I'm taking a break from my series on resilience, grit and mental toughness to share a podcast.

I was invited by my lifelong friend, Penny Milner Smyth of Ethicalways to participate in a radio show on which she is a regular. The show is all about business ethics and corruption, which is her area of expertise.
The main idea is that following an instruction to do something unethical or illegal does not let you off the hook - you can be prosecuted in your personal capacity.

So how do you respond when you are instructed to do something unethical or illegal? 

1. Notice your physical response - you will most likely have a tightness in your neck or a feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you that there is danger. This is not a good time to try and have a cogent conversation as these feelings are a strong indicator that your pre-frontal cortex has been disrupted and you won't be able to think clearly.

2. Buy time - or be non-commital. Ask if you can discuss this later or if you can have some time to think about it. If you don't have the presence of mind to do this, no matter. Proceed to step 3.

3. Gather your thoughts. Get some guidance and advice and formulate a response. Prepare yourself for a difficult conversation. Write the most important points down.

4. Pick a good time - make sure it is a time when you can be uninterrupted. Share that you have had difficulty sleeping since the last conversation; that this is a really difficult conversation to have; and ask that you be heard to the end. Share your concern about the instruction and especially your concern for your manager (let's assume it was your boss who gave the instruction - although it could have come from anyone who outranks you) - that this course of action will have an impact on them that they might not have thought of. Make it clear that you value working for them and that you would hate for the working relationship to be disrupted. If this doesn't work, proceed to step 5.

5. Ask them to get this done without involving you - please can you ask someone else to do it; please don't involve me. You need to find ways to increase your resistance. If this fails, proceed to step 6.
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6. Ask to have the instruction in writing, respond with your concerns in writing and then do what you must do.

This is a very difficujlt position to be in and it always carries risks. You can insulate yourself from such requests if you show yourself over the long term to be a "principled rebel". In order to establish yourself as a principled rebel, it is important that you do the following:

• Build good relationships across your organisation, especially with people who have influence in the business - such as senior people in HR or Finance. Build relationships with your manager and your team mates and make sure that you have plenty of "relational capital". It is just not good enough to fly under the radar and mind your own business.
• Be a consistent good contributor. Being a top performer gives you license to push back. Top performers always have more "wriggle room" than those who do no more than what is required. Their views also tend to be respected more than those of average performers.
• Be an original thinker. Be known as someone who resists anything "dodgy". Contribute good ideas for doing things better and differently.

People who do these 3 things are far less likely to be asked to do anything untoward because they have established themselves as less corruptible than others.

Have a listen to the podcast below - it's only 20 minutes. You'll find it useful and interesting.

Call to Action
Remember that values conflicts are great topics to take into coaching, so if you find yourself in this situation, send me an email and we can talk about some coaching for you: belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za

​Somebody once said that one should list “living in South Africa” as a skill set, and even more so if you live in Kwazulu Natal. Many of us have said that we’re just tired of being resilient. Actually we’d like to be able to collapse into a puddle and have a good cry in the knowledge that someone will pick us up and make it all better.

The truth is that that is never going to happen. We live in a world where shit happens. We have to withstand the impact of all sorts of dramas. Locally we have had Covid 19 with all its tragedies and personal difficulties, the riots and looting of July 2021 and now the devastating floods of April 2022 that have resulted in widespread loss of life and property.

Resilience might be thought of as the ability to cope mentally and emotionally with a crisis and to bounce back after the crisis without long-term health or psychological consequences. Resilient people are those who are able to remain calm during the crisis, making good decisions for themselves and others. They then return to their pre-crisis psychological and mental state quickly, and move on from it without any residual difficulties.

It includes the following abilities:

• Coping well with high levels of ongoing, disruptive change;
• The ability to sustain good health and energy even under constant pressure;
• Being able to bounce back after setbacks;
• Overcoming adversity;
• Being able to change to a new way of living and working when the old way is no longer possible;

… and all without behaving in dysfunctional or harmful ways.

​Consider your own circumstances:

• What ongoing, disruptive change are you needing to cope with?
• What is happening to your health as a result of the constant pressure you are experiencing?
• Are you bouncing back from adversity, or do you find yourself being weighed down by feelings of despair and hopelessness?
• What changes do you now have to make because the way things were is no longer possible?

 
Resilient people have a significant advantage over people who are not resilient – people who respond to adversity with helplessness or a sense of being victims. Consider this:

• Companies that have resilient employees perform better during tough times than companies that don’t;
• During downsizing (or whatever it is being called this week) resilient employees with a wide set of competencies have a better chance of being kept on
• Resilient job applicants are more likely to be hired than those who are not;
• When the job skills of resilient people are no longer needed, they will quickly learn new ways to earn an income;
• When the economic times are tough, resilient people give their families a better chance of pulling through and bouncing back;
• Resilient people are able to make the best out of difficult situations;
• Less resilient people are more likely to become ill during difficult times.

 
Now rate your own resilience (1 = very little; 5 = very strong):

From “The Resiliency Advantage” by Al Siebert.
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Scoring :
Low score: A self rating score under 50 indicates that life is probably a struggle for you. You may not handle pressure well. You don’t learn anything useful from bad experiences. You feel hurt when people criticize you. You may sometimes feel helpless and without hope.
If these statements fit you, ask yourself “Would I like to learn how to handle my difficulties better”. If your answer is yes, then a good way to start is to meet with others who are working to develop their resilience skills. Let them coach, encourage and guide you. Another way is to work with a coach or a therapist. The fact that you feel motivated to be more resilience is a positive sign.

High score: If you rated yourself high on most of these statements you would have a score over 90. This means you know you are very good at bouncing back from life’s setbacks.
A question for you to consider is whether you feel willing to tell your story to others and make yourself available to people who are trying to cope with adversities. People learn from real-life role models. You could be one.

Middle scores: If you agreed with many of the statements and scored in the 70-89 range, then that is very good! It means that you are fairly resilient, but that you could become even more resilient and confident by paying attention to some of those factors that will make the difference.
If you scored in the 50-69 range, you appear to be fairly adequate, but you may be underrating yourself. A much larger percentage of people underrate themselves than overrate themselves on the assessment. Some people have a habit of being modest and automatically give themselves a 3 on every item for a total score of 60. If your score is in the 50-69 range, we need to find out how valid your self rating is.

In the next article, we will look at ways in which you can develop your own resilience, after which we will consider how you might enable your team to become more resilient.
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Contact Me
Resilience has everything to do with how you think about things, so it is a completely coachable topic. If you recognise that you need to strengthen your own resilience, email me on belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za and let’s discuss your coaching programme.

Anyone who knows me (and many who don’t) know that I have opinions about lots of things. In some cases, it’s because I’m a know-it-all, but in most cases it’s based on my nearly 60 years on this earth and my 38 years in the field of people development. I have worked with men and women of all races, at every level in the corporate hierarchy, every possible personality type, advantaged people, disadvantaged people, people with happy childhoods and those with disastrous childhoods. Many of them have been victims of something – abuse, rape, attacks, robberies, bullying, racism, prejudice, you name it.

If there is one thing I know for sure it is that allowing oneself to be defined by one’s wounds, scars and past injuries is a recipe for a miserable life of unrealizable potential. It is not possible to be happy if you are defined by your wounds, and it is impossible to realize your potential if you don’t stop looking over your shoulder at your past. Your wounds may have left scars that will always be there, but even scarred people can have eyes forward and march into a positive future.

I am moving into dangerous territory here. I am at risk of being heard to say that those who have wounds need to get over it. How dare I say such a thing? I have this internal debate going – am I saying that; am I saying something else? Maybe it starts with an understanding of what it takes to “get over it”.

When one says “just get over it” there is the implication that this is a small thing that simply requires that one makes a decision. It’s way more complicated than that, so let me make an attempt at what is takes to “get over it”.

Disclaimer: There is very real psychopathology that has its roots in past experiences and that is not my area of expertise. My expertise lies more in the arena of positive human functioning. Therefore, I will base this article on what I know enhances the human capacity to thrive, and not on psychopathology.

I really like the way Andrea Mathews explains the issue of woundedness: “And THAT is the wound. It isn’t just the pain of what was done—we can get past pain through a healthy grief process. The “damage” is done when we change the identity to match the event, person or circumstance so that we ARE now that event, person or circumstance in some small or large way.”

I don’t think “getting over it” starts with a decision so much as a realization – that defining oneself as a victim is an obstacle to a good life. When you have become defined by what happened to you, you may observe the following in yourself:

• Hypervigilance – constantly looking for evidence of new and related sources of hurt. For example, if you have been hurt by racism in your past, you will be extremely vigilant to new instances of racism – even when that is not what is going on. Think of this as being easily offended or outraged.
• Feeling attacked when someone tries to give you helpful feedback or make a suggestion for moving forward. This is the person who yells “How dare you suggest that I get over it!”
• Blaming external factors and events for one’s life – my life is the way it is because of what so-and-so did to me; I didn’t get the promotion because so-and-so is out to get me; I can’t come across as confident because of what happened when I was a child. Of course, because nothing is their fault or responsibility, they cannot be expected to be responsible for making changes to their lives.
• Having manypeople in your circle who blame everyone and everything but themselves for their circumstances – birds of a feather flocking together.
• Unhealthy coping mechanisms – examples include finding 101 problems for every solution; developing a negative outlook where one’s expectations of life are kept extremely low in order to avoid disappointment; feeling stuck and approaching challenges with a negative outlook.
• Believing that life or the world is out to get you.

This has been defined in the psychology literature as “victimhood mindset” or “victim mentality”.

The impact of a victim mindset is that it creates a whole society of people whose primary identification is with being oppressed. This is a culture in which there is an expectation of some kind of payback, reparations or the expectation that lives will only change when “they” change in some way. No matter how justified this expectation might be, let’s be clear that (1) it is NEVER going to happen, and (2) even if it does happen in some way, it will NEVER be enough. Victimhood is a bottomless pit that just cannot be filled.

It is important to shake off a victim mindset because of its impact on YOURSELF. It holds you back. It keeps you unhappy and resentful. It actively prevents you from enjoying any real personal success. It is completely self-defeating. The most liberating thing that anyone with a victim mindset can do is to let go of the hope or expectation that anyone other than themselves will ever change their lives! There are no saviours! Life doesn’t owe you anything – but YOU owe yourself something. What you owe yourself is the shaking off of the victim chains that keep you bound to the past in order to embrace a winning mindset that has you 100% responsible for defining your future, even if you did not shape your past.

Shaking off such a mindset can be difficult, because a victim mentality has important payoffs:

• You don't have to take accountability when nothing is your responsibility – so you’re off the hook;
• You get sympathy and attention (and maybe even tangible benefits such as grants);
• You don’t have to take risks or be vulnerable.

Because the victim mentality is a learned behaviour, it can be unlearned and replaced with a winning mindset. However, this cannot happen until you personally have a blinding flash of insight – or maybe it emerges gradually – that your victim mindset is preventing you from having the life you want. With this realization comes the acceptance of personal responsibility – you cannot have the life you want if you don’t change your mindset, and only you can take on a new mindset.

Once you accept personal responsibility, educate yourself. Read books, blogs and articles on victim mentality or victimhood mindset. Make sure you understand it as a phenomenon, and that you develop your understanding of how to shift from a victim mindset to a winning mindset.

Consider seeking therapy as a healthy way to process the pain of the past so that you are liberated to start looking forward and making choices that make for a good life.

Choose who you spend time with. Move away from spending time with other victims. Surround yourself with people who have succeeded, who have risen above life’s challenges, who have a winning mindset, who take responsibility for what they can do in the face of life’s difficulties.

Say No to things you do not want to do. You have a choice – exercise your choice. Prioritise yourself and your objectives more than worrying about other people’s feelings.

Be kind to yourself. This can be a tough journey – moving from a victim mindset to a winning mindset. It takes work. You will slip up – but you can notice it, and correct course every time you slip up.

Take time to relish moments of joy. You absolutely will experience more moments of joy as a winner than you possibly can as a victim. Enjoy them!

Contact Me
If you recognise that you need to do some important work in shifting to a winning mindset so that you can create the life you want, email me on belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za and let’s discuss your coaching programme.
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Previous Articles
This article is the latest in a series that follows the theme that “Life is Difficult”, and yet we can definitely live a life of victory and fulfillment if we choose to do so. My purpose in writing these articles is to share tips and tools for thriving even though life is difficult.

People who thrive even when life is difficult are not without their problems and challenges. Even they lose their jobs, get sick, suffer losses and tragedies and have relationship issues. They tend to handle these in particularly helpful ways, as I have described here. What is more to the point is that they set themselves up to thrive because they have a positive outlook on life that is based on optimism and hope for the future.

What exactly is optimism? The following explanation was published in an article in Psychology Today: “To many psychologists, optimism reflects the belief that the outcomes of events or experiences will generally be positive. Others contend that optimism is more an explanatory style; it resides in the way people explain the causes of events. Optimists are likely to see the causes of failure or negative experiences as temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than global, and external rather than internal. Such a perspective enables optimists to more easily see the possibility of change.”

They have a can-do, positive attitude to life and make the most of whatever opportunities may come their way. They go through life with the sense that things will work out and that they will be OK no matter what happens. They try new things, they learn new skills, they take risks and live life with enthusiasm. They spend little time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. They live in the moment and experience gratitude and joy easily.

I believe that this is largely about the choices we make – and these are all important choices.

1. Albert Einstein once said “The most important decision we can make is whether this is a friendly or hostile universe. From that one decision all others spring.” Choosing to see our world as a safe place is the basis for all other decisions.
2. The expectation that things will most probably work out is another key choice – there are no “facts” in an expectation, so we either choose to expect a positive outcome or we choose to expect a negative outcome.
3. Choosing to see the causes of negative events and experiences as
   1. temporary rather than permanent (“this too shall pass”);
   2. external rather than internal (this is a function of something that is happening in my world rather than being a function of something that is about me);
   3. specific to this person or the current circumstances rather than as general in relation to human nature or the world.

We choose what to believe – our beliefs are not a given.

Some people are “natural” optimists – it is as if they decided very young that the world is a safe place. As a result they have a can-do, positive attitude to life and make the most of whatever opportunities may come their way. They go through life with the sense that things will work out and that they will be OK no matter what happens. They try new things, they learn new skills, they take risks and live life with enthusiasm. They spend little time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. They live in the moment and experience gratitude and joy easily.

It is a way of looking at the world that gives the optimist more agency than the pessimist. They feel at least partly responsible for the quality of their own lives and for how things turn out. They have a healthier outlook on life and live longer than pessimists. They also have better outcomes when they experience illness and other negative experiences. This is not to say that they have the unrealistic belief that they will only have good experiences in life – which can actually cause its own problems!

Self-awareness is always the key to personal growth, so ask yourself these questions:

• Do you generally see the glass as half empty or half full?
• Do you look for the “difficulty in every opportunity or the opportunity in every difficulty” (Churchill)?
• Do you often experience a sense of impending doom or do you generally expect that things will work out?
• Do you tend to try and keep things like they’ve always been or do you try new things, put yourself out there for new experiences, learn new skills and live life with enthusiasm?
• Do you spend more time than you should regretting the past or worrying about the future or do you mostly live in the present moment and experience joy and gratitude often?

If an honest consideration of these questions shows that you tend to be an optimist, then you have a good chance of riding out life’s difficulties. You will find the opportunities. You will allow yourself to experience the joys. You will experience life’s adventures with enthusiasm. You will deal with life’s setbacks and be ok.

If, on the other hand, you recognise that you are the opposite, then what can you do to change it?
 
Call to Action
Firstly, accept that there is work to do and that it will take personal honesty and effort.

​Then, I think, there are 3 ways to do the work:

1. Do the work on your own using a process to guide you. Understand that it will take work and that you will need to be consistent – but know that it is worth the effort. Here are some examples:
   1. https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/how-train-your-brain-be-more-optimistic-ncna795231
   2. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-be-optimistic-4164832
   3. https://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2008/02/01/being-optimist-ways-to-overcome-pessimism/
2. Spend some time working with a therapist. If the first suggestion is just not working for you and you find yourself constantly returning to a state of pessimism, perhaps you need someone to help you find your way to a more optimistic state of mind. Perhaps you are depressed and need to treat that first.
3. Find a coach who can work with your typical ways of seeing and responding to the world, and help you to find alternatives that are more hopeful and optimistic. You could email me on belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za and we can discuss your coaching programme.

About 3 weeks ago I wrote an article about people who thrive, despite life being difficult. They do specific things, including taking care of their physical and mental health. In this article and the supporting video, I'm going to talk about something else they do which enhances their ability to thrive - they are comfortable in their own skin! They are ok with themselves, they are fine with their looks and weight, they feel fine about the people they hang out with, they feel fine about their occupation or profession.

In other words, they don't expend useless energy comparing themselves with other people, or comparing themselves with some hopeless standard of perfection. 

That is not to say that they simply accept everything about themselves and refuse to grow and change. Not at all. However, they make changes that move them in the direction of their own goals, and not in the direction of everyone else's approval.

If they are heavier than they'd like to be, they do something about it and don't allow it to go to far. When they fall off the wagon, they clamber back on without pointless recriminations. If they know they are going to indulge - say, over Christmas or Eid or Hannukah - they ringfence specific "cheat days" and then go back to their healthy eating habits. They never just throw it all in with an "Oh what they hell - I might as well just pig out".

They choose their friends according to their value system, and are comfortable with the company they keep - they have no need to keep one group of friends from another group of friends or from their family. The same with their occupation - they are comfortable talking about their work.

Whilst they recognise that the good opinion of others is important in some respects, they are not derailed by the fact that some people may not like them or approve of them. Having said this, if they notice a pattern, they are willing to look in the mirror and take responsibility for how they might be earning the disapproval of others - and then do something about it if it is important enough.

People who thrive often have their own sense of style. That is not to say that they are fashion icons. However, they have probably decided how they like to dress and how they want to look - and they are fine with it. 

So if you have read all of this and you are still saying "Well that's all very well in theory, but I'm well into adulthood/middle age and I just don't know how to do these things", what can you do?  Here are some ideas:

1. Do an inventory.

• What do you like/what can you be proud of regarding your looks, weight, sense of style, friendship groups, work and networks? Give yourself credit for progress and improvements that you've made along the way. These are aspects of yourself that you want to keep and appreciate.
• What would you like to change about your looks, weight, sense of style, friendship groups, work and networks?
• What do you need to make peace with and even embrace? For example, if you are a statuesque woman of 190cm in height, embrace it! You are never going to be petite no matter what you do! 

2. Set some goals.

• Weight goals: To get from Xkg to Ykg by (date) / I want to fit into a size X by (date)
• Style goals
• Friendship goals: To make friends who enjoy (activity) by (joining a club/online group). You can also end friendships that diminish you and are not in your best interests.
• Career goals: To be promoted to (name it) by (date); to find a new job that better suits your interests and skills.
• Network goals: To meet colleagues in (name the parts of the organisation) and have them call me for input.

3. Make sure each goal has an action plan.
4. Choose a set of affirmations that address your negative self-talk and support your success (google "how to use affirmations"), and use them as a mantra many times a day. Make sure that these are loving affirmations - you will grow to believe them as you use them.
5. Do a daily reflection: ask yourself what you did today to move each goal forward, no matter how slightly; ask yourself how you demonstrated your better nature (the likeable aspects of yourself) today.
6. Track your progress - use a tool such as Monday.com or trello.com. They are great because you can track whether or not you actually took action relevant to each goal all on one dashboard. Maybe also get yourself an accountability buddy - someone who will hold you accountable and give you "the look" when you are fooling yourself; someone who will celebrate with you and give you a high five when you win.
7. Celebrate progress. Allow yourself to revel in your small wins and give yourself appropriate rewards - but be careful not to reward yourself with things that derail you, like a wedge of chocolate cake when you've lost 2kg!
​8. Accept compliments graciously. Just smile and say "Thank you."

Remember that you are fabulous and worthwhile and deserving - and remind yourself often!

Contact Me
If you recognise that you need to become comfortable in your own skin, and you know that it's going to be a real challenge, email me on belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za and let’s discuss your coaching programme.
 

​If you want to listen to the audio of this article, see above!

Serendipity is a funny thing! The other evening I was chatting to my stepson’s girlfriend. She is one of those unlucky people who is tormented by anxiety – and I work with A LOT of people who struggle with anxiety. Not only are some personalities “anxious types”, but we live in a world that exacerbates any predispositions we may have,
I was sharing with her some guidelines for dealing with her anxiety. The fact of the matter is that those who struggle with anxiety must accept that managing it is a lifelong commitment. However, it can be done with the development of some essential skills (this is NOT instead of medication).
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Gratitude Reduces Anxiety
The next morning I went to check what my social media topic is for November – GRATITUDE. So I started doing some reading to get some ideas for the articles for the month. It turns out that practicing gratitude has beneficial effects on all sorts of things, one of which is … Anxiety!
I can’t remember why I chose Gratitude as the topic for November – although it is the month when Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, so perhaps that had something to do with it. Nevertheless, we are heading downhill to the end of the year at a dizzying rate, and most people are feeling somewhat frazzled.

It Keeps You Focused on the Positive
At a time like this, it is easy to focus on one’s frayed edges – but that only adds to the sense of exhaustion. Shifting your focus to matters of gratitude is remarkably helpful and will add to your resilience at a time when we all need it.
How does gratitude work? While the practice of gratitude is a topic for a later newsletter, it is worthwhile noticing that all forms of the practice require that one articulates what one is grateful for. This means that you are naming what you appreciate and why – you are putting it into words. It doesn’t matter if it is something you are grateful for from or about another person, or if it is something you are grateful for in your life. What matters is that you are putting it into words. This says something about the power of words!

Gratitude is Good for Your Brain
Articulating what you are grateful for does several things, all of which are positive:

1. It moves your attention away from negative emotions and distracts you from ruminating about the negative experiences in your life.
2. Over time and with disciplined practice, gratitude shifts your focus to what is positive in your life and changes the overall tone of your internal world. “It is not happiness that brings us gratitude. It is gratitude that brings us happiness.” (Madhuleena Roy Chowdhury, 2021). It is this shift in focus that rewires the brain from an anxious, apprehensive one to a calm and grateful brain.
3. It positively impacts your brain! People who practice and express gratitude show more activity in the part of the brain associated with learning and decision-making (the medial prefrontal cortex) than those who don’t – which represents a general enhancement of brain function.
4. Gratitude is a natural antidepressant. Whether we express gratitude or receive it, it causes a release of oxytocin and serotonin in the brain – the feel-good neurotransmitters that enhance one’s feelings of happiness and well-being.
5. Gratitude is good for your health. Research conducted in the field of positive psychology has reliably demonstrated that keeping a gratitude journal improves the quality of sleep, reduces stress, and enhances energy and vitality.
6. Gratitude has a positive impact on professional commitment – in both the person expressing gratitude and in the person receiving it – and this enhances the quality of work performance and team work. Employees who express gratitude are more likely to put their hands up for extra work, and managers who express gratitude build stronger teams and enjoy greater productivity. They are also well liked! Let’s not underestimate the value of being well liked in being able to get things done and pull rabbits out of hats when you need to.
7. The practice of gratitude fortifies your resilience – which is what helps you to bounce back more quickly after setbacks and tough experiences.

Write it Down
As you brace yourself for the final push in 2021, think about the following (and write it down):

• What are you grateful for in your life?
• To whom are you grateful and for what?
• Who in your world deserves some appreciation? How will you express this?

To read a little more about the impact of gratitude on your brain, go here and here.

Look out for next week’s article on Gratitude Practices.

Contact Me
If you would like to work on your own resilience as a leader, email me on belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za and let’s discuss your coaching programme.

Lao Tzu said "New beginnings are sometimes disguised as painful endings." For these painful endings to provide fertile ground for a new beginning, we need to make peace with it. There are 2 ways to make peace: either we need to make meaning of the experience and extract whatever learnings there may be; or we need to make peace with that experience being random - that it happened, it was not sent to teach us something, there is no good to be extracted.

In this video, I talk about how you could do this.

Contact Me
​If you are struggling to craft a new beginning and are still stuck in a painful ending, email me on belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za and let’s discuss your coaching programme.

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​“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” These are the opening lines to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. If they had been written in 2020 they could not have been more appropriate!
I’d like to share with you the story of two people – Darby and Joan. Both successful businesspeople, Darby ran an engineering business with 65 employees, and Joan was the Sales Director of a large corporate. Darby had always been described as laid back. Always calm, nothing ever seemed to phase him. Joan was more highly strung. She worried a lot; often reacted too quickly to issues without taking the time to gather the facts; was given to high highs and low lows. She was exceptionally good at her job and her sales teams all did really well, but it was always at quite a high price emotionally. When the Covid-19 lockdown happened, as you can imagine, Darby and Joan responded very differently.
In the days before lockdown, Joan found herself in meeting after meeting with her principals in the European head office. They worried about adjusting forecasts, getting deposits in before lockdown, adjusting salaries downwards for non-essential staff and making sure that all deliveries were completed before lockdown. She had no time with her team except for half an hour on the day before lockdown when she breathlessly emphasised how important it was that they make sure that they don’t lose a single sale during this time.
During lockdown, she was all over the place. On and off social media, back and forth between her emails and phoning her team members to ask for progress on pending deals and new quotations. She continued with her daily meetings with her European head office and only discovered at the end of week 1 that she could have a team meeting on Zoom. When she did have a team meeting it was business, business, business. She seemed not to have the emotional capacity to deal with her team members’ fears and concerns.
She slept badly and was up in the early hours of the morning trying to figure out how to achieve the sales targets after lockdown – after all there were only 8 days/7 days/6 days to go. She was distracted when she was helping her children with their school work, and struggled to follow a routine every day. She endlessly ruminated over “what if this, and what if that”.
Darby, on the other hand, spent some time with his team before lockdown deciding how they were going to handle things. He wanted above all else to make sure that jobs were saved and that the business would be able to ride out the lockdown and recover quickly when it was over. He and the team agreed on various tactics that they would use to achieve that, and then they talked to the wider team and agreed on how they would proceed during the initial lockdown, and what they would do if the lockdown were extended. They agreed on how they would stay in touch with each other during the lockdown. Darby made sure he and his other managers were set up properly to do whatever business they could remotely. They got in touch with all their customers personally and informed them of the plan. Darby also contacted his bank to defer his bond payments on the business premises and some capital equipment payments for a few months so that they would have working capital when this was all over.
Following conversations with his wife and children, he designed a daily routine for himself that included waking at the normal time, an exercise regime of an hour, time during the morning to attend to business, lunch with the family, household chores and projects in the afternoon, followed by family story time and dinner. He and his wife also agreed that their children would do a certain number of supervised hours of schoolwork and how they would share this load.

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Then Darby, being the measured, laidback soul that he was, proceeded to live in exactly this way. He took one day at a time. He refused to indulge in the excitement about “when we go back in 8 days/7 days/6 days time”, and was mindful of how much attention he paid to social media. He checked in twice a day and was very circumspect about how much credibility he gave to much of what he read. He stayed in touch with his team, encouraging them, calming them down, reminding them not to worry about what would happen after lockdown or ruminate over “what if this and what if that”. When they did venture into “what if” territory he would say “Well what if that happens? What will you do?” and stay with it until they at least had some actions that they would take in the event of that “what if” coming to pass.
Of course he was concerned, as any business owner would be, but he kept his attention in the present, and paid attention to what was under his control at that time. He regularly phoned his customers to find out how they were doing and how they were feeling about their businesses, taking time to encourage and calm them in the same way he did with his own team. He used his time to learn about new engineering processes that he wanted to explore, learning new skills and working on various household projects and hobbies that he had never had the time to before. And he stayed in touch with his friends and family, encouraging them and lightening things up for them.
He was optimistic about a number of things: that lockdown would end; that times would get better; and that the economy would improve. After all, bad times always roll around to better times, and the world economy has always recovered.
This time of Covid-19 and worldwide lockdown is causing us to draw on our very best selves or risk spiralling into despair and mental illness. Never has it been more important for us to “mind our minds”.
It has been said that the mind is a faithful servant but a tyrannical master. We can see exactly how this played out with Darby and Joan. Notwithstanding their different personalities, Darby and Joan clearly had different levels of mental discipline. For whatever reason, Darby has excellent skills that enabled himself to “mind his mind”. Let’s have a look at what they are:

1. He recognises that he has a responsibility to other people – his wife, his children and his team – and understands that how he behaves will influence how they feel and behave. This is such an important leadership quality – the recognition that it is not just about how you feel. It is about how other people feel. If you want people to be cooperative, calm and thoughtful during a crisis, then the leader must create calm. Just by putting the needs of others before his own, Darby created calm for himself – after all, it is impossible to create calm for others if you are an anxious, worried mess yourself.
2. He decides what is important right now – and in the case of his business, what was most important was that they all pull together so that the business and all the jobs could be sustained. He also needed some backing from his bank, and asked for it.
3. He focuses on what is within his control and brings other people back to what is in their control when he talks to them. Within his control are his thoughts, his routine, his contingency plan (in the event that the “what if” happens), his conversations with his team and his customers, his impact on his children.
4. He sustains optimism without obsessing about what life will be like when this is all over. Optimism is the quality of being hopeful about a positive future. It is not necessarily attached to a specific positive future. It might best be captured in this quotation that I love: “Everything works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out yet you haven’t reached the end.” So he doesn’t count down days because that will only result in disappointment if lockdown is extended – but he does speak about the likelihood that things will change and improve and that we may return to a nicer world than the one we left behind.
5. He does not allow himself to be tormented by endless “what ifs”. When my clients play “what if” I always respond with “Well then answer the question! If that happens, what will you do?” This is a kind of scenario planning exercise – when you know how you will respond if your fear comes to pass, it takes some of the power out of that fear. In fact, this is exactly the approach I have been taking with clients who want to talk about life after lockdown. We don’t have a crystal ball, but we can explore the possible scenarios that could play out and think about how we will respond to each one.
6. He sustains a routine. Healthy routines build our resilience during the best of times, and are especially important during the worst of times. Having a reason to get up in the morning, staying fit, having goals in the form of your domestic chores, projects and hobbies, having set meal times and family time, all create a structure and predictability to your day that keeps you and your family resilient.
7. He reflects several times a day on the blessings this lockdown has given – time to learn new skills and processes; time to work on his projects and hobbies; story time with his children every afternoon; time to play with his children during the week; time to talk to people; and regularly notices how lucky he is. In doing this, he notices that this time is full of gifts.

These are all skills that Joan seems to lack. She is unable to create calm for her team because she is unable to create calm for herself. Focusing on sales at a time like this is the last thing her team members and her customers need. What they need is calm, care and encouragement. She needs to take her attention off herself and focus on what her team needs from her – just that is a powerful way to mind your mind. Making other people’s concerns more important than your own will diminish the magnitude of your personal concerns.
The time will come soon enough when they can worry about targets – but right now, when nobody can get out there, when nobody is buying and when everyone is worrying about how their businesses will survive is not the time to be pushing the numbers. Reminding people that “this too shall pass” would be more useful. Joan’s attention is in the future, on things she cannot control and on needing to know what will happen – all redolent of someone who is a slave to their mind. She needs to learn to stop herself from doing these things. She needs to notice when she is doing them and bring her attention back to the present moment and those things she can control.

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In the inimitable words of M. Scott Peck:
"Life is difficult.
This is a great truth. One of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly know and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." (From The Road Less Travelled).

The world over, life is difficult. What tends to vary is the source of the difficulty. It may be the economy. It may be health. It may be family issues. It could be the internal politics of your company. There are as many sources of difficulty as there are people. 

In my coaching practice, my clients are dealing with the following sources of difficulty:

• declining markets;
• disruption to the normal flow of things because of the corona virus causing delays in manufacturing, imports and deliveries as well as disrupting access to overseas markets;
• headcount freezes because of real or anticipated economic slow down resulting in having to do more with less;
• having to shave margins to the bone just to compete (which I've heard called "the race to zero margin");
• toxic workplaces where people are constantly on edge, where bullying is rife, and where people always feel like they have to watch their backs;
• pressure from overseas holding companies because they have problems (even if your local operation is flying);
• rolling out new initiatives and piloting new business models under global scrutiny;
• having to manage teams that feel overwhelmed, undervalued, and fed up while trying to inspire excitement about some vision that currently feels like a pipe dream.

And that was just last week!

Almost inevitably, when life is difficult, we focus all our energy and attention on managing that difficulty. As a consequence, we start doing things that actually make things more difficult for both ourselves and those around us. Let's consider some examples:

• we spend more and more time in meetings that are not productive and are less available to our people;
• we work longer hours in order to meet tighter deadlines;
• we stop taking lunch breaks;
• we eat more junk and eat for comfort more often;
• we sacrifice exercise because we are too busy;
• we zone out on social media more often because we are too exhausted to actually engage with our spouse or children;
• we use booze to relax and pills to get to sleep;
• we rush from meeting to meeting, walking too fast and looking too intense or stern and talking too fast and listening too little;
• we carry with us a pervasive anxiety that just sits in the pit of our stomach creating this feeling of impending doom;
• we obsess on the bad news that is all around us which only adds to our sense of impending doom.

Sound familiar? Did I just make your day even more difficult?

These behaviours are how we respond to the difficulties that are part of life when we have not made peace with the idea that life is difficult - and what we are dealing with today just happens to be the present source of difficulty. And, as with all things, this too shall pass. And then things will be less difficult, and then things will get difficult again. 

The point I am making is that the difficulty you are experiencing now is part of how life works. It may feel unusual or special in some way, but it isn't really. And the sacrifices that we make in terms of self-care and care for others does not help us through the current difficulty - it actually makes things worse. When we sacrifice self-care we ensure that it is our lower selves that we are pitched at our difficulties, when the situation really requires the highest version of ourselves. When we sacrifice self-care we communicate to others that this is what is expected and what is required - with the result that those around us also bring their lower selves. The characteristics of our lower selves include:

• impatience;
• anxiety;
• short-tempers;
• fear-based thinking (which is thinking of a far lower quality than the thinking that happens when we are calm) resulting in fear-based decisions.

When life is difficult it feels right that we should be pushing the hours, working harder, taking less time for ourselves and others - it feels like this is what we need to do to get over the hump. But trust me. This hump will be replaced by another hump, and then another one. So what do we have to do?

1. Accept that your current difficulty is your normal for now. It is what it is. It's not special. It's not unusual. It just is. Ask yourself this question: if you knew that this situation was what you have to look forward to for the rest of your life would you carry on the way you are? Or might you think "The hell with it! I might as well take care of myself!"
2. Get some perspective. Get off the playing field and up onto the balcony and take a look at what is going on on the field. Do this with someone you trust who is not on the field too - a coach, a mentor, a friend who you know will help you gain some perspective. Gaining perspective is about:

• creating some distance between you and the current difficulty;
• getting clear on priorities;
• working out a game plan to address the priorities; 
• deciding what not to focus on for now.

3.  Put some essential disciplines in place:

• exercise time;
• eat away from your desk;
• eat good calories. Your brain is an energy gobbling machine. Don't feed it garbage. Garbage in, garbage out;
• set limits on your working hours and boundaries between work and home. For example, eat breakfast and dinner at the table with your family and without devices; work longer at the office if you must but then don't work at home; or do an hour of work before the family is awake and then have breakfast with the family;
• sleep: know yourself. If you are an 8 hour per day person, then that is what you need. Sleep is essential to your productivity and effectiveness;
• block out time for your people. Life is difficult. They need access to you;
• take time out. Find a relaxation practice that suits you: a walk in nature; a mindfulness meditation; listening to flowing water; something that will slow down your racing mind;

4. Make a To Don't list. When life is difficult, we have to decide what we are going to put down. 

• What meetings should you not go to? What meetings just shouldn't take place at all? Would everyone's life be easier if there was a Friday ban on meetings? Should meetings be limited to 40 minutes? Should you have your meetings standing up?
• What responsibilities should you delegate or just put down for now?
• What tasks or responsibilities need to be executed in a leaner, simpler, less engineered way?
• During which times of the day will you not be available to take calls?
• Is there anything else you need to NOT do because it adds little value and is making life more difficult? Is there anything your team should NOT do for the same reasons?

5. Slow down! Walk more slowly. Talk more slowly. Listen more attentively. Don't make fear-based, knee-jerk decisions. They create as many new fires as you think you're putting out. Fear-based behaviour on the part of a leader creates panic and anxiety. Your job, when life is difficult, is to create calm.

• Practice asking more questions. When life is difficult the quality of your thinking is paramount. You don't have to have an instant answer. You have to have a quality answer. Ask questions until you have looked at the issue from every angle. Then make your  decision. 
• If at all possible, sleep on your decisions. This will slow things down a bit, and will also allow your subconscious to apply itself to the issue and make sense of things in a way your conscious mind does not. Identify what decisions must NOT be made until you are sure they will result in quality actions.

6. Find moments where you can have fun. Play with your children for half an hour. Go on a date. Play a silly board game. Laugh! The release of endorphins when you laugh counters stress hormones and improves immunity, as well as contributing to an overall sense of well-being.​

​7. Make time for your faith practices, if you are a person of faith. Knowing you are not alone is hugely positive for your sense that you can get through whatever difficulties you are dealing with. 

When life is difficult, self-care is key. The tactics I've described are all about taking care of yourself - and many of them will also take care of your people. When your people are struggling with the same difficulties that you are, or some of their own, these tactics will help to build their resilience. Self-care is absolutely vital to building resilience - in yourself and in others - and resilience is what gets us through the tough times.

When life is difficult, our default is to dive into action. Most of these tactics are counter intuitive, so you won't trust that implementing them all at once will do anything except create more problems. So start with one thing first. My own recommendation is that you start with some form of relaxation practice or exercise regime - but it's horses for courses really. Just start with one form of self-care. Then as you see that it actually helps, you could add another and another. And remember to care for your team as you care for yourself. They share your difficulties even when yours are personal.
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​Success in #20Plenty is going to be about far more than whether or not you meet your KPIs. Actually, that’s not really success – that’s just meeting the demands of your boss. Success is going to be about the commitments you made to yourself and kept. Here are some examples:

• Personal growth: did you do the work you said you would do in order to be more in control of your emotional reactions, or do you fly off the handle as badly as you did this time last year?
• Health: did you implement the exercise programme you chose in a disciplined way; did you stick to the eating lifestyle you committed to; did you kick that carb habit that was making you fat?
• Relationships: were you more gentle with your Mom? Or did you continue to be as impatient with her as you always are?
• Money: did you invest money every month, like you said you would? Did you manage to save for that holiday?
• Work: Did you become a better leader and coach for your team, or are you still telling everybody what to do?
• Career: what did you do to build your network in the wider organisation? What changes have you made on the advice of your mentor?
• Community: did you give back in the way you intended to any of the communities of which you are a member?
• Family: What did you do differently in order to make your family the priority that you say they are?

Most of us start the year with goals or intentions for the year – and many of them will fall under the headings above. But then life happens and we get busy and we live on autopilot and suddenly the year is over and oh, shucks!
If you are serious about achieving the goals you have set in these various areas of your life, I recommend that you “appoint” accountability partners. Don’t make one person your accountability partner for everything – rather use a few people and schedule regular get togethers with them where you account for the actions you have taken against each of your goals. Setting up your accountability partners involves a conversation in which you outline the following:

1. Describe the goal, why it is important to you and the actions you intend to take to achieve that goal. Also outline how you think you might get in your own way – your personal bad habits or weaknesses.
2. Ask them to be your accountability partner and clarify what the role means – that they need to hear you accounting to them regularly for your actions; that they need to get you to commit to new actions, if necessary, and that they need to give you honest feedback on how you might be creating your own problems. It is vital that you and your accountability partners agree to mutual freedom of expression within a relationship of mutual respect.
3. Agree on how often you will meet (can be fact-to-face; telephonically; or via Skype) and what that meeting will cover.

In terms of your work and career goals, I recommend nominating an accountability partner who regularly sees you in action and is in a position to give you frank and prompt feedback on how they see you showing up in comparison to the intentions you have shared with them.
Appointing accountability partners takes courage. You will have nowhere to hide! Isn’t that great?