Undefeated

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Frederick Maryat

As I mentioned last week, I do a lot of cold calling which means I get rejected. A lot. So the word resilience has been in my face lately. A lot. Merriam-Webster defines it as, “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” As usual, I have questions.  

“It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” Rocky Balboa

How do I get resilience? The same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice. As a woman in the workforce, I feel like I have plenty of opportunity to practice resiliency. From sexism (e.g. Since I’m the only woman in the meeting I must be the note taker, right?) To family responsibilities competing with work (e.g. leaving a day-long corporate meeting “early” (6:00PM) to volunteer at my daughter’s school event.). Every day seems to offer a chance to practice resiliency.

“Instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed.” Michelle Obama

Why is it important to cultivate? Because life is hard and stressful, yet we don’t assume it will be. We should be surprised when the Memorial Day tornadoes of 2019 happen, but we shouldn’t be surprised when our coworker tries to steal our lead. Again. We can’t predict all the problems life throws at us, but we can prepare our minds to process them, work through them, and maybe even use them to become stronger. When setbacks happen we can remind ourselves of our positive qualities, formulate a realistic plan to overcome the problem, manage our emotions, remain calm and breathe, think about communication and make it effective, and think of ourselves as survivors and not victims.

“You gotta get up and try, and try, and try” Pink

When I fail, how do I work through it? My best example of resiliency is our daughter flunking the road test for her driver’s license the first time she took it. There was much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on the way home. As I selfishly thought how angry I was that I’d have to take yet another afternoon off work to let her try again, God thumped me on the head and said, “Ten years from now, it won’t matter that you took more time off work, but what you say in the next ten minutes will. Don’t screw it up.” I told her, “We’ll be home in five minutes, so you have five minutes to wallow in self-pity. Then, pick yourself up and decide what you’re going to do to fix this.” We were home about an hour when she told me she’d called a friend for consolation and found out she’d failed her first try too. She was angry enough to work on what flunked her and retake the test. My husband got off work to take her for the second try, and she passed.

Now, when I get knocked down, I follow her example: I wallow in self-pity for five minutes, talk to someone who knows what I went through, practice what I failed, then go back and try again. It works pretty well. Maybe you should give it a…try.

Please share your stories of resilience in the comments section.