Resilience In Recession Tip #4 - Wisdom Shared By One Of Our Readers
This week we’re taking a break from our review of the fundamental skills of resilience to share an interesting note that we received last week from an E-tips reader:
Dear Adaptiv,
I was laid off from my director-level job in March. Trying to locate a new job, even at a level below my last position, was impossible. No matter how much I networked, I couldn’t line up a single interview. I’m a pretty resilient, optimistic person, but in mid-September, I hit the wall. I felt down and discouraged and was having a hard time just getting out of bed in the morning. A friend who had been downsized a few months earlier than me called it “search fatigue”, and I think he was right. I sat back and reviewed all the new contacts and relationships I had developed over the past few months. I realized that even if none of these connections resulted in a new job, the network I had built would be of value for the rest of my life. So I picked myself up, picked up the phone and got back into the game.
At the beginning of October, I got a call from one of my contacts that his company had just lost their Director of Leadership Development and that he had recommended me to fill the position. To make a long story short, I am the new Director of Leadership Training & Development at a mid-sized specialty manufacturing company. The position has more potential than the one I lost, with about the same salary and benefits, and a shorter commute.
When I went through Adaptiv executive coaching a couple of years ago, the lowest score on my resilience profile was Reaching Out. My coach stressed the importance of actively seeking new opportunities and relationships, and this job search experience has driven that point home for me. Reaching out has never come naturally to me, and I can’t say that all the networking I had to do land this position was easy, but it has really paid off.
This reader’s story reminded us of findings from our interviews earlier this year with a number of people thriving in the midst of these harsh economic realities. We’ve found that these people share 4 characteristics:
§ Avoiding the Negative – The simple act of turning off the TV has helped many of us stay resilient. At any time there is usually more good news than bad news in the world, but bad news sells better and both network and cable broadcasters are established masters of the negative.
§ Maintaining Optimism – Our research shows that optimism is crucial to resilience, but only within the bounds of reality. However, if you’ve done everything reasonably possible to solve the problems facing you, you’re almost always better off erring on the side of optimism.
§ Reaching Out – It’s natural during tough times to shrink back into our cocoons, and this stubborn recession has caused many of us to do just that. But our work has shown again and again that pushing against this tendency is critical to our resilience in recession.
§ Forging Connections – The most engaged people are those that have found deeper meaning in their work and in their lives at large. Finding ways to truly make a difference has a profound impact on our resilience and job/life satisfaction.
The individuals that we interviewed represented a diverse slice of the population, with a wide variety of backgrounds, jobs and life experiences. But in spite of their differences, each and every one of them shared these 4 characteristics. Do you have a story of your own resilience in recession in which you tapped into one or more of these 4 “resilience-in-recession” strengths? If so, we’d love to hear from you.
In the next E-tips, we’ll take a quick look at Iceberg Beliefs – those deeper-seated beliefs that can really sap our resilience. And we’ll show you a few Icebergs that people experience particularly during tough economic times, and how to avoid them.