The
Path to Resilience
“This above all: to thane
own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day;
Thou canst not then be false to any man.” – William
Shakespeare
Resilience can be
achieved in at least two different ways.
One way to achieve
resilience is to respond to each event that occurs in a
successful manner in order to resolve tensions in that
event-space. This I call event-based resilience.
Event-based resilience is
the reason why some of us achieve resilience during portions
of our lives or during particular events. This also explains
why someone who has been and appears to be resilient
encounters periods where the person demonstrates little or
no resilience—being downsized, outsourced, or even struck
square-on by midlife crisis that never seems to end. Each of
us has particular gifts that when aligned with particular
conditions match up well. It is that moment, event, or
series of events not directly in alignment with
our natural or nurtured capability that gives us
trouble.
Event-based resilience is
an important form of resilience, but is less effective than
what I call path-driven resilience. In contrast to
event-based resilience, which in large part depends on
successfully reducing the tensions of each event or set of
conditions using our inductive bias, natural gifts or
disposition, path-driven resilience uses success AND
failure to create resolution of tensions over time.
Path-Driven
Resilience
What I mean by
path-driven resilience is encompassed in nurtured—natural
capabilities that allow us to learn from the current
situation regardless of success or failure. Remember in
event-based resilience, which is an important form of
resilience; we rely on our capability to overcome the
demands on the conditions placed upon us in the moment.
Here as some examples:
Ø
A
salesperson overcomes the negative attitudes of the client
to get the sale.
Ø
An athlete
overcomes a stumble to win a race.
Ø
A leader
transcends negative stock market news to merge with a large
company.
Ø
A person
fights back feelings of self-doubt and moves in spite of
fear.
Ø
A parent
picks up a fallen child and nudges them back in the game.
Ø
A partner,
after losing a significant other, resolves to find another
relationship.
Each of these examples
shows some degree of resilience in responding to an event
which produced conditions where success was achieved. Each
is valued for the response made in the moment. Often, we
call this resilience. And it is resilience. Yet, in most of
these cases, if you really look into the attributes and the
tensions resulting in those event-spaces, you will find that
the actor was more than likely matched in terms of natural
capability and the requirements of the situation.
For every example above,
we know hundreds of examples where the person was unable to
meet the conditions of the demand environment…
Ø
The
salesperson turns away from the sale because they think the
person does not approve of them and that is why they have a
negative attitude.
Ø
The athlete
stumbles and…falls…failing to finish the race.
Ø
The leader
fails to transcend negative stock news pulling back from the
merger
Ø
The
person’s feelings of self-doubt prevent them from reaching
out to others.
Ø
The parent
picks up the fallen child and soothes them, removing them
from the game.
Ø
A partner,
after losing a significant other, blames himself or herself
for the failure, avoiding another relationship of
significance.
In each of these
examples, we find that people are not matched through their
natural gifts to the event, or conditions. In some cases,
people find the capability to meet these events over time.
In many cases, the failures become reinforcement as to why
they cannot succeed. Event-based resilience is often the
result of a narrow, yet sufficient match between our innate
capability and the conditions. In those cases where the
match is sufficiently wide enough to bolster the person
during the event, we get resilience. EVERYONE has some
resilience. EVERYONE can be resilient at times. Yet
what produces the resilient person, profession, business or
network over and over? A Path of Resilience.
In my view, there is a
way to design and produce resilience across a wide-bandwidth
of conditions. It is through path-driven resilience.
Path-driven resilience is natural to a limited few, but
possible for most who understand how to use design. There is
not any question in my mind that some people naturally have
what are called hardy personalities and through success and
failure, they remain resilient, most usually because they
refuse to give up or in—you might say that outright
stubbornness has an indirect way of helping some people to
be resilient. Although in their wake lies failure and
distress they create among others through their “hardiness.”
One reason I point this
out is that if it is not in your nature to be hardy, you
have a much different path and need a different design than
those whose nature it is to remain hardy through thick and
thin. The other reason I point this out is for you hardy
people to see the damage that is done as you move through
life with your unconscious hardiness!
I see people (trainers,
developers and coaches) making the mistake of trying to
model outwardly the hardy personality to others, as if
anybody can learn hardiness, overcome acceptance motivation.
In large part I think this is due to people still believing
in the humanist philosophy of what is called blank slate—where
someone can be nurtured to be anything he or she wants to
be; or in some cases needs to be, when we consider
resilience or more broadly, material success.
In my opinion, this
ability to learn the hardy personality is not probable.
There are a very small number of lucky people who have this
natural gift of “being anything they want to be”, yet we try
to generalize this “nature” to all those nurtured.
This results in inefficient approaches to motivation,
training, development, success and resilience. Be advised
that the blank slate moniker, “be anything you want to be”,
in most cases does not apply to you; much to the chagrin of
those selling success-snake oil, who wish everyone were
actually created equal.
If you are or are NOT one
of those truly lucky ones with nature’s gifts of resilience,
you too can utilize the CPR System to enhance your success
rate over time. It seems that while some of us may have the
gift of hardiness, we also have the gift of learning by
failing. Even Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM may have
exampled this language when he stated to IBMers, “if you
want to double your success rate, double your failure rate.”
While there is no question that iteration is a powerful
teacher, those of us who fail to succeed use up a lot of
resources in the process. So, we, like our antithesis--those
who avoid failure, do not iterate enough or risk enough—are
likely to experience similar unsustainable fortunes, each in
different ways.
Let me quote a few words
about hardiness so you can recognize it when you see it and
realize it is a natural gift.
In the late 1970s,
psychologist Suzanne Kobasa, Ph.D. (Kobasa, 1979a & b), did
a long term research study on the impact of stress on top
AT&T executives when it was breaking up. The employees were
either losing their jobs or being reassigned. Over a period
of eight years, she found that there were two different
patterns in the way these executives responded to the
stress. People in one group became increasingly symptomatic.
They had more medical and psychological problems and
symptoms and more doctors visits. In contrast, the second
group showed no difference in symptoms during this stressful
period as compared to before its onset. Surprisingly, they
seemed healthier and more robust. They essentially rose to
meet the challenge. Dr. Kobasa referred to this second group
as having a stress-hardy personality. (www.hardiness.com)
In some ways, the
constitution or nature of these people is more a gift than a
human design, although inherent in the gift is a design.
Many motivational speakers and pundits tell people—from
their points on high—that all they need to do is get going,
just do it, or use passion to overcome setbacks, barriers
and failure; much the same as the naturally resilient
personality would model. Yet, to our dismay, it is much more
than feel-good, motivational, impact events which produce
resilience over time…and in most cases—in time.
|
“Unfortunately our culture
continually reinforces this belief and maybe even
wants it to be true; it’s just a matter of finding
that right program, redoubling our efforts, or
having an attitude adjustment…. If this thing didn’t
work, maybe the next one will, so keep looking. This
constant scanning and pumping up distracts us away
from a “true path of resilience” – that of really
getting to know ourselves, accepting what is and
what naturally fits. It fuels runaway
consumption…You haven’t tried this one yet,
so how can you know unless you try… I’ve spent
thousands of hours and dollars on just that approach
and it has probably reduced my resilience (in
certain areas) over time through loss of confidence
and it has certainly eaten up a tremendous amount of
energy. What has produced the most resilience for
me is staying engaged in a process of stripping away
the barriers to self awareness.” -CPR System User |
Over the years, I have
realized that I am naturally one of those hardy
personalities. You might say that along with it, I do not
get ulcers but I am a carrier! Just by telling people how I
have done it, or how I do it, is not enough as I have
discovered over my many years of working with people around
the globe.
I have discovered that
what really works to create resilience is to create a unique
path of individual purpose resulting in a resilient design.
This is done through self-knowledge activities, a strong
desire to be self-directed and self-correcting and often
with a coach trained developmentally. This is where I have
arrived in supporting increased resilience with the people I
coach and the systems I work in and around—through design
based on their gifts.
There is a story I
related in my first book called Coach2 The Bottom Line,
where I refer to a story by David Whyte. It is called the
kayak story and it basically discusses how a mountaineer
prepares perfectly for a kayak trip—in mountaineer design,
taking only essentials, weighting and packing carefully;
only to find that the people showing up to go kayaking are
bringing everything including the kitchen sink. The design
of the kayak (system) allows the “water” to carry the
weight. A mountaineer, in contrast perfects a way for the
person to carry the weight. What the analogy shows is
that YOU do not have to carry the weight of resilience. The
design will carry the weight if you understand the
territory.
Side note:
Now I do not intend to become religious here, nor point to
increasing correlations between spirituality and religion in
this entire system or design. Yet I do want to point out
that a resilient design, from whatever source it comes
from—if it is resilient—will carry the weight of
finding the alignment required to produce enhanced levels of
aliveness. Most of us in the world today are caught up with
semantics of naming the design, rather than making sure that
we create the path of design. I would suggest, rather
indirectly, that there are many source paradigms of
resilient design, including religion.
Are you ready to
find out how to create a path of resilience by design?
Get access to my
complete white paper on Path of Resilience with specific
examples and recommendations on finding your path of
resilience using our Resilience Mapping Indicator at:
www.resilienceworks.com, purchase my new book CPR For
The Soul: Creating Personal Resilience By Design, which
contains this white paper and mapping tools, or get all of
my published works each month at
www.ontheprofessionaledge.com/founder.
