Interview with Sandy Davis: "My daily resilience practices have actually saved my life a bunch of times."

Interview of Sandy Davis by Atieno Fisher on April 21, 2008

Excerpt: I realized that the daily practices I was doing served to generate a vital inner energy that served to amplify and extend my own ability to be resilient. In other words, I discovered the “proactive” side of resilience. I realized that before you can be optimally resilient, you first have to become “zillient.” Then, when adversity or change challenges you, you will be primed to be “re-zillient” or resilient.

Sandy Davis holds a PCC Certificate (Professional Certified Coach) from the International Coach Federation and has been a full-time professional coach for over 12 years. For decades, he has been experimenting with various ways to develop personal resilience. He has self-published two instructional manuals on this subject, the most recent of which is entitled: “Zillience! How to Succeed in Business without Really Frying.”

In April, I had the opportunity to interview Sandy about his work and his thinking on the subject of personal resilience. I was reminded again that the people we often consider extraordinary and elevate as somehow different (more heroic or saintly) than ourselves are actually people just like the rest of us, who make choices that are just as open to each of us. In the transcript of that interview that follows is a description of Sandy's story and how he came to evolve the three resilience-sustaining practices he now teaches others.


AF: How did you become interested in developing personal resilience?

SD: At the age of six, I stumbled on the need to develop my own resilience experientially, long before I knew the word “resilience” existed. After the sudden and unexpected break-up of my parents’ marriage, I found myself in circumstances that I didn't like. The world around me abruptly transformed from being safe and predictable to unknown and unpredictable. Suddenly life became threatening. This was a big shock, one that traumatized me in subtle and lasting ways. It let me to feel a need to constantly be “en garde.”

I remember wanting to find a way to make the uninvited adversities that had befallen us go away. I had an intuition that there had to be some way to offset them, to play through the adversities, and to come out the other side of them. I wanted to be more in control of my situation. But no one offered me any help or instruction in how to do this. Back then, I found myself trapped in my own private existential distress.

AF: What were some of the lessons you learned way back then?

SD: The set-up for one of the first lessons I learned about how to “play through adversity” began a year later, when I was in the second grade. I had been labeled as “musically talented,” and was in my second year of private piano lessons. I had a great aural memory and could play melodies back upon just hearing them once. It was also easy for me to improvise around those melodies. I would happily spend hours “noodling” away on the family piano.

Unfortunately, however, I was dyslexic (which was not yet diagnosable back then). My brain was wired up in such a way that reading music was next to impossible. Written notes made no sense to me whatsoever. So I taught myself to compensate for this inability by taking the fullest possible advantage of my auditory memory. After each lesson, I would ask my mother to sight-read my newly assigned pieces for me. Then I would reconstruct what she had played by ear and commit the piece to memory. That was how I bluffed my way through the first two years of piano lessons.

My relationship with my piano teacher became increasingly adversarial. I though of her as “Mrs. Witch” and to this day remember her only by that made-up name. She was determined to have all her students to play every note exactly as it was written. She had no interest in my playing in the assigned pieces in an “approximate” way, and she was even less interested in my improvising those melodies in order to decorate and “improve” them.

We finally came to blows. At the end of my second year of lessons, Mrs. Witch declared to my mother (in front of me) that I was “unmusical and uneducable.” She told my mother that she would do better to spend her money on giving me riding lessons. A week later, I was sitting on top of a horse. I felt wounded, double-crossed, and betrayed. It was as though I had been summarily thrown out of the promise land. My most favorite pastime had been ripped out from underneath me.

AF: Was that the end of your pursuit of music?

SD: No, eight years later, when I was 15, I finally discovered a way to forever heal that wound. I stumbled into the world of traditional folk music. I discovered the recordings of Pete Seeger, the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, and other folk musicians. Here was a world where songs and tunes were learned primarily by ear and then passed along by ear from musician to musician and from generation to generation. This was my idea of heaven on earth.

I jumped headlong into this vibrant world. I knew this time around that no one would ever be able to take my music away from me again. It was mine now. I have continued to thrive in this world of music ever since. I still play traditional dance tunes every day, and this act of making music still reliably nourishes my spirit.

Perhaps more than anything else, it was this formative learning experience that marked the beginning of my figuring out how to bounce back from adversity. It was my first memorable success in reclaiming what I wanted, what I needed, and what I loved. In the process, I discovered the value of daily practice (in this case, playing my five-string banjo every day) and it led me to a first taste of what a delight it is to master something. It also gave me a very positive new identity fragment: “I’m a musician. I play the banjo.”

Having this new identity gave my self-confidence a huge boost. More importantly, it encouraged me to believe that no matter what the setback, it is possible to find a way through it. After having my favorite pastime painfully stripped away when I was seven, I later found my own way to reclaim it. Because I refused to give it up, the wounded part of me finally started to feel whole again.

AF: Were there other lessons in resilience that date back to when you were young?

SD: Yes, I think the roots of my long-standing interest in resilience go squarely back to my formative years. For example, another lesson in dealing with adversity came about through some physical challenges I faced as an adolescent.

When I was 14, I was stricken with rheumatic fever and ended up with scarred heart valves and a residual heart murmur. I was told back then that I would never be able to exercise vigorously. Through high school and college, I was not allowed to play competitive sports. I missed out on the rewarding experience of becoming an athlete.

When I was 23, I took it upon myself to disobey the long-standing advice of my doctors. I was fed up with being so out of condition that I was unable to walk up four flights of stairs without becoming winded and red in the face. Without anyone’s permission, I went out and bought myself a pair of sneakers and a sweat suit and just started running.

At first, jogging a distance of one mile just about killed me. But I liked the payoff of feeling better about myself after I had worked up a good sweat. So I continued to run. Over three months, I gradually worked my way up to running three miles every other day. At that point, I had developed enough stamina to run up four flights of stairs without becoming winded. That was a thrill. And I was reminded again that practice always pays off.

AF: What did you take from this lesson?

SD: I was so impressed by this demonstration of the power of daily practice that I have never stopped exercising vigorously for at least half an hour ever other day. For the past 40 years, I have continuously run 5K every other day, year ’round, or rowed a distance of 7.5K.

AF: That’s an impressive demonstration of persistence. After all those miles, how are your knees?

SD: Up until a few months ago, there were in fabulous condition. Then, unfortunately, in February of this year, I was in a near-fatal car accident in which my right knee was permanently injured. I suddenly had to stop my long-standing practice of running, and it appears now that I may never be able to run again. My injured right knee can no longer tolerate the “concussions” of the running stride. I am grateful, however, that I can still ride a bicycle and I can still row my racing shell. My new goal is to continue doing one or the other of those two sports every other day for the next thirty-plus years, year ’round, until I am 100 years old.

I remain fully committed to exercising regularly because that’s what has continuously strengthened my heart and, in spite of my shaky start as an invalid, that daily habit has enabled me to run a total distance of well over 24,900 miles (which is the circumference of the earth at the equator).

AF: You mentioned to me earlier that you’ve had some recent setbacks. What are those?

SD: When I was 61, my history with rheumatic fever caught up with me. After 40 years of running, my heart finally needed some assistance. Over a period of several decades, my resting pulse had become progressively lower. It finally got too low and I developed symptoms of heart block. Fortunately, I was alert to my symptoms and, on the day when my heart finally needed help, I was fortunate to have a pacemaker hastily implanted in my chest.

The good news is that the pacemaker was implanted just in time, and it fully corrected the heart block problem. In short order, I was able to resume my routine of exercising vigorously for at least half an hour every other day. The bad news is that at the same time I received my pacemaker, a staph infection was also accidentally implanted in me.

That infection “colonized,” and eight months later, it unexpectedly “came back to life” and all but killed me. As a consequence, I had to spend three weeks in two different hospitals. In addition to treating the systemic staph infection, I had to have having two more pacemaker surgeries, one to “extract” my first pacemaker install a temporary replacement, and then a second surgery to implant a new pacemaker and remove the temporary one.

On top of that, I had to endure six weeks of continuous intravenous infusions of antibiotics. More than anything else, the toxic antibiotics nearly killed me. What saved my life were the daily resilience practices I have been doing faithfully for the past several decades. Even as I was in the hospital, they gave me the stamina I needed to “play through adversity” once again.

AF: I know you speak of “doing your daily resilience practices as though your life depends on them.” It sounds like that has proven to be true for you. Is that so?

SD: Yes. My daily resilience practices have actually saved my life a bunch of times. I think it’s fair to say that without them, I wouldn’t be here today. They have pulled me through emotional adversities (such as depression, personal losses, etc.), medical challenges (such as various sports injuries and occasional illnesses), and my fair share of major life upsets (such as divorce, getting laid off from work, failing in business, etc.).

AF: How was it that you started to incorporate these daily resilience practices into your work with your coaching clients?

SD: Based on how valuable these daily practices have proven to be for myself, about 10 years ago I started experimenting with teaching these practices to my coaching clients. The practices proved to be extremely effective in helping them meet the challenges they were facing. I then set about inventing ways to reach more people. Four years ago, I started piloting several group programs. Today I offer both live workshops, and several ongoing phone-based group programs. All of these programs focus on teaching you how to take on and sustain these simple daily resilience practices. I’ve also authored two instructional manuals on this topic.

AF: You’ve clearly spent a long time putting the pieces of this puzzle together. You started way back when you were a teenager. Take us from back then to the present moment.

SD: As a teenager, my experiments in becoming resilient were somewhat haphazard. Fortunately, a few of them produced great results. Over the past 50 years, I have gone on to consciously experiment with all sorts of daily developmental practices. I have sought out ones that had the promise of helping me reach the long-desired state of being prepared to handle whatever challenges and adversities were bound to be on my path. I have tested many different practices. In almost all cases, I have experimented with a given practice for at least five continuous years or longer.

About eight years ago, I reached a point where it felt like I had finally “cracked the code.” I had been searching for a combination of daily practices that would ensure a consistent high degree of personal resilience. I wanted to discover the best, most effective, most affordable, and minimum set of simple daily practices.

Along the way, I came to understand that “resilience” is fundamentally a reactive phenomenon. Only in the moment of facing adversity, do you actually put forward responses that are what we call “resilient.” The question I asked myself was, “In between those moments of making resilient responses, what’s going on?”

That was when I realized that the daily practices I was doing served to generate a vital inner energy that served to amplify and extend my own ability to be resilient. In other words, I discovered the “proactive” side of resilience. I realized that before you can be optimally resilient, you first have to become “zillient.” Then, when adversity or change challenges you, you will be primed to be “re-zillient” or resilient.

AF: So what are the daily practices that generate this energy you call “zillience?”

SD: What I have discovered works best is a combination of three simple daily practices. All three require you to “come back to your senses.” One is focused on developing your mind. The second focuses on developing your body. And the third focuses on developing your spirit.

All three of these practices are what I call “non-cognitive” practices. They are not about thinking. In fact, they are all designed to help you regularly “get out of your cerebral cortex.” They all involve learning “experientially” rather than “cognitively.”

Here’s the magic combination of daily practices that I have found will reliably amplify and extend your natural resilience:

1. The first is a pure centering practice for the mind. It entails learning to shut down the “CPU” (Central Processing Unit) of the thinking brain and focus momentarily on just being without thinking. One simple way to do this is to focus your attention singularly on your breathing. Doing this for just 15 minutes a day is enough to produce desirable changes (such as lowing the level of the stress hormone, cortisol, in your blood, and strengthening your immune system). By teaching yourself how to let go of your thoughts and be completely present in the moment, you can gain a remarkable degree of control over your inner emotional world. For example, you can learn to quickly let go of negative emotional states and induce positive emotional states at will.

2. The second daily practice entails exercising vigorously for an average of 15 minutes a day or 30 minutes every other day. When you regularly exercise “aerobically,” you not only strengthen your heart as a muscle. You also keep the inner workings of your whole body “toned up.” Indeed, regular exercise turns out to be particularly beneficial for your brain.

Without regular exercise, our bodies slowly start to degenerate. With regular exercise, it’s possible to “hold even” as we age. Indeed, at any given moment, no matter how old we are, we can develop our bodies to be stronger, healthier, and more agile. In some truly remarkable ways, regular exercise can actually reverse the normal aging process.

3. The third daily practice is what I call a daily creative practice. Each of us can benefit hugely from having a restorative developmental activity that we pursue every day in some small but continuous ways. You want to choose a creative activity that falls outside the domain of your work, one that tantalizes you to keep on developing your creative self. You want to choose an activity with which you feel a deep and passionate connection. You want it to be something so dear to you that when you take time to pursue it, you can become completely entranced by it. You want it to have the power to bring you back to center you by pulling you far away from everything else in your life that is stressing you. By having such a practice and by doing it for at least 15 minutes each day, you can greatly refresh your spirit.
AF: How long have you been doing these three daily practices?
SD: I’ve been doing a daily creative practice off an on for almost 50 years. I’ve been exercising vigorously for half an hour every other day for over 40 years. And I’ve been doing a daily centering practice for the past 15 years. For the past six years, I have also kept an accountability log in which I record every day how many minutes I spend doing each of these practices.
Based on these logs, I know that on April 1st of this year, I completed 2,100 consecutive days during which time I did not miss my daily centering practice a single time, and during which time I missed my every-other-day aerobic exercise only on a few instances when I was injured or sick. Over the span of the past 69 consecutive months, I have averaged over an hour a day doing my daily creative practice (which happens still to be playing traditional music).
AF: You speak of doing these daily practices as though your life depends on them. How is that so?
SD: These practices have saved my life multiple times. For example, as I was being wheeled into the operating room to receive my pacemaker (and months later when I had to have it extricated surgically), my centering practice really helped to be able to remain calm and receptive. Furthermore, the only way I could survive the painful staph infection I had was to continuously do my centering practice.
Because my creative thinking was all tuned up when I was admitted to the hospital, I was able to maintain the thought clarity and self-confidence required to catch a number of potentially fatal medical mistakes that were made. I was able to stay tuned into my body and trusted that I knew at least as much, and in some cases more, than my doctors knew. Without this confidence in my own processing capabilities and the resulting courage to speak out, I would be dead today. These are some examples of how these daily practices have saved my life.
AF: How about an example of how these practices have helped others in similar ways?
SD: I have seen these practices help others tremendously. For example, several years ago I coached a President and CEO of a manufacturing company over a period of about 18 months. When I started working with him, his life was pretty messed up both professionally and personally. He was on the cusp of getting fired. He was also overweight, out of shape, and highly distractible. His father had died in his 40’s of a heart attack, and it appeared that my client was on track to follow in his father’s footsteps.
By teaching my client how and why to take on a individualized version of these three daily resilience practices, he moved quickly from a place of feeling beleaguered and stressed out, to a place of leading with a genuine warmth of spirit and a new-found agility. He became visibly much more “zillient.”
Three years later, over the Christmas holidays, I unexpectedly received a card from him in which he wrote longhand: “Sandy, thank you for saving my life.”
AF: How is it that you, yourself, have consistently chosen to respond to adversities with such a positive attitude?
SD: Most of my own learning about resilience stems from my wanting to find effective ways to move away from discomfort. I have always believed that if I could learn to self-regulate my own emotions, my own beliefs, and my own actions, I would be able to create a kind of “personal sovereignty.” I would be able to remain free, no matter what my circumstances. I would be able to stay “at choice.” For my whole life, I have been a student of how to create this kind of personal sovereignty.
What I have discovered is that these simple daily practices have the power to change your destiny. Where you end up in life depends on what you practice. If you choose to practice negative behaviors, you will get better and better at them, until they finally influence your destiny. By the same token, if you practice positive behaviors, ones that benefit your health and well-being, you will also get better and better at them, and they will influence your destiny in positive ways.
What we tend to forget is that either course takes about the same amount of work and commitment. So when there’s no difference in “price,” why not treat yourself to the positive outcomes?
It is not that the positive choices are easy. More often than not, they are hard. But choosing a positive path and taking committed action accordingly is what moves you from surviving to thriving.
For example, in February when I suddenly couldn't run anymore, I was deeply discouraged by my personal loss. At that point, I had a choice. I could sit there and continue to practice feeling sorry for myself. Or I could re-orient my thinking in some positive manner and practice a different choice. I chose this latter course. I decided to view my knee injury not as the end of my running, but as the beginning of my cycling. I went out and bought myself a bicycle and never looked back.
AF: Please say a bit more about how these practices can change your destiny.
SD: Your destiny derives in large part from what you practice every day ––consciously or otherwise. If you are depressed, it is because you have been practicing hanging out in that emotional state. If you keep on practicing being depressed, it is predictable that you will get even better at it. If you decide that you want to stop being depressed, you have to start practicing something else.
A proven medical intervention that works to decrease depression entails increasing your body’s production of serotonin. This can be done via prescriptive medications. In almost all cases, it can be done equally well by exercising regularly. So if you want to break your habit of being depressed, a great place to start is to take on a daily practice of vigorous exercise. What I have found is that when you are physically in motion, it’s impossible to feel stuck. Once you start to exercise regularly and continuously, a predictable result is that you will start to feel “not depressed.”
What’s critical is that you get to a point where you understand you have the option to change your practices in order to create different results. Then all you have to do is take action––repeatedly and continuously. This requires commitment and work. In the long run, nothing else produces sustainable results.

AF: Before we finish, I’d like to ask you what’s going to be next for you? How is your work evolving now?

SD: What’s calling me next is to find ways to teach these practices to seniors in high schools and to incoming college freshmen. I would love to help kids discover the power of these practices sooner than later. If I had known how to systematically put them to work at that age, my life might have tracked quite differently.

Right now I work mostly with adults in their forties and fifties. Before they come to me, they have had to finally conclude on their own that they don’t “know it all,” that what they have been doing isn’t producing the results they want, and that they are ready to make a commitment to changing some behaviors in order to get different results. They need to be willing to do something to “get out of their head,” to come back to their senses, and to explore the power of simple experiential learning.

What excites me now is to reach out to younger individuals. I’m looking forward to figuring out how to connect with them in order to make a positive difference not just for “fully-grown” adults, but also for as many young adults as possible.

AF: I like your observation that we are all free to choose between fragility and resilience by cultivating greatness of spirit bit by bit.Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences, Sandy!


To find out more about Sandy Davis, the services he offers, and the instruction manuals he has published, visit www.homecomingcoaching.com. To order a copy of Sandy’s instruction manual on developing zillience, visit www.zillience.com. To reach Sandy or to subscribe to his free monthly e-newsletter, send an e-mail to sandy@wayofresilience.com. (As a bonus for new subscribers, Sandy will send you a free 22-page introductory excerpt from his instructional manual on developing zillience through simple daily practices.)