What I Got Wrong About Resilience...quite a lot.

An NHS client told me last week she’d attended some resilience training. I asked how it was and she told me in no uncertain terms that it had pis*ed her off. I have a loathing for anything buzz-wordy so i've largely ignored 'resilience', but here it was smack bang in the middle of one of my coaching sessions.

Reflecting after that session I realised I have always struggled with resilience. Looking a little further, it stated to obvious why. So here we are!

I looked up the definition before starting this week’s newsletter (and I probably have a bone to pick with the Oxford English Dictionary folk, but I'll save that for later):

Resilience?

the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

Today I'm not focusing on operational or organisational resilience, but our individual resilience. Our own capacity to withstand or recover from difficulties.

Not something i've majored on in the In the past I can tell you. Writing this week's newsletter highlighted how wrong I'd been about resilience in the past, which I'm sharing now in the hope you good people will learn something from my mistake.

I used to think that my toughness was resilience. I thought my toughness was the thing that allowed me to withstand and recover from difficulties.?Spoiler alert; it wasn't.?

Remember the dictionary definition of resilience, the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. Now I can look back with clearer eyes, I can see that my attempt at resilience was just toughness. Toughness which actually damaged my resilience in the longer term. and reduced my capacity to withstand difficulty.

Here’s some ways that my toughness showed up at work:

• Being 'fine' with a mistake on the outside (while beating myself up over it and feeling disappointment and shame on the inside for months)
• Acting like I didn't care about negative or difficult to hear feedback (even when my boss told me about how I was leading the team wrong for the fifth time and it made me want to cry - and the feedback was about being too tough lol)
• Faking confidence in my new job (which I certainly didn't feel in an effort to appear confident)
• Expecting myself to just get over things I couldn't just get over (I chose to break up my marriage during a pandemic so I should just be able to carry on as normal at work, other people do)
• Telling everyone yeah, I’m? fine with it, she doesn't bother me about a difficult working relationship (which did bother me quite bit)
• Pretending that I was fine about not getting the job I wanted (when I wasn't).

Sure, I probably looked very resilient, on the outside. But I wasn't. My capacity to withstand and recover from difficulties was actually pretty low. And no wonder given the internal culture I was operating within.

Imagine working in a culture which didn't allow for showing or sharing any sensitivity or allow you to feel things about the stuff that happened. A culture where you were expected to keep smiling and act like everything was fine on the outside while quietly getting in a stew about things on the inside. I know logically that kind of culture wouldn't promote resilience. But somehow, when it came to me, I thought it was the way forwards. I was wrong.

Fast forward to today and I think I am pretty resilient and I know what's helped. Not thinking about resilience as toughness, but softness (and that would have sounded ridiculous to me five years ago). I’m not going to pretend it was some easy three step formula to becoming more resilient, but looking back I can see when I could:-

1. Admit that things had an impact on me, that I did care, that I was ‘emotional’
2. Actually being ok with (1) rather than judging myself for it?
3. Tend to the emotions that came along with difficulties (like disappointment, sadness, frustration) rather than shove them down or pretend they weren't happening AND receive support from others.

I've become more resilient by being and doing the exact things I thought made me less so. Admitting that I wasn't that tough, actually being ok with that, and tending to the emotions that came with it.

I changed my internal culture around difficulties and resilience grew as a natural byproduct from that internal culture. An internal culture that accepted me for who and how I was rather than forcing me into some tough box I never belonged in. A internal culture that was honest about the difficulties and the emotions that came with it instead of me slapping a happy face on it and trying to be positive all the time. A internal culture which recognised I was a person who was struggling at moments and which tended to me, and by being honest, allowed others to support me too.

PLUS I just noticed something lovely....resilience by our dictionary definition was the capacity to withstand. I have apparently worked out how to with-stand...i.e. how to stand with myself through difficulties. When I grew my capacity to with-stand i.e. stand with myself in difficulties, I found resilience.

And as I am typing this I am thinking about my friend who died suddenly last month. And how I didn't get to know her enough and how I loved her anyway. And how I am going this Friday to see her body and I have no idea what that's going to be like. Life’s always happening. More evidence for me, that I'll always need an internal culture which allows for my softness to keep me resilient. And that I can always stand with myself, so that I have the capacity to withstand. Wish me love.

To talk more with me about resilience and internal culture, email me here: [email protected]?