Resilience– we believed we lacked it. The pandemic hit! Now we witness our resilience every day. Look around – its visible alongside the stark chaos of contradictory information, complaints, egocentric and kindly actions!
We’re all using it to cope with consequences of this global pandemic, which despite repeated warnings has caught us in a state of unpreparedness. BUT …the pandemic has also rubbed our ‘resilience genie’ imprisoned in the lamp.
It’s interesting to take a back seat and observe our reactions and those of different leaders and societies as we all simultaneously grabble with our resilience and different responses to the same issue. Let’s take a closer look right now, at Resilience!
What gives us confidence and makes us feel we and our world are coping? Here are some of the resilience ‘sparks’ I see all around the world and appreciate right now.
The ability to:
- Ask questions, not just accept statements from sources; educate ourselves on explanations and responses we receive and ask more questions, keep questioning!
- Communicate with patient empathy to lead, participate in and reach solutions that benefit us individually and importantly our human race
- Toggle with agile thinking between analyzing strategic big picture and operational analysis
- Separate and align facts from noise and fake news
- Quickly discern the most reliable and relevant facts for that moment in time
- Project the best-and worst-case scenarios and problems, critically reflect on that analysis
- Solve problems with agility and an understanding of likely consequences, knowing we will continue adjusting as we go
- Reach clear decisions for a forward-facing strategy based on facts, reality, lessons of history and experience while also understanding the consequences we may face.
- Understand our individuality depends on us embracing our shared connectivity with a deep respect for wisdom – our lives depend on our joint actions
- We, NOT ONLY, ME!
Resilience is complex, it has many levels: individual, national, regional, global; sectoral, societal, economic. This pandemic means we are grabbling with it on all these levels simultaneously and deeply.
Resilience, it’s in all of us! I believe it’s in our DNA; engraved in our human memory, handed down and accessible in our own personal ancestral story and in the global human story. Its repository is in our brain, a part of the muscle we must consciously use and exercise to maintain, strengthen or lose.
Devastating as the pandemic effects are in every sense, in time we may look back and see it as our wake up call, an opportunity for us to take a breath, refocus why and how we do things, re-examine our values, reset our patience, kindness, collaboration and respect buttons.
Let’s stop ‘winging,’ we’ve done a lot of that in Australia recently, let’s focus on our resilience and ‘Do It’ – whatever we need to do to be that lucky country! We have the tools, we are resilient!
Perhaps the belief that we are a lucky country has clouded or dimmed the memory that most of those who lived in this country or came to this country before us, ‘did it hard’ at some point. We are lucky today because they relied on and demonstrated unmistakable resilience. We must consciously exercise the muscle of our individual and collective resilience post Covid-19 and realign ourselves, our humanity, our history and our cultured civilizations. Let’s Do It!’ Let’s stop wasting our resilience.
Luciana Niven runs development programs for leaders to assess, build and measure resilience.
Luciana brings dedication, breadth and depth of experience to individuals and any strategic operations team, gained in a variety of senior positions, internal and external global consultancies. She has a wealth of experience and knowledge in Coaching and Mentoring, HR Facilitation, Learning and Development and Change Management. Building on this she designs ‘exclusively small group’ retreats in global locations that focus and support leaders, and individuals to direct and develop their own potential, with the space and time to ‘think,’ be coached and mentored over a week. You can contact Luciana for a chat and more information, click here: luciana@ldnivenconsulting.com