The Power of Resilience

This article was previously featured on Medium.

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Here is a quote I came across recently:

"Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce."   -Vivian Komori

Resilience. It’s hard to count all the times I’ve had to call on it in my life and when I do, I’m reminded of its importance to wellbeing and success.

I should point out that I’m not suffering the traumatic stress and grief so many others are experiencing right now. I’m very thankful to be so fortunate. And this is not a message to indicate that resilience is the quick salve for all wounds and that after a major tragedy or debilitating setback, we ought to be able to immediately pick ourselves up and get back on the path. Sometimes we just need time to process and heal ourselves first.

Yet, when we do experience life’s losses and let downs of any degree, resilience is the key factor to get us back on our feet after that initial feeling of loss. It helps us succeed when circumstances aren’t in our favor. It allows us to “keep the faith” and carry on despite setbacks.

What happens when you’re resilient? You gain motivation to overcome roadblocks and find ways to persevere and succeed no matter what. The fact is that we all fail at times in life. We are all dealt harsh blows—often unfair ones. It’s an inevitable part of the human experience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from these moments and continue striving. It’s a crucial element to accomplishing what you want in work and life, and for experiencing happiness!

I bet that you can point to any successful individual and find a deep well of resilience within that person.

What happens when you have low reserves of resilience? Perhaps you:

• Pivot too soon from a great idea once something goes awry

• Beat yourself up with negative self-thoughts based on disappointments you’ve experienced

• Play out situations over and over in your mind wishing you’d done something differently

• Lose faith in yourself and your dreams

• Fall into a rut . . . and for much longer than you’d like

• Decide to just give up

These responses are normal as short-term reactions to adversity. What’s important is to catch yourself before letting them linger and before taking drastic measures without careful consideration, so you can stay on track with your goals and the direction you’ve set for your life.  

So, how do we build resilience? We can begin by looking at its source. Based on my experience and research, resilience stems from positivity. It’s the main ingredient in resilience.

One thing we know from neuroscience is that our brains are designed to process thoughts and information efficiently, which means that we often see what we expect to see. The author Anais Nin wrote, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

When we think negatively about a situation, another person, or ourselves, we naturally find the negative points that exist, because the brain is wired to see things based on our mindset—how we routinely view the world around us. Conversely, when we think positively, we are primed to see the positive in others, ourselves, and our circumstances.

Think about this: how we view adversity and stress strongly affects our experiences and outcomes from it. For example, if you view a set-back as purely negative without looking for the positive, i.e., the opportunities and learnings it generates, you will tend to take action from that negative mindset, typically achieving a far less than desirable outcome. But if you instead catch yourself in negative thoughts and take time to consider positive aspects of the situation, you will more likely take actions that better reflect your end-goals and values.  Makes sense, right?

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl embodied a truly inspirational and unbelievably strong example of positive mindset in his memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, Frankl recounts his experiences surviving the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps. But, his book is less about his suffering and more about his strength to survive. He looked to the positives as hard as that is to imagine. He thought about his wife and leaned on the hope of seeing her again. He dreamed of teaching after the war on the learnings from his experience. Frankl believed that suffering itself was meaningless, but that we give it meaning by the way in which we respond to it. He wrote:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

This is obviously an extreme example, but it illustrates that there are extraordinary advantages in cultivating a positive mindset!

And, when we talk about positivity, it’s about viewing ourselves in positive ways as well. Being kind to yourself is just as important as maintaining a positive view point on challenging circumstances. Don’t let your inner critic expound on your shortcomings and berate your abilities. Stay aware of negative thoughts, challenge their truth, and reframe them in ways that will enhance your resilience, among other healthy benefits! You can read more on how to do this here.

It’s important to point out that changing attitudes and increasing resilience takes time and intentionality. But cultivating a more positive outlook is a worthwhile, if not critical starting point. It can help you bounce back, stay on track, and achieve far more of what you want in work and life!

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If you want to focus more on learning about your mindset and how to use it as a way to achieve better outcomes in your life, schedule a complimentary call with me or reach out with questions.

Critical Self-Chatter and How to Manage It

I’ve written before on negative self-talk because it comes up quite often for my clients. That’s because we all do it. Ethan Kross writes about this in Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, and his work (some of which I’ve included here with my own thinking) introduced me to some new ideas on this topic.

Negative self-talk is biological and instinctual. And like many things, it can be healthy and unhealthy. For instance, some negative chatter can be valuable because it can generate the initial anxiety or impetus to prompt our stress response, which helps us take action and adapt in critical situations. It can help us plan, take charge, control ourselves, and find quick solutions.  

What happens, though, is that this negative self-chatter (and its accompanying stress response) can go on for too long, in ways that are damaging. In other words, we can get stuck in the anxiety that negative self-thoughts induce.

This can deeply affect our work performance and our relationships with others. After all, the brain only has a certain amount of power available to be in the present moment.

For example, if we need to be engaged with work, but are distracted by ongoing self-critical thoughts, not much work is being accomplished. Do you experience this? What can happen next is that the negative thoughts can then grow and become reinforced in our minds with the perceived failure of not being as productive, causing even more anxiety. Negative self-talk is vicious!

Likewise, with relationships, if negative chatter occupies too much of one’s attention and energy, it can make it challenging to be a good listener. And, relationships can be sabotaged by a person monopolizing others’ time by talking too much about his or her own problems.

These results are entirely understandable given what’s (literally) occupying our minds. And while it’s not entirely avoidable, it is manageable.

So, what can we do? There are a lot of tools that help and it’s all about finding ones that work for you. Below are some ideas to get you started using an example of a personal struggle of mine with accounting-related tasks. This has generated a fair share of negative chatter for me. (Believe me, I have far heavier personal examples of negative self-chatter, but those will have to wait for future posts.)

Coach yourself and use your name in third person as you do it. It’s easy to coach and support friends, but it’s hard to coach ourselves. This is why it’s important to use your name when doing so. I know this sounds corny—it certainly did to me at first. But, it works! For example, I might say to myself, “Come on, Judy. You’ve got this. It may take several hours to prepare that spreadsheet, but there is a lot of value to gain and it’s worth it! You’ll feel amazing once it’s done.” Remember: Language is powerful and can be constructive or destructive depending on how we use it!

Do something atypical when you find yourself engaged in negative self-chatter. Often times there is a sense of confusion and clutter in our minds when we are at the mercy of our negative self-thoughts which can prevent us from moving forward with work. Find other ways in those moments to regain control. For example, organize your desk or your office. Or, make a list of action items you plan to focus on immediately to cut the clutter and reengage with your work. Just make sure that whatever you do is a jumpstart to get back to your work in the moment, and not a distraction to avoid doing what needs to be done. That’s procrastination and a topic for another day!

Reframe your negative self-thoughts. Use those negative thoughts for you and not against you. As mentioned previously, negative thoughts about yourself allow you to mobilize and take quick action in critical situations. But, it’s important to then reframe them so that they don’t linger and become larger recurring problems that hold you back. Here’s one process to do that:

1. Look at the negative thought. What exactly are you telling yourself? Look for the actual truth and the actual facts and use them to challenge your negative thoughts. For example, I sometimes say to myself that I’m terrible with accounting and that I’m lame because I can’t learn to embrace accounting tasks. If I look at this, am I really “terrible” with accounting? No, I get to the right answers, it just takes me some time to get there. Am I “lame” because I can’t learn to enjoy accounting? No, we all have things we like and don’t like. I happen to not like working with numbers. Period.

2. Pinpoint what you are feeling when thinking those thoughts. Like most people, I feel frustrated with myself and anxious, almost resentful, about spending a lot of time on things I dislike. Monitor your emotions so you can identify your pressure points and embrace strategies that are well-suited to your individual triggers.

3. How do you want to feel instead? I, personally, want to feel capable and motivated to get through the project. Notice that I don’t want to learn to enjoy finance tasks—that may be unrealistic for now. Just feeling capable and motivated seems like a reasonable step in the right direction.

4. What would you like to think about yourself instead? This is where you can again throw in some of the self-coaching referenced above. Remember to talk to yourself as you would a friend (in third-person), and use true, factual statements that are constructive instead of destructive. How about, “Judy, you don’t like to create and analyze spreadsheets, but you’ve done it before and can do it now. The work product is important and offers a lot of value. You’ll feel amazing when it’s done and can then reward yourself with a [insert your reward of choice, mine might be a nice glass of wine] afterward.” As I said before, this sounds cheesy, I know. But it works! Again, there is power in positive (and true) words as much as there is in negative.

5. Find an anchor to help you tap into tools that work for you. Finally, think through an anchor you can use to bring you back to this process, or any process that works for you, the next time you find yourself thinking defeatist thoughts. An anchor might be a keyword posted on your computer or whiteboard, or it may be a daily reminder as part of your morning or evening routine, etc. The more often you remind yourself of what to do when you are experiencing critical thoughts about yourself (and the more you do it), the faster it will become an automatic habit!

The bottom line is to try different approaches to combat the prolonged negative thoughts you have about yourself. They aren’t serving you, so find productive ways to let them go and move on.

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Are you interested in diving in more deeply on this? Schedule a complimentary call with me to explore whether these techniques or other aspects of my coaching practice can help you improve your mindset and bring you more happiness in work and life.

Let’s Stop Stressing Out Over Stress

How stressed are you about feeling stressed? I know that I lost quite a bit of sleep earlier in my life due to chronic stress, with no understanding of how stress works or the tools available to manage it, or even learn from it. I find it’s still a process to manage it, but the important thing is I have a process. And so can you!

Let’s face it: Stress is a normal and inevitable part of life. Yet we often allow it to unduly weigh on us mentally, emotionally, and physically. Chronic stress, in particular, can have severe effects on our overall health and well-being. It is, of course, not possible to remove all stress from our lives. (Some studies have actually found that trying to do so actually makes us more stressed!) But we absolutely can learn to understand stress, work to lessen the negative effects we experience from it, and even harness stress in positive ways.

In fact, researchers have found that how we view stress determines whether and how much we suffer from it. In other words, our perspective on stress has an impact on whether we experience negative physical and mental effects from it, or whether we experience positive, healthy effects instead.

Take, for example, two people who are facing the same type of challenges on their jobs. It has become obvious to them that their jobs do not provide the kinds of satisfaction these two individuals crave and deserve. They are both under enormous stress. But this is where the similarities end. One of these individuals is oppressed and worn-down from the stress of the situation, while the other individual perceives the stress as a signal that it is time to consider meaningful change—whether generating change within his existing job, seeking out another job, or even exploring a different career altogether, one with more potential to bring real satisfaction.

The difference between these two people is mindset. Adopting a positive mindset about stress, embracing it, and working with it, can allow us to experience the opportunity stress provides to effect positive benefits in our performance as well as our mental and physical well-being. It may sound cliché to say “think positive thoughts,” but there really is power (and science) behind the words we use and how they impact the ways in which we think and live.

The point is, we can learn to effectively manage stress by understanding it and even using it to our advantage.

Here are three important elements in understanding how to use stress as a positive force:

First, let’s look at the symptoms. The common physical sensations happening in your body when you experience stress, such as sweaty palms, shallow breathing, racing heart, rise in blood pressure, stomach butterflies, etc., are there for a reason. And that reason is not because you can’t cope or because you are inept, incapable, unskilled, different from others, etc. These symptomatic sensations are physiological and happen to us all. The science behind this, put simply, is that commonly known stress hormones, such as adrenaline, are released by the pituitary gland in the base of your brain revving up your body and producing those unwelcome, but normal (indeed critical) sensations when under stress. These hormones are providing energy in order to perform, and it’s important to understand that this is not a reflection of weakness on your part. Understanding this can allow you to adopt a new, helpful perspective that can actually help you perform even better. For example, perhaps the butterflies in your stomach before that job interview are a sign of excitement vs. nervousness. Or perhaps the stress you experienced after you last disappointment at your job is actually a gift, in that it can provide insight about the optimal future path.

Next, engage with others. Have you ever felt like reaching out to others when under stress? The reason for this is a stress hormone called oxytocin. You’ve likely heard about this one. It is commonly referred to as the “love” hormone. It’s one of the stress hormones that is released at challenging times with the role to counterbalance the racing heart effects of adrenaline. When we physically and socially interact with others, e.g., receiving emotional support, holding hands, hugging, etc., the hypothalamus in our brains produces even more oxytocin, helping to soothe us, allowing for a faster recovery from stress. The more oxytocin we release when under stress, the more positive energy we gain and the more easily we can work through stress to prepare for the task at hand. So, connect with friends. Get in touch with a family member. Engage a colleague. Work with a coach or counselor. Connect with others in times of stress to increase your resilience to it. Our brains were designed with this in mind!

Lastly, gain awareness and choose your response. Does thinking positively about stress really help us use it to our advantage? Absolutely! Neuroscience supports that a practice of thinking positively changes the way our brains are wired. Just as negative thoughts have been wired in your brain, so can positive.

Start by noticing how you respond when feeling stressed. What action did you take? What was the outcome? Here’s how it works:

Think back on a recent stressful event and notice:

(1) what you thought;
(2) how you felt when it occurred;
(3) how you responded; and
(4) the outcome you experienced

Many times, the outcome we experience is a result of the thoughts, feelings, and actions we took as a result of stress.

If you didn’t experience a desirable outcome in the episode you are analyzing, reverse engineer the process a bit by thinking about:

(1) the outcome you would have liked to experience
(2) new thoughts that support that outcome
(3) the feelings that stem from those thoughts; and
(4) actions/response that you plan to take as a result

It may seem corny, but I encourage you to take the time to write it all down and repeat the process every time you deal with challenging situations. When you do this work over time, it will not only change how you think, feel, and respond to stress for the better, it will help improve the outcomes in your life. If the thought of adding one more effortful thing to your days and weeks causes you to hesitate, consider this: how many things do we do each day that that carry the opportunity for such significant health and performance results in our lives? It’s worth the work! For examples and help with this practice, download my Working with Stress workbook. It’s free.

Remember, stress is normal. How you view and respond to it is your choice.

In my coaching practice, I work with clients on these and related issues. Feel free to schedule an initial complimentary session, so we can determine whether the type of coaching I provide can help improve the ways in which you deal with stress, and the quality of your life.