Wishing you all a joyful, peaceful 2022! And to ensure it goes that way, let’s address a critical skill…resilience.
From small irritations, such as getting misunderstood or being late, to large roadblocks, like poor health or loss of any kind, life will keep throwing curveballs at us. The healthiest, most useful way to handle such situations is to build up resilience, a skill that will get us farther in our personal and professional journeys, with fewer battle scars.
One way to build up resilience is to reframe our perspective. Let’s take the example of getting stuck in traffic and being late to a meeting that you’re supposed to run. Those are the facts and they can’t be changed. Rummaging over them won’t help. You can’t move the cars. You can’t turn back time. So, you have 2 options:
- Accept the situation and make peace with it
Make space for your feelings to occur and validate them. Then take some deep breaths and let the negative emotions go. Realize your circumstances may mean a different reality than expected but they don’t have to mean an unpleasant one. Remember everything you are still grateful for and re-envision how your new circumstances can play into that.
- See your situation as a gift or opportunity
Change the perspective from “this happened to me” to “this happened, now what?” Your plans have been detoured but on this new path, you can find areas to add more value. From this setback, what is your gift of learning? What strength are you reinforcing? What form of inspiration can emerge?
Going back to our traffic example, you could delegate the beginning of the meeting to an intern eager to prove herself to the team. This way, you’re giving them the gift of trust and experience. You may also take the time to find ways to make the meeting more efficient, to rehearse your presentation, and to clear your mind so that when you get there you are fully focused.
These tips may take practice but once mastered, you’ll be a stronger, better person.
Which path of resilience is your favorite?
For more tips on mindfulness and executive coaching, follow Roshmi Dalal @transformational.coach.
Roshmi is an Executive Coach (ACC), CPA, and keynote speaker, she passionately writes, coaches, and leads workshops to help rising female executives, entrepreneurs and professionals achieve their full potential in their personal and professional lives.
She started out as a practicing CPA, working for a Top 5 public accounting firm in the US for over 10 years and, afterwards, for a large national Oil & Gas company. Putting in frequent overtime, meeting tight deadlines for Fortune 100 enterprises, and working under pressure meant just another day at work. She experienced firsthand the multitude of stressors and challenges that come with this lifestyle. This experience, along with a set of personal challenges including family loss, home devastation and a global relocation catapulted her into the coaching profession. After getting certified by the AoEC in executive coaching, as well as by the ICF as an accredited, associate coach, she began her journey of giving back.
Today, she is a relentless advocate for women workforce inclusion, particularly in traditionally male-dominated industries. She has helped dozens of rising female professionals be heard and seen within their teams, regardless of their circumstances or insecurities. She has successfully empowered her clients to overcome their inner critic, imposter syndrome, procrastination, conflict avoidance, the glass ceiling, and eventually attain balance in their career and overall life.
Her coaching method is based on a unique combination of skills that she has nurtured over time, and which include extensive positive and emotional intelligence training, a strengths-based approach, resilience and accountability tools, as well as mindfulness training for stress management. The feedback she receives most often as a coach is that she creates a safe, approachable, and judgment-free space for my clients, with an authentic desire to see them flourish. She removes barriers and creates breakthroughs every day as she helps her clients dig deeper into the root causes of their challenges, establish more self-awareness about their premises, and set actionable steps that help propel them closer to their goals and desired outcomes.
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