This is the second post in a row I’m doing on a career advice article I saw a couple of weeks ago in the Denver Post called “Key Skills Mean Brighter Employment Future.” The author, Kathleen Winsor-Games and I think alike. Today I want to focus on one of the skills Kathleen identified: Resiliency.
According to Kathleen, resiliency “describes the person who bounces back from disappointments quickly, and who takes the initiative to gather new skills or resources when faced with challenge. The ability to reinvent yourself, your approach to finding work and your attitude toward resolving problems at work are all a part of this.”
I devote 20 tweets in my career success book Success Tweets to the concept of resiliency. I call it committing to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success. Tweet 32 says, “Stuff happens as you go about creating your life and career success. Choose to respond positively to the negative stuff that happens.”
Success is all up to you, and me, and anyone else who wants it. We all have to take personal responsibility for our own success. We have to be resilient. I am the only one who can make me a career success. You are the only one who can make you a career success.
Stuff happens: good stuff, bad stuff, frustrating stuff, unexpected stuff. Successful people are resilient. They respond to the stuff that happens in a positive way. Humans are the only animals with free will. That means we – you and me – get to decide how we react to every situation that comes up. That’s why taking personal responsibility for yourself and choosing to respond positively to the negative stuff that happens to you is so important.
Resilient people recognize that they are responsible for their life and the choicesthe y make. They realize that while other people and events have an impact on their life, these people and events don’t shape their life.
When you accept personal responsibility for your life, you own up to the fact that how you react to people and events is what’s important. And you can choose how to react to every person you meet and everything that happens to you. You can choose to be resilient.
The concept of personal responsibility is found in most writings on success. Unfortunately Stephen Covey is no longer with us. He was a wise and caring man. The first habit in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is, “Be proactive.” I have a little book called Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People, also by Stephen Covey. It is one of the most-read books that I have. I like it because it provides a little snippet of advice from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People every day.
The daily reflection for September 24 goes directly to the advice in this tweet, and it gets to the heart of personal responsibility and life and career success.
“It’s not really what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things can hurt physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all. In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the future and to inspire others to do so as well.”
Dr. Covey provides some great career advice here. We can’t always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we react to both the positive and negative experiences we have as we go through life. Successful reslient people choose to make lemonade out of lemons. Unsuccessful, non reslient people choose to complain about the bitter, tart taste of the lemons they are handed.
I know the “lemons into lemonade” line is a cliché. However, clichés become clichés because they have an underlying truth. The important point is that human beings are blessed with free will. As such, we can choose what we do and how we react to the world around us. We can choose a positive, productive path, or we can choose a path of self pity and inaction – and hurt only ourselves in the end.
The 7 Habits advice for September 25 carries on in the same vein…
“Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.”
I love the concept of carrying your own weather with you. Choosing to react positively to the negative people and events in your life is the best way to carry your weather – and to take personal responsibility for your life and career success.
The common sense career success coach point here is clear. Successful people know that they can choose how they respond to everyone they meet and everything that happens to them. They are resilient. They follow the advice in Tweet 32 in Success Tweets. “Stuff happens as you go about creating a successful life and career. Choose to respond positively to the negative stuff that happens.” If you want to create the career success you deserve, be resilient, carry your weather with you. In this way, whether it rains or shines on the outside, it will be sunny on the inside. Choose to react positively to the negative people you meet, and the negative things that happen to you. When you do, you’ll find that you’ll have less negative things happening and fewer negative people entering your life.
That’s the career advice I found in Kathleen Winsor-Games thoughts on resiliency. What do you think? Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment. As always, thanks for taking the time to read my daily musings on life and career success. I value you and I appreciate you. If you want to learn more about how to become more resilient and climb the corporate ladder faster check out the free rebroadcast of a webinar I did recently. You can find it at http://www.mycorporateclimb.com/squeeze_pages/13337-bud-bilanichs-corporate-career-success-webinar/
Bud
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