You're More Resilient Than You Think

Welcome back to my LinkedIn newsletter where I share tips, ideas, and strategies to help you become more effective in business and life.

If we haven't been acquainted yet, I’m a professor of organizational and cross-cultural psychology, the author of?Global Dexterity?and?Reach, and an HBR contributor and consultant.?I also work closely with coaches, trainers, consultants and teachers to certify them in my?Global Dexterity Method.

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I teach a course each fall about stepping outside your comfort zone. Each student in the class chooses a behavior outside their comfort zone to work on. For some, it's public speaking; for others, it’s networking, making small talk with strangers, or being assertive.

For many of my students, it’s terrifying to step outside their comfort zones - and typically, in "regular life" tend to avoid these types of situations altogether.

What I’ve learned from teaching this course year after year is that people are far more resilient than they imagine. Like many of us, my students underestimate their resilience at adapting behavior and stepping outside their comfort zone.

Here's what I've learned from this experience:

1. You're more flexible than you give yourself credit for.?Throughout your life, you’ve been trained to adapt and adjust your behavior in different situations. Do you speak with your boss the same way you do with your colleagues? Do your interactions with your in-laws take the same form as those with your friends from university? My guess is no. In fact, I find that simply reminding people of this fact can boost their confidence?going into an unfamiliar situation.
2. You're braver than you realize. Consider all the things you’ve already done in your life that took serious guts. For some of us, it was going off to college and living alone for the first time. For others, it was switching jobs or careers or getting married. We all have our own experiences that required some level of bravery, and we can draw on them when confronting the next situation outside our comfort zones.
3. The situation probably isn’t as bad as you think. You worry about the worst possible outcome: that you'll humiliate yourself onstage during a public speaking event, or that the person you're delivering negative feedback to will hate you forever. There’s always a slight chance that the worst will happen, but the reality is a bit more nuanced. For example: If you have to deliver bad news to someone, they may be shocked, or even hurt. But will they hate you forever? Probably not if the news is delivered with some degree of compassion or sensitivity.
4. You have more resources than you think. When you face a really tough situation, you often feel vulnerable. But you’re not alone in the situation. You often have quite a number of resources to use—mentors, colleagues, and friends to go to for guidance or steps you can take when preparing.