Tag Archives: Resilience

Jumping off the Treadmill

Posted on February 12, 2010 | 1 Comment

I just finished reading “Happy at Last: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Finding Joy” I’m not planning on reviewing this book – though I did enjoy it. I wanted to focus on a particular passage that struck me:

Some argue that the loss in happiness due to unemployment is actually worse than that due to divorce. It can lead to passivity – a lot of television watching – and alcohol consumption. Even in countries like Holland and Sweden, which give the unemployed good financial support, there is still a drop in happiness, health, and mental health. And you don’t get used to it, even after two years; and when you go back to work, there is a scar, some permanent damage to our capacity to enjoy our work.

wow.

I’m not going to deny it, being unemployed is tough. There are days where I have what I call “household ADD”. I find myself wandering from room to room doing little things here and there but not really finishing anything. It is weird, especially for me because I am usually pretty focused. Some days are worse, there are times where I feel more than a little hopeless. But, that’s ok. I wallow in it for an hour or two, and then I get over it.

However, it hasn’t been all bad. I have a great network and a lot of good friends who have done their best to help me in my search, but the economy isn’t really cooperating. That’s not their fault, nor my own. Thankfully my family can live on one salary for an extended period of time. And even more thankfully, my husband is still gainfully employed.

I’ve also done a few things to maintain a schedule and to help provide a daily purpose. I usually do not turn on the TV until after my husband comes home from work. I don’t need it to keep me company – during the day it is just a bunch of mindless junk anyway. Occasionally I’ll watch “Cash Cab” while I’m on the Stairmaster because I find it fun to play along. Every morning I eat a healthy breakfast to start my day. I always workout for about an hour in the morning. There is nothing that lifts my spirits more than a good workout. I have days where I don’t want to do it, but I find that if I drag myself into the exercise room and just “do a little something” that I’ll complete a full workout and feel much better afterwards. I’ve also come to love my local library. Reading is a great way to expand my mind and I’m in the habit of reading about a book a week now. Best of all, it’s FREE! I hope that I can continue this once I start working again.

Having all this extra time has allowed for a lot of reflection as well. There have been times in my life where I’ve been on that hedonic treadmill, pure and simple. I wanted a new car, some nicer clothes, a better house and so on. I’m not a big “shopper” in the usual sense, but when it comes to some of the bigger wants I’ve had them all. I’ve come to realize that they never make me happy – they typically add more stress. New car? Don’t get it dinged in the parking lot! Bigger house – how much are my taxes?!?!! Come to find out I don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy. You know what I felt most grateful for yesterday? Here are the top 3 (and there are many more):

  1. Napping on the floor in the sun with a really warm purring black cat
  2. Eating eggs benedict and steamed broccoli with hollandaise sauce for dinner
  3. Feeling the satisfaction of having a clean house

What is missing here? Everything to do with money, career, and possessions. I’m a driven person. I’m not patient. I’ve been told that I can be too competitive. When I look at my life and who I am, those parts of me aren’t really the highlights. They’ve made me appear successful on the outside. What makes me really successful – and what will make me survive this period in my life – is all about who I am on the inside.

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What’s Really Important – Respect

Posted on December 27, 2009 | 2 Comments

“What we do matters to us. Work may not be the most important thing in our lives or the only thing. We may work because we must, but we still want to love, to feel pride in, to respect ourselves for what we do and to make a difference.” Sara Ann Friedman

“That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.” William J. H. Boetcker

I’ve addressed respect in my blog before, and in reflection I thought it would be interesting to focus on self-respect vs. the respect for others. There is a lot of interesting debate in psychology circles regarding the differences between self-esteem and self-respect. See Psychology Today Self Esteem vs Self Respect for a quick overview. Having high self-esteem is ego driven. Technically a person with high self-esteem feels superior to others and expects preferential treatment. These people are very dependent upon how other people react to them and the feedback that these people provide. Studies have shown that some of the most heinous violent crimes are committed by people who have an unusually high warped self-esteem when they encounter someone who clearly does not hold them in as high regard. They have been “dissed” and it makes them angry. This is not self-respect, it is the pathology of a narcissist.

A person with healthy self-respect is :

  • able to look at themselves, both their successes and their failures and feel content – accepting who they are
  • not defined by either the positive or negative feedback of others (compliments are nice, but not required)
  • consistent in how they treat others with kindness and understanding
  • not phony, passive-aggressive, or manipulative
  • not willing to do the wrong thing just to appease someone else
  • concerned about maintaining their health and physical wellness (but is not obsessed by appearance)

Working with these kinds of people is a wonderful experience. There is no jockeying for position or ego driven posturing. Instead, there is cooperation, receptivity to suggestions, and a straight forward understanding that everyone on the team wants to do the right things.

For more reading see this article on Self Respect.

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The Best Advice I Ever Got

Posted on July 17, 2009 | Leave a comment

“Best advice I ever got” from Fortune Magazine

“In a world of uncertainty, we could all use a little advice. So we asked a host of influential leaders to share with us the wise words that changed their lives forever.”

Thanks to my friend Richard for pointing out this article to me. Lately I’ve been struggling a little bit with what to write about as I have been spending a lot of time on my job search and I really don’t want to write about that ad nauseam. This article made me reflect back on my career to see what advice really sticks out for me.

I remember many years ago when a promotion opportunity didn’t go well for me. I was extremely upset about it and I was having a tough time getting back into my existing role. I think part of the problem is that my career up until that point had been very successful. I hadn’t gotten much strong push back or negative feedback about my work. This time I received a bit – and it wasn’t information that could easily be dismissed because it clearly impacted my future career growth. I was crushed.

My poor manager at the time – who wasn’t the bearer of the bad news had to deal with me in my distress. Thankfully he finally hit upon the one phrase that put what happened into perspective – “Get Over It!” It doesn’t sound like much, but it was what flipped the switch for me. This is the key bit of advice that I’ve taken to heart. Everyone has problems both big and small. Their impact on you depends on how well you are able to learn from them and “get over it”. Resiliency is the key to future success!

“I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
- Thomas Edison, Inventor

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What to Do if Your Startup Is Failing

Posted on March 10, 2009 | Leave a comment

This article from Business Week brought back a lot of memories for me about the dotcom bust. Jason Calacanis talks about a lot of very difficult decisions that he has made and that he suggests that CEOs of startups should be considering in this economic environment.
“A lot of CEOs with less than 12 months of capital left in the bank have been asking me for advice about what to do, given the massive economic turmoil we’re facing. I thought I would take the time put these various conversations into one place to help those who are “up against it,” as we say in Brooklyn. The result is intended for the entrepreneurs behind startup companies who know in their hearts that their investors have lost faith, and that Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), or Microsoft (MSFT) aren’t going to pick them up on a magic M&A carpet ride.”

From 2000-2005 I worked for a now defunct networking equipment maker. During the heyday we grew to over 350 people with 3 engineering offices spread across the US plus sales offices in Europe and Asia. All told the company spent hundreds of millions of investment dollars trying to build some really amazing next generation networking technology. A lot of that cost was due to the sheer amount of resources required to build such a product, and the exorbitant cost of developing custom ASICs. There also were a lot of bad decisions made. We had the swankest office digs I have ever seen. We had a company car at each site. We had salt water fishtanks and water walls. We had massage chairs, espresso machines, foosball tables, and pool tables. We thought it would be wise to start working on a second product line before the first was even close to completion. All in all we were going through a lot more money that we should have, and I think some of the employees recognized it early on. Back then every company was doing it. You had to have all of the perks to keep people interested in working for you in Silicon Valley.

Once the dotcom bust settled in, the board switched out most of the executive team. We developed a fiscally conservative policy and things really changed. We went from 350 people down to a little less than 100. We closed one development site and subleased a significant portion of the other two. We looked for every way to reduce costs to the minimum to survive. Unfortunately we had blown through a huge cash cushion that could have helped us weather the path to profitability. I still admire the strength of the executive team and the hard decisions that they had to make back then. They didn’t run and hide from the problem. They attacked it head on. If that type of conservative management had been in place from the start I am sure that the company would have survived and been successful. Once the dotcom bust ended the company had gone to the well one too many times and the investors sold off the IP. I saw the writing on the wall well in advance of this event and I left about a year before it occurred.

This part of my work history is really sad for me. We built a great product. We had a terrific team – and it was a very tight knit one after the company shrank. We had clear corporate goals and priorities. The economy killed us, and I believe that happened because of the sheer amount of spending that occurred. We didn’t prepare for a rainy day.

I hope your company is ready to weather the worst and is planning for survival.

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Adaptability

Posted on January 2, 2009 | 1 Comment

Do you adapt well to changing or uncomfortable circumstances? Really? Are you sure? I’m not convinced. It’s a skill that not everyone has. In fact, I would say that most people are pretty change averse. Personally I am not. I itch for change. My husband says that I like to change things and try the unfamiliar just for the sake of the experience, not because of any other reason.

On my trip one couple was truly unable to cope with difficult circumstances. They inconvenienced many people in the process of trying to get comfortable, and they felt entitled to do so. This was done under the guise of “taking care of myself first” and it was done without any regard to how it impacted anyone else. It was clear that they expected their little bubble of USA standard of living comfort to follow them regardless of where they were in the world.

First off – let me tell you a little bit about the cabin that my husband and I shared during the trip. It was one of the smallest berths on the boat. We were expecting a full sized bed in it. When we got there, we found two smaller than twin bed bunks that were at different heights with a wooden board between them. They were at different heights because the bunks were located directly over one of the two big diesel engines that powered the boat from island to island over night. By directly, I mean that there was a hatch that we could open and we could see the engine. When the wind wasn’t right, diesel exhaust fumes came in through our very small open windows when the engines were running. There was no a/c (expected) so the windows had to remain open. There was only enough floor space in the cabin proper for one of us to stand if the other wasn’t in the bathroom. The shower was a hand held and the process of using it involved sitting on the toilet. This was no problem for us. This was the trip of a lifetime and we found that the vibration of the diesel engine helped lull us to sleep after a long hard day. The beds were extremely comfortable as well – regardless of their size. The open window in the roof of our cabin gave us a view of some of the most spectacular starry skies I have ever seen. There was no light pollution to speak of and the sight was amazing. I am truly thankful for the experience we had, and I don’t think that it would have been anywhere near the same in a big boat with a big suite with a/c and the light pollution of a cruise ship.

Flash to their experience. They had one of the best and largest cabins on the boat. It was on the front of the boat, far from the diesel engine noise and vibration at the back. They had a long corridor in their cabin – they even had drawers. (yes! Drawers!! we had 3 small cabinets) They had a shower in a separate room (!!) from the toilet and sink. They had numerous large windows. They had a double bed! They also had the diesel generator sitting above their room. It ran from 6am – noon and from 4 – 9pm. Yes, that wasn’t great, but it wasn’t running at night. They only spent 2 nights in their room. The first night the diesel fumes were too bad. They complained and complained the next day until our poor guide traded beds with them. They didn’t trade rooms with him however, just beds. His room didn’t have a shower – he showered in the space with the rest of the crew. Unacceptable. Besides, it would have been too much work to pack up their belongings and move them to the other room. Because of this they would have the crew of the boat WAKE HIM UP so they could get their things in the morning. I guess they felt the customer always should get what they want. On the last night, they decided to sleep in their room because they needed to pack to get ready to leave the boat the next morning. That night we had the roughest open water crossing of the trip. My husband was still on deck around midnight that night and what he saw appalled him. The guide’s cabin was midship so it had less roll. The husband came out, complained of feeling sea sick and woke up the guide, kicking him out of the cabin so he and his wife could sleep there. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. What were these people thinking? Why was their sleep and experience so much more important than that of the person who guided us all week? I guess they had to take care of themselves.

The really sad part is that during the week the wife kept talking about how she was able to easily adapt to tough circumstances. HA! She didn’t adapt, she whined until someone got sick of listening to her and made their experience worse to end the complaining. During the week we kept pointing out that she was not adapting, and finally the last night I really let loose with both barrels. I still don’t think that she had a clue.

Exhibit this kind behavior at work and you will make a lot of enemies. The benefit of the team is more important than the benefit of you as an individual. You need to be able to positively adapt to difficult and extenuating circumstances without a lot of drama. If you believe this simple thing and live it, you will always have supporters in your camp.

Now I ask you this:

When new processes or other changes are rolled out at work what do you do? Do you pick them right up and make sure that they get implemented as quickly and efficiently as possible? Or do you roll your eyes and commiserate with your pals about how management just doesn’t get it and that this is another initiative that is bound to fail?

What do you do when you are given the opportunity for a skill stretching assignment? Do you jump right in and learn as much as you can? Or do you avoid the work – sticking to what you know best and remaining in your comfort zone?

Only the adaptable will survive. Make sure you are one of them.

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