Interview with Shreve Gould - Author / Speaker / Resilience Expert

Our next author is Shreve Gould. And Shreve is a master NLP practitioner, master success coach, known for blending intellectual depth with emotional insight. With an executive MBA from Emory University, he brings a strategic approach to fostering resilience. His military career as a major in the US Army instilled a profound understanding of leadership under pressure. And after losing his left leg in 2022, just two years ago, Shreve emerged stronger, inspiring others through professional and personal challenges.

His chapter is called Embracing Resilience in the Midst of Unexpected Challenges and Changes, and he explores how resilience is more than just enduring hardships. It's about adapting and thriving despite adversity. Shreve highlights the role of neurolinguistic programming and building resilience by reframing experiences and removing negative emotions and eliminating limiting beliefs. So Shreve, welcome.

Well, thank you, Michael, and thank you for having me today.

Yeah, it's great to have you here. Tell us first, what inspired you to join this book and to write your chapter?

What inspired me? Well, so what inspired me was other people. What happened to me in 2022 during my health crisis, to go back to that date, it was in July of that year, I was running in the woods. I was a CrossFit athlete. I liked running in the woods and trail running, and I was running at Haw Creek in Cumming, Georgia, and I felt a pain in the middle of my back. And what happened is that in that second, I realized I hadn't seen a cardiologist in years.

The pain wasn't in my front chest or my right side, so it wasn't a heart attack. So I went to the doctor, and after that, ended up getting in for a heart catheterization, which turned into a quadruple bypass, which turned into heparin-induced thrombosis. Then my foot died, I had pneumonia, a whole series of health issues where ultimately I was dying. And the decision to take my leg was not to save my life, but to give me a chance at life. And my family had to make some difficult decisions along the way. And after my leg amputated and came out of that, I ended up having Addison's disease, which is adrenal gland failure and where I don't have cortisol in my system. So there's this whole unexpected event, this what is called the Black Swan event. This is a catastrophic event that changes courses in people's lives.

And how I was resilient out of that, people wanted to know how I was resilient out of that. How did I maintain my mindset? How did I seem to adapt so easily? How did I look at this differently? People wanted to understand this. So what inspired me to do this was people wanting to hear how I became resilient. And resilience is not about enduring. When we grew up in high school, I was taught always to push harder, to swim harder, to push through the pain. All you have to do is push through the pain. And that's enduring, that is suffering, that is not resilience. Resilience is the ability to be flexible, to adjust in extreme periods when there is a choice not to. It is the conscious effort to think through the lens of curiosity, how to become better through this experience.

Yes, that's so powerful. And in your chapter, you emphasize the importance of identity in building resilience. So can you share how shifting one's identity can impact their ability to handle adversity?

Yes, definitely. So, identity is critical because, August 25th, 2022, I had two legs. My identity, I was a highly functioning athlete and I had two legs. The 26th of August, I had one human leg. And so, I remember the first day. I remember the first day as if it was today, of them trying to get me to get out of bed. And the leg I lost actually was my dominant leg. And so, here I was trying to get out of bed. My mind was telling me that I had to lead with my left leg, and it's not there. So right away, I had to shift my identity, right?

Yeah.

My dominant leg was no longer there. I had to now come up with a new identity. And so, in that moment, this is like, "How am I going to do this?" In fact, that was my thought. "How am I going to do this differently?" And so, I had to shift my identity to forever adapting. I'm going to have to figure out this and forever adapt in this process of life, that I'm always going to have to figure out how to move differently. And so, that's the beginning of that journey.

And ever since then, I'm continually learning. And even two years later, I'm continually learning how to adapt with it because it's forever adapting. So that's really the identity. That identity sets a set of beliefs underneath it and drives your potential. And then underneath your potential are your behaviors to support all those things, so it's really critical to have the identity that works. People have wanted to call me disabled, and I'm not disabled. I have a disability, in their mind. It's not a disability to me because I'm forever adapting. So it's important to understand what frame you want to live in, what identity you want that empowers you, versus what other people want to drive their identity or beliefs onto you.

I mean, here's an example. I got a handicap sticker on my car because I have a disability. I am not handicapped in any shape or form, but that sticker gets me closer to the door and makes it easier for me to get back and forth to the car, but I'm far from handicapped. And when I got it, I was only living in a wheelchair, so I needed it. So the thing is, is that we really have to challenge the identities that other people put on us and say, "Is that my identity? Is it really my identity?" And so forth.

For example, ADHD. ADHD is a label. It's not my identity. And so ADHD, it's just like everything else. It says in a scope of things, it tells us that we have a disability. But I'll tell you, ADHD is my superpower, so there's nothing disabling about it. I think differently. I think in 3D. So how many people, it's their realm, their view of the world that makes us different. But that's okay. Everybody's different.

Absolutely. Amen. I love that. And for anybody who thinks that losing a leg makes you disabled, I mean, it might make some people disabled. But I will tell you, I took a trip to Mexico with Shreve and a few other people, and we were in a villa that was right on the water with these amazing rocks, like a giant, giant boulder. And one morning, somebody goes, "Oh my God, Shreve's climbing the rock. Somebody stop him! He's only got one leg. He can't do that!" And I was like, "Relax. He's fine." Because he's either going to climb the rock and prove to himself who he really is, or he's going to find out what his current limit is and he's going to challenge that limit so it's not a limit anymore, right?

Exactly right. Part of that experience, Michael, though, there was a shift, a point and shift. There's always a paradigm shift of a bully for what you're capable of. And I was confined by a set of beliefs that I had that I was lacking the ability to do things. The day that you and I walked to the beach on that first day, you broke a belief about me that it was not safe to do something. And so, from that day on forward, is it's just like, "Okay, so I need to consciously challenge this belief, this limiting belief that I can't do something." And so, I had to constantly challenge, "Why can't I do that? For what reason?" Because it was so instilled in me for the last year that everything, I had to be safer.

Well, the reality is, is that for climbing that rock, the best leverage I had was that freaking artificial leg because it wouldn't break. It wouldn't even bend. So, it was very firm and it actually gave me a lot of support and safety along the way. So I came out of that and everybody looked at my artificial leg and they saw all this scarring on the plastic. Then they go like, "What did you do with it?" My daughter goes to say, "Dad, you got to be more careful about that." And I looked at her and said, "So, you're more worried about the artificial leg than my right leg?"

Right. Well, and here's the funny thing. We had a lot of two-legged people there at that retreat that would never have climbed that rock. And the thing is, like for you, this is my projection, but for you, it's like, well, you've already lost a leg. What worse could happen to you by climbing a rock? And that attitude is called resilience. And unfortunately, the way most people get resilience is through some sort of a malady, some sort of a tragedy happening. I built a lot of resilience in my life because I had a traumatic childhood. What do you say to people who haven't had some sort of a traumatic experience and they lack that resilience, but they need it, they want it?

Well, the hardest thing about resilience is that you're not born with it. It's not a natural ability. It is a function. There's the growth mindset. There's a fixed mindset, there's the growth mindset, and there's a resilient mindset. And the fixed mindset, of course, that person believes that they are fixed in their world. They can't be anything. That is like you can't get any smarter, you can't become more knowledgeable, you can't become anything other than your natural abilities. And the growth mindset says that you can be everything beyond your natural abilities.

And there's athletes who have proven that, from the 5 foot 3 basketball player who played professional basketball. McGee, I believe it was. He was incredible. And if you talk to all the professional athletes, they would say it's the fundamentals. You have to practice the fundamentals over and over and over and over to maintain and build that. So resilience is the same thing. Resilience, you have to practice and is a conscious thing. It's not enduring. It's not pushing through pain. And that's the misnomer. That's actually a fixed mindset.

Now, a resilient mindset does have a component of a growth mindset, because you are growing in everything else. But it is actually what I consider a reactive mindset versus resilient, which is actually a proactive mindset. It's like, what do I need to do to prepare and what do I need to do to get ready and what do I need to glean in myself to be more resilient in the future, from how to perceive. I mean, one of the biggest things I will tell you in this whole thing is reframing. Reframing what people say about you. Right?

Yeah.

I had somebody say it's such a tragedy that I lost my leg. Well, the reality is, is that if I had kept my leg, I would've died. And so, where is the tragedy? In business, we do a lot of two by twos. And if you do a two by two where it's lose leg, keep leg, live or die, and you play out where the tragedy is, there is no tragedy. It doesn't belong there because if I kept my leg, I would've died. And so, that's not even part of it. And then, so if I lost my leg and died, then that's not a tragedy. They did everything they could to save me. If I'd lost my leg and lived, I'm alive. That's not a tragedy. Well, I hope it's not. And the other thing is, is that keeping my leg and living was such a small probability. That one occurred, so it's really not a tragedy.

I love it. So we are here today in support of our new book, Inner Revolution: Embracing Change to Achieve Greatness. Our launch is today and tomorrow. If you get the book before 11:59 p.m. tomorrow, December 8th, then you're going to get $1,000 in free gifts, valuable gifts. And those gifts, by the way, include courses, audio programs, hypnosis recordings, eBooks. There's all kinds of great content that you're going to get as thanks for helping us during this launch. And so, Shreve, if people want to work with you one on one, or if they just want to connect with you and follow you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Well, the first thing they can do is follow me on social media @2bresilient, the number two, the letter B, and resilient. And you can follow me on socials and so forth. And then, on top of that, we'll be launching 2bresilient.com soon, and that's the best way to connect with me and to work with me.

And share a little bit, maybe 30 seconds of how you help people. What is it that you do to work with people?

Well, one of the things I've found is that people are typically in a stuck, stopped, or stalled state. And in that initial stopped, stuck, or stalled state, I'm really great at helping people break through that barrier. And so, that's shifting their mind, breaking some limiting beliefs, or actually limiting decisions, and really breaking through those states and shifting their mind to move forward, so that's that resilient mindset I help build.

I love it. So again, the book is Inner Revolution: Embracing Change to Achieve Greatness. Shreve's chapter is Resilience in the Midst of Unexpected Challenges and Changes. Thank you so much, Shreve.

Thank you.