Resolutions and tips for being healthy and happy in challenging times! 

 

We look at our public figures, entertainers and sports stars and ask “why not us?” What we forget to acknowledge is that most if not all of those individuals had failures and tough times that helped to shape them and their ultimate success.  What are some of the lessons that these individuals learned about tough times that can apply to us?

 

Truth #1 “ A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.” 

                                                                                Larry Bird

Good enough isn’t good enough. The first truth for coping with tough times is to deploy what you have.  Take a self-inventory and be honest with yourself. You have more at your disposal than you think. Not only is it essential to know your skills and talents from an honest, first hand perspective, but it boosts your ego. What we believe we are, we can be. Start by taking a friend to lunch.  Not your BFF, but a reasonably close acquaintance. Ask that person to think for only a minute and then to tell you your three greatest strengths. Repeat this exercise over the course of a week or two with two or three additional people and create a list.  Look for the common themes and pick one or two strengths that you are going to focus on for the coming 3-4 months. Building from a position of strength is more impactful than remediating a weakness.

 

Truth #2 “When things go wrong, don’t go with them.”

                                                                                Elvis Presley

Tough times create vacuums letting rumor, speculation and FUD to rush in. It is so easy to get sucked into the vortex of negativism and the “groupthink” that tends to accompany it. It takes conscious effort not to take the same trip. One of the best ways to express your frustration is to keep a journal either in a traditional written format or in a blog.  This can allow you to express your feelings openly without airing them in public.  It is useful to just let your feelings flow out onto the page and later go back and reflect on them.  First, you gain perspective and secondly, you can work on your response to your negatives by countering them with one positive response you can have to each one. 

 

Truth #3 “Failure is hard but success is far more dangerous. If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.”

                                                                             Po Bronson, Author

It is better to fail attempting to do the right thing than be successful doing the wrong thing. Too often during tough times, we want the solution – the out – to be easy. It seldom is.  Moreover, in Human Resources, we often want to assure the employees that it is going to be “easy” or “over soon”.  We have to resist optimism for the sake of optimism or the easy or quick solution. The reality is that honesty and frequent communication will serve you better in the long term than platitudes and false praise and reinforcement.  Remember when you as a child mastered the challenging task of learning to tie your shoelaces?  Failure after failure ultimately led to success and when you achieved that success without Mom’s assistance, there was no better feeling in the world.  Those sneakers were almost a badge of honor.

 

Truth #4 “Beauty does not consist in the individual elements but in the symmetry of the parts, the proportion of one finger to another, of all the fingers in a hand” 

                                                                            Ancient Greek Sculptor Polyclitus of Argos

Collaboration is a force multiplier. One mind can conceive of great things, but it often takes a team to get it put into action.  When times are tough, it is even more important to engage the entire team and not just a few members. It is the team that has worked together to solve day to day problems who in times of crisis, can rise swiftly to the occasion and act with unconscious competence in combination with each other. Think about the accident victim who enters the emergency room with all the caregivers working in concert in their appointed roles. If they had to continually stop and negotiate which team member was to take over what task, the patient would suffer.  Just as Polyclitus said, if you have to consciously think about which finger to move and in what sequence when you are eating your next meal you’ll starve to death. Make your team and its symmetry a thing of beauty.

 

Truth #5 “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”                                                                       

Thomas A. Edison

The best idea is almost always followed by an immense amount of effort.  In tough times, great leaders expect much of their people in terms of creativity and innovation, but also acknowledge the need to execute well.  When the going gets tough, a model leader often has to demonstrate the willingness to roll up his or her sleeves and just get it done.  When on the phone with a customer to discuss a problem, sometimes the best thing you can do when you get done is to summarize the result in a technical note or post a quick e-mail and share the resolution of the problem with the rest of the team.  You can leverage the event and have a teachable moment all in one.  Willingness to engage and demonstrate your proficiency with the gritty details means a lot to your people, especially in tough times.

 

Truth #6 “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

                                                                                Plato

Don’t just work hard together, play hard together. The intensity of tough times calls for the occasional moment of decompression.  When you are across the foosball table from an employee in the break room or playing an afternoon of softball as a group or even creating teams and competing to see which department can collect the most food for a company holiday food drive; play brings out the hidden facets of employees.  It also is a great stress reliever and makes the intense moments manageable.

Truth #7 “To love what you do and feel that it matters – how could anything be more fun?”

                                                                                Katherine Graham

Even difficult times can be fun.  The trick is to ensure you establish meaningful milestones to determine when you are making progress.  Make time to celebrate those milestones and success. It is fun to be successful and to celebrate with your team. Engage the team in creating the milestones that you will be measuring and celebrating, don’t wait for the Big Bang – the ultimate goal.  It is also beneficial to take a personal moment of self reflection and think about what you are doing that matters. It may be as simple as thinking about the colleague you helped along the way or the extra 10 minutes you spent coaching a subordinate instead of just doing the task yourself…..it really is fun!

  Truth #8 “A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.” 

                                                                Dwight D. Eisenhower

Humor is a small cure for change fatigue.  Find the humor in the worst of situations and suddenly the problems don’t seem so gigantic and overwhelming.   Scott Adams, the creator of the incredibly funny comic strip, Dilbert, has proven this for years.  Laugh with your people at the situation, not at your people. One of my favorite leaders I worked with in my past had mastered a huge repertoire of metaphors and sayings that originated in her native Tennessee.  Nothing diffused a terribly tense situation than one of Diane’s favorite sayings.  When the CEO would broach an uncomfortable topic about her area of responsibility, she would let him know “Well didn’t you just lick the red off of my candy!”  It made the point and left us all smiling…..