Resilience allows you to perform at your very best. Resilience means
to ‘jump again’ – it is the ability to bounce back from your experiences
to the place where you are alive and at your peak. You can think of it
as a tree swaying in the wind – even in hurricane winds, the strongest
trees bounce back and remain standing.
The more resilient you are, the better able you are to face the
challenges of relaunching, including deciding your next steps, reaching
out to your network, applying, interviewing and then heading back to
work.
Resilience can be learned and built, like a muscle you haven’t used
in a while, and so if you are feeling rusty, you can start today. The
key to resilience is perception – how do you interpret the facts that
happen in your life? You and the person next to you can experience the
same event – receiving a no from potential employer – but it is how you
internalize and respond to that event that determines your success going
forward.
To get you started, here are three steps you can take now to build your resilience muscle for your relaunch journey:
Expect to Fall Down
Hitting hurdles in the road of life is normal and nothing more than
part of the process of looking for work and learning to perform at your
best. When you expect it, you can make sense of it more easily and you
will handle it better, which means you will bounce back faster. Denial
is the enemy of resilience. Expecting the hurdles allows you to throw
yourself into your relaunch 110%. You’ll be ready for what comes your
way.
Detach, Detach, Detach
It is easier to manage through the tough times when you develop the
habit of detaching from them. Resilient people are able to maintain
perspective on the events that cause them to fall down. Highly resilient
people do not avoid loss, receive less rejection than others, or
experience less stress, they just handle it differently.
The good news is that you get to choose how you respond to an
event. For example, when someone else is chosen for a job over you, you
can immediately internalize it and assume this is a comment on your
experience or character. But what is the more resilient path? This takes
us to the third step.
Acknowledge, Fight, Focus
Every time you get knocked down, immediately acknowledge it -
recognize that it is not what you wanted and allow yourself to be
disappointed. Give yourself time to be angry or upset that you were not
chosen for the job. After all, this matters to you, and it should. And
as the saying goes, ‘what you resist, persists.' Do not resist your
reaction.
Then, fight against the inner critic. Run through other perspectives
or possibilities and argue back to your inner critic that is trying to
get you to internalize the event and feel defeated. Solicit feedback and
figure out what actually happened. You may find that the company went
with an internal candidate, or that you actually made it to the final
round (and at that stage, there are so many factors considered for the
final pick). You may also never know, but you can choose to figure out
what you can control (improve upon your interview prep, prepare better
questions, research industry specific interview techniques), learn from
that, and let the rest go. And no matter what, take the information as
just that – information to help you move forward and improve.
Finally, focus. Resist the temptation to compare yourself to others
or get caught up in their success. This will derail you more easily and
you will waste valuable energy worrying about others when you can be
focused on yourself. Finding joy and performing at your best is not
related to other people’s experiences.
For every hurdle you face, you have a choice. You can choose to expect
it, detach from it, fight the assumptions, and focus on moving
forward. And every time you make this choice, you are growing your roots
and building your strength so that you can remain standing, regardless
of the force of the wind.
