The 28th episode was dedicated to the Joy Recipe Ingredient Emotional Wellbeing. I was pleased to discuss with our guest Rachel Druckenmiller and have her perspective about the Joy Superpower of Resilience. As the CEO of UNMUTED, a training and development company, Rachel is on a mission to humanize the workplace by igniting resilience, connection, engagement and compassion in organizations, associations and their leaders and teams. Inspired by her two parents being entrepreneurs, she developed expectations for work to be something purposeful, enjoyable, fulfilling…. She’s now dedicated to creating spaces for other people to feel that way about work.
In the midst of going through a hard thing, there is a capacity to grow
Her personal journey led her to learn how to be more resilient. When growing up, Rachel was a shy and timid person. She learned to unmute herself, and is now passionate about being a catalyst to help other people unmute themselves! To illustrate this and give us the experience, she interpreted live on our show the beautiful song Let it be from the Beatles with her delightful voice.
Rachel identified three extremely challenging situations which taught her considerably about resilience. First, she went through a burn out in 2017. A few years later, the launch of her own company was challenged by the covid outbreak. Finally, she was knocked down by a truck while on a run with her husband, and fractured her back.
“Most people don’t give themselves permission to process, and so it gets suppressed”
Rachel Druckenmiller
In all these experiences, she learned about her capacity to get through hard situations. When literally being knocked down, she had to learn to get off the ground. To rise again. Therapy was essential for her in the process. What also really helped her was to search out stories of incredibly resilient people. She used that as a way to encourage herself.
This reminded us of one of our past episodes Coping with pain, with Terry Tucker. Terry said: “we’re all going to have pain in our life, but we can choose whether to suffer or not”.
Very few people want to turn the mirror to themsleves
Which can damage relationships, and be harmful in the workplace. She thus guides teams to cooperate, communicate better, by inviting them to look into the mirror, develop a self-awareness and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Her ultimate aim is to connect people with each other, trigger their engagement and sense of compassion for a better team dynamic.
Valuing honesty above all, she doesn’t hesitate to lose business if team leaders aren’t willing to play the game and learn themselves to be resilient. As she faces prejudices on the wellness industry in her work, she loves to convert the sceptics. She gives them an experience by creating an inviting space, where she fosters connection and relevance for people, so that they find value in it.
Her top three tips to become more resilient are:
- Invest in your relationships! You don’t become stronger through standing on your own. Resilience is rooted in meaningful relationships that have mutual support, curiosity, care, love, compassion…
- Give yourself the permission to feel. For this, she recommends the book Permission To Feel by Marc Brackett, to better understand, express and process emotions.
- Find what gives your life meaning. When situations arise, you get to choose how you respond to them!
“It’s ok to need people, to let them know that you need them, to be willing to receive the love and support that they want to give you and to have the courage to ask for what you need.”
Rachel Druckenmiller
Rachel posts inspirational videos and other content on LinkedIn. Follow her there and on her website www.UnmutedLife.com, where you can download her resilience toolkit. Watch here on our Youtube channel the whole video recording for this podcast!
Thanks a lot for your interest! You can follow the Art and Science of Joy on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. Remember to subscribe to the podcast from Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or Captivate, for example, for more episodes on Joy Superpowers, to inspire and empower you to live a more joyful life.