Thought Provoking Thursdays 15- DEALING WITH CAREER TRANSITIONS--Building Resilience

According to Merriam- Webster, Resilience is the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. Toughness is a classic synonym for resilience. When scientists describe the toughness of materials, they refer to the ability of the material to absorb shock and energy without cracking. Toughness in people is the same – it's the way in which you cope with challenges and withstand pressure.

These are tough times indeed. The spate of layoffs unleashed by a whole range of companies have created enough stress to last a lifetime. At the same time, there is no dearth of ideas on how to deal with this new reality.

If you were to google or more fashionably ask ChatGPT, how to build resilience, you will get a plethora of answers. Let me share some of my lived experience on this- hopefully you will find something that strikes a personal chord.

So, here is my playbook for Resilience, honed over decades of working in challenging times across companies and geographies.

1. Build financial freedom –When I was restructured out of a major electronics conglomerate in 2012, I went through 31 interviews over one year with no success. And the first success came through a consulting project, and not a job. I was able to deal with this partly because I had money in the bank. That financial freedom gave me the courage to deal with this reality with more equanimity than anything else.

2. Practice self-care—In every professional downturn, I have double downed on the personal health dimensions with extra force. So, sleep well, exercise a lot and eat healthily. If you have good health, you will be better able to deal with the stresses that come from finding a job or just consulting work.

3. Get energy from friends, family and spouse, not necessarily in that order—The biggest predictor of a bounce back is the quality of the support system you have. The most critical person, at least in my case, has been my spouse. Her positive energy and drive have been critical in landing me success after a series of troughs. So, invest in building this support system.

4. Believe in the magic of believing- Everything passes, winter always turns to spring, dawn follows dusk…there are enough metaphors around us to convince us that tough times will go. So hope has to be your go to mantra. You have to will yourself to hope that the best is yet to come.

5. Set inspiring goals—Make plans and visualize yourself achieving them. Just the act of setting goals, whether personal and or professional will energize you and the small wins towards then will act like a tonic to keep doing more.?

6. Find mentors you can relate to—Talk to people who have been through tough times. Sometimes, just speaking to another person reinforces the fact that you are not alone and that it can be overcome.?

7. Find an authentic coach—You need a sounding board, a person to whom you can be accountable to, someone with whom you can be vulnerable. Today it is much easier and acceptable to find one. So don’t be passive, just go and find that one person with whom you can stay honest and real as you go through a career transition. It’s a small investment to be made but the results are more than substantial.?

I am sure some of you have had as challenging journeys as mine, or perhaps even more so. Please feel free to share what has made you more resilient as I am sure this curated wisdom will benefit scores of people dealing with unexpected and expected transitions today. Resilience is easy to preach but hard to practice. As Steve Maraboli said, “Life does not get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient”

#resilience #betterversions #toughtimes #hope