Will Yours Be the House Left Standing?

When Hurricane Michael roared through Mexico Beach, only one house was left standing. It had been built “for the big one”. All the features built into the house with planning and intent to make it more resilient clearly worked.

I am often asked, when I speak on resilience, what any of us can do, not only to make our homes, communities or organizations more resilient, but what we could do personally to make ourselves better built for “the big one”. The first characteristic of resilience is capacity for a high degree of situational awareness. Ellen Langer at Harvard and others write of mindfulness. Developing the capacity to process important information quickly and with full attention is critical. Sometimes what needs to be changed can be found in the environment, not in ourselves. The second characteristic is the ability to integrate all sources of information, internal and external, more effectively, and that takes practice before something bad happens. The third characteristic is nimbleness, the capacity to change course easily. Too often we contribute to a problem by being unable or too rigid to shift and quickly try some new behavior or plan. And finally we must each learn how to fail safely, not catastrophically, when we are under stress, by walling off the “broken piece” and not letting it take down everything else in our lives that is still working.

We can be ready. #Resilience matters.