"Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops …”
- Maya Angelou
- Maya Angelou
"I love those who can smile in
trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection"
- Leonardo da Vinci
LIFE ISN’T FAIR
Forrest Gump was right. As human
beings, we’re randomly buffeted by large, frequent, and difficult shocks and
changes. The speed and intensity at which we need to perform our work in
today's workplaces, is resulting in a growing number of stress and anxiety
disorders. During these tough times, some sink and others swim. But we can all
build resilience — that positive quality that helps us cope with
disappointments, hard times, stress, adversity, change, and helps us to
resurface, bounce back, move on. Like bamboo. (In China, bamboo is revered for
its great strength, flexibility, ability to survive and grow in the harshest of
Winters).
Renowned Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön
once received this advice from her mentor, Trungpa Rinpoche:
“Well, it’s a lot like walking into
the ocean, and a big wave comes and knocks you over. And you find yourself
lying on the bottom with sand in your nose and in your mouth. And you are lying
there, and you have a choice. You can either lie there, or you can stand up and
start to keep walking out to sea”.
“So the waves keep coming,” he
said. “And you keep cultivating your courage and bravery and sense of humor to
relate to this situation of the waves, and you keep getting up and going
forward”.
(Chödrön, Pema 2016)
Precisely because we are evolved humans
and have the powers to imagine and reflect, we tend to live in a primitive,
anxious anticipation mode - that's our default setting in many ways!
The approach to building personal resilience that is outlined in this newsletter enables us not only to cope with change and adversity, but also to live less anxiously, not get caught up in living fearfully, and to be accepting of ourselves, others, our circumstances and our possibilities.
BUILDING PERSONAL
RESILIENCE
Based on early work by Suzanne Kobasa
on hardy personalities (Kobasa, S. C. 1979), Allen Zimbler and Caryn
Solomons developed an accurate and robust assessment of personal resilience. It
is a self-report questionnaire that has proved itself over a long period of
time, and takes only a few minutes to complete. I’ve used it in many settings
with individuals, couples, teams and during large change interventions. It
consists of nine, interconnected factors grouped under:
- Rising to change CHALLENGES
- Being COMFORTABLE during change
- Having (Self) CONTROL during change
After an individual assessment is done, tools,
methodologies, techniques, conversations and practices are offered that help
people to self-direct their resilience improvements, supported by coaching
where necessary.
NINE RESILIENCE
FACTORS:
Briefly illustrate, taking one factor
from each of the challenge, comfort, control areas:
Purpose (Challenge). Those who have purpose tend to
engage, relate and perform better. “At the heart of resilience is a belief
in oneself - yet also a belief in something larger than oneself” - Hara
Estroff Marano (Editor at Large, Psychology Today).
Patanjali, the Indian sage who lived
about 1700 years ago: “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some
extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind
transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you
find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties
and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by
far than you ever dreamed yourself to be”. (Rutte, M. 2006)
Purpose differs from person to person
in span, depth and time horizon, and depends partly on their ‘motivational
fingerprint'. This can be the difference between perceiving that you have a
job, a career or a calling. See Why Am I Here? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-am-i-here-aligning-individual-employees-purpose-graham-williams?trk=prof-post
Expressing feelings appropriately (Comfort). Expressing feelings is a component of emotional intelligence that
we can learn. Related to self-esteem it is, according to psychotherapist Jean
Gamble, “important enough to express what we are feeling… (the) energy we
were using to keep down the resentment and frustration gets freed up and we get
more energy for life (and relationships”. (Gamble, J)
Self-esteem (Self-Control). In the first half of life we tend to chase after position, power,
possessions, pleasure, and perfection. As the Queen lyrics say, “I want it
all. And I want it now”. And our self-esteem too often resides in how
‘successful’ we are. In the second half of life - if we succeed in taming our
ego - the focus moves to Purpose, Personhood, Presence, Planet, and People
(other-orientation). Savvy building of self-esteem, step by step, which
includes the reframing of limiting beliefs, having realistic expectations and
self-compassion, contributes hugely to how well we handle change and adversity.
Most
of us straddle these two value – sets. Society imposes the small Ps – and we
suffer untold harm in our chase after esteem through what we have, control,
chase after, strive for – not realising that imperfection makes us more human,
emptying makes us more open and accepting. The growth to our raison detré, the
beauty of imperfection, personhood based on humility, care for the planet and
love of people, takes time.
Two practices that undergird the development
of many of the nine resilience factors are:
•
Mindfulness. “ .. Contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal
and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our
chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative
practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and
lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter”. (Rohr, R. 2015)
Being mindful is contrary to our normal behaviour. It goes against our busy-ness, frenetic thinking and acting, distractability, striving to achieve, and impatience. Mindfulness brings calm, clarity, a non-judgmental approach to life, the development of and continued connection to purpose, compassion, and mature ethics - all of which supports resilience. Mindfulness helps us to put our attention where we need to, in the way that we need to - and to take it away from where it shouldn't be (unnecessary or 'illogical' distraction, negativity, stressors, anxiousness) which supports being resilient. Mindfulness, specifically meditation, can build stronger neural pathways that make us even better at attending, being calm, recovering faster from shock, disquieting happenings and disturbances - which of course is part of being resilient.
• Story. Story helps with resilience-building strengths such as raising
awareness, creating a safe space for sharing, re-imagining and reframing of
situations, invoking possibility, overcoming limiting beliefs, forging
connections, and conveying wisdom.
And remember that practice makes
perfect. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist at Florida State University
who has studied how people become experts (in many domains), says:
“Deliberate practice involves two
kinds of learning: improving the skills you already have and extending the
reach and range of your skills. You need a particular kind of practice - deliberate
practice - to develop expertise. When most people practice, they focus on the
things they already know how to do. Deliberate practice is different. It
entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t
do well — or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by
working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become”.
(Ericsson, K. et al. 2007)
It takes resilience to build
resilience!
Coping with challenging change and
adversity is a bit like the Don Lockwood song lyrics "Singin' in the
rain, Dancin' in the rain .... I'm laughing at clouds, So dark up above ..."
For an inspirational story of bouncing
back (or bouncing forward as he calls it) watch Sam Cawthorne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grLyjiq2uGM
Resilient employees make for resilient
and agile organizations.
REFERENCES
Chödrön, Pema (2016) How to
Move Forward Once You’ve Hit Bottom Lion’s Roar Newsletter 7th
Ericsson, K. Anders; Prietula, Michael.
J; Cokely Edward T. (2007) The Making of an Expert Harvard Business
Review July–August 2007 https://hbr.org/2007/07/the-making-of-an-expert
Gamble, Jean (Psychotherapist and
Family/Couples Therapist | Grad Dip Systemic Therapy, Dip Som Psych, Dip Adv
Somatics, Dip R.M. Clinical Mem PACFA Mem ASPA, EPA Accredited) Learning
To Express Our Feelings
Kobasa, S. C. (1979) Stressful
life events, personality, and health – Inquiry into hardiness Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 37
Richard Rohr (2015) Richard Rohr’s Meditation: Contemplation and
Action Monday, August 17, 2015 citing Williams, Archbishop Rowan Address
to the Synod of Bishops in Rome on October 10, 2012
Rutte, Martin (2006) The Work
of Humanity: project heaven on earth citing Patanjali (in Seeking
the Sacred: leading a spiritual life in a secular world. (ed Mary
Joseph) ECW Press, Toronto, Canada
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