The Secret To Choosing Resilience
“In the power to change yourself lies the power to change the world around you.” -Anwar Sadat
Choices & Resilience
How many times have you made a choice that did not result in the outcome you intended? Our choices define us. Improving our ability to make tough choices in the moment shapes our ability to be resilient. It works for organizations too.
If we want to figure out if something is working or not, there’s only one place to look – at the results we’ve created so far.
Our results are the clearest indicator of the effectiveness of the choices we’ve made. We could also say that our results are also the clearest indicator of what is most important to us. Results, for us as people AND as companies, results reflect the way we assimilate information (our filters) and the beliefs we hold about ourselves and others (image).
3 Types of Choices
There are three kinds of choices we make every day:
- Things we want to do: I want to go out tonight or I want to build an office in Israel
- Things we have to do: I have to take out the trash or I have to reconcile the accounts
- And, the things we do unconsciously: How did I get here? Or How did this happen again?
The “want to’s” are easy choices. The things we feel we have to do, such as pay our taxes or go to the dentist, we often do with a bit of annoyance or resentment. And then there are the things we do unconsciously, things handled on our behalf, like breathing and blinking, reflexive responses.
Reframing Our Choices To Build Resilience
Think, for a moment, if the things we had to do, were actually things we wanted to do. Taking out the trash, for example. If you don’t take out the trash, what happens? It piles up, stinking up the place. Are you sure you don’t want to take it out? There can be a fine line between ‘have to’ and ‘want to’, but that fine line impacts our unconscious and over time, can have deep impacts on both our happiness and our effectiveness. What if we could reframe the ‘have to’s and turn them into ‘want to’s’. How does that apply on your team?
Our lives, both personally and professionally, and our organizations are the reflection of the sum total of the choices we’ve made over time and continue to make every day.
Think about some of the choices you have made, or are making, that get in the way of becoming your best and prevent you from bringing out the resilient warrior inside. These are the things you do, the ways you think or speak, and the ways you feel that are not working very well for you.
Over time, these choices become blockages, stymieing our best efforts to get ahead. But we can stop that by reframing them.
What about your organization? What are some of the choices your organization makes that don’t work out very well or that get in the way of fully engaging all employees in delivering the objectives, strategy or mission (your results)?
If your leaders or organization can benefit from making better choices that are in alignment with your strategy, call us. It’s what we do.