| 3 Ways to Build Resilience |
Shortly after celebrating my 10 year anniversary with my company, my manager spent nearly eight months ignoring me; disregarding my physical existence, wanting to see me leave the position, the office, and our company. I could have easily quit. Those eight months were some of the most challenging, emotionally and professionally, challenging times that I have ever endured.
But circumstances led me to stay; I found out that several other employees had gone through similar circumstances with this manager, and I decided not only for myself, but to support these others as a leader, that I was going to be resilient and stick it out. I wanted to show my resilience in finding a solution, finding a way that myself and others would not have to go through this type of experience.
Resilience is a really challenging concept, it’s challenging in the word itself.
You will absolutely have times that you face difficult circumstances, situations that you believe you can never overcome. Like, “This is it, I’ve got to call it in, I can’t do it.” But I’m encouraging you to find that resilience that I know you have inside of you, to continue to fight and push forward toward whatever it is. For me, to find that ability to stick it out, number one, I had to believe that I could figure things out.
I have to believe, have the confidence in myself that even though this seemed impossible, that I could do it. I didn’t know how, I just knew that I would be able to do it. I just had to have that internal dialogue, that confidence, that pep talk. Now every day I would wake up and say, “Okay, I know I’m going to be treated in this way, but I’m going to show up for other people.” But as soon as I would walk in, I would have a dagger thrown into my chest.
So the second way I was able to have that resilience to stick it out was through my community; my support group. Whether that was through peers at my organization, through coaches that I had, through my parents, my spouse, or my friends. I turned to my community for that support. Those connections helped me stay resilient. They helped me have that confidence when I wasn’t having it anymore. They helped me see what could be on the other side.
That’s the third thing that I had, was additional ideas and additional resources. The skills that I had, the coping skills, the mechanisms that I had always relied on to overcome stress, to fight through things such as this – they weren’t working. You know, three months, six months in, what I knew to work in the past was no longer working in this situation. But again, instead of giving up, instead of saying, “Well, I tried everything..” I knew I hadn’t tried everything. So I reached out to that community to say, what else could I be doing?
That’s when I was introduced to other resources that absolutely helped me stick it out, until there was a resolution at the end that allowed me to feel really good about my choice to be resilient, to create change.
What do you need to fight against right now? What do you need to have that confidence in your ability around, to have that community, that connection, and the additional resources, the places to go? What situation are you up against, where those things can help you stay resilient? To stick with it and fight through to the end, so that you know you will come out with the best solution for you.