Investing now pays dividend later

If you are wanting to strengthen your personal resilience, be that for work or life you need to invest the time and energy during calmer periods. When there is equilibrium.

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It is no different for a team.

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If you want to want to strengthen the resilience of your team you need to invest the time and energy during calmer periods.

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I often use this spectrum when collaborating with clients or teams. I know that investing in the development and strengthening of resilience needs to take place when things are equilibrium.

A truly resilient person and leader can lead themselves and a team at any point on this spectrum with confidence.

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Why?

If you are truly going to work on your resilience you need the time and space to rehearse and have a go, and indeed make mistakes. Resilience is not strengthened by reading a book or attending a workshop alone.

Sometimes you are not sure when you might use that skill, the strategy or that hidden strength and it may come as a surprise to you when you do as it has done for me recently.

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A recent experience cemented my knowing that resilience is an investment.

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After spending time on holiday with my parents in 2018, and watching them struggle with their mobility I promised myself I would try and stay as fit and mobile as I could as I moved towards my sixtieth year, this promise coupled with the embarrassment of having to be dragged up on to our boat like a harpooned whale, made me in invest in my physical resilience.

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I joined a gym, not any old gym a gym which met my needs, a small community which is inclusive. I have remained with the gym for over five years now and I am fitter now that I was in my 30s and 40s. It has been an investment of time, energy, and money.

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I have used my new-found strength, stamina, and fitness to complete many physical challenges, but I was surprised by a scenario that unfolded when we visited Dorset last week with our boat ( the one I couldn’t get on to in deep water!)

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We were moored the boat in shallow water off Studland Beach and went on to the beach to enjoy a few hours swimming and sunbathing.

My husband and his mate walked off down to the Cafe to get refreshments, leaving me and Becky to chat. Before we knew it the boat had somehow come free from the anchor line and was drifting out to sea. The wind had picked up!??

Without even thinking twice I jumped up and ran into the sea. I was going to get to the boat.?

Yep!?

?I managed to swim out to it, about three hundred meters. I have not swum front crawl since I was eighteen. After I had recovered,? I managed to pull myself up into the boat whilst the boat continued to drift and was in very deep water.??

I started the engine up and collected my husband who had started to swim out . I even pulled him aboard.?

Reflecting, I would never have been able to have done this five years ago, and not just because of my improved? physical strength, my mindset was different.??

As I was running into the water and then swimming out to the boat, which felt like it was moving faster than I was swimming. I never once thought “ I am not going to reach it.” I realised breaststroke was not going to get me there so broke into front crawl.?

When I did reach the boat I never once thought “ I am not going to be able to pull myself up” I knew I had one shot at it so I let the boat pull me out into deeper water before I dug deep to pull myself up and out of the water. The thought that I could not do it never entered my head.??

We all have things, people, events both at work and home that we dread, avoid, or put off to another day.?

What could you do today to prepare yourself differently for one of these??

What to you need to rehearse??

Resilience is so more than just facing your fears and doing it. Resilience is a knowing, a knowing that you can do THAT thing, have THAT difficult conversation, attend THAT awful meeting.??

I KNEW I was going to get to the boat, no it was not Olympic swimming, but it got the job done.?

I have a difficult meeting to attend in September and I am going to draw on this experience. I am rehearsing what I am going to say and how I am going to say it.??