We all have some resilience. How much?
I am a creature of habit for many parts of my life. For example, I like my food routines, such as having the same breakfast every day. I like eating one of the same three lunches each week. While I can change what I eat, I choose not to.
I bet when you drive and encounter a detour, you may be surprised or even flustered for a few seconds. Then you go with the detour.
We think of resilience as “bouncing back.” What if we considered it adapting to change?
Bounce Back vs. Adapt to Change
Bouncing “back” is more difficult when you have a big change. If you decide to change a job, you may bounce differently than if you get laid off. When you initiate the change, you may find it easier to bounce.
However, when the change happens to you? It’s more difficult. You might never “return” to where you were. (As an example, I am never going to live without vertigo. I can adapt to my new life, but I can never return to the old life.)
When we initiate change, we are in control. We may have even thought about the change in advance. If you look at the Satir Change Model, by the time we initiate the change, we may already have the Transforming Idea.
I find it easier to be resilient when I already have the Transforming Idea. I’ve been mulling around what I need to do to change, already in Chaos. Making the change is similar to a “Simple Matter of Programming” once you know the algorithm. That’s because I see where I’m going with the Transforming Idea. Knowing my goal gets me to Practice and Integration.
When We Don’t Control the Change(s)
Contrast that reaction to a self-initiated change to one where you are not in charge of the change. We don’t have control of changes when we have a health crisis, get laid off, or even if someone doesn’t choose you for a job you interviewed for. That’s when we are at the mercy of someone or something else. The change chose you—not the other way around.
That means we need our self-esteem to manage our reactions. More, we need to build resilience skills. And, if it’s one of a series of changes that happen to you, you need the courage to manage one more challenge.
How much change can you handle? How much is too much change, so you cannot accommodate the changes in your life or at work?
Practicing Resilience Allows Us To Manage More Change
I suspect that everyone starts at their own level of change comfort. And I bet that level changes as we live and learn. As we learn how to be more resilient, we can handle more change. Even better, the higher our self-esteem, the more change we can mange.
There is no right or wrong answer. However you answer—and I am sure this is context dependent—that is the right answer for you.
See Resilience In Action
All of the people who have commented on my Inside a Vertigo Attack page have managed their resilience in the face of vertigo attacks. They have found a way to continue to live, and in most cases, to thrive.
We build our resilience by recognizing we are in change and by being as resilient as we can be. If we are not sufficiently resilient yet? We can practice.
Practice Building Resilience
The more we practice resilience, the more we use the growth mindset, so we can coach ourselves and learn from our mistakes. Growth isn’t the only mindset we need. In my experience, we also need to learn to coach ourselves into a hopeful mindset. The more we practice using both the hope and the growth mindsets, the more resilient we can become. That allows us to adapt better.
Practicing change helps me build my resilience.
Dear adaptable problem solvers, this is the question of the week: How do you build your resilience?