Resilience Leadership in a World of Global Adversity
So much has changed in the last 24 hours.
Stocks have plummeted.
Travel and schools and events are being cancelled.
We have a global health pandemic along with a pandemic of human disappointment and loss: We’re facing cancelled trips, sporting events, speaking tours, concerts, and art openings. Life events we’ve been planning for, praying for, and anticipating are being cancelled and postponed. Yet, amidst being told to stay home, how can we find resilience in this moment of challenge?
WATCH THIS IF YOU’RE FACING A CHALLENGE RIGHT NOW
A SILVER LINING within the CHAOS
What if, rather than getting sick, we’re healing?
Yes, people are getting sick. My heart, prayers, and desire for healing is going out to all people who have significant vulnerability to COVID19. I am not immune to the fear and anxiety of our present state. I vacillate between feeling strong and capable, to feeling completely paralyzed and afraid.
Life wasn’t easy for many before this global pandemic. It hasn’t gotten any easier. Yet, by staying home, we’re reducing countless toxic emissions that allow Mother Earth to restore and heal mounting pollution. By staying home, we begin to combat a frenetic on-the-go lifestyle, and instead, reconnect to ourselves, families, homes, and local communities.
COVID19, if we allow it, becomes a lesson on how to live a more present life, to honor our earth, energy, and emissions. What are you learning about yourself in this moment of pause?
IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR MEANING RIGHT NOW
I believe that as a planet, as a community of humans, we are being called away from our old lives. These lives, for many of us here in the west, existed with easy abundance. Without the appreciation of the gifts, opportunity, and resources at our very fingertips.
Now, our worlds are narrowing. We’ll stay home instead of travel. We’ll cook instead of going out to eat. We’ll work at home or find new employment instead of posting up at an office. For many of us, this is the beginning of change. For our greatest good. For our highest potential. To support the realization of our best intentions.
Yet, none of it will be easy. Change never is. Loss. Staying goodbye to the old ways. Grieving what once was, and will be no more, will be difficult. A process.
As we grow and change, we’ll tap into our inherent resilience. The Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People invites us to engage in simple, yet powerful practices that will absolutely support us in bringing forward our best selves in these trying times.
Know that at each step of the way, you are fully loved and supported. You have me, this community, your friends and family to lean on.
Allow this coming challenge to soften you, not make you harder.
Allow the coming change to inspire gratitude and connection, not disappointment and disconnection.
Allow the coming complexity to shift your gaze to what is possible, not what is being taken away or removed.
Allow. Surrender.
This is just the beginning. We need all of us. We are in this together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal is one of the leading authorities on Resilience Leadership. Her work is resonating throughout the Fortune 500. As she describes it, "We are a world in which our human experience is defined by facing challenge, change, and complexity on an order of magnitude to which prior generations have not been exposed. The concept of resilience is built on the very ideology that we have the capacity to face hard things: trauma, loss, misfortune, and the like, and come out on the other side; not diminished, but instead, enhanced."
