You know the types - it seems like their world is caving in around them, yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure.
To recap, the first step in improving your stress resilience is:
Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “Why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.
The second lesson I have learned about being more stress-resilient is to carefully choose where to focus your attention in times of adversity. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them. But, we can get so wrapped up in the little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the lesson.
Last week I wrote about losing one of my biggest clients, quite unexpectedly, and really through no fault of my own. I had been teaching for years in their company’s management development program. I would do some work with emerging leaders; helping them define their leadership principles as well as teaching other leaders the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. I did this work for over 7 years and got great reviews every time we did a class. Then, I got a phone call that the company was reorganizing and they were not sure how they would be approaching training in the future.
So in one phone call, I lost one of my biggest and best clients. At least, I lost that opportunity with the client in a very ambiguous sort of way.
According to Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss, “People hunger for certainty.” We all like stability and to know, or at least to have the idea that we know, what is going to happen in the future. So, according to Boss, “…uncertainty makes ambiguous loss the most distressful of all losses…” This is because the loss is often very confusing. People can actually become immobilized by not being able to make sense of the situation. In my case, it was tough, because I always held a belief that if you did a great job for a customer, work would always follow. And while I think the basic tenant is true, there are just things that happen in business that are not in my control.
Second, the ambiguous loss felt very much to me like it was irrational. How could they no longer love me? How could such a great company no longer invest in leaders? As I thought about all of this, my mind became fixated on the loss. So much so I was starting to get physically exhausted. By focusing on the wrong part of the loss, I was losing my perspective.
My Intervention
I was telling this story to my coach during one of my monthly sessions with him. After our session, as I am prone to do, I sat and summarized the coaching in a journal I keep. Here is my entry:
-Don’t lose what you have to what you lost!
-What do I need to be learning through all of this?
At the same time this loss was happening to me, I was teaching a group of doctoral students at Indiana Wesleyan University.. I had been reviewing an article by Lila Davachi, Tobias Kiefer, David Rock, and Lisa Rock titled Learning that lasts through the AGES.
AGES is a 4 part acronym:
Attention is critical.
Generating insights takes time.
Emotions govern.
Spaced learning sticks.
Here is what I learned from each part of the AGES Model during my stressful time:
Attention is critical and I needed to focus on the customers I am still able to serve. Just because I lost this one thing should not affect how I serve those I am still blessed to work with.
Generating insights takes time. I have a tendency to want to rush things. If I am going to learn from this loss, I needed to give myself some space and realize that time does have a healing component to it.
Emotions govern and I get to choose how I feel. Sure, I was going to miss these great folks I had worked with and to some degree, I mourned the loss. And I am also joyful that I have other clients and in fact, I have been able to keep relationships with many folks at this company. So it turns out I really didn’t lose them, the work there just changed for me and looks very different.
Spaced learning sticks. I needed to process this learning over time and in chunks. You can not learn everything you need to learn all at once. Spacing things out, keeping them fresh in your journal, will really help you maximize your learning.
Summary Thought
For those of you wanting to improve your stress resilience, one of the most important points is to carefully choose what you will focus your attention on. You get to pick. You can focus on the pain and stay there. You can focus on how you were treated and dwell.
Or
You can appropriately accept and mourn your loss, and then focus on all the good things you still have.
Choose wisely.
That last thought actually will be the focus of next week’s post…Appreciate the good.
See you next week!