A muscle called resilience

There’s no denying it, these last few weeks have been a period of utter procrastination!?I’ve been thinking about writing my next leadership article for 3 weeks and only now hours before I publish, have I sat down to do something about it.?While it pains me to admit, this current covid calamity has deeply questioned my resilience stores.?I’ve thought of myself as someone with ample in reserve, that when I need to call on my resiliency it’s ready and waiting.?But this current fight seems to be lasting forever.?Day after day the battle lines get drawn, working from home, kids home schooling, the fear of catching covid, the anxieties of vaccines, the constant stories of incredible hardship, financial loss and for many deaths of loved ones.?

2020 and now 2021 feel like an ever-present set of tests, challenges, sprints, and marathons.?Some days I’ve wanted to scream: “Make it Stop…. make all of this go away and let us have our freedoms back”.?I regularly hear people refer to this time as “a phase to test our resilience” and “this will only make us stronger”.?Most days I have to stop, take a breath, shake myself from head to toe and tell myself to get back in the game.?I keep channeling “This too shall pass”.

Last week a colleague asked me to listen to one of Brene Brown’s interviews on her Unlocking Us podcast.?Many of you know I admire Brene’s work, and I was intrigued when I heard about her interview with Dr. Edith Eger; a 93 yr old Hungarian Holocaust survivor who at the age of 90 published her memoirs, ‘The Choice’, which tells the story of her survival and healing.?When Edith was 16, she watched as her parents were led to a gas chamber at Auschwitz, the concentration camp run by the Nazi’s during the second world war.?Edith went on to live a further year in the camp, witnessing unspeakable horrors and being reminded daily she was sub-human, and her way out would be as a corpse. ?In later years she went on to say the only way she survived were to remember her mother’s words to her as they drove on a truck to the camp, “No one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.”?

Edith’s interview with Brene made me cry, it profoundly impacted me listening to this beautiful frail and joyous woman tell the stories of her past.?How she harnessed torturous experiences and fueled them into a life spent educating and supporting thousands in her specialist field of post traumatic stress disorders.?Her simple and philosophical messages to be kind, to be strong, to not be a victim but to stand and claim your innocence….to quote Edith “Never allow yourself to be a victim or prisoner of your own mind. The way we think is what we create.”

And it is Edith this week that has allowed me to lift my socks and remind myself that I am resilient and to draw inspiration from this wondrous human being.?To channel stories of incredible heroic resilience, just like heroic courage to remind us that every human on this planet can achieve extraordinary feats no matter how ordinary they feel their existence might be.?The story of Edith Eger is just one example of this alive at work, you’ll have many stories yourself, stories of great suffering and tribulation, stories of amazing feats in the face of adversity.?Whatever the story, the message is consistent…in the face of a hardship, people face their fate and through their triumph they strengthen their resilience.

So many definitions of resilience exist:

“the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”

“toughness”, “maintain equilibrium under pressure”

“the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape”

Reading these, I’m struck by the reality our lives have difficulties, there is no point avoiding them and if you haven’t faced one yet, don’t worry it’s coming.?Rather than attempt to run or hide from the struggles that lay in our path, it is far better to build the skills to face them head on.?

Entering my 11th week of lockdown here in Sydney, I’ve had time to experiment with the good and bad of this different life event. ?Not everything is a hardship; the extra time saved from commuting and absence of a social calendar, has created the space to slow down and spend time thinking about my life.?It’s been a perfect time to take stock and question my priorities.?What was I losing time on pre-CP (covid pandemic…who knows just like BC and AD, maybe the world is waiting for a pre and post CP time stamp)??My summary is somewhat confronting; I’ve spent so much of my life being busy and productive…. the queen of achieving stuff, I’ve prioritised the practical importance of tasks, lists and jobs in such a way they have consumed so much of my weeks, months, and years.?Covid bizarrely has been the experience I’ve needed to sharpen my mind and prioritise how I want to show up and where I want to invest my time.?It’s allowed me to learn more, read more, reflect more and ultimately hone more of the areas of my life that need quality time and my attention.?

And this is something I’ve committed to do…. more time with friends and family, more time enjoying the simple pleasures of life, like walking in the park with our dog, playing board games of an evening with our children, movie nights at home, cook-ups in the kitchen and picking up a book and returning to reading.?All these need time, something pre–CP I felt I had none of…..but of course we all have the same amount every single day.?It’s a finite resource and how we choose to spend it and the experiences we create are the memories we’ll have forever. ?The busyness can wait!

From a neurological standpoint, using this time to learn from the experience of a lockdown can be a wonderful opportunity to learn new skills in resilience building.?In his book ‘Resilient’, Rick Hanson shares 12 neurological muscles for resilience that people can build.?I love the concept of a muscle at work, lifting hard to watch results appear.?They are:

1.????Compassion, specifically self-compassion

2.????Mindfulness

3.????Learning

4.????Grit

5.????Gratitude

6.????Confidence

7.????Calm

8.????Motivation

9.????Intimacy

10.?Courage

11.?Aspiration

12.?Generosity

Reading these 12 I am reminded how much one relies on the other.?To have strength in one drives improvement in others.?Isn’t it a powerful thought knowing each of these traits strengthen your resilience which in turn deepens your character??The idea is inspiring to me and has helped me to overcome the victim mindset I’ve been holding onto about Covid and my silly procrastination on writing this article.?I’ve been up in my head ruminating when all I needed to do was sit and reflect!?Let that be a lesson to you Chris!?

Before I close, I’d love to share a leadership framework for resilience that has helped me.?I learnt this framework from the Centre for Creative Leadership; it’s simple and powerful.?

Perhaps print it out and refer to it from time to time…. the detail behind each you can read here:

Personal Energy Management: Manage your own resistance. “Show up,” give your best, and relinquish attachment to the outcome. Stay in the present.

Shift Your Lenses: Take charge of how you think about adversity. Understand your beliefs about the situation and choose your response. Exercise compassion for yourself and others.

Sense of Purpose: Develop a “personal why” that gives your life meaning. This helps you better face setbacks and challenges. Also, look for ways that crisis and adversity may connect to your larger life purpose.

This is one of the best frameworks I’ve used in building my leadership resilience and every time I fail, I come back to the model, read it again, dust myself off and get back in the game.?I hope it connects for you also.?Let me leave you with my favourite quotes when it comes to resilience.

1. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. You won’t need to worry about being resilient if you stay in your comfort zone. Joseph Campbell

One of my most enjoyable YouTube videos is a 2 min lecture from the Rabbi Twerski called the Lobster and its shell.? I share it often with colleagues and teams I lead.? The Rabbi in his indomitable style shares the story of the lobster who needs to get uncomfortable in its shell for the lobster to grow.? It’s a wonderful tale of how times of stress are signals for growth. It’s something I admire greatly when I recall Joseph Campbell’s famous quote on resilience.

2. Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.? Angela Duckworth

If you haven’t heard of Angela before, stop what you are doing, get online and order a copy of Grit this instant!? I truly hope girl crushes are still allowed cause Angela you are high on my list.? That we have in existence a Grit Scale is due to Angela and her teams work on learning more about a topic that we are only beginning to deeply research. Angela’s work is changing that, and my hope is our future generations learn from an early age the power of cultivating grit.? We’ll have Angela to thank for it.

3. Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit. Bernard Williams

Right you are Bernard!? I’ve been using this word spirit a lot recently.? I have the privilege of working in a new organisation that uses spirit to encapsulate its values.? What a wonderful attitude; to use the force of a word like spirit to animate the power of the organisation and the power of the people inside it.? We humans are a resilient bunch; we need to remind ourselves of this every day and empower everyone in our tribe with this truth.? There is nothing more uplifting than watching the power of the human spirit.

Enjoy new challenges as they face you this week, set about strengthening those resilience muscles and remember there’s nothing more resilient than you and I.