Let’s talk about resilience – that ability to weather hardship over time; to endure and stand strong; to bounce back to a new normal. A new normal not thrust on us but one we help create.
“Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress – such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. It means “bouncing back” from difficult experiences.” – The Road to Resilience
When strong winds come (whether illness, financial setbacks, or social distancing prescribed to avoid COVID-19), we can bend or break.Photo Credit: Wallpaper Flare
There is a more middle place as well, when the bending leaves us bent rather than just stretched. We are in a season where we might feel bent. In a “fog” of sorts, disoriented by our circumstances, ill-equipped for what we currently face. The lethargy, fatigue, and emotional/mental dullness are confusing when we actually have more opportunity than ever before to create and innovate.
This is where resilience comes in. After weeks of “staying at home”, getting work done in different ways than before, we are teetering on whether to remain cautious or throw caution to the wind.
Tapping into that mental energy for decisive action can move us toward resilience. What do we want as a long-term outcome of this season?
Author James Clear writes about habit formation. He says it takes 2 months or so for a new habit to become automatic. He also cautions against focusing on the amount of time it takes more than the work it takes. “Do the work”. From Day 1 until whatever day our lives will “return” to normal.
Have you thought about what you hope to gain from this time we’re in “together”? We can’t control everything, of course. We will continue to have days where it seemed we weren’t able to accomplish much more than keeping our kids safe and fed. Underneath the sluggishness of this season of “staying well” or “staying in” for the sake of others…there is a rock-solid foundation of future possibility.
Let’s go after resilience. Let this be something we and our children look back on as a gain from 2020. Photo Credit: George Mason University
I’d love to hear your thoughts, your struggles, and how you are tackling the framing of that new normal. How are you staying mentally and emotionally engaged in spite of social distancing?
The world’s shortest speech for those who won’t have a graduation. “Turn your hardships into blessings. Mourn the loss of graduation, but let it motivate you in 2 ways: become resilient in the face of setbacks & maintain relationships with friends whose good-byes were stolen.”
Foroux hands his readers a mirror and asks these pointed questions and others – regarding habits. Our junk food diet, our propensity for complaining, our couch-potato screen habits, our spending beyond what we make. Pretty much in-your-face. However, he also provides free helps to get us off the couch or office chair and on to the kinds of habits that move us to that future self we hope to be. His free ebook How to Get From Procrastinate Hero to Procrastinate Zero is valuable, worth hopping onto his email list for me.
3) Wisdom of Great Leaders – Mark Crowley, leadership sage himself, posted a piece recently entitled 10 of the World’s Great Sages Share Their Most Important Leadership Advice. He’s taken these quotes from his own interviews with these leaders on his insightful Lead From the Heart podcast. Below are four of my favorite quotes from Crowley’s article. Check out the interviews in full – great stuff! “When a human being feels as though they are being cared for and nurtured, their physiology works at its best…Leaders who affect the hearts in people get the best results, and your companies will become far more successful once you embrace this.” – Dr. James Doty
“A ‘multiplier’ leader is someone who uses their own intelligence, capabilities, and talents in a way that amplifies the talents and intelligence of others. They’re leaders who we’re best around.” – Liz Wiseman
“There’s a pathological disconnect between the attributes that seduce us when hiring managers and those that are actually needed to be an effective leader. We can see the effects of hyper-masculine leadership; what we need today are managers who are more self-effacing, empathetic and altruistic – other-focused people who are good coaches and mentors.” – Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
“It’s not the big decisions that differentiate high-performing CEOs, it’s the volume and speed of their decisions. It’s about the speed rather than the precision on the hundreds of decisions they need to make.” – Kim Powell
The Oscar Wilde satirical quote below is NOT among Crowley’s #LeadFromtheHeart counsel above. It does speak to the problem of our leaders being knowers and non-learners. Learners are the best kind of knowers. Excellent leaders never stop learning.
4) Father’s Day – Celebrating Father’s Day this weekend!
We all have fathers – whether very present or long-time absent. Some of you may be fathers. Some of you may have wanted to be fathers but are not able to be…for whatever reasons. This day of commemoration usually means a good meal and some sort of gifting or pampering for you dads. For all of you, with or without children, you can be influencers…and we need you. My biological father was absent long before my parents divorced. Thankfully I have had a rich heritage of good fathers through the rest of my life – my step-dad, brothers, uncles, husband, father-in-law, son/son-in-law, and loving, empowering male friends and colleagues. Most of these good fathers in my life were spiritual fathers…but fathers nonetheless.
5) Southern Baptists – My family didn’t start out in church or Christian. Mom was a believer but through a difficult marriage and trying to feed and clothe four children, she left church before I was born. After her divorce, neighbors invited us to church and it was a huge discovery for us…people who loved us even though we came with a lot of baggage as a family…and a God who loved us just as we were. It was a small Southern Baptist church in Georgia, and I’ve been Southern Baptist ever since.
In June every year church representatives of this large denomination meet somewhere in the US to worship together, reflect on the past year and plan for the future, and invariably, deal with some issue that could divide them.
After the fun of catching up with old friends and colleagues from years past, two of the highlights of this convention for me were:
the Scripture translation project (we could buy verses of the New Testament for $5 each – for a New Testament to be translated for a people group who don’t have it in their language). By the end of the convention, it was funded!
This year two of the dividing issues were the continuing need for racial reconciliation and responding with care to those victimized by clergy in the Southern Baptist Convention. We aren’t where we need to be eventually, but we made progress, thankfully.Photo Credit: Religion News
The piece below is where I am after listening to the panel above:
Slowly and surely I began to realize that my problem was not that I was a person of privilege. Jesus was the most privileged being to ever walk this earth. My problem was what I did with my privilege. Would I use it (consciously or unconsciously) for my own gain, or could I let go of my grasp and use it to serve others. Jesus showed me how, “Who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing”.
How Jesus lived and died would serve as an example for me, and would ultimately allow me to live and die like him. He has taken my shame so that I no longer have to respond defensively about my privilege. I can embrace it, now no longer for myself, but for those for whom Christ died and rose again. Not in a white savior way, He’s the Messiah, I am not. But in an incarnational, self-emptying, for-the-sake-of-others way.
The gospel for the privileged is that Christ took our state of mis-being so that we can live for others. Hallelujah. – Missioeric
Photo Credit: Resilience, Seoraksan National Park, South Korea, Chris Campbell, Flickr
Photo Credit: Wallpaper Flare
Photo Credit: George Mason University
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