Neurological Practices to Boost Resilience with Bonnie Blueford
//What can we do when we feel emotionally triggered and bumped out of our best selves by the stress of the day (or the year)? In this episode Bonnie Blueford and Andrea discuss how to improve our individual resilience and help others, as well.
Bonnie Blueford is the founder of The Blueford Group, a communications and coaching organization dedicated to helping leaders lead resiliently.
She offers a proven framework and integrates coaching into all she does. She works in defense, education, healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industries and is a contributing writer in healthcare and other industry publications.
She is a certified ICF coach and is the Communication Director for ICF Maryland. Most recently, she was certified as a teacher of the Community Resiliency Model.
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Transcript:
Hey there! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me, Bonnie Blueford.
Bonnie, it is good to see you. I’m so glad that you’re here with us today!
Bonnie Blueford: Oh, it is great to be here! Thank you for inviting me!
Andrea: I have so enjoyed every interaction that we’ve had. You are one of those just warm, genuine, deep people that I feel an immediate connection with. And so, I feel like our audience is just in for a real treat today.
Bonnie Blueford: Oh, I hope so. Yeah, I’ll give it everything I got for them.
Andrea: Today, I want to talk a little bit about trauma and what we’ve been experiencing with the pandemic, and all of those difficult things. But let’s start with, you know, what do you bring to the table? What is your background and experience and why do you care about this kind of stuff? So, why don’t you start with that?
Bonnie Blueford: Well, first off, I think the thing that I care deeply the most about is people. So, I think I’ve been really lucky person, that my career has allowed me to really do a lot with people and build cultures, build leaders that can really inspire cultures – you know, the people in their cultures, kind of reaching the hearts and the minds of people. So that’s kind of what I spent my career doing for many, many years.
About five years ago, I decided to retire from that long, long career and started out on my own. And I’m really kind of an extension of, you know, really helping people. So, building cultures and getting in there with the leaders and looking into how do you build resilience, how do you build trust in your teams? You know, because at the end of the day, it’s really all about the people that come to work every day. And it’s all about how they go home to their families and the communities that they live in and if work is good, that helps all of that be good.
Andrea: And you did this in HR context, is that right?
Bonnie Blueford: I did it more in communications, so I really did the internal and external communications. But I had the great fortune of being in workforce development for a period of time, where I got to do leadership development, mentoring, career development, knowledge- training, and all of the really cool stuff that is really valuable to people. So, I think the combination of the coaching – I do a lot of coaching – the communications and the development of leaders and people is kind of a real nice, like a unique blend, to really help people.
Andrea: I’m kind of curious, have you ever seen? I mean, I know none of us have seen a pandemic before. But in your experience working in corporate, helping people, communicating, helping make sure that the communication is, you know, appropriate, or, you know, when crises have come up and things. Have you ever experienced it where there is such a crisis that affects kind of everybody like this, or at least everybody in your organization?
Bonnie Blueford: You know, I would say, at a time, I did a lot of crisis communications. That’s really an interesting point. When I talk about things later, it was one of those things I don’t even remember I did, but it was life. You just did it. And I would say that there was a time when sequestration was around. I don’t know if you remember sequestration down in Washington, which threatened the lives of a lot of government workers, because if sequestration happened, they may stop work. So that was a very long period of time of really kind of trying to keep your employees feeling good and educated.
Andrea: What was sequestration? I don’t remember that.
Bonnie Blueford: So, I remember sequestration. I probably won’t do a good job of it. But it was just where the government would shut down, so we would not have work. I’d have to go back and, really, I don’t remember it exactly because it was a long while ago.
Andrea: Because you were working for a government contractor?
Bonnie Blueford: Yes. A very large defense company. So that meant programs would shut down, people’s jobs would shut down. And so, people were really, really worried about it, and I remember, we at the time had this phenomenal leader and she talked to people every single day. So, she knew this was a little bit of a long trajectory, right?
I mean, they shut down parks. They shut down so many things during sequestration and she understood that that was almost like a stress, a real stress in her environment. So, every day she wrote them and when we did surveys afterwards, we realized that was key, right? That’s what kept them going. That kept them resilient, you know, I use that word a lot.
But it kept them resilient because they knew that the leadership team was on their side and keeping them educated and informed. And we did not have to go through any of, you know, terrible things over time. And I really have to thank that leadership team for that,
Andrea: Mmm. So, what kind of things were being communicated in those emails that meant so much to people?
Bonnie Blueford: Well, I think her philosophy was it’s all about accountability and caring. And I think her emails talked about, “Here’s where we are”; “here’s the status today”; “here’s what’s going on today”; “here’s what you can expect”; ”here’s what we’re doing”; “here’s how I feel about this.” I mean, she was absolutely phenomenal at that. I was in charge of sending up, you know, sending her note out to 25,000 people, and every day it came through and every day it went out. It was something! I’ll never forget the impact that it made.
Andrea: You know, leaders being transparent like that and not just transparent, but also consistently sharing where they’re at and what’s going on, just people… when people feel like they’re in the dark, that just adds so much more fear and concern to everything else that they’re experiencing. But when they know where you’re at, when they know what’s being done, they can at least rest in today, like those emails would allow you.
Bonnie Blueford: It builds that trust, and it builds that resilient culture. And I think that’s what I, you know, really spend a lot of energy working with leaders, is building the trust and keeping a resilient culture where people are informed, and they feel good when they come to work every day.
Andrea: Anything that you point to or go to to help you, like a framework or a book or some sort of concept that has helped you in training people to be more resilient or helping with that resilience communication and all that kind of stuff?
Bonnie Blueford: Well, that is a great question, because you know, given my background and where I’m going now with leaders and helping them, I decided to explore the Trauma Resources Institute. They have a community resiliency model that they do. So, they have a trauma model but they also have one for the community, which is all about six wellness skills to really help during times of stress.
And so, it’s a resilience model that addresses the nervous system and really helps us, you know, in our research. I’ll just explain it. So, there you have your resilience zone, right? This is where you’re feeling your best self, right? You get up and you’re feeling your best self. But we all know that during the day, we get bumped out of that. At times we get bumped. That’s normal. What isn’t normal is when we get bumped to a place where we can’t really return very easily.
So, for example, they call it “big T” trauma and “little t” trauma. “Big T” trauma is, you know, some of the devastation that we’ve seen – people losing their homes through wildfires, the shootings that we’re watching going on. “Little t” trauma is what we’ve all been living for the past year.
Andrea: Low level anxiety, kind of stuck all the time.
Bonnie Blueford: We got a pandemic. We’ve got political unrest, we’ve got wildfires and environmental things we’re not even sure where to go with, and now Afghanistan. So, we are living in a time that I don’t think we’ve ever lived in before. So, daily, you know, women and families and husbands all trying to teach their children at home and do their jobs.
I mean, I can’t even begin to express how hard that was. I mean, I raised a child and I didn’t have to do that. I can’t even imagine! So daily, we’re getting bumped. But now we’re getting bumped, and we might be anxious. We might be a little depressed, it depends. And so, the wellness skills in the community resiliency model are there to help you instantly get back to your best self. And it may take a couple of times, but even to help your children get back. So, what it does is, it helps you understand. It’s really about neuroscience, retraining your brain.
Andrea: And I find that really fascinating because I remember back when I was a young mom, and I was not getting enough sleep and things like this. And I was feeling really bad about myself and how I was as a mom. And then I started to realize that I wasn’t being set up for success.
Bonnie Blueford: Oh my heavens, yes, that’s so true. And so, families now, I’m sure they don’t feel set up for success.
Andrea: Because when you’re so tired and everything….
Bonnie Blueford: And all of this, the pandemic happened overnight in March. Everyone had to regroup. There was not a chance to plan. So I really give families so much credit, and I really think that the six wellness skills, understanding your nervous system and tracking the sensations in your body helps. So, what the Trauma Resource Institute says is you want to track the sensations in your body.
Let’s say you’re feeling [unsettled]. You’ve got the kids around, it’s a very stressful situation. You’ve got to jump on a meeting, and you stop and pause. It’s really about pausing for a minute, right? Take a drink of water, count from 20 backwards and say, “What am I feeling and where am I feeling that sensation? Am I feeling it in my stomach, and then is it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral?”
If it’s unpleasant, it’s time to kick in one of those wellness skills that they offer to help you move back to your best self. And it’s amazing, I do it with my mom a lot. Like elderly, I think the elderly can use it a lot. So, you’ll find, I mean your audience cantest it sometime if you’re willing to do it.
Andrea: Well, let’s do it now. Can you sort of guide us through that? I think that would be really cool.
Bonnie Blueford: I can. So, if everybody can maybe just close your eyes for a minute, just take a minute and pause. Just think about where you are, what you’re doing, and notice in your body where you’re feeling any sensations. And it can be anywhere. So, find that place and notice it and then ask yourself, is it feeling pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral?
So, now that you have that, this is where the six skills come in. So, I can take you to one of them and we could walk through while we’re in this mode. If you’re in a chair, or maybe find a chair and put your feet on the ground and put your hands on the armrest or on your lap and put your back, and ground yourself just for a minute, like just get grounded. Do you feel a change? Do you feel a chance to kind of pause and come back to your best self? And do you feel that? Do you feel, “Okay, okay, I got this”? If you don’t, then it’s worth spending a little more time there in that grounding. Or, shifting to another wellness skill, which could be counting 20 backwards, taking a glass of water.
If you ever notice in shows when you’re watching TV and the news, do you ever notice when someone takes a drink of water when they’re answering questions in a media event. They’re taking a glass of water so they can take a second to get back to their best self because they’re starting to lose, they’re getting bumped out of that resilience and they’re starting to feel it. “Okay, I can’t answer this question.” They’re starting to feel a little anxiety that enables them to come back.
There’s another great skill, there’s six of them, called a Resource. So, a Resource and I want to read this if I can: “a Resource is what gives you strength and joy in your life.” It can be a photo; it can be an object that is from a vacation or something very special. So, it’s bringing that resource in front of you, and thinking about it, and letting it take you away for a few minutes.
So, I know for me, I have a picture of my daughter when we were on a vacation in Maine. So, I instantly go back to the fun we had in that picture. And I can come back for a few minutes to my best self. And then, “Okay, I can go on.” If I can’t go on, I go back there a little longer until I feel like “Okay, I got this. I can do it.”
Andrea: It sounds like you’re sort of disrupting the negativity for a moment so that you can readjust and kind of end up on a new path that might be a little more positive.
Bonnie Blueford: And retraining the brain into your resilience, right? Letting the brain know, you know, that’s the neuroscience is that, you know, “I’m going to be resilient for this” and it just helps you. Now, sometimes we can’t be resilient right away. Sometimes we’re just… it’s hard. There’s a lot of things in life where we can’t, and so that, you know, maybe it’s time to reach out to a friend. But these are skills to help you in the moment.
And also, I want to tell the audience if you’re in a neighborhood and there’s a lot of crisis all the time everywhere, these are great skills that you can use with neighbors in a traumatic event that can help them in that moment. The Trauma Resource Institute is deployed all the time to challenging situations just to use these skills to help people.
Andrea: Did they say anything about actually crying and if that’s helpful?
Bonnie Blueford: I think crying is always helpful.
Andrea: I like your answer.
Bonnie Blueford: I think that what they’re trying to do is keep you resilient, you know, get you back to your best self. So, if crying, and we all know if we cry a really good cry, we get back to our best self. We all notice that, you know, it’s all penting up and building up. You have a good cry, and you’re like, “Okay, I got this.” It helps you get right back to that self that can problem solve and make decisions.
Andrea: It kind of reminds me of how I feel, you know, those old wind-up toys, that little key in the back and you just twist it. And you wind it up and then boom, they come out with all this energy and they do whatever they’re supposed to do, the little bunny that’s, you know, pounding on the drum or whatever it is. But sometimes, I feel like I have been tightly wound up.
Bonnie Blueford: That’s it and then bump.
Andrea: And then you took the release.
Bonnie Blueford: You’ve been bumped. You’ve been bumped out of your resilience zone. And so, these skills, if you keep doing them, you learn the art of coming back quicker.
Andrea: Mm hmm.
Bonnie Blueford: You’re training your brain to come back to your resilient self, quicker.
Andrea: And I think that there are times when like, a drink of water or the things that you’re talking about, you know, just to have that chance to think or whatever. All those things that you’d mentioned are so helpful and then there are times when I just need to solve a little bit.
Bonnie Blueford: Yes.
Andrea: Because of who I am, I have to cry a little bit.
Bonnie Blueford: Yeah.
Andrea: And then when I do that, I usually eat because I get angry, and I have learned that sadness is the “underneath” of my anger. And so, when I get angry, I asked that question, “What am I actually sad about?” But you have to stop, you really have to stop to do that, like you’re talking about.
Bonnie Blueford: You pause, and notice. You really notice about yourself.
Andrea: Yeah.
Bonnie Blueford: And you’re noticing about yourself, and I think even with, you know, I spoke about the elderly, but I think even with children, there’s a great one called “shift and stay.” And the young woman there at the Resource Institute has a young daughter, and so she falls and hurt herself and banged up a knee, and she instantly deploys these to shift her. So, she’ll talk about her other knee, “Oh my gosh, look at your other knee.” And even for a second that little girl can feel a little bit better. It just gives her a chance to kind of get her best self back. So, I love that best self, you know.
One of the other skills is called “Help Now.” And I’ll mention a free app at the end that can really help people, and “Help Now” really is for – the veterans approved it. They put it on their app; they said, “Put it up front: Help Now, is ‘I need this immediately.’ ” And that is where, you know, it’s like drinking that glass of water, counting 20 backwards. There’s a whole list of them, and the veterans say that it really helps them.
So, you know, in your families and for yourself just that quick look at what they are and picking one can always, even just taking a walk outside, can just make such a big difference. And I think helping each other, you know, as a leader, if you’re in a room and you notice one of your employees, you’re just seeing some stress, you know, just turn the meeting over to someone else and ask them, “Hey, can you just take a walk with me, I just want to talk about something.” You can just help an individual so much by just being there, simply. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, just a simple little act can make a really big difference for people.
Andrea: Right! I really like that idea because I think I’ve seen that a lot and I hadn’t really thought of it quite like this. But when you see somebody else that seems a little tightly wound or whatever it might be, and you’re able to even just touch them or talk to them for a moment so that they kind of come out of that fog that they’re in or whatever, I have seen that work. That’s really interesting.
Bonnie Blueford: Yes. And it just gives them a minute, but eventually if they can start to, the minutes get longer. And then you understand deeply how to move back to your best self. These work. It’s amazing because I use them all the time. And even for myself, personally, I understand how to retrain my brain and move back. And it’s fascinating to me.
Andrea: Yeah, it is. I’m curious, have you experienced, or do you have any kind of examples? You were talking earlier about “big T” trauma, “little t” trauma. Can you share with us any examples of that?
Bonnie Blueford: I can, you know. I can share a personal one if that’s okay to share.
Andrea: Of course, yes.
Bonnie Blueford: I don’t think I knew it was resilience when I was young. I didn’t understand that at all. I think that’s why I love it so much now, because I get it. I get it even more. But I had the fortune of being with my best friend who lived “little t trauma” for her whole – for many, many years. She had a very challenging home life. She was 12 or 13, and she was taking care of her father, her four-year-old brother and her 80-year-old grandfather.
And I think I learned about resilience from her. It was phenomenal, the way this woman continued. And I didn’t even realize we were building in these skills. Like, we would always walk. If it got stressful at home, we go take a long walk. If it got stressful, we would, you know, get a drink of iced tea and sit on the porch and watch the traffic go by. I didn’t even know we were doing things that really were helping her, because I think she knew. I think she greatly understood that she needed to find a way back to her best self.
And so, I think this has all come full circle for me, watching her, learning from her how she managed to navigate it through this life and then seeing this community resiliency model, it just feels full circle for me. And I think I’ve seen it work so beautifully in life.
Andrea: How young were you guys when you think you first started employing these kinds of tactics to help with the “little t” trauma stuff that was going on?
Bonnie Blueford: I think we were probably thirteen, fourteen. We would walk home from school. You know, we always found ways to shift. I think we shifted constantly. I do. And I don’t think I knew that then but as I look back, I realize how much we shifted off of that, you know, what her challenges were. Just even for a little while, that enabled her to go back stronger, or even just to go back and, you know, to do the things she needed to do in her life. She was amazing.
Andrea: What made her so amazing?
Bonnie Blueford: I think her attitude. You know, I think she just picked up every day and kept going and believed in the good and she was resilient. I can’t even put another word on it. Like she understood deeply that, you know, this is my life and I’m going to go after this and I’m going to do it and I’m going to find a way to stay as well as I can through it all.
Andrea: Why do you think that sometimes we push back on the idea of breaking away or calming down and thinking about something else or using some of these tactics that you were talking about? Why do some of us not always want to do that?
Bonnie Blueford: Well, you know, I don’t know if I’m an expert at answering that. I’ll just try to go on my own. I think sometimes we’re living in pain or we’re living in fear and it’s hard to move out of it. I do think sometimes it’s very hard to move out of what we know, and we think we know it so well. We have to retrain our brain to believe in wellness and wholeness and that we can be resilient. And I think it depends on, you know, how you grew up and what influences you then and what’s influencing you today. And so, it’s kind of a mind shift a little bit and an awkward one. I think very awkward, right? To feel good is awkward for a lot of people.
Andrea: Hmm, that’s interesting.
Bonnie Blueford: Feeling good is awkward for a lot of people. And so, maybe they don’t feel like they deserve to feel good and resilient. I mean, as we all know, as women, we’ve grown up, you know, with that not enough kind of thought process, right? You know, do more, do more, and do more. And so, to be resilient and feel good, that’s not, you know, always accepted by society. So, I think there’s a little bit of that, I’m sure.
Andrea: Hmm, sure. I can think of at least another one that I can relate to would be wanting to distract myself or to solve the problem instead of allowing the solution to be easy. You know what I mean, like, I just want to go through all the mental gymnastics in order to…
Bonnie Blueford: “Cause we’re problem solvers; solve it, solve it, solve it.
Andrea: Yeah.
Bonnie Blueford: Whereas, I’m curious when you say that. I’m very curious if our problem solving would look much different, if we were feeling more resilient all the time. Maybe we would problem solve differently. So, I love that.
Andrea: Yeah, you know, with creativity, and there’s like this zone where you get into where, you know, they talk about some of the best ideas come when you’re on a walk or when you’re taking a shower, or that sort of thing. And because your mind is just sort of free flowing and your brain is able to just sort of make these connections naturally without trying.
And I think I feel sometimes that I have to put the effort in, like, I need to figure this out. And instead of relaxing into it, instead of getting into that place where I could flow, I think that I…there are times when I definitely just try to push through. And I don’t know if that’s partly my middle-class mindset from growing up and everything or Midwest, “Pull up your bootstraps and get it done.”
Bonnie Blueford: I really love this because I understand that “Yeah, just pull up your bootstraps and get it done,” like problem solving, get it done. But, you know, I just got certified in a new 360, that was new to me, called The Leadership Circle. And there it is, right? The Leadership Circle talks about reactive behaviors versus creative behaviors. And so, as leaders, being reactive has gotten leaders in a great place. But what got them there won’t get them to their next place. And I think that’s all part of it, too.
So, what got us here, problem solving, may not get us where we need to go in the future because of all the things that we are up against now. We are in a new world, and I think it’s going to call for some new ways of looking at our resilience and how we move through that.
And I think that Leadership Circle is so spot on of our reactive behaviors we’ve been living in. They’ve worked, right, because we’ve got good lives. We’re problem solving. We’re doing that and that but now there’s a whole new world order. Maybe we need to move into some more resilient and different mindsets of “How do we move this all forward as an individual, for our families, our communities, and ultimately the world?”
Andrea: Yeah, you know, I’ve been thinking lately about just how big the problems are. I mean, it’s just been weighing on me a little bit more lately, I guess. And what do I do about that, and I think what I’ve been thinking lately, and what’s been kind of on my heart lately has been that it’s in the individual interactions between people where we actually delight in another person, and they feel good.
They feel loved, they feel connected, they feel like they matter. And then they can go off and do something, who knows what, or you know that smiling at people instead of frowning, while I’m driving by, you know, anything’s like that. I’m like, maybe there’s more if we could do more of this sort of thing for each other. Maybe there’s that part of that relational aspect of, let me just touch you for a second. Maybe just maybe you’ll pull back and be able to get back to that resilience that you were talking about.
Bonnie Blueford: Yes. Yeah, I think resiliency is, I know, it’s a word or phrase, like, “Oh, you have resilience.” And a lot of people feel like, “Well, I don’t want to, you know, what is this resilience?” Maybe I just want to feel bad for a little while. And I agree, you know, it is okay, to feel bad and to let it in, all of that. So, I’m not saying oh, my gosh, you have to be resilient. No, you have to know yourself.
But if you really want to retrain yourself, your mind, to go a little more to the resilience, these wellness skills, I think, can really help you get there. And I do think we are in a new world order, and I see myself as a very resilient person. And even I’m like, “Whoa, this is going a little over that, you know, resilience that I can’t keep up and I am but it’s, yeah.” And then we have demands on our life, with our children, our parents. You know, it’s a lot.
Andrea: And I think, even though we did take a break for a little bit, we kind of jumped right back into all the things. And it’s almost like our capacity has decreased, but yet we’re still trying to do as much as we were always doing.
Bonnie Blueford: I think you are spot on with that. And I do think that we go along and we think that things are getting a little better. We’ve, you know, got the vaccines. With the pandemic, we feel like something, and then another big event happens in the world. And so, we feel like we’re getting somewhere and then we’re not, getting somewhere and then we’re not. And I think that is really a very stressful thing for even kids to be part of, right? Kids in school, children have…
I know that they use this a lot with children and it’s very, very effective. You know, think of a screaming kid, right? They don’t even know what to do with their emotions and they’re screaming. What if you can just give them a glass of water or you can just let them count 20 backwards? Maybe not all the time, but I think sometimes, you know, even that can help a small child who’s struggling with all the stress they’re feeling in their homes and then in the world.
Andrea: Yeah. I have so much more compassion now than I did I think when I first started parenting for when kids get angry, because like I said before, I’ve learned over the last 10 to 15 years that when I am angry, I’m actually sad. So, when I see kids get angry now, I’m like, “Oh, boy, what’s going on?” You know, not so much, you’re just trying to defy me, and I’m going to put you in your place, but more of that like, “Oh, shoot, what could be going on?” And it’s hard to get them to talk. They don’t always tell you.
Bonnie Blueford: No, but you could ask them. I mean, if they’re young enough, teenagers are going to say, “Don’t. No, no, no, no, Mom,” but you can ask them. “So, where are you feeling this anger in your body?” Like help them see maybe where it’s coming from, right? And then maybe it’s in their heart, maybe it’s in their gut, and then kind of helping them understand how their body can work for them, you know.
“It’s okay to feel it there, so tell me more about…” Let’s say they feel it in their tummy, “So tell me more. What are you feeling in that tummy? What color is it?” You know, “What does it look like to you?” And helping them, even that action can help them stop thinking about that or help them think about it in a different way, and you might learn something from them. You’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I had no idea.”
Andrea: Interesting.
Bonnie Blueford: Yeah. Identifying colors for kids is great. You know, “If a circle is on your belly, what color would it be?” And they might say “Black.” And then you’re like, “Whoa, okay, we got some serious stuff going on here.” So, helping them, yeah, I think it’s a creative way to help them.
Andrea: Interesting. Interesting. So, Bonnie, would you be willing to tell us a little bit more about the app that you were talking about and where people can find you?
Bonnie Blueford: Yeah, absolutely. So, the app is called iChill. It is free on the app store, on your iPhones, or on computer. But you can also go out to the Trauma Resource Institute’s website and download it from there, and that might help you learn a little more about what they do. But it’s free, and it will walk through, I can tell you here what it’s going to walk through for you. It has “Help Now” at the corner. It’s also in Spanish and different languages because this community resilience model is used globally worldwide.
They have touched so many people worldwide, especially in, you know, places like Haiti right now. This is something that the Trauma Resource would go and help people with, to help them move through the trauma they’re experiencing in their life right now. So, it’ll give you an iChill overview. It’ll talk about the resilient zone before, like when you get bumped. It will tell you the skills that you can use, the six wellness, and then it’ll tell you the resilient zone after you use those skills. And then it has some images that you can use for resiliency.
So, it is really an all-encompassing app. My mom has it on her phone and I’m telling ya, she goes out there and she’s 85 years old. “I went to the app today,” she says.
Andrea: Oh, I love it.
Bonnie Blueford: So, I think you know, it’s something that is just incredibly helpful. And if anyone wants to reach out to me, oh my gracious. The Blueford Group is my business. My email is bonnie.bluefordgp.com. And anyone can reach out to me, look me up, I’m on LinkedIn, as well. And I’d love to hear from anyone and anything I could help them with, I’m here.
Andrea: bonnie@bluefordgp.com.
Bonnie Blueford: So, it’s Blueford Group, but you know when you’re trying to go out and get a name, you know how hard that is. So, it’s GP for bluefordgp.com. And actually, it’s on LinkedIn, if you go put Bonnie Blueford, I’m probably the only Bonnie Blueford out there so my website will be there, too.
Andrea: Bonnie has so much experience and wisdom to share. So, I’m really grateful that you did that today with us. And do you have any last parting words for somebody who really wants to be a Voice of Influence?
Bonnie Blueford: Well, yes, I think we all have something in us to influence others, and I think tapping into that wellspring of us as human beings, you know. If you have something that you can influence another person, you know, please do it. And I love what you’re doing, Andrea, I love that you have this Voice of Influence and you’re sharing stories, and I think the resiliency to be able to talk about that today.
And you know, I do want to add, one of the greatest things I learned about resiliency, too, that I didn’t mention earlier was back in 2016. I talked to you about my friend. I actually made the decision to end a 36-year career, and at the same time, my best friend, the resilient one, passed away at the age of 57. I woke up on January 1 with no work friends and not my best friend. And I would tell you that I had to learn the art of resiliency. I really did. And it’s just been such a great journey. I’ve had so many people that have influenced me. So, if there’s anything I can do for anyone on your call, please reach out.
Andrea: Thanks so much, Bonnie for being a Voice of Influence for our listeners.
Bonnie Blueford: You’re welcome!