Resiliency
“One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel
And the next it’s rolling over me
I can get back on
I can get back on”
- Rush: “Far Cry”
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During the pandemic, I fell into a hole. Working remote, Isolation, social distancing, having an ailing older parent and in-laws, and fears amplified by social media and the ongoing crisis affected my mental health, and depression and dark times followed. It impacted my relationships, my friendships, my workstyle, and my demeanor. My leadership team at my job, who I credit with helping me pull out of it, helped reinforce the idea of being resilient in times of crisis, and helped me find my way forward again. Over the course of 2 years, from 2020–2022, a senior manager, who will stay nameless, would check on me every week or 2 and we would talk about work, life in general, and the idea of finding resilience was a repeated topic. I credit this relationship that was built at work, remotely, as a key to helping me evolve. This impacted my ability to become more than I was, and I found my leadership skills come out stronger as a result.
What is resilience, and why is it important?
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficulties and move forward, regardless of circumstance, regardless of obstacles. Obstacles and roadblocks can be physical or mental, caused by someone, or caused by yourself. When the world shut down (at least in the NY/NJ area) there was a lot of self-imposed restrictions that I put on myself, because I was afraid, combined with the strong restrictions that were in place in this area. Understanding that everyone has a different take on this, I’m not looking to rehash that. In my specific case, I felt the world was getting a lot smaller and I felt trapped, and I realize now that I wasn’t alone in that.
But at the time, it felt like the world was falling in on me. In my conversations with this leader, they gave me ideas on how to work through it, returning to things that I enjoyed doing, such as writing, or playing music, or exercising, and asking me “what are you going to do, to pull yourself out of it?”. There have been times in my life, where I had to evolve and make changes to make my life better, because I was alone, and I realized that resiliency had always been there, I just forgot how to use it.
