Muster Enthusiasm, Dammit.
How to develop resiliency
When you get this, I’ll be in the middle of my annual staff retreat somewhere in the high desert outside of Las Vegas. This retreat almost, ALMOST, feels like a vacation. We’ll be in my favorite landscape, I get the chance to see the only Meow Wolf installation I haven’t been to yet, there’s lots of scheduled outdoor time, someone else will feed me all week, and our agenda is built all around “thriving not surviving.”
And I, my friends, am in charge of just ONE thing on this retreat. And that is of course to facilitate the resiliency discussion.
Now I’m not saying this is the case for me right now, HOWEVER, I’ve seen a trend at 9-5 desk jobs that goes something like this: There comes a breaking point where higher ups pull their heads out of their asses important work, look around the proverbial room, realize someone is on the verge of rage quitting morale is dipping, and start wondering if a pizza party can fix the months years of chaos and burnout they’ve created.
“What can we possibly do to make our staff more resilient!” The higher ups moan and lament as they fail to communicate clear direction, timelines, and expectations for their staff while padding their egos with defensive excuses for why they can’t achieve a calm workplace when they’re just “such a small team!”
“It’s the world these days! Not our leadership! Not our faults! We can’t fix the world!”
It is around this time that their eyes turn toward me (or someone like me). “YOU!” They shout, as I lift my head from the soulless blue glow of my laptop, my mouth likely filled with soup. “You will teach them resilience! The workers will learn!”
I do that thing where I look around the room not 100% sure who they’re talking to even though the room is empty except for me. I point to my chest asking, “Me?” I set down my soup. “You want me to be an example of resiliency?”
They nod vigorously, so hard their heads fall off. I toss up my hands. “Okay! I’ll do it!”
There is a great, relief-filled sigh—like that of an old dog at the end of a long day of farting and napping. Order has been restored. Anja the Gregarious will go to battle once more.
For many moons, being the one tasked with facilitating resilience work really pissed me off.
Why should I, a practically brand new employee, have to teach my coworkers (some of whom have been around for DECADES) how to stay resilient at a job THAT THEY CREATED?
And is it really fair to ask a junior-level staff member with very little power to talk about actual resiliency, which fundamentally involves taking leadership, power, and your jobs less seriously in your personal life?
But the real reason my blood would boil was because the ask always seemed to come with this presupposition that I wasn’t actually working really fucking hard at being resilient, my life was just a lot easier than everyone else’s.
I didn’t seem as bogged down with the world as the rest of the team. Could I pretty please do the labor of carrying us all through the shit storm of life while being forced to stare at our doom screens for 8+ hours a day through a global pandemic, historic inflation, and a collapsing global economy, since things were going so well for me, personally?
The last time I was asked to lead on resilience in the workplace was a couple of years ago. We were on a staff retreat and boy, my life sure was swell. While fighting off a seemingly incurable multi-month yeast infection, I slept in a tent in the yard for two nights because there weren’t enough beds in the rental. I was also tapering off Lexapro which made me constantly dizzy and weepy and anxious and sleep-deprived. And just that morning, I had opted not to re-sign my lease and instead move into a 100 square foot camper in three months with no plan because I couldn’t figure out how to afford rent.
Still, I talked about resilience on the last day of the retreat with as much enthusiasm as I could muster—which was a lot, because I’m really good at mustering enthusiasm! But I got a lot of pushback from other staff members about how resilience just wasn’t possible for them right now because of health stuff, and family stuff, and stuff around the pandemic, and money stuff, and, and, and…
By the end of our small group discussion, I was feeling not very resilient and was in fact poorly fighting back angry tears. Oh fuck off, was what I really wanted to say. The implication was that these hardships made it impossible to be resilient. So if I was resilient, then clearly I wasn’t facing any of these same adversities.
I excused myself when the session ended to take one of those showers where you kind of hunch up on the floor of the bathtub and cry into the drain.
The 6-Part Resiliency Workout Routine
I am less bitter now. Or rather, I am more resilient when people are defensive about why they can’t possibly be resilient. I don’t take it so personally.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still feel a little judgy about it.
Exercising the muscle of resiliency is very hard work. It’s a choice you have to make every time you’re faced with something on the spectrum of “just uncomfortable” to “straight up painful.”
Are you going to bounce back from this, or are you going to let it consume you?
Do I still go into a bit of a spiral any time I get an angry email at work? Yeah, I do. Do I sometimes have to lie down on my office floor for a good cry? Oh, for sure.
I’m not saying I’m winning any resiliency weightlifting championships or anything. But every year, I’m surprised to find I can put a little more weight on my back before my knees buckle.
We have to train to be resilient the same way we train for anything else challenging in our lives. I don’t lift weights a couple days a week because I’m worried the universe is going to suddenly chuck a literal barbell at me and demand I do a perfect clean on my way to the grocery store. But it’s reasonable to assume that having the ability to pick up heavy-ish things and be able to maneuver my body with some kind of athletic grace are skills I’ll need many times throughout my life. If I don’t put in the work now, I’m definitely not going to get magical strength for a problem in the exact moment it’s needed.
Resilience is like that. You shouldn’t wait until you lose your job and are three months behind on rent to start practicing.
Which means resiliency requires a voluntary agreement to do hard things.
How Resilience Gets Made
1. Early Life Experiences
Research is showing that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have major impacts on a person’s lifelong mental and physical health. According to the Center for Childhood Counseling, people with many ACEs “suffer from more diseases, greater levels of depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse. They die, on average, 20 years younger than those with no ACEs.”
Fucking brutal.
You can take your test here to see how many ACEs you have. My ACE score is 3/10. A 4/10 is considered high. But the number of ACEs you faced in early childhood can be counteracted with—you guessed it!—resilience.
In fact, the Center for Childhood Counseling says that resilience can be the CURE for ACEs and develops in children in the following ways:
Close relationships with competent caregivers or other caring adults
Parental resilience
Caregiver knowledge and the use of positive parenting skills
Having a sense of purpose (through faith, culture, identity, etc.)
Individual competencies (problem solving skills, self–regulation, autonomy, etc.)
Opportunities to connect socially
Practical and available support services for parents and families
Communities that value people and support health and personal growth
Despite my medium-ish ACE score, I can start to see where I made up for some of those trauma deficits:
✅Mom, grandma, grandpa, and other nearby family members who helped raise me post-divorce were all competent, caring caregivers.
✅ My mom is probably one of the most resilient people I know.
✅ Definitely enough positive parenting skills (though, you know, we always want more, right?).
✅ We got involved in a Methodist church shortly after the divorce—and even though later that delivered its own kind of trauma—for the most part, especially as a young kid, it gave me an immense sense of purpose as well as a community to lean on and guide me.
❌ I’ll admit my individual competencies have not historically been great…moving on!
✅ So many opportunities to connect socially through church, school, sports, band, etc.
❌ Not a ton of professional support in Butler, PA in the early 2000s
✅ Rural Pennsylvania vibes were all about people and our little communities, even if we weren’t super educated yet on mental health. Someone was always watching out for us.
I mean, a pretty early case for growing that resiliency muscle, right?
Of course, not everyone gets this in childhood. The good news is that you can overcome what you lacked in childhood by working in adulthood on other aspects of resiliency.
2. Support Systems
In the spring of 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared Americans had officially entered a “loneliness epidemic.” We were more isolated, disconnected, and without support systems than ever before.
I wrote a bit about this back at the beginning of the year, but hadn’t quite made all the connections with the way this also ties to resilience. Similar to your ACE score, the more resilient you already are, the more likely you are to have support systems and not feel lonely. However, if you’re feeling lonely, you can also combat it by developing resilience.
The cure, again, is resilience.
Research shows that the loneliest group of people right now is…drumroll please…
30-44 years olds. Yikes.
Of this group, 29% reported they were “frequently” or “always” lonely. Unsurprisingly, those numbers got even worse if you had more than one racial identity and earned less than $30,000 annually.
From the report, 81% of adults who were lonely also said they suffered from anxiety or depression compared to JUST 29% of those who were “less lonely.” That is a 64% decrease (check my math) in serious mental health disorders simply because a person doesn’t feel as lonely.
Feeling lonely and lack of support systems go hand-in-hand. Here are the top reasons people named for their loneliness:
73% - Technology
66% - Insufficient time with family
62% - People are overworked or too busy or tired
60% - Mental health challenges that harm relationships with others
58% - Living in a society that is too individualistic
50% - No religious or spiritual life, too much focus on one’s own feelings, and the changing nature of work
Resilience is all about our ability to recover after hardship. A support system of even 2-3 close relationships can make a massive difference in how we bounce back after tough times.
A Danish study revealed there is a strong correlation between loneliness, lack of resilience, and lack of a sense of cohesion, “indicating that people feeling lonely also experience their life as less meaningful, comprehensible, and manageable.”
I have a gut sense that I’m pretty resilient and also don’t feel lonely, but to follow along with this Danish study, I took a Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA) test as well as a Sense of Coherence (SOC) test which they used in this study and found that:
RSA: My scores were all pretty high, only dipping below 90% in “Personal Structure”
SOC: Overall score of 152 (healthy & happy is anything above 140, 160-190 is extremely strong - so I’m solidly “happy” I suppose)
Basically, it comes as no surprise that I get thrown into resilience trainings all the time. I’m pretty heckin’ resilient! But this also probably supports and comes from my high social competence and social support (100%!!).
Community—as I’ve written about before—is essential for my life. I’ve been incredibly deliberate in choosing a place to live where I feel strong community support and an easy ability to do things we love together, even if the cost of living is a little higher. I’ll take a hit to my wallet over a hit to my RSA and SOC scores any day.
Essentially, I try to make sure others are willing to workout at the resiliency gym with me.
3. Mindset and Beliefs
Let’s talk about the AFGO in the room.
Short for “Another Fucking Growth Opportunity,” a previous therapist gave me this phrase to throw at difficult moments.
Boss wants to give me “feedback?” It’s an AFGO. I have to break off a friendship that my gut told me from the beginning was going to be a mess? AFGO! Republicans want to try and label nonprofits doing really amazing things for communities and the planet as “terrorist organizations?” FINE. AFGO. I GUESS.
I think a lot of people confuse becoming resilient with trying to ensure that nothing bad ever happens to them. If that’s your mindset, OF COURSE it feels like failure when challenging, difficult things continue to bombard you. What a way to set yourself up for a lifetime of failure, baby girl!
Don’t confuse AFGO with toxic positivity, though, which is when people minimize and try to altogether eliminate negative feelings. We certainly don’t need any more techbro-stoicism-Ryan Holidays in the room.
Resilience isn’t about eliminating our feelings. It’s about having those feelings FULLY and trusting that they are informative, but ultimately temporary.
Add the AFGO to your resiliency workout routine.
4. Purpose and Meaning
Purpose and meaning does not have to mean organized religion. I repeat: PURPOSE AND MEANING DOES NOT HAVE TO MEAN ORGANIZED RELIGION.
However, if you don’t have ANYTHING that gives your life purpose and meaning, it’s pretty hard to be resilient when shitty things happen. You might find yourself tossing up your hands saying None of this fucking matters! And then giving up.
My purpose and meaning? At this point probably some soupy combination of awe, wonder, curiosity, art, quantum physics, and the fact that there’s so much we still don’t know (and hopefully never will).
Don’t get me wrong, if I lose my job tomorrow, it’s going to SUCK. I will cry A LOT. But also there’s a little nugget somewhere in me that knows I’ve got a purpose and my life is meaningful, this job or not. And a strong resiliency muscle will help me start moving in that direction.
Having a sense that there’s this fantastical cosmos out there doing (being! becoming!) god knows what has a real ability to make hardship, at the very least, feel a little less personal.
5. Adaptability and Problem-Solving
Non-resilient people: Cling to how it was supposed to be
Resilient people: Adapt to how it is
Of course it’s okay to mourn and grieve how you thought things were supposed to be. Just don’t hang out there too long.
6. Physical Health
Unsurprisingly, the resiliency muscle is closely tied to your actual muscles.
Resilience is embodied. A regulated nervous system, good sleep, nutrition, and movement all support your capacity to cope. It’s very hard to be resilient if you don’t feel good in your body.
Physical resilience can crop up in all areas of our lives. Like when I had a meltdown last summer because I wasn’t strong enough to lift my mountain bike over my head and load it onto my new, really expensive, hitch rack. Or when a new medication meant to solve one genetic health problem was giving me crippling tension headaches.
Those things made me feel (briefly) like a failure. And if ANY other hardship had come my way during that time, I would have told resilience to fuck right off.
We can’t be very resilient to the physical world if we’re not in tune with our physical bodies. And the physical world is never going to stop asking hard things of us.
How to Be Resilient at Your Job
At the end of the day, if you aren’t working out the resiliency muscle in your personal life, you’re not going to magically have resiliency strength in your working life.
I was initially tempted to keep this section brief by simply giving the advice: Try not to give as much of a shit about your job and stop trying to make it have meaning and BOOM you’ll have workplace resilience.
But after talking about it with my partner J, he helped me realize that’s not quite right. It’s not about not giving a shit. It’s actually about giving several shits (at least!) and recognizing that your job is a tool to live the kind of life you want to live.
And remembering that your job is just one of MANY tools at your disposal to live the life you want will inherently help you build resilience when shit goes down at work.
But to use your job as a tool, it helps to know what kind of life you want to live.
For example, I know that (right now, at least) the life I want to live involves:
Stability: Not moving around a bunch, not traveling a ton for work, and knowing I’ve got enough income to not get destroyed by something unexpected like a medical bill
Community: (see above)
Creativity: Time to write and paint and read and think
Adventure: Biking, horseback riding, diving, paddle boarding — all the things!
When I boil it all down, I basically want to know I can pay my bills, go to the doctor, pursue my passions, hang out with my friends, and maybe even have a little fun using the work “tool” to accomplish those things.
If I have to clock in 8 hours a day to make that happen and do some tasks I don’t particularly want to do, so be it. I’m using the tool.
When things go south at work, I ask myself if I’m still living the life I want to be living. And if we’ve got at least a 90% yes, then I try to let whatever is happening at work bounce off of me. I practice resilience.
And if things aren’t at least a 90% YES, then resilience starts looking like job searching or contemplating a new career. Suffering through shit is not the same as resilience. Resilience is getting back up one more time than you fall down (and sometimes heading straight to the job boards).
Your job is a tool to live the life you want to live. It’s not a definition of who you are.
After spending six years in academia feeling so connected and contemplative about nature, economies, ecosystems, philosophy, policy, technology, etc., and building these tight little communities where we were all meditating on these problems and solutions everyday, it was jarring to land my first job and discover that most work does not demand that kind of thoughtfulness, community, or creativity.
But my personal life does. My soul does. And it’s taken me nearly a decade to stop expecting work to give me those things and instead use work as a tool to bring thoughtfulness, community, and creativity into my non-working life.
Instead of building resentment, I’m trying to reframe.
If I rode my bike with friends today—that’s resilience.
If I worked on my book proposal—that’s resilience.
If I rode Tex and told him about some asshole who sent me a really mean email and then I laughed it off as we watched the red-winged blackbirds dip in and out of the pond at the edge of the barn while thinking about how much more beautiful our life was than his—that’s resilience.
Good stuff! I need work on my resilience....