spinning plates whilst juggling balls.

10:43
And I, I say that one of the ways, you know, people are in this secret club is that, you know, when you say to people, how are you?

10:48
And they go, they give this little laugh, they're like, oh, you know, busy.

10:51
And actually on the inside they're like, I am so busy.

10:54
I'm, I've, you know, got so many competing things going on.

10:58
I'm managing a team, I'm pushing forward in my career, I've got home responsibilities, all of these different things and it, and it's a lot like modern life is a lot.

11:08
And so really the book itself is for anybody who is just feeling exhausted by this idea of even having to be resilient, anybody who suspects there's a better way than just gritting your teeth and pushing through and people who want to figure out how to build their resilience, but in a really manageable way.

11:27
The book, I should also say there's a caveat around this.

11:30
The book itself is very much a professional development book.

11:33
And you know, you said in the beginning, like a self-help genre, it's not for people who are experiencing trauma.

11:40
And I am not a, a trained psychologist, psychiatrist, you know, that is where absolutely there is professional help available.

11:46
So this is very much about everyday resilience and, and professional and, and personal development.

11:53
So the books for individuals, the work I do spans individuals and, and into organisations as well.

11:59
Great, thank you.

12:00
You've mentioned that one of the scariest parts was sending your book to beta readers.

12:07
So being an academic, how did you manage your own fears around criticism?

12:12
And I totally understand that is the equivalent of in my role, presenting a strategy to a client for the first time.

12:19
It's scary.

12:21
It is.

12:22
And, and writing this book was a, a, a step out of my comfort zone.

12:26
So as an academic, I write all the time and I write, you know, as I said, for marketing week, you know, writing is something that I really enjoy doing, but this was a passion project.

12:35
So I wrote this in my spare time.

12:37
This is not something I've done on work time.

12:39
So don't hate me for saying this, but I, I did get up at 4:00 in the morning for two hours of writing seven days a week while I was writing the book.

12:48
But I can talk about this if it, if, if you'd like to, but I didn't mind waking up early to write the book because I really, when I say it's a passion project, I absolutely believe in this work and I am 100% never didn't want to get out of bed to write the book.

13:05
So the reason why it was such a step out of my comfort zone is because I was writing in my own voice.

13:12
I was writing something that's really close to my heart and something I, I care deeply about.

13:16
And it's not that I don't care about my work as an academic or as a columnist, but this writing was deeply personal.

13:23
I tell personal stories and it's me on a page in many ways.

13:28
It's not written in academic language.

13:30
You know, I said before, it has my jokes in it.

13:32
Some people who know me that have read it have said it's like having me in the room next to them when they read them, when they read the book.

13:39
And when you're, when you in your workspace, you often have this kind of professional veneer.

13:45
So it just felt really vulnerable putting this book out into the world when it was published.

13:50
There were other academics, not from my area, but other academics who were really sniffy and said, oh, she's written an airport book.

14:00
Because, you know, this is not the kind of credible thing that academics are supposed to do.

14:05
And I knew I was putting myself out there for this kind of criticism.

14:08
And so I did joke when I sent out my, my book draft to the beta readers, He very kindly reviewed the book for me and gave me some hugely valuable feedback.

14:17
It was like the equivalent of sending nudes because it just felt so vulnerable and it was about drinking my own medicine in in some ways.

14:27
I had to really think about a lot of things around what I could control, but also thinking about the fact that I was sending this to people to get this feedback because I wanted them to help me make this to be the best possible book could be.

14:42
And so that was really fuelling in many ways.

14:44
And I believe in this book and this message around positive resilience and a completely new way of thinking about resilience so much that I actually, I had to get myself into a headspace where actually I don't matter.

14:58
It's about what this can do to help people.

15:00
That became really important.

15:02
But you know, that little imposter gremlin that many of us have, and I have it as well, still nips on my heels sometimes.

15:07
But yeah, it's, it's, it's pushing yourself.

15:11
I suppose in a, in a way that can feel uncomfortable, but hopefully having a positive impact is more important.

15:17
You mentioned you got valuable feedback.

15:20
Did you change the book as a result of the feedback?

15:23
Yes, there were.

15:25
It was really interesting because there were quite a few people who and gave me feedback around sort of technicalities to it, the structure of the book.

15:35
People had opinions on some of the stories that I told.

15:38
And it was a really interesting process because just because people feedback give you feedback doesn't mean you have to take everything on board.

15:43
I mean, we know that marketers, right?

15:47
There were some really interesting feedback from people who weren't mothers, and so I do mention the fact that I'm a mother in the book, and the book does have quite a feminine energy to it.

15:56
So I also sent it to some men as well to see how they responded to the content.

16:02
And in the beginning of the book, I talk about the fact that being a mother is a huge part of my life.

16:07
And I draw on that as one example of many that I share in the book to do with the topics that that we talk about.

16:14
But yeah, the book does have quite a feminine energy.

16:17
So there were there were some things that I did change as a result of some of the feedback from some of the men.

16:22
They were a bit like, oh, that didn't last.

16:25
Because it is important to me that this does connect with people on a really human being.

16:30
Therefore, absolutely.

16:33
So your book is structured around bounces.

16:36
So these are small, manageable exercises that people can do on a daily basis.

16:42
And I think you have so many gems in there, Laura.

16:45
It was really difficult to pick one.

16:46
But for me, the one that stood out was the OR is the strength star.

16:51
Do you want to tell us a bit more about the strength star?

16:55
So there's a lot behind this concept of positive resilience.

17:00
So it's not just about building resilience when times are good.

17:03
It's about seeing resilience as a process and not an outcome.

17:07
We've touched on the fact that it's also important to think about the people we surround ourselves with.

17:12
But the strengths piece is so integral to this because we actually need to think about our our strengths, what makes us strong, because that's actually what fuels our resilience.

17:21
So I always think about resilience as like a dimmer switch.

17:25
So it's not sort of, it's something you switch on during a crisis and then turn off again.

17:28
It's like a lamp on a dimmer switch that's always there.

17:31
And so, you know, you can turn it up a little bit when you need to be more resilient and then turn it down when you don't need it so much.

17:37
But it's, it's always there in the background.

17:39
And for a lamp on a dimmer switch, you kind of need this electricity.

17:42
And that's where the strengths come from.

17:45
And over the years, when I've done work around this, I have found that people have a really weird relationship with their strengths.

17:52
So we have these like really generic phrases that we parrot.

17:56
Like I'm really organised or I'm a good communicator.

17:59
I work well under pressure.

18:00
And it just sounds like people are either like reciting what's on their CV or what they think they should say in a job interview or what's on their LinkedIn profile.

18:09
And there's something else around strengths which is so interesting is for some reason we've developed this thing where when we think about our strengths, we go, yeah, I'm good at this, but these are my weaknesses.

18:19
We automatically like focus on our weaknesses and, and not on our strengths.

18:24
And so the strengths also are not just what we're good at it.

18:29
It's also about what energises us and what gives us that energy and, and, and all those kinds of things as well.

18:33
And so I've been doing all of this work.

18:36
I was trying to find ways to help people to uncover or, or to lean into their strengths more.

18:41
So we can look at not just identifying our strengths, really understanding them, getting to grips with them, and then figuring out how we can stretch our strengths, how we can lean into them, do more of the things that we're good at, but give us energy, for example.

18:55
So the strength Star is a tool that I developed and there's five points to the star.

19:02
And it's not about creating 5 new strengths.

19:05
They are like 5 spotlights that we can shine on our strengths to help us to uncover a depth and breadth of understanding about our strengths more than just the kind of generic phrases like I'm a good communicator.

19:17
So the five points of the strength Star are strength energy.

19:20
So what is the thing that lights you up and gives you lots of energy?

19:25
The sweet spot, your strength sweet spot, and I call this your fizzy brain zone.

19:29
When you're like challenged and not overwhelmed, that your brain is fizzing.

19:34
And there can be overlap between these things as well.

19:36
That's important to notice.

19:37
So sometimes people find there's an overlap between their strength energy and their strength sweet spot.

19:41
And that just is information.

19:43
It's not a bad thing.

19:46
And another point on the start is your strength expertise.

19:48
So this is like your thing.

19:50
It doesn't mean you have to be.

19:52
It has to be your specialist subject or mastermind, or you have to have an encyclopaedic knowledge about.

19:57
It is about the thing that you could happily talk about for hours, the thing that really excites you.

20:01
It could be anything from crochet to sport to something to do with your professional life.

20:07
It really doesn't matter.

20:10
The another point on the start is your success strength.

20:13
So this is what makes you feel accomplished.

20:15
It's what gives you that warm glow of pride or makes you want to message your partner or your best friend immediately to tell them about this really cool thing that's happened.

20:24
And the last one is your perceived strength.

20:27
And this is what other people think of you.

20:30
And this again, it's information gathering about your strength.

20:33
People find this one quite uncomfortable.

20:35
So you can identify this by asking other people what they think your strengths are.

20:40
Or you can look at things like what do people consistently come to you for?

20:43
Like what do people always ask you for?

20:45
Like either at work or in your personal life?

20:47
Are you the go to person for something?

20:49
It gives you a really valuable insight into your strengths.

20:54
And she won't mind me telling this story, but my Co-founder, Anna for Esteem, we were doing some of this work in a coaching programme that we run.

21:01
And I made a comment to her about the fact that I really admire her creativity.

21:07
And it's not something that's one of my strengths at all.

21:09
So I often in a partnership, when you're Co-founders, you sort of lean into each other's strengths a little bit more.

21:15
And she sort of immediately dismissed it like, oh, I'm not creative at all.

21:18
That's not you know, anything for me.

21:20
But she was looking at it very much in her view of stereotypical creativity, not what like her creativity was.

21:29
And she's now sort of lent into that a little bit more and owns that.

21:32
And she started to define and redefine what creativity means for her and sort of think about that as something that she really brings to the table and, and, and is a strength.

21:40
So what the strengths are, allows us to do is look at strengths from different angles to get this fuller picture.

21:46
And it allows us to think about what energises us, what our authentic strengths are that feel natural, not just what we're competent at or what we think our strengths should be.

21:55
And actually it creates a positive feedback loop because if we can identify our strengths and think about what we want to do more of, if we do it more, it makes you better at it and it makes you happier ultimately.

22:07
So thinking about the context of resilience, this becomes really important because it feeds that electricity into your dimmer switch, as it were.

22:17
Yes.

22:18
And until I did the exercise in your book, you mentioned, right, write down your top three strengths, what you think they are.

22:25
So I wrote them down.

22:26
And then when I read on to the book, he said, does it energise you?

22:29
Does it actually light you up?

22:31
And I thought, I don't think they do.

22:35
So I kind of went back to the drawing board, what actually lights me up, and so have revisited my top three strengths.

22:43
And you're so right.

22:45
If they actually make you feel good about yourself, if they actually energise you, it helps with the whole resilience and it's a useful tool.

22:56
And I think part of this whole thing, I talk about becoming more confidently, comfortably you in the book and you being the generic you that that's kind of the aim.

23:05
It's not to be somebody that we're not.

23:08
It's about finding ways to build our resilience so that we're stronger when we need to call upon our resilience in a way that's authentically ourselves.

23:17
That also matches whatever, you know, busy life you lead.

23:21
But it makes me really happy that you did that Bev and you found value in it.

23:25
Honestly, that makes me make genuinely makes me so, so happy.

23:30
Oh, now, you touched on this before, but I'm going to quote something from the book now.

23:36
Friends should be radiators, not drains. Discuss.

23:41
Oh, that sounds like an academic essay, but I, I love that phrase.

23:48
Yeah.

23:48
And when I was, it's like 20 years ago, I first heard this phrase, and it was my friend's grandma imparted this Pearl of wisdom.

23:56
And it has lived in my brain ever since.

23:58
And I have quoted it liberally and actually it's become one of the cornerstones of this work.

24:04
And we, we touched on it before when you, when you gave your story about when you, you needed to be resilient.

24:10
Bevan, it's this idea of we don't have to be lone wolves.

24:15
And the people we surround ourselves with are so, so important.

24:19
Now I'm going to caveat here and say there are some relationships that we have that we have no control over.

24:24
So, you know, you can't choose some relationships that you have, but I'm sure anybody listening can think about the friends or the people in their lives that give them energy.

24:36
And there is a profound difference between nourishing and depleting relationships.

24:42
A nourishing, energising, supportive relationship can come in many different shapes and sizes.

24:48
It could be to do with shared humour, daily check ins, idea sparkers and people who you don't see for a super long time and you pick up where you left off.

25:00
I mean, my, the girls that I went to university with and live with at university, there's seven of us and we've all got partners and children.

25:07
We're outnumbered by children by a long way now in, in the friendship group.

25:12
So seeing each other is, is really tricky to organise.

25:16
But when we do, it's literally like, you know, we pick up where we've left off and I leave that interaction just feeling so absolutely energised.

25:25
And it's, it's so important.

25:27
These are the radiators in your life.

25:29
And when you spend more time with radiators, it just again, it gives you that energy and that that positivity, but also it lays the foundation for the relationship so that if you do need to call on that friendship or relationship or whichever form it may take, you're able to do so.

25:45
And so Bev, when you said about what happened to you and there were lots of people that supported you during that really difficult time.

25:51
These were your radiators who really came through for you.

25:54
And, and actually, it was really nice to hear that they were radiators, you know, good people in the world who weren't people you already had a relationship or a friendship with.

26:03
The drains, however, are people who deplete energy.

26:07
They leave you feeling exhausted.

26:10
I've had people in my life who thrive on drama or have like a glass half empty perspective.

26:16
And, and, and this isn't about a judgement.

26:18
Like I'm not saying they're bad people.

26:21
You know, the same person can be a radiator for one person and a drain for another.

26:26
But it's really important to recognise that you don't have to necessarily have relationships with those people or spend a lot of time with those people if they don't have a positive impact on your life.

26:37
Because if you're expanding an enormous emotional energy to engage with these people, it's not something that's actually going to make you stronger and fuel your resilience.

26:45
Wait for when you need to call on it.

26:47
And in the book, I tell a story about a lady that my husband had to interact with relatively infrequently, but, and it wasn't a meaningful relationship by any strange, but when he saw this lady, it was literally like he'd had his soul sucked out of him by a dementor from Harry Potter.

27:04
It was, it was quite incredible.

27:06
And again, she was, I got on with her really well.

27:08
She's a really nice lady.

27:10
But it was just that that interaction between those two people just didn't work.

27:14
And so it's about trying to invest in your radiators and managing your drains.

27:19
I'm not saying to get rid of people at all.

27:21
The people around you form your resilience context.

27:26
So I like to see it as like your radiators fill your energy tank.

27:29
And so just choosing to be around those people, finding those people kind of helps to build this resilience ecosystem, which is really important.

27:38
It is, it's kind of tricky managing drains, isn't it?

27:43
It's not easy.

27:43
So it's not easy and you know, it's, it's, it's something on a very personal level.

27:49
I talk about sort of an inner circle of trust.

27:51
And so I have a very small, tight knit group of people who are in my inner circle.

27:57
And once you're in that inner circle, I would move absolute heaven and earth for you.

28:01
And they're people who energise me and, and vice versa.

28:06
I have a lot of people who are friends, acquaintances, and it's no disrespect to anybody who's who I wouldn't consider to be in my inner circle, but it, I'm, I, I actively think about those relationships and how I manage those relationships.

28:19
It's, it's not necessarily kind of going in blind as it were.

28:23
And when it comes to managing drains, it's about understanding where you're at in terms of do you have the capacity to interact with that individual, if you have the choice around that, of course.

28:33
But also, you know, are there ways to try and flip the relationship, adding other people into the context where you're seeing that person?

28:42
Or have, you know, in a work context, if you have drains in your team or for people that you have to deal with, thinking about ways of communicating with them that actually sort of lessens that energy drain for you or helps them to sort of perhaps flip the way that they're interacting as well.

29:02
So there's lots of things that that can happen, but it is also being just really self aware around what matters to you and what energises you and what claims you.

29:12
That's great advice.

29:13
So in the beginning we mentioned how many hats you had.

29:16
So you are you're a professor, researcher, consultant, writer of the marketing week as well as a mum.

29:24
Which bounces do you use to help you maintain your sanity on a daily basis?

29:30
I mean sanity and daily basis aren't necessarily natural bedfellows in my world, but so there's a couple of things that I use.

29:42
Firstly is around choices.

29:43
So really thinking about the choices that I'm making and being aware of them.

29:49
So rather than automatically just saying yes to things, I try to have a pause and think does this serve me?

29:56
Does this help me?

29:57
Does it help my immediate family?

30:00
Is this something that I actually need to do and be really conscious around the, the choices that I am making?

30:07
Because I find, and I'm sure you will connect with this Bev, that often I put myself at the bottom of my family pile.

30:16
I think about everybody else's needs before my own.

30:19
And you know, there's that saying, you know, you can't pour for an empty cup and, and all that kind of stuff.

30:24
But I really think that there is something really simple about thinking about the choices that we're making and not just automatically saying yes and automatically putting yourself at the bottom of the pile that that's, that's hugely powerful.

30:38
My youngest child is 2.

30:41
She's just turned 2.

30:43
So we, my oldest is five and my youngest is 2.

30:46
So we're kind of coming out of the trenches with the 2 year old a little bit.

30:50
And I'm also starting to feel like I can have a little bit more time where I can spend time with my radiators and, and, and do things like that.

30:57
When you're in the, in the early years trenches, it's, it's kind of hard to do that in, in some ways, But, but you know, really consciously taking the time to spend time with people who energise me and on my radiators is also something really simple.

31:12
And I think on that, the, the key point around this is these bounces and the things that I'm advocating for, they're designed to fit into really messy, busy lives.

31:22
It's, you can be something so ridiculously small, but it can actually have a huge difference.

31:28
And I always think about the idea of progress rather than perfection.

31:33
So it's not about overhauling your life, it's around finding what I call opportunity pockets, places where you can fit in things that are a positive that are going to help you.

31:41
And the core principles around finding things that energise you rather than deplete you are just a really important, particularly when you're juggling motherhood and a career and life and everything else that's going on as well.

31:55
That's great advice.

31:56
So I'm going to ask you a bonus question now, which I asked all my guests at the end of the episode.

32:02
And that is what's a piece of advice you come back to when things get tough.

32:09
I'm going to pick two.

32:10
I can't pick just one.

32:11
So one is the friends should be like radiators and not drones.

32:14
I always come back to that one.

32:17
And the other one is courtesy of my good friend Jackie Jagger, who has a fried egg diagram.

32:24
And it is on this theme of control that I also talk about, but she talks about having spheres of control and influence.

32:32
And so if you imagine having a piece of paper, and in the middle of the piece of paper, you draw a circle, which is your sphere of control, and then you have a circle around that one, which is your sphere of influence.

32:42
And so it's around figuring out what you can control that's within your control.

32:48
If the, if it's something that's worrying you, is it in your sphere of influence?

32:51
Can you influence the outcome or, or what it is?

32:53
And if you can't control it and you can't influence it, then you have to let it go.

32:56
I find that hugely powerful.

32:59
And sometimes I do, you know, just draw out the two circles and think, OK, this thing that I'm worrying about or this thing that's happening or whatever it might be, is it in my control?

33:08
OK, yes or no?

33:09
Is it, can I influence it in some way?

33:11
And if I if I can't, if it doesn't fit on in that fried egg, then it has to be something that I don't spend I'm thinking about and worrying about.

33:18
So, yeah, that's the piece of advice courtesy of the wonderful Jackie Jagger.

33:24
That's great.

33:24
Thank you.

33:25
And where can people buy your book from?

33:28
So the books available on Amazon.

33:30
And I should also mention that there is a little online course coming up called the Resilience Revolution, which goes through some of the core principles around positive resilience and really focuses on the strength style.

33:44
It's super short, it's super actionable, but it really draws down into that strength piece to help people with that.

33:51
But in the book, as you said, there are bounces and there are QR codes where you can download like little worksheets and things to help you from the book as well.

34:00
Yes, I found those QR codes really useful.

34:04
And how can people get in touch with you?

34:07
So you can find me on LinkedIn and Laura Chamberlain, my website is brilliantlybouncy.com and also brilliantly bouncy on some various social media channels.

34:16
But LinkedIn would probably be the easiest place for people to find me.

34:21
Great.

34:22
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Laura.

34:25
Thank you so much for having me, Bev.

34:27
And I just really appreciate your kindness and sharing your story about resilience as well.

34:32
So thank you.

34:33
And I'm really glad the book was useful for you, too.

34:36
Thank you.