Career

3 Words to Guide Me in 2021

January 4, 2021 by Jim Peacock 4 Comments

Since 2016, I have chosen 3 words to guide me through the year, rather than doing a New Year’s resolution. I find the words somehow lead me to new ideas and actions. Often they are reinforcing thoughts important to me, but there is real power in “sending the message out to the universe.” I distinctly remember in 2017 my word “authentic” continued to come back to me when other people would say to me things like, “what I really like about your work is it feels so authentic.” Yeah, that happened at least twice that year.

Once again, I spent time on my December day-long retreat to think about 2021 and the 3 words I want to guide me this year. As I reflected on 2020, I felt that my two words “rebalance” and “strategic” guided me well.

“Philanthropy” did not live up to what I had hoped. I did provide more pro bono career coaching and I had begun to do some career development workshops for the local Boy’s and Girl’s Club and then Covid hit and put an end to that. I did volunteer at the local food pantry once, but was uncomfortable with the close quarters it required…I am just not ready yet.

I reviewed my journal for the year looking for themes and words that repeated themselves. No surprise, COVID was repeated many times but there was quite a bit of writing about anxiety as well. With the pandemic, social injustice, and the divisive elections, my life seemed to have an undercurrent of anxiety all the time. 2020 is best viewed in the rear view mirror, I believe.

After much thought about the past year and where I want to be in the next year, I have landed on these three words to guide me in 2021.

Understanding ★ Kindness ★ Be

UNDERSTANDING

Understanding ★ As I think about our divided nation, I struggle with understanding the many friends and family who are so different from me politically. I try hard to see their perspective on so many issues, from Trump vs Democrats, mask vs no-mask, and more. I hope that this word will begin to guide me toward learning how they think, what they think, and what motivates them, in order to find some common ground.

The blatant social injustice that is going on in our country hurts me deeply. I have tried to better understand how I have been a part of that injustice in the past and currently, and what I can do to help change it in the future. I have made it a practice to read on this topic, watch TedTalks that enlighten me, and follow people who are speaking about this, like Baratunde Thurston and others, as a way to help me understand the issues. Understanding the issues is the first step in being able to make change.

KINDNESS

Kindness ★ “Be kind to one another” is how Ellen DeGeneres ended her talk show for years. It is a simple statement and simple to follow her advice. Along with understanding people, I feel like the word kindness will guide me forward even when I don’t understand. Maybe it will help me understand people better, maybe it won’t, but if I lead with kindness first and always keep it at the forefront of what I do, it will help me be a better person.

There were times this year that I didn’t feel kind towards everyone. There were people saying and doing things that offended me and my first reaction was negative. I want my first reactions to be kindness first. 2020 was a very difficult year for so many people, financially, socially, mentally, and more. I want to do whatever small things I can to be kind to others and hopefully make their day a little bit better if I can.

BE

Be ★ This word spoke to me. I rejected it initially thinking it was too small and did not carry the meaning of my three words over the years. But then I realized the power of this word in guiding me daily through 2021. I want to be present more. I want to be in the moment at all times. I want to be authentic in how I approach life…in all things I do.

For me the opposite of this word is the “shoulds,” the “want to do’s,” and the “maybe’s. ” As I thought about all the times I say to myself I “should” do something or I “want” to do something, I hope to take those future oriented words and convert my thinking to the present…to be here, wherever that is and with whoever I am with. I want to be me at all times.

Those are my three words for 2021 and below are my three words for the past five years. I have printed them off and tape them to my bathroom mirror, the fridge, my photocopier in my office, and I will begin each journal entry by writing them down before I start journaling. This way I start each day thinking about these words to guide me.

Here are my words from past years. I don’t think they truly ever go away. They were important to me then and still are now, as a clue to who I am and who I want to be.

2016 – Health ★ Mindfulness ★ Focus

2017 – Intentional ★ Authentic ★ Wellness

2018 – Reach ★ Capacity ★ Consistency

2019 – Reflection ★ Purposeful ★ Gratitude

2020 – Philanthropy ★ Rebalance ★ Strategic

Do you choose three words each year?
Would you like to try it this year?
If you do, please share them with me.

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association.

Sign up here to receive my TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON. You will also receive the career practitioner’s weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more.

Improve Your Deeper Thinking

December 7, 2020 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. Cal Newport.

How do you improve your deeper thinking? Cal Newport wrote about the importance of deeper thinking in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. We live in a world filled with YouTube videos, Facebook, emails, Instagram, Pinterest, and more…which are ALL trying to keep you and your mind on them and only them.

One way to improve your deeper thinking is to read. Read books that will help you in your job, books that will inspire you, books that will take you on fantasy trips, and books that are pure entertainment. For those of you who are prolific readers, there is no need to continue reading this blog. Just go to the comments and share your thoughts 🙂

For the occasional book readers or people who are not reading books these days, hear me out. TV, movies, YouTube videos, and social media can be very entertaining and serve a purpose. But recognize that it is “passive” thinking for your brain. You are taking in information that someone else is sending to you. There is not much ‘deep thinking’ here…which is fine. We all need entertainment. But if you want to stretch that brain a bit, let me suggest one simple way to do that: reading.

Here are some of the benefits, in my opinion, that come from reading books to help me with deeper thinking.

Increases concentration and focus. When I am reading a book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, I have to focus on the words, the characters, the plot, or the meaning behind whatever the book is about. It is forcing my brain to leave the distractions of my everyday life behind and really focus on that book, at that time.

Memorization. In Cal Newport’s book, he talks about Daniel Kilov who can memorize a shuffled deck of cards, a string of one hundred random digits, or 115 abstract shapes. He has won silver medals in the Australian memory championships. There are tricks to doing this, but his point is that you can train your brain to memorize things that require the removal of all distraction…and gets us closer to deeper thinking. I am reading a John LeCarre novel now that requires me to memorize a variety of characters and it is a challenge, but I accept the challenge!

Connecting disparate thoughts. In James Lang’s book, Small Teaching, he talks about the difference between memorizing things and real knowledge of a topic. Experts, in all fields, have the ability to learn new information and to store it in their brains in ways that are “connected” to other things we already know. This improves your deeper thinking as well.

Stretching your brain. Your brain is like a muscle. It actually does not stop growing as we grow older; it improves on making connections between other things we have learned in our lives. This is why as people get older, they often get wiser. This is why as a career coach for over 25 years, I can come to different, often creative solutions to problems my clients present. By reading, you are stretching your brain and keeping it working, just like a muscle.

Slowing down. Even professional books that may be challenging to read can help us slow down. In mindfulness and meditation practices, people talk about the “monkey brain” that never stops thinking. We all have it. If you are just jumping from emails to Facebook, to YouTube, back to emails, from your phone to your computer to the TV, you are “feeding” your monkey brain. By taking even 15 minutes to read a book, you are calming your mind and teaching it to slow down.

I encourage you to pick up a book today. If not today, this week. Find a quiet place and a time each day at the same time and read. Turn off your phone or leave it in a different room. Even if it is for 10-15 minutes, you will begin to slow that distractible brain down and improve your deeper thinking.

In the mornings, I like to start my day with 10-15 minutes of reading a professional book, one that will help me in some way. What I like is, I start my day NOT chasing emails, and reading helps me to be slow…to read…to think…to be in the moment. In the evenings, I like to end my day with a historical book or a fiction book that helps me stop thinking about work. I tend to read for 15-45 minutes in the evenings and this is MUCH better than ending my day on the computer or the TV.

Think about it. If you read 15 minutes per day at an average of 250 words per minute, that’s nearly 4000 words in a setting, and 26,000+ words each week. That would get you through about a third to half of the average adult book.

Want to improve your deeper thinking?

Grab a book each day and make a routine out of it and let me know how you feel in a few weeks.

How to get better at deeper thinking.

October 12, 2020 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

What are some ways you can train yourself to do deeper thinking? Why is this so important? I believe we are all a bit like a golden retriever in a room with four tennis balls bouncing around. We chase emails. We click on five different social media platforms. We send and receive text messages. We are too busy most days to simply slow down and think.

I read Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work to help me understand this topic better. He talks about the many benefits of Deep Work that requires longer periods of uninterrupted time that is much more productive. Cal’s definition of Deep Work is professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improves your skill, and are hard to replicate.

One way that I try to do deeper thinking is to take monthly day-long retreats where I turn off my phone, leave the computer behind, stop all social media, and I journal, think, meditate, walk, read, and simply slow down. (Read more about my retreats).

I also try to start each day with walking meditation and take a 20-25 minute meditation break mid-day most days. You can learn more about this topic here.

I want to talk about how spending some time writing
can improve your deeper thinking.

I believe there is something powerful in taking a pen in hand and writing on paper…the kinesthetic connection between your hand and your brain is powerful. I can’t give you the scientific information to support this, I know it is true. It is why I love using card sorts with clients and call that particular workshop, The Magic of Card Sorts. Something deeper happens when you use your hands with your brain.

Writing forces you to take those thoughts out of your head to organize them on paper which helps with deeper thinking.

That simple process requires you to consider an order of importance, and then to describe your thoughts clearly. When you “leave it in your head” it seldom gets worked out enough. By writing it down, it helps you process the information and gets you to identify key themes or key points.

I like to mind-map my blogs. Here is a picture of my mind-map for this blog. My original was much sloppier writing so I re-wrote it so you could read my handwriting 🙂

It helps me organize my thinking and I can always add to it as I am going.

If you would like to practice deeper thinking for yourself, start journaling. I strongly encourage you to not type in a computer and to get yourself a journal book to write in. I try to write each morning and often I will flip back through my journal book to see if there are themes emerging and also so I can develop my thinking and add to some of my earlier thoughts.

You may want to nudge yourself to write for your colleagues or people you work with as a way to clarify some thinking. Again, most of us would do that on the computer. I challenge you to consider starting with pen and paper.

As you work on your deeper thinking and begin to write, I encourage you to share your writing with your network. You can do this on a blog or in a LinkedIn post or even write a LinkedIn article. When you push out your thoughts publicly, people can add to your thinking or be challenged to think themselves in a different way.

Finally, many of you are doing great things in your work. Why not consider writing an article for one of your professional associations?

I know that the Maine Career Development Association produces a monthly newsletter and they would consider articles from their members. Your chamber of commerce likes to share information, your place of work may have a newsletter, and national associations are always looking for good content.

For example, National Career Development Association has a monthly web-magazine called Career Convergence. They encourage members to write and are only looking for about 950 words. They provide editors to review your article before submitting and give great advice. I’ve written a few articles there. Here is one I wrote about “Stay Interviews” that I wrote a few years ago.

Here is one I wrote for the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) in their Academic Advising Today, quarterly e-zine on how Academic Advisors are the like the Wizard of Oz 🙂

My point that I want you to take away is that writing can help you do deeper thinking. And we all need to find ways to do deeper thinking to slow down our fast-paced lives and to really T H I N K about what is happening and how we can improve our lives.

What are your thoughts on deeper thinking?

What is Your LinkedIn Message?

August 31, 2020 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

_{Image thanks to www_slon_pics from Pixabay}

Every word and every sentence on your profile is a message you are sending to people. All (or none) of the actions you take on LinkedIn, are a message. I encourage you to think about your LinkedIn message today.

Your LinkedIn message begins with the words on your profile, what you choose to include and/or exclude, and what you choose to do on LinkedIn. Let’s start with the words you choose.

WORD CHOICE

GOAL: To use the words that best describe what you do and are the words used in the industry you want to work in.

These are all words that have similar meanings.

Training. Educating. Teaching.
Counseling. Coaching. Advising.
But what is the message that each sends?

What words are used in your industry, or the industry you want to work in?

I used to call myself a career counselor or an academic advisor, but I much prefer to use the word “coach” now because it implies a different relationship with my clients. I am not going to tell them or advise them what to do. I want the client to figure things out and what is best for them, by coaching them through the process.

That simple choice of word change carries quite a bit of weight in how people perceive me and what I provide.

SENTENCES

GOAL: To demonstrate your value in short snippets of information so that people will actually read it.

I like to say when working with a client that your LinkedIn About Section should be written for the public, not your English teacher. Your English teacher wanted paragraphs that led with a sentence to set the theme and then at least three more sentences to support that theme or thought. Your paragraphs need to be shorter than this on LinkedIn.

Here is an example that comes from my About section of my LinkedIn profile. The About section is where you have 2000 characters to highlight whatever you want about yourself. Notice this snippet is two sentences and only takes up three lines (excluding the title).

★ CAREER COACHING ★

I believe people know what they want to do deep down in their hearts and I embrace the idea of “intentional serendipity” in all my work. Often people just need someone who can reframe their situation to see new opportunities.

Less is best. I could have written much more, and probably did when I first drafted it. What is the essence of what I want people to know? How do I get that in two sentences?

VALUE vs TASKS

GOAL: To let people know what value you bring to the workplace and what skills do you want to continue to use.

The “old school” resume was a list of tasks and duties found on the job description. So many people simply move that information to their LinkedIn profile. Hiring managers and recruiters don’t want to see that on the resume nor do they want to see it on your LinkedIn profile. If everyone is using similar job descriptions, what makes you unique? This only tells me what you did do…not what you want to do or are really good at.

Hiring managers want to see your value. What do you bring to the workplace that makes you unique? What have you done to improve the workplace in the past? (And they will make the assumption you will do similar things in the future). I found this example in one of my first connections profile that demonstrates what I am talking about.

My clients are able to tell persuasive, captivating career stories with their unique promise of value throughout the following expertly crafted collateral:

► Powerfully Tailored Executive Résumés.

► Customized Cover Letters and Correspondence specific to job search strategy.

► LinkedIn Profiles highlighting organizational impact and leadership capabilities.

► Personal and Professional Executive Bios that focus and elevate their narrative.

► Insightful, Persuasive Interviews adding authenticity and credibility to career collateral.

When you read this, you really get a sense of what value she offers her clients.

YOUNG OR OLD
EXPERIENCED OR INEXPERIENCED

GOAL: You should choose if you want people to know how long ago something happened. It is your LinkedIn message and you decide when to highlight dates and when not to.

You should make a conscious decision on whether or not you want to include dates and over ten years of experience. In general, I recommend that my clients only go back ten years. What happened fifteen or twenty years ago was an eternity in many ways because the world of work has changed so much.

Although…some people may want to go back further because they want to send the message that they can do a specific set of skills or have knowledge of a specific industry. It is your message, you must decide.

For clients who are over forty-five or so (it depends), I recommend that they not include the dates of college degrees. If I were to put up my graduation in 1979, people would make assumptions whether they wanted to or not. There is so much implicit bias in all of us. Hmmm….he’s old. I wonder…

By leaving it off, I am choosing my LinkedIn message.

A recent college graduate, you always want to include dates. Hiring managers need to know that they are looking at a person who recently attended college and will typically not have a lot of work experience. They could have internships or taken industry-related courses, but they are not looking for ten years of experience. So, go ahead and tell them the dates.

ACTION vs INACTION

GOAL: To demonstrate that you are committed to your profession and support learning and networking.

LinkedIn is the place for your professional online presence. Is your profile completely filled out? If not, is it because you do not know how to do it? Or you don’t care? Or you are unorganized? The last thing you want is for others to look at your profile and ask themselves questions like these, or worse, fill in their own responses. (Read my blog, Start from the Beginning if this is you). You get to choose how you are presented to the world so take advantage of all LinkedIn has to offer.

Did you “like”, “comment”, or “share”, any posts on LinkedIn recently? If so, it shows up in your Activity Feed.

Have you written any recommendations on LinkedIn for any of your first connections?

What about writing a LinkedIn article? Blog? Not everyone will want to write original work, but you sure can “like”, “comment”, or “share” someone else’s work.

What is your LinkedIn message?

Can you improve it?

KEYWORD image thanks to Wokandapix on Pixabay
LinkedIn image thanks to QuinceCreative on Pixabay

Want to learn more about how to advance your skills on LinkedIn? Check out this 5-week online seminar with Bob McIntosh.

Six reasons why I do a tech-free retreat

August 10, 2020 by Jim Peacock 1 Comment

My goal is to do a day-long tech-free retreat each month, inspired by Richard Leider’s book, Repacking Your Bags, and by my brother Mark who has been doing retreats for over thirty years. Each month I look ahead in my calendar to see what day works best. My brother takes any month that has a 5th Friday because there can’t be any “repeat meetings” scheduled on that day. I.e. “We meet on the 2nd Friday”… or the “3rd Friday of each month”.

This is a day I turn off my phone, computer, and ignore social media, so I am not “chasing the rabbit down the proverbial hole” every time something dings, rings, or shakes. I get up at my normal time, read the paper, eat breakfast, make lunch, fill a thermos of coffee, and then pack up my things and retreat to a friend’s office in downtown Waterville along the Kennebec River. (Thank you Jeri). I have done past retreats at a local college and also on the 3rd floor of our city library, but having a place that is truly private is important. There is something magical about being at her office space, away from my home, not at my desk, not in front of my computer, that creates space for me to do my retreat.

Here are my six reasons I do a tech-free retreat.

SIMPLIFYING

Probably the number one reason I do a tech-free retreat is to simplify my day. When I work from home there are so many distractions and things to do that constantly catch my attention, chores that need doing, sounds of kids playing, the mail truck arriving, etc… At her office, nothing is familiar.

The noises are different, the chair is different, it smells different. Perfect, time to simplify. My “monkey-brain” seems to slow down here.

THREE MONTH PLAN

I use this time to create a three-month editorial calendar. As many of you know, I write a weekly career email that goes out every Tuesday morning. One week I typically write a blog, another week I interview people on a variety of career topics, another week I might do a Facebook Live. Today is my day to take that 5000-foot view. It always feels good to have a plan laid out for the next three months and all I have to do is execute it. When I come home, I update the three month, dry-erase wall calendar I have. Now I can see what I will be writing about or sharing for the next twelve weeks.

10,000-FOOT VIEW

This is also the time I like to reflect on the bigger picture. The 10,000-foot view. Where do I want to be in three-five years? What areas do I want to revise, recommit to, or remove from my plan? One of my three-words for 2020 is “rebalance” and I am thinking about how to rebalance my work and leisure time.

It is hard to do sometimes working from home and owning my own business. This is the day that gives me the “space” to stop and think, which is nearly impossible to do at home with all the distractions. This is one of the most “freeing” feelings I get on the retreat…time to do what I want and when, and to look to the future.
[Me on top of Mt. Whitney, 14,505 foot view in 2012]

WRITING

Whether you like to write or not, the kinesthetic process of handwriting your thoughts is powerful. I happen to like writing. Most regular workdays, I begin by writing in a journal. Today, I will write more. For me, the handwriting forces my brain to organize my thoughts and to choose what is important to me now.

Sometimes I only write a few paragraphs because nothing is really jumping out at me, other days, I write more. On my retreat, I tend to write lots more. Because I have done my editorial calendar, I often have a couple of blogs kicking around in my head. I started this blog you are reading on my retreat. I started another one that will be coming out in September.

OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE

I remember the first time I did a retreat. Yikes! The first couple of hours all I could think about was the text messages, emails, posts on LinkedIn, that I was missing. It took awhile on the first retreat to turn that “monkey mind” off. Now I look forward to my retreat day.

The key is getting out of my comfort zone and getting into the “stretch zone”. When we work with clients, we need to remember that there are actually three zones people can be in.

One is the “comfort zone” where not much learning or growth happens
Another is the “panic zone” where people are overwhelmed. There is zero learning happening here either.
The one in between I call the “stretch zone.” This is where learning and growth happens. We are out of our comfort zone and not in the panic zone, and this is where we can think, observe, and learn.

READING

Charles T. Munger said, “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero...”

Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay

I always have a book, magazine, blogs, or journals to read and it feels like there is never enough time to read them all…and there isn’t. But today at my tech-free retreat, I will take at least an hour or two to read. This retreat I read my current pleasure reading book, as well as three business magazines.

My challenge to you… try a tech-free retreat

Think about a day, or start with a half-day, to unplug and do the work we all must do to slow down. I call it the ‘tsunami of information’ and it comes at us all daily. We need to find ways to think and to “just be” in the moment. Do not be fooled by the fact that just because you are busy, it must mean you are productive. My tech-free retreat day is probably THE most productive day I have each month.

As the old Life cereal commercial said, “Try it, you might like it.” (Watch Mikey eat)

Want to learn more about taking a retreat? Watch this interview with three of us who take retreats and we talk about how and why we do them. INTERVIEW

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from National Career Development Association.

Sign up here to receive my TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON. You will also receive the career practitioners weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more.

Resilience – If you are reading this, you have it.

July 13, 2020 by Jim Peacock Leave a Comment

Resilience: The ability to bounce back from hardship. We all have resilience. We need to recognize that we have it and give ourselves credit for our ability to bounce back from hardship in these challenging times.

I see resilience as a rubber band that stretches as we need it. It is often surprising how much a rubber band can stretch. I believe we too, are often surprised, how much we can stretch when we need to. While backpacking in New Zealand in 1984, I was caught in the worst flooding in recorded history in the Grebe Valley in the Fiordlands. I never thought I could swim a mile through a forest in 10’ of water. And then scramble up an 800’ fiord mountain and walk 15 miles out to the first cabin with people who could help me. But I did.

We often do not know how many resources we each possess, when we are dealing with things like a months-long quarantine, or losing a job in the worst economy ever. I say, give yourself some credit here. Who would have thought we would have to quarantine for three months? I certainly would have freaked out if they told me that back in March, but I’ve managed to continue living and even managed to have some fun over this time too…a semblance of normal times.

Resilience is also like a muscle. You can work it and make it stronger and you can also learn from these difficult times. Much of our resilience is based on our own personal strength, both physically and mentally, as well as the resources we can lean on in tough times.

PHYSICALLY. We need to stay active physically to whatever level your body can take. The worst thing we can do is just sit around and turn on “I Love Lucy” reruns or watch Wimbledon tennis from 2018. In order to build your resilience make sure you are taking time to walk, or exercise, or move in whatever way you can. When I work from home I set a timer for 45 minutes which reminds me to get up and move. Sometimes it is as simple as getting another coffee or brushing my teeth, and sometimes I go for a walk or go downstairs and work out.

It is important to realize that your physical health is as important as your mental health. Even watching what you are eating and making sure you are making healthy choices is important. Movement is one key and the other is what you put in your mouth. That ‘rubber band’ of resilience will not be stretched at all if you do not take care of your health.

MENTALLY. I think most people think of the mental piece to resilience first. It seems there is a constant undercurrent of stress in our lives now as we are dealing with COVID-19, the economy, the terrible social injustice of our society, and the upcoming American elections. Yikes! Just writing that sentence makes me nervous. Yet even with this undercurrent of stress, most people are managing their lives fine. My wife was furloughed for five weeks and that was difficult for her. But she managed to do a few things to help distract herself and we both managed to get through it.

I recommend exploring the practice of mindfulness which helps get your head out of “What’s going to happen tomorrow?” “How am I going to deal with this in a month?” “What could I have done…?”. All good questions but they can raise your level of stress even more if you don’t focus on what is happening right now. That is what mindfulness is all about. Being present in the moment and place you are right now. You can also do more reading, more reflecting, more writing, and more time with yourself. Remember it was not that long ago most people were saying, “I’m so busy! I wish it would slow down.” Looks like those people’s prayers were answered 🙂

SUPPORT. We all need support in our lives. It may look different for each of us and it may be more difficult to get with social distancing, but with all the technology in our lives, we can still reach out to people to provide support, and to receive it as well. Don’t be afraid to reach out if you need it and don’t be afraid to check on people. This is all part of being resilient.

Nancy Schlossberg’s Transition Theory comes to mind as I think about resilience. Her Four S’s really seem to fit here.

Situation: How bad is the situation? It is quite different for each of us. I have been working just as hard as ever because I do a lot of online training anyway. My wife, on the other hand, struggled with how to fill her days. Same house. Same situation. Different feelings. Recognize that each person may be dealing with the same situation differently.

Self: This has to do with how much self-efficacy each person has. Are you an optimist? Or a pessimist? Are you taking care of yourself physically and mentally? What are some things you can do to be more optimistic?

Support: Schlossberg recognized in career development that people needed support in order to move forward, and we do too in these challenging times.

Strategizing: What is your ability to strategize? Are you able to think of a Plan A and a Plan B, and consider your possible options within those plans? Are you able to adapt to obstacles that come your way?

As you think about your own resilience;

Which of these four S’s is your strength?

Which one might need some work?

The most important question…What did you learn?

I think the most important piece of resilience is being able to look at your own situation and ask yourself, “What did I learn from this?” The longer people have been quarantined, the more I hear that people have discovered some new things about themselves and their families. And many people are able to say they really have enjoyed pieces of it. For me, my siblings and I get together for a Zoom-chat once per week. We never would have done that without Covid-19.

When you go in for an interview, be prepared to answer the question, “What did you learn in these past few months?” You have been building resilience. You are developing other skills as well. The question for you is, are you aware you are learning? And if not, how can you increase that awareness. Think about these times as a time for personal growth.

Maybe this is the time to do something on the margins of your to-do list. Things like, “I’ve always wanted to do photography” or “I’ve always wanted to learn another language”. Things that you’ve put off because they weren’t essential to your day-to-day. This is a great way to:

(1) keep your mental wellness in good standing and build resilience during these times, but also

(2) a way to sharpen a tool that would otherwise have never been sharpened.

Then when you are on the other side, you can impress your employer (or future employer in an interview), showing them your curiosity, initiative, and self-improvement all in one example.

Who could imagine Anne Frank being hidden in a small room for 761 days! Over two years. She had to find ways to work through her days (journaling was one). She had no idea she would be hidden for over two years and then spend twenty-five months in a concentration camp. I had no idea I could swim for hours through the forest and climb a fiord and then walk fifteen miles in fourteen hours…but I did.

We all have resilience. We can all build up our resilience by taking care of ourselves one day at a time and supporting each other. Your rubber band can handle quite a bit and can indeed flex without breaking.

Listen to this Crystal Debrah-Ekolie’s podcast, Change and Transition,
where Crystal interviews myself and Sabrina Woods on
“How to thrive in difficult times- RESILIENCE.”

NOTE: If you are interested in learning more about my near-death experience and adventures traveling in New Zealand for six months, I am writing a book about this adventure which should be out this fall. Email me if you’d like to be notified when it comes out. [email protected]

Dr. Lucy Hone shares her three secrets of resilient people based upon her research and her personal devastating event. This is a great Ted Talk I encourage you to watch it. (16 minutes) . Watch now.