On Resilience - a professional and personal reflection

In the last three years, the topic of resilience has been top of the list of training topics requested by large and small, private sector, government, and non-profit organizations. Resilience - defined by Webster as:

1. the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress
2. an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

Given the onslaught of strained bodies (both individual and collective), compressive stress, misfortune, and change that our workforce - and the world beyond it - has experienced in recent years, this shouldn’t surprise anyone.?

We need our workers to be more resilient. To be honest, this feels wildly oversimplified to me. We live in an absolutely unpredictable world in which the number of employees hired to do an ever-increasing amount of work is shrinking, while the instability of their housing, health, finances, and future are seemingly under a constant state of threat. Could we use our collective organizational power to lobby for an overall improvement in the way things work? Perhaps. But instead we’ll offer a lunch-hour yoga class (just don’t be late getting back to your desk!) and a workshop on resilience.

I digress. The truth is, I actually do think resilience is tremendously important. And there is plenty of research to support the idea that one’s resilience is a critical factor in determining a number of outcomes in our lives. In fact, according to Neenan (2018), “Inner resilience is an important resource that appears to be the secret to success in the outer world and the basis of good mental health.” In Laurence Gonzales’s Deep Survival (2004), he points to a positive mental attitude as a critical component of resilience, and ultimately survival. And to be clear, he is referencing a positive mental attitude in the face of challenges and setbacks (compressive stress, misfortune, change) not while burying one’s head in the sand and pretending all is fine.

I’m sometimes described as an optimist. I prefer the term upbeat realist. I am decidedly not an optimist. But I also don’t find a whole lot of benefit in dwelling on what isn’t working. As a younger person, I watched the movie My Cousin Vinny over and over again till I knew most every line inside and out. In the second scene, as the two main characters are driving down the road and see a cop car behind them, Ralph Macchio’s character tells his panicking friend Stan, “there’s nothing to worry about until there’s something to worry about.”

In their case, they did in fact have something to worry about. But even then - does the worry help? I tend to stay pretty measured and try to figure out what’s the best way forward, given what we know in the moment - even when most of what we know is pretty bad news. As a rock climber and avid outdoorswoman, I’ve had lots of practice with these kinds of scenarios. (Ever been a couple thousand feet up a cliff, and gotten your rope stuck when rappelling to descend? Or had gotten a flat tire 45 miles down an unmaintained road in the middle of the desert?) Gonzales might call this a resilient approach. Whatever it is, I’m glad it’s mine. It does seem to help me move through life more easily.

So, now that we’ve got my background on how I feel about resilience - both as a training topic and a personal approach - I’d love to tell you a story. ??

September was a month of travel. When all was said and done, I looked at my calendar and realized I would only be sleeping in my own bed for three nights during the entire month! From Massachusetts to the Adirondacks, to the Cascades to Philly, to North Carolina to Florida, to Milwaukee and back home. There were a lot of logistics to account for and a lot of planes to catch and connections to make. And all in all, I was shocked at how smoothly everything went.

On the 26th I finished a fabulous gig in Milwaukee and checked my Lyft app to ensure my ride was on time. The gig finished at 4:00, the last flight out was at 6:05, and the gig was 40 minutes from the airport. I didn’t have much time to spare. I was bummed, but not entirely unsurprised when I checked the app to find that my scheduled driver was 14 minutes away. Which turned into 18 minutes. And when he finally arrived, he instructed me to “just hang tight for a moment” because he had to fix his lights before we went anywhere. Lordy. At least this has given me time to change from heels to sneakers, so I can haul it at the airport.?

It’s less than ideal, but the Milwaukee airport is small, I have pre-check, and I’m not checking a bag, so I take a deep breath, realizing there’s really not much I can do. So, I’ll plan to make my flight. And if I don’t, I’ll make another plan.

We arrive at the airport at 5:09. I have just under 30 minutes before my flight starts boarding. I’ll be fine. In fact, I may even be able to grab dinner - which would be amazing since I didn’t have a chance to get lunch! As luck would have it, I did make it through security and the bathroom lines with plenty of time to spare before my flight boarded, so I searched for food - only to find that the downside of Milwaukee being a small airport was. . . that there were no food options. I grabbed a bag of pretzels and a banana from a market place and lined up to board. Surely the 2 ounces of almonds they give as a snack on the flight will be sufficient as a meal substitute!

I sit down in my seat, crack open a book (Where You’ll Find Me: Risk Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova -worth the read if you have the chance) and am immediately engrossed. It’s a short flight and I plan to read from wheels up to wheels down. I expect to sleep on the next flight. We finish boarding, go through the speeches, push back from the gate, and then we wait. And wait a bit longer. And then the plane goes silent. Is the engine still on? Whatever, I’ve got my book. It doesn’t really matter. I fly enough to know that sometimes sitting on the runway is a much bigger part of “flying” than you’d usually expect.

We’re all pretty bummed, and some of us more surprised than others, when the captain comes on to tell us we have to deplane as there is an issue with the hydraulic system and they need to get mechanics on scene to address it. I look at my watch. Even if we deplaned, had it fixed in 15 minutes, and then reboarded immediately after, I’m still going to miss my connection. Too much time has passed. I exit the plane and get in line behind the majority of other passengers who have also realized they will miss their connections - or who just want to reschedule altogether.

As expected, the line moves slowly. Two agents working their way through dozens of travelers, each wishing for their own unique miracle. I text my partner to let her know the deal. She is pissed. Not at me, of course, but at the situation. I shrug (as if she can see me) and tell her there’s nothing to be done until I see what my flight options are. I continue to try rebooking myself through the app, but the app keeps crashing due to the volume. When I get up to the counter the agent presents me with two options. One has me spending the night in Milwaukee and getting home around 1:45 tomorrow via a layover in LaGuardia, and one has me assuming my current flight gets fixed, flying to Detroit tonight and then directly home by 11:30 tomorrow morning. It’s a gamble. They may not fix my plane. But I really hate LaGuardia. So, I choose the latter. She sends me an email with the link to my hotel voucher and updated tickets and I head off to find a more substantive snack. I am unsuccessful.

With luck on my side this time, the plane is fixed and by 8:30 we are all back on the plane and ready to head to Detroit. We land without incident and it’s only upon exiting the plane that I realize that while I did receive my new tickets via email, I didn’t receive the hotel voucher. I call Delta while walking to the shuttle area, and it’s a relatively easy - if time consuming - fix. The system is pretty seamless and within 30 minutes of landing I am waiting for a shuttle to take me to my hotel. The shuttle takes longer than I’d like and as it gets closer to 11pm, my stomach reminds me of my lack of lunch or dinner. I’m hungry. And tired.?

I arrive at the hotel along with 5 other passengers, and we line up to check in with the one hotel employee. The line moves, albeit slowly, and after getting my info she asks what time my flight leaves in the morning so she can put my name on the shuttle list. It is only then that I realize that the information for the next leg of my flight is incorrect. I give her my best guess, she gives me a key, and I head up to my room to call Delta yet again. Except that when I get to my room, the key won’t unlock the door. Sighing, I head back downstairs, and wait to get a new key.

By the time I am in the room, squared away the flight info with Delta, have a new flight confirmation number, and ready for bed it’s after midnight. And I am on the 5am shuttle in the morning. All things considered, I sleep well, and am in the lobby at 4:55am, waiting to head back to the airport.?

Upon arriving at the airport, I attempt to do a self-check-in, but receive a message that I must see a gate agent. Undeterred, I get in line to speak with a representative. She asks if I’m checking a bag and I advise that I don’t need to check a bag - just need to check in and seem to be unable to do it on the machine. She asks for my license, looks up my information, and prints out a ticket that . . . is not for the correct flight. In fact, it’s not even for a flight leaving from Detroit. I politely advise her that the ticket is incorrect, and show her my phone with the correct flight info and confirmation number.?

The exchange went back and forth a number of times - her telling me that that flight was full, me telling her that I am one of the people filling it, as I have a confirmed seat number. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. She can see my info in her system, but cannot print it out. There’s nothing she can do.?

I have gotten about four hours of sleep. I am tired. I have gone about 22 hours without a meal. I am hungry. I haven’t been home in a while. I am anxious. And for the first time, my facade cracks just a little as I say, “Okay, but I am on that flight, and I do need that ticket. So can you please find someone who can print out the ticket for me?” I’m not rude, but I am audibly frustrated. Or at least expressing some level of urgency. She goes to enlist the help of a colleague. A few minutes later, she returns with the printed ticket for the correct flight. I thank her profusely and with that, I head off to security, to Starbucks, to my plane, and ultimately, home.

The late uber. The lack of food. The delayed plane. The missing hotel voucher. The key that didn’t work. The incorrect flight info. The lack of sleep. The incorrect flight info again. The continued lack of food - it did seem like a comedy of errors. Or a series of compressive stresses, misfortunes, or changes. And at any given moment, I suppose even one of these things could really shake us. Make us feel defeated. Angry. Done.

For me, they’re the makings of a good story. And if that’s what resilience looks like, so be it.?

And, if you want to know more about my life of travel and its accompanying misfortunes, ask me about how many train crashes I’ve been in. ;)

References:

Gonzales, L. (2004). Deep survival: who lives, who dies, and why : true stories of miraculous endurance and sudden death. 1st Norton pbk. ed. New York, W.W. Norton & Co.

Neenan, M. (2018). Developing resilience: A cognitive-behavioural approach. Routledge.