Youth, Happiness & Resilience

Can you remember a time in your life sitting around the dinner table with your family and your mom or dad asking you that fateful question...What do you want to be when you grow up? I hope your answer was something authentically you and that you received nothing but love and support moving forward.

Unfortunately, love and support are not always plentiful when you simply want to follow your passion. Your parents want you to be successful and for them, success means making a great income. But the definition of success has changed over the years and today, people have successful careers that your parents couldn't even have imagined a mere decade ago.

My friends son went to university for economics and is now a highly successful thought leader in cryptocurrency. That wasn't even a career option when he started university. After graduating with his Masters, he went to work for the Bank of Canada and then quit that dream job to become an independent cryptocurrency consultant making more money at 30 than his parents made in a lifetime. He is meeting his parents definition of success but if he had told them a decade ago that he was going to quit his dream job to become a consultant in his 20's, do you think they would have been so supportive?

When my daughter Katelyn first told me she wanted to be an English major in university, my first thought was that she wanted to be a teacher. But she didn't want to teach. So my next logical question was, how do you make a living with an English degree? I was already defining in my mind what success and happiness were supposed to look like for her and while well intended, my mindset of success could have been devastating for her.

If you don't fit into your current career path, maybe it's time to be brave and try something new. I'll bet the clothing designers over at Carhartt never imagined their work clothes could be functional, fashionable and become a symbol of resilience for a new generation.

After graduating from university and becoming disillusioned with her corporate job and the traditional definition of success, Katelyn Buzanko is following her passion and heading back to school. But it's not the traditional Master's program she is seeking.

Katelyn honed her people skills from her time working front of house during university at a large micro-brewery. Today she is honing her back of house skills as a BrewMaster student in the Niagara College BrewMaster Program.

Katelyn is following in the footsteps of some amazing women business leaders and as her dad, I couldn't be more happy, grateful and proud.

Main Idea: You need Resilience to develop your happiness muscle.

Shawn Achor , author of The Happiness Advantage defines happiness as "the ability to reach your full potential every day".

The traditional definition of success and happiness if flawed. If we say that when I'm successful, then I'll be happy, we never let our brain's experience true happiness. As soon as we reach a specific goal, we want something more. Hit a sales goal and next quarter your sales goal is raised. Traditional success is just momentary pleasure, not daily happiness.

lf happiness can be found in the journey of full potential, Katelyn has happiness in spades! But nothing great in life comes without some degree of adversity, stress or anxiety. The challenge is deciding if you are going to move forward, stay stuck or fall behind every day. The secret of resilience is learning how to keep moving forward.

ENTRY LEVEL JOBS:

Most people out of college or university start with entry level jobs. The position usually isn't great and the pay can be disappointing to say the least. In the beginning of your career, the objective is to fail fast, learn from your mistakes and move forward, but you still have to pay the bills. Most companies tend to reward new employees with some form of advancement but there are no guarantees. If they don't, you will have to be brave enough to learn from every situation and make the moves that feel right for you.

Resilience starts with having a clear vision of who you aspire to be and sometimes it takes a few years to figure that out. Once you have a clear vision of the person you aspire to be, you need to start assuming the identity of that type of person every day. The only way to know if you are on the right path is to look for the proof that you are moving forward.

It's not easy to walk away from an existing job or career to try something new. But that's the thing about resilient people, they are focused on moving forward and rarely get stuck living in the past. I believe that resilience can trigger happiness because having a clear vision of who you aspire to be can give you a clear sense of purpose for your life.

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO FORGE YOUR OWN PATH:

Who are you going to be when you grow up? "I'll let you know when I finally grow up." ~ Dave Buzanko

If success and happiness were easy, we'd all be following the same plan. It's hard to find your own path when the road in front of you is not clear. But once you do start to visualize who you aspire to be, you need to start owning that identity every day.

James Clear , author of Atomic Habits writes that the process of changing your identity begins by building daily habits that become the foundation of becoming yourself. "If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the visual cue a big part of your environment. Environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life. Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it."

Visual cues are intentional and they become the foundation of your daily habits. With Katelyn, it wasn't enough of a visual cue to simply wear the Carhartt overalls that symbolized the identity of a BrewMaster.

In order to create a strong daily visual cue to remind Katelyn of who she is and who she aspires to be, she had to take this status quo symbol of daily work wear and make it her own. She had to become the designer of her own resilient identity and she did that with tie-dye in a very powerful way.

Katelyn's visual cue inspires feelings of belief, empowerment and resilience. She doesn't want to just become another Master Brewer, she wants to become "Katelyn the BrewMaster" with her own unique vision and identity.

Katelyn is finding happiness in her new found identity, building her resilience muscle by having a clear daily reminder of the person and personality that she aspires to be. Resilience and happiness don't just show up on graduation day and stick with you for the rest of your life. Graduation is just momentary pleasure that marks one successful chapter capped off by celebration.

True resilience and happiness come from what you continue to learn about yourself and the environment around you. Be the designer of your life and not the consumer by paying attention and learning how to keep moving forward every day.

FROM MENTE TO MENTOR:

Life would be so much happier and easier if we all had the humility to accept that we can all learn from each other.

Simon Sinek in his book with David Mead and Peter Docker entitled Find Your Why use a simple formula to help companies and their people find their "Why". "To (contribution) so that (impact)."

While I have never gone through this exercise with Katelyn (because not everyone can look forward easily), I think if I were to ask her to complete this statement, we might come up with two different answers based on two different perspectives.

As a father and mentor, the way that I would write this statement for Katelyn is as follows: To inspire other women in business so that they can reach their full potential every day.

Your "Why" statement is the reason why you get out of bed every day and why anyone else should care. When writing your "Why" statement, always create a positive impact statement. Your "Why" shouldn't be to prevent something bad from happening, it should be to create a positive impact in this world.

Katelyn has been fortunate enough to be surrounded by confident and successful women leaders. These leaders lift each other up to become more resilient so that they can own their happiness.

Remember, success and happiness aren't a dollar figure, that's just a result. Happiness is the joy you feel while realizing your full potential every day and that is a feeling that money can't buy. Being able to visualize your dreams and turn those dreams into your reality is the essence of a resilient mindset.

But you can't neglect the reality that you need to earn a profit doing what you do every day. Financial resilience is just as important as physical, mental and professional resilience. You need to be moving forward in all 4 quadrants of your life resiliently to live a healthy, happy life.

Pink Boots:

What's interesting about brewing beer is that it is one big iterative process. You keep working on the recipe until you finally get it right. Resilience works the same way. The identity that you assume is an iterative process and you need to keep working on it even when you feel like you are moving forward. Constant innovation and learning will keep you from getting stuck in complacency.

Sometimes you will find that your current process is working in your favour and then other times you need to tweak your recipe until you get it just right. I'm told that you can hide your mistakes better in a dark beer because of the big bold flavours. It's the lighter beers that are tricky because there is no where to hide your mistakes.

Knock Your Boots Off was a recipe that Katelyn and her BrewMaster partner Aidan Hole created for International Women's Day. The recipe went through 12 iterations before they got it right and the end result was so good that this beer was entered into a US College competition. The results have not come back yet but I will let you know in the comments when they become available.

If you take one thing away from this article, remember the V.I.P. Process for Resilience (Vision, Identity, Proof).

The hardest part is assuming the right identity every day because that iterative process is never a straight line but you can find happiness by developing your resilience muscle every day.

Call to action:

So what can we learn from each other about Youth, Happiness and Resilience?

The first thing is that you need to develop your resilience muscle if you want to have more happiness in your life. You do that by having a clear vision of the type of person you want to be. By assuming the identity of that type of person every day and always being on the lookout for clues that you are moving forward.

The second thing is to be grateful for all of the mentors in your life who inspire you and embrace your authenticity. The best mentors are the ones who believe in you way before you start believing in yourself.

Finally, remember that anything is possible if you continue to improve. The aggregate of being 1% better every day helps you to manage your expectations by being better prepared to deal with adversity when it arises.

Success is not a straight line, so embrace the journey and find real happiness by developing your resilience muscle and striving to be your best every day. The journey of 10,000 miles starts with being brave enough to take that first step.

Cheers Katelyn!

Who are the women in your life who have inspired you with their resilience? Give them a shout out in the comments below and let's all learn about resilience from each other.