Improving your mental resilience with the experts

There’s never been a better time to reinforce our ability to deal with stress.

This is why we were impressed to see resilience training platform Driven taking the initiative and launching free weekly interactive webinars on the topic.

Driven uses an AI-powered chatbot to help its users talk through issues and build their mental resilience. They are experts on mental resilience, and the techniques you can use to improve your headspace.

We talked to Driven founder Jurie Rossouw about these webinars on offer, how Driven is faring during this period, and his advice for other founders.

QUESTION: How do you define resilience and how does Driven provide training?

JURIE: Our definition of resilience is being able to continually pursue what’s meaningful to you, regardless of the challenges along the way. We help people build resilience through short daily chats delivered through app-based chatbot called Driven.

QUESTION: Tell us about these workshops you are rolling out? How have they been received so far?

JURIE: Every Thursday at 5pm Sydney time, I’m hosting a free online Pandemic Resilience workshop. These workshops are aimed to help people deal with the stress and impact that the pandemic has on the different aspects of their lives. The format is a one-hour workshop which is very interactive. Through the workshop, I talk about a particular challenge, the neuroscience behind it, and strategies that people can use to help right now.

As I talk through, I pose questions to the group and we discuss what’s been working for them, what hasn’t, and how they can put the strategies into action. This way we get some lively discussion and give people a chance to interact with each other as well. Very useful to facilitate some human connection. So far we’ve had close to 1,000 people sign up, and we get great feedback each time!

QUESTION: What was the inspiration for the workshops?

JURIE: Driven is an AI-powered program that helps people build personal resilience, which is exactly what people need right now to manage this massive challenge that the pandemic has brought before us. While we’ve been making the digital product more available to people in need — especially in the health sector for hundreds of healthcare workers through drastically discounted services — I personally wanted to do more to help people directly who are struggling.

Thinking about how many people are stuck at home with not as much human interaction, I thought something like an interactive online workshop could be really helpful for people in addition to what we’re doing with the app already.

QUESTION: How has Driven been faring during COVID-19?

JURIE: We were monitoring the pandemic progress for a while, and quickly moved everyone to work from home well before the government suggested it. Since we mainly work with businesses, we had a few proposals that quickly disappeared as businesses cut funding. Though soon we started to see a lot of new interest.

This included more people looking for something that can help them through this challenge, and also organisations looking to support their staff through digital methods now that face-to-face options are very limited. Overall, we’ve been even busier than usual!

GLF: Do you have any advice for other founders in regards to mental resilience during this period?

JURIE: For many startups, this is a period of way more stress than usual. And given how much stress founders face already, that’s definitely saying something.

While it can feel like now is the time to put everything in to survive, take care not to sacrifice your own health. Make time to get enough sleep, even if it feels like there is a lot to do. The impact of COVID-19 will be a marathon, and we need to be prepared to stay all the way!

You can tune into Driven’s mental resilience webinars every Thursday via their Youtube channel

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