Resilience for Leaders

Your regular days are stressful: you made decisions with imperfect information, you relied on someone who didn’t do what they were supposed to do, you gave tough feedback or a performance evaluation, you messed up in a presentation and you were late to your kid’s soccer game. And to top it off, over the past 6 months, you’ve been juggling all the above, via zoom, from your kitchen table, with kids and dogs in the background.

And so you buy books, and learn how the greatest CEOs manage stress, and become more resilient. You read things like they meditate on top of a mountain, or take ice baths daily, or start a keto diet and fast 20 hours a day.

It feels daunting. So you tell yourself ‘well I guess that’s why I’m not CEO’, and go back to your daily routine. You are tired, you order pizza because you have no time to cook, maybe split a bottle of wine with your partner because ‘this day was hell and you deserve it’, go to bed too late and start again the next day.

I know. I read the books. And my daily routine still sounded like the above. Until I realized that you don’t have to go from zero to hero. And there are tiny daily things that you can start that make the world of a difference, increase your ability to cope with your day-to-day, even allow you to take more risks and be able to cope with the inevitable bumps in the road.

I wanted to offer a few strategies you don’t even need to block time in your schedule for. Tiny things that make a huge difference.

Gratitude.

The happiest, most resilient leaders out there are just... grateful. When they talk, they are positive and focus on the bright side of each situation. They are not better than you, they have the same failures, and challenges in their lives. Maybe more, who knows. But they are grateful.

If you’re not a grateful person to start with (and don’t worry, a lot of us were not wired that way), good news! You can pretty easily rewire your brain.

You may have heard of people doing gratitude journals, or 3 gratitudes a day. I used to do it on my commute to work: everyday, I’d write on my phone 3 things I was grateful for that day. The nice weather, living close to the subway station, having sushi for dinner, or my health. There is nothing too big or too small to be grateful for.

Last year, we realized our kids would benefit from a similar practice, so we started a dinner time routine. For a month, we wrote down what each of us were grateful for. Just one thing per person. Fast forward a year, and we don’t even have to remind them nor write it down. Before we even start eating, there’s an argument for who is going to go first to tell us what they are grateful for today. And the lists are getting so long, we have to all take turns.

For the habit to stick and to rewire your brain, it may be best to write them down at least for a month, daily. Put a daily reminder in your calendar? Or maybe text them to someone? Find what works for you.

Your Life as a Pie and ‘Future-You’ Techniques.

You just got terrible news at work. Or you received tough feedback from someone more senior than you.

If you’re anything like me, you are probably obsessing about it. You can’t sleep because this is all you can think of. You relive the experience over and over. You overthink what’s going to happen next.

In those situations, I have found two techniques to be helpful.

First, think of your life as a massive pie. Each slice represents a sliver or your life: your health, your marriage, your family, your friends, your finances, your home, your work, etc. Now you’ve established that your work is, for example, 1/8th of your life-pie. Further divide this slice in the different aspects of your work: your boss, your team, project A, project B, project C, relationships with your colleagues, your compensation, your schedule, etc. Once you start breaking things up this way, it’s easier to realize the very small negative impact project B (that happens to be the one you messed up on) will have on your entire life.

Secondly, imagine the future. So you really messed up on project B and it feels like your life is ending. Do you think you’ll still feel that way 6 months from now? A year from now? This failure will be a tiny blip you may not even remember, so there is no reason to make it ruin your present day!

Break the Hedonic Adaptation.

Human brains are wired to do something called hedonic adaptation. Essentially, this means we get used to whatever it is we are experiencing in the moment very quickly. For example, if you order your favourite food, you will have a boost of happiness with your first few bites. And then your brain will think of the taste as the new normal, and not really notice the next 100 bites until you are done. Similarly, if you buy that big house down the street, you will probably be on a ‘high’ and will feel so much happier for the first little while. And all of a sudden, it’s going to be old news. Your brain considers the new house as the new normal, and you will just start wanting the bigger house two blocks away… and now you’re stuck with the bigger mortgage.

Sucks, right? Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to break the hedonic adaptation.

Next time you are doing something you really like, just take a split second to notice it. To stop and savour it. This could be when you take your coffee break, maybe smell the cup before you drink it. And then take a few sips, and put the cup down. Turn away. Do something else. When you come back to it, smell it again. By breaking down the experience, you’re breaking the hedonic adaptation, and get to experience the ‘high’ of this first sip of coffee all over again.

Now this doesn’t work with a new house, or getting a the new job you really wanted. In these cases, what you can do is to re-experience the ‘old’ so that you can enjoy the ‘new’ all over again. So when you’re complaining about the new job (that you wanted so badly only a month ago, remember?), close your eyes and imagine you’re still in the old job. Relive a bit of what the ‘old’ looked like, and why you wanted the ‘new’ so much. Maybe go check out your old desk? Once you come back to the present, you will feel better about your current situation.

I told my 7 year old about hedonic adaptation, and how to get even more joy from the things she already enjoys. She will now eat half of a cookie, leave the other half on the table, go to get dressed and come back to savour the second half. Except for the one time her little sister snagged the half eaten cookie, she swears by it!

Random Acts of Kindness.

For me, resilience means I still find ways to lead a happy life in the face of adversity. And you know what makes people happy? Making other people happy.

Sounds odd, but it’s been proven. Researchers agree: being kind to others has a whole host of benefits, such as

• Feeling more energetic, calmer, less depressed

• Release of pain-relieving chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin

• Boost to physical and mental health, and natural stress relief

So you want to improve your overall happiness, and in turn your resilience? Buy your colleague that coffee, help the old lady cross the road, call your mom. Even just saying ‘good morning’ to your neighbour has an impact on your well-being. Yes, it’s really as simple as that.

I know you were probably expecting me to say things like have a better diet, exercise, sleep more and meditate. But you already know that. So pick one of those tips and give it a try for a month. And see how your world starts changing.