Leading through Uncertainty (Part 2 of 4): The Power of Resilience
“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it
must and survived.”
― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven
This is the second email in our series, Leading through Uncertainty with Kindness, Resilience, Creativity and Hope. If you missed it, here is part 1 of the series Start with Kindness.
In full disclosure, the original title for this part of the series was stability, not resilience. Much of the management literature highlights how important it is for leaders to provide stability during times of crisis, but as we were digging into this topic – and our own experiences navigating stress and uncertainty – we found that resilience was the better choice. Stability implies a desired predictable state, whereas resilience describes a way of being, no matter the circumstances, that will hold us and sustain us. Indeed, the more we search for stability amidst our current mid-COVID-19 uncertainty, the more overwhelmed we can become. In this past month at the ALG, we have noticed how flexible our planning needs to be – we do not know what Tuesday might look like, never mind June.
In this brief video, David Whyte describes resilience as “a return to spaciousness”. Oftentimes when we feel stressed and overwhelmed, there is a feeling of restriction and hopelessness. David’s description helps us understand the importance of cultivating our inner state in order to give ourselves the gift of that spaciousness – and the promise of what that spaciousness can facilitate.
In his latest book, Resilient Rick Hanson, PhD, notes “There’s a fundamental idea in psychology and medicine that the path your life takes depends on just three causes: how you manage your challenges, protect your vulnerabilities, and increase your resources. These causes are located in three places: your world, your body, and your mind.” We all have very limited influence on the world, and often times our own body, but we do have tremendous influence on our thoughts.
How can we influence our thoughts?
A tool we have found be helpful, and which we often use in partnership with our coaching clients, is a cognitive behavioral thought model by Brooke Castillo called CTFAR – an acronym for circumstances, thoughts, feelings actions and results. It is best described by way of an example:
Circumstances: School is closed, I am working from home, the kids are screaming.
Thoughts: I can’t concentrate, I am really behind on work. My boss hasn’t contacted me in three days – is she annoyed at something I did? Do I have to use the video for Zoom? This place is a mess. The kids are REALLY annoying me now. I am a bad mother. I might get fired from my work because I can’t get anything done. I can’t even concentrate when it’s quiet. Why won’t my partner do anything around here to help?
Feelings: I feel stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted, angry, hopeless.
Actions: Yell at the kids, scroll through the news and my Facebook feed, stress eat.
Results: Everybody is yelling at each other, I am feeling even more anxious and stressed having read the news and dubious sources on Facebook. I can feel a sugar crash coming on too.
Our brain’s negativity bias takes us to these negative thoughts and feelings in mere seconds. But we have a choice. We have a choice in that moment in between circumstances and thoughts – and the more we exercise that choice, the more spaciousness we give ourselves.
Here’s an example of what is possible with a mindful pause in between circumstances and thoughts – to stop the negativity bias in its tracks and nurture your resiliency:
Circumstances: School is closed, I am working from home, the kids are screaming.
Thoughts: I can’t concentrate, I am behind on work. What do I need right now? I have a Zoom call in an hour that I need to prepare for and I really need to take a walk to clear my head at some point today. I will go and speak with my partner and find out what they need right now as well and see what we can come up with together.
Feelings: I feel a sense of empowerment and hope.
Actions: Speak with my partner. They can take the kids for that hour and we decide that we will all go for a walk afterwards. It will give us a chance to plan tomorrow – and a much-needed opportunity for the kids to run and burn off some energy.
Results: I had a great Zoom call with minimal interruptions. The family walk gave us all a chance to connect. Yes, the kids were still bickering with each other occasionally during the walk, but I felt I had some mental space not to take it personally. My partner and I also have a plan for tomorrow.
The more we intervene in our mind in between circumstance and thought, the greater resilience we can cultivate – helping you to be more in control of your thoughts, rather than your thoughts controlling you.
Here are a few additional resources we recommend on the topic of resilience:
Rick Hanson, PhD, has a generous library of articles as well as Just One Thing: Simple Practices – simple practices that can have a big impact. We have found this one to be particularly grounding.
An HBR article by Martin Seligman - Building Resilience: What business can learn from a pioneering army program for fostering post-traumatic growth. “Thirty years of research suggests that resilience can be measured and taught” – this article describes how the U.S. Army is putting that idea to the test.
If you would like to dig into resilience in more detail, this panel discussion How We Bounce Back: The New Science of Human Resilience from the World Science Festival provides a diversity of insights from a biological psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, a social psychologist and a Buddhist monk.
A final note on the topic of resilience. Everyone with whom we speak (and there have been zero exceptions) is experiencing overwhelm, anxiety and stress. This global pandemic has upended the everyday lives of the majority of the eight billion people on the planet. We have never experienced this before in our lifetime. In between our current circumstances, and the thoughts that occur to you. Pause and ask yourself, “What do I need right now?”. Let you innate wisdom be your guide.