Resilience

I attended a conference yesterday for International Womens Day and the theme was "Resilience". This hits very close to home for me as a lack of resilience in the face of change is what drove me to take my leave from work. There was a lot of active discussion about what does "resilience" mean. Is it only about surviving and thriving when things don't go as expected or as you want them to? or Is it also about strength to know what you want and go after it? I am not sure I have an answer or that it really matters. What I do know if that I feel like I am in a much better place in both of these areas than I was six months ago.

One of my biggest struggles has always been handling unexpected change. I think this may always be an issue for me as it gets to my desire to be perfect and one must have control of the situation in order to ensure a perfect outcome. Blah, blah, blah. So I am never going to be perfect and neither are you....and that is great! How boring perfection would be!! And if I can say that is OK then I don't need to be in control of every situation because it is OK if things go amiss or don't work out. We all will be just fine and we will have a great chuckle over it later. I can say all of this to you, but the key is continuing to remind myself of this every single day. I really have had to develop a mantra and breathing to go along with this, but so far, so good.

The next part is something I am still not so sure about and have some major work to do. What do I want for myself? Personally that is a little more clear, but professionally there are muddy waters. I am continuing on my self-assessment journey and doing the research. There are so many things that are interesting that I have never tried and have no clue if I would like them never mind be any good at them. And I do think the combination of those two is the key. Knowing myself, I need challenge and change, but I also need to be interested and have an opportunity to be successful. Research continues with volunteering, going to classes, searching the internet, reading, and a new one for me, being curious. This is pretty fun!

While it is just like any other muscle and you must work on it daily, I do feel like I have rediscovered my resilience and it is stronger than ever.