Cultivating Resilience: Navigating Life’s Transitions [Part 3 of 4]
In 2009, I left a job that I loved and had been doing for 15 years. The senior leadership was so toxic that it became unmanageable. The stress consumed my days and nights, and my body was falling apart. So I made the heartbreaking decision to quit.
However, I was so shattered by my situation that I paid scant attention to world events: namely, the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009! Often defined as the worst financial crisis since WW2, unemployment rose to 10%. To say it was challenging to find a new job, let alone find a new career trajectory, is an understatement.
As awful as that experience was (and I am in no hurry to repeat it!), I did learn some incredibly valuable lessons. Best of all, it strengthened my emotional resilience.
That brings us to the third element in this four-part series on Overall Well-Being. To review, in Part One I started with a description of learning to track your Daily Well-Being - are you having more good days than bad ones? In Part Two, I invited you to explore the concept of Authenticity, which is defined by a healthy and grounded sense of self-awareness.
The Third Element of Well-Being
Those first two elements really establish a strong foundation on which to build this third element of Resilience. While this term became trendy and overused during the pandemic, it really is worth developing in your life. As in my previous posts in this series, I go back to Dr. Matt Bloom for a great definition of resilience:
Resilience comprises our capacities to adjust to changes in the world around us, to achieve our life goals, and to keep growing and reaching toward our fullest potential.
Resilient people are able to increase their knowledge and abilities, develop new capabilities, and learn new things. They have an internal drive to learn more about themselves so they can grow as a person.
Transitions are part of life. Yet our natural reflexes tend to resist such change. In fact we often do our best to avoid it whenever possible because we tend to prefer the status quo. Why is that? I could list a multitude of reasons: fear of the unknown, the pain of loss, past negative experiences, and my favorite - the loss of control.
Change is Inevitable
Unfortunately, we are kidding ourselves if we think we can avoid change. Quoting from The Clocklike Regularity of Major Life Changes by the sociologist Arthur C. Brooks.
The author Bruce Feiler wrote a book called Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age. After interviewing hundreds of people about their transitions, he found that a major change in life occurs, on average, every 12 to 18 months.
Huge ones—what Feiler calls “lifequakes”—happen three to five times in each person’s life. Some lifequakes are voluntary and joyful, such as getting married or having a child. Others are involuntary and unwelcome, such as unemployment or life-threatening illness.
So now if we operate from the assumption that life is going to be FULL of changes and transitions - sometimes good, sometimes upsetting, nearly always a bit (or a lot!) disorienting, we will see why we must develop resilience. And in my coaching my goal is to get my clients to make this a priority, because the opposite of resilience is burnout. And perhaps you already know this, but burnout is no joke - if it lasts, it can lead to depression, anxiety, nervous breakdowns, divorce, and even suicide. YIKES!
Moving from Burnout to Resilience
Hopefully I’ve gotten your attention. So where does one begin in building resilience, especially when one of the early signs of burnout is fatigue? Fortunately, if you’ve invested in first two elements I’ve described in this series — Daily Well-Being and Authenticity — you’re already on your way:
Tracking your Daily Well-Being will help you recognize when you are in a slump (a string of bad days have built up).
Leaning into your Authenticity will give you a strong sense of self-awareness. Then you will have the capacity to pay attention and recognize what is happening inside you and around you. How do those bad days make you feel? Do you like the way you are responding to them?
This makes you ready to build resilience and stress management skills. You recognize you are struggling, and you see how that is affecting you. Now it’s time to take inventory of the things you can and cannot control. What does that look like? Way back in 1991, I first read Stephen Covey’s classic book on proactivity vs reactivity titled, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Several concepts from that book have stayed with me all these years later, but one stands out the most: the concept of the circle of influence versus the circle of concern. (Check out this illustration here to visualize it.) Rather than focusing on the circumstances you cannot control, spend your energy and attention on where you have influence. Slowly but surely, you will move from feeling attacked to developing a sense of agency over what is happening to you.
Back to my opening illustration: once I left my stressful job in 2009, I was left with a huge “NOW WHAT?!” Once I got my bearings and realized that the job market was pretty fragile, I focused on what I could control, rather than on the daunting economic situation in the country. I started simplifying my life: I stopped eating out, I let friends and family know there would be no gifts this year, I bought nothing new, I took no trips. Surprisingly, I cut my budget by nearly a third!
Rather than obsess on finding “THE” next job, I took on various side jobs just to make ends meet: I taught a college course, I took a couple of speaking gigs, I raised money for an environmental non-profit. None of them were full-time, and I had to count pennies for at least six months.
But since I had scaled back on my discretionary expenses, I also had some free time on my hands, so I start building an idea around leadership development coaching. I had been developing staff, students and adult volunteers as leaders for 25 years at that point, so I felt I had the requisite experience. I also started cultivating my network. SPOILER ALERT: It worked out! I’m still coaching, sixteen years later.
Let me say it again: I focused on what I could control. And the deep challenges I had been facing slowly turned into opportunities for growth. THIS is the essence of resilience: it is not the state of having everything figured out, but it is the capacity to keep moving forward and not get stuck in a rut. And once you make it through a difficult time, you gain confidence in your ability to make it through other challenges. Your resilience BUILDS.
Congratulations! The exploration of these first three elements of overall well-being is just the beginning of our journey together. There's much more to discover in the upcoming installments of this series, so I encourage you to subscribe to my blog notifications to stay connected.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences! You can reach me at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. If you're feeling ready to take the next step in your well-being journey, I invite you to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation. Together, we can explore how personalized coaching might support your growth and development, especially in building EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE.
Looking forward to continuing this conversation with you!
