The road to a resilient New Year…
Date: 12 December 2008
Recently, I posted an article in the management section of www.mysmallbusiness.com.au (The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald website portal for small business) about a new way of thinking to overcome adversity in business. Being resilient is something we all need to know about – not just when handling work – because there is plenty of turmoil around in financial markets as well as daily life.
Apparently, there are 29 adverse events in an individual’s day and how we respond is largely hardwired into our psyches. But experts claim that it’s possible to retrain yourself to take these setbacks more lightly and be able to bounce back faster.
Dr Stolz, a US academic, has created a measure for how people handle their adversity quotient (AQ) and out of this, came a training programme for managers to help learn lasting ways to be more productive, healthier and happier.
Local performance coaching group Phuel found from their data when they applied the AQ training to Australians that the participants became better at finding ways to overcome their problems, than other nationalities, but we’re very good at hanging onto the emotional fall-out.
In other words, we’re slow to get on with our lives even if we’ve solved the things that are bothering us.
This made me wonder about what I regarded as adverse ‘X factors’ in my own life and I came up with my current list:
- Too many hours spent commuting in peak hour traffic (which is why I now work from home)
- Organisations which talk a good game and don’t/won’t deliver (they probably will never know who they are)
- Bear share markets (when will the ASX200 hit the bottom?)
- Uncertainty about cash flow
- Unexpected bills
- Loads of housework and endless meals to make (dull, dull, dull)
- Tradespeople who forget to show or do a crap job resulting in more cost
- One-offs eg car making strange noises, sick child
- People who engage in no-speakies (and other forms of passive aggression) when they want to punish/get to you.
Of course, none of this is truly killing; it just brings the mood down a notch. And by next week, my pet peeves will be reshuffled and hopefully, dispelled.
So what’s on your list? I’d love to know …is it about money or is it people?
Counsellors like the idea of wearing coloured glasses: how you can look at problems in your life through various filters and how switching filters could be useful. I guess this sounds similar although the idea is that your AQ is part of you…you may not have a choice about the filters you’re using.
Christmas and New Year can be low or high ‘adversity’ times, depending upon your circumstances. Either way, they can herald the start of a fresh phase and a whole new time of uncertainty which may bring new worries.
This is especially true when people are losing their jobs and money is tight.
So let’s resolve to deal with our adverse events creatively and confidently and then as they are solved, dump them off the stressor list and move onwards and upwards.
In light of all the economic gloom and doom, it’s helpful to work on one’s resilience.
Happy Christmas times to everyone and may 2009 be a dynamic and more hopeful year!
Julianne
22 September 2008 "Women, Marriage and Money"
