The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.
– JODI PICOULT, MY SISTER’S KEEPER
If I ask any person to give me a simple definition of resiliency, the answer is always “bounce back.” That is certainly on the mark for the first definition by Merriam-Webster: “The ability of something to return to its original size and shape after being compressed or deformed.”
This works just fine if you are a piece of steel, a willow tree, or a sofa cushion—but not if you are a human being. When we experience the compression of stress or an event that knocks us down, we are forever changed. You either stay down or you grow through it. There is no going back. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (born ca. 544 BC) said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
The second definition is also not accurate for our human experience: “An ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change.” A few things are wrong with this definition. First, the word “recover” implies that something went wrong. “Adjust easily” is a lovely thought, but in many cases, adjusting is hard work and not easy. And lastly, this definition implies that resiliency only kicks into gear in the face of adversity or change.
Here’s my definition: Resiliency is growing through challenge or opportunity, so you end up wiser and stronger. As the Japanese say, “Get knocked down seven times, get up eight.” Resiliency ultimately means managing your energy so that you have the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual hardiness to get up and move forward. What is energy but the ability to do work! You also need energy if you have an incredible opportunity. You need energy to run your career, to handle your household, to throw a party, to raise your kids, or to plan a funeral.
Breakout happens when we reach an “Aha moment” in understanding that how we think, feel, and act influences our energy. Breakthrough will only come, however, if we realize we must make a change to realign our energy. That creates our Ahhhh. Building resilience is the next step for increasing our energy resources, and for creating connections that support and renew our energy to handle what matters most at this particular period of our lives.
Consider a power grid. Energy flows through the grid if the connections are good. Consider a car. Turn the engine on and, if the connections are good, a spark flies from the battery and the car moves. Bad connections, no movement. In short, energy is either generated through good connections or dissipated through poor connections. I’ll borrow from Einstein’s equation of E = mc2. In my model, Energy equals Meaningful Connections to the power of two. The “two” can be you and another person, an event, a cause, or your soul! Meaningful connections create energy!
We create or lose energy by how we connect with our head (what we are thinking), our heart (what we are feeling), and our hands (what we are doing). Energy is also generated by humor and by meaning. The latter is a belief that when one is engaged in meaningful work that matters and leaves a legacy—no matter how large or small—the energy to continue grows.
Are you beginning to see the correlation with burnout? All definitions of burnout are about exhaustion, zero energy, an inability to savor life, unhappiness, depression, and withdrawal. But sometimes we’re slow to get the breakout Ahas. We’re slow to realize where our energy is being depleted.
Let me give you a personal example. As newlyweds, we were an instant family: my precious husband came with a ready-made family ranging in ages from ten to nineteen. While son Todd could be on his own in a rental unit, the two girls were with us—blessedly so. My energy became focused on doing everything I could to make this family unit work: from family dinners every night to special spur-of-the-moment outings; from making sure that the house had order and cleanliness to having healthy food in the pantry and refrigerator; from taking special time to talk and listen to my girls to laughing with my Sweet William.
Bill had a consulting assignment that took him away 5.5 days of the week. At the same time, I had launched my own business and was trying to get it up and running along with being a first-time mother. Sleep became a sometime thing and exercise consisted of running up and down grocery aisles. Although I had successfully taught a couple hundred children from ages eight to sixteen, living with them was a whole other thing—particularly when the parent whom they adored was absent so much.
Just writing this memory brings up my stress levels. My Ahas came by fits and starts. A couple of breakouts here and there. I connected with my head to really ask myself what I was thinking and saying inside my head and whether it gave me energy or drained my energy. I realized I didn’t have to be perfect. Being me was enough. I had to develop heart courage to firmly ask for the support I needed from Bill. I got into action and went to family counseling. And I learned what work assignments I could do without killing myself in the bargain. I learned to say no. I was beginning to build a muscle for resiliency that led from my various Ahas to the wonderful Ahhhh of celebrating an incredible family.
Think of burnout and resiliency like the double helix found within our DNA. Resiliency can be intertwined with the complex and multifaceted events of our life. Stress is not always a bad thing. It is our body and mind’s reaction to changes that can be demanding. There’s a difference between eustress, which is positive, and distress, which is negative. Handling both types of stress requires energy, that is, resiliency!
According to psychologists, eustress is motivating and uses focused energy. It’s exciting and provides the ability to handle and improve performance. Consider an athlete who is getting ready to run a race. He’s trained for this. He’s ready and he is experiencing eustress. It’s also short-term. Once the race is over, eustress goes away. I now look for work that affords eustress.
Distress, however, causes anxiety and concern and decreases performance. It’s unpleasant and thought to be outside our coping abilities. It can be short- or long-term and can lead to physical or mental problems. Consider the athlete who is a long-distance runner. Suddenly, the coach tells him that he will compete in the high jump the next day. He has never done this. He is untrained. Once he hears that news, he’s going to develop a migraine, throw up, or head to the nearest bar!
The next obvious question is this: Is resiliency genetic? Aren’t there people who just have more grit, energy, and resiliency? After amassing twenty years of research, Dr. Stephen Southwick and Dr. Dennis Charney released their findings in their book Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges. They concluded: “Some people genetically appear to be more resilient because they do have a more rapid firing of neurons into the pre-frontal cortex.”1 Think of the prefrontal cortex as the seat of executive functioning. It acts as a conductor for other parts of the brain and moderates complex cognitive behavior, social behavior, and decision-making. The more quickly neurons fire in this area of the brain, the more quickly a person responds to events.
Here’s the good news: Southwick and Charney concluded that people can be trained to be more resilient. Our neurobiological systems are highly adaptive. Thanks to the brain’s neuroplasticity, neurons in the prefrontal cortex can rewire with practice, patience, and persistence.
Well-renowned Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,2 has successfully proven that developing a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset can create not only a love of learning but also a resilience when faced with a challenge or what seems like a setback. You can catch yourself operating from a fixed mindset that closes off possibilities and instead work on seeing multiple options.
Dweck relates the example of Christopher Reeve, the actor who was thrown from a horse and became completely paralyzed from the neck down. His growth mindset refused to accept what appeared to be inevitable. Reeve started a demanding exercise program that, despite the pessimism of doctors, resulted in him beginning to regain movement after five years. He was far from cured, but brain scans showed that he was sending signals to parts of his body, so movement was beginning in his hands, arms, legs, and torso. He stretched his abilities and in doing so also opened the potential of hope for others with spinal cord injuries. Tragically, he died of cardiac arrest as a reaction to a drug he was given for sepsis. But his inspiration and model of a growth mindset remain!
People with a growth mindset stretch themselves and relish challenge. Over time, you can literally create new patterns of thinking and acting, creating new neural pathways that are more life enhancing. I think of this process as cultivating resiliency. Training your brain to learn new patterns to handle the stresses of life is not done in one sitting. Much like a garden, you cultivate. You must loosen the soil, plant seeds, water the seeds, feed the seeds, and weed out what is choking out the new behavior.
ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE
I define organizational resilience as growing through opportunity or challenge and becoming wiser and stronger as an entity. This doesn’t necessarily mean bigger. Rather, think of this as being more focused on encouraging innovation, allowing employees to grow and develop their unique skills, and operating from a desire to connect in meaningful ways with all stakeholders. I identify resilient organizations as those that have a firm grasp on reality, a deep belief in shared values that transcend profit, a way to make meaning out of hardships, and an ability to improvise as needed. The list of now defunct companies who failed to change or existed solely to line the pockets of a few is telling. Resilient organizations have growth mindsets versus fixed mindsets.