key to resilience Rachel had made one of her dreams come true.

She had spread her writing wings and created a blog. She added a new post almost every day. She was thrilled to have an outlet to share her views on networking. After a few months had passed, she had gained a large group subscribers and a roster regular guest bloggers.

Rachel had long been a fan of, and email correspondent with, a fairly prominent author in her genre.

Rachel asked for my opinion as her friend. She wanted to know if she should she invite the author to write a guest post.

My counsel: go for it! Jump off the cliff and see what happens. Worst case scenario is the author saying no. She asked others for their opinion on what to do. Everyone told her the same thing—she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking the risk and making the ask.

Rachel went for it.

Two months later, the daily email notifications of posts to Rachel’s blog stopped. Why? Rachel had lost her mojo. Why?

She had extended the guest post invitation to the author. He turned her down. He told he had reviewed her blog and found it “to look too pretty, too girly for him.”

The word “pretty” was an arrow through Rachel’s heart and spirit.

For someone of the author’s caliber to use “pretty” as a descriptor meant to Rachel that she wasn’t fulfilling her mission to provide useful and meaningful advice. She believed she had failed, so she quit writing. She said she didn’t have a clue for how to reclaim her blog writing mojo. And maybe didn’t want to.

What Rachel needed was resilience—the ability to rebound after setbacks and look forward with optimism and hope.

Life is full of road blocks, adversity, loss, rejection and other obstacles.

If we’re passionate about something, a huge part of making that something a reality is the going over, under, around or through those obstacles; resiliently bouncing back and trying again whenever a new stumbling block appears in our path. Because they will.

Nothing can sabotage winning, except for fear of losing. Success usually lies just beyond failure. ~Mario Cortes

How to up your resilience quotient

1) Reach out to others

According to the Mayo Clinic, “being resilient doesn’t mean being stoic or going it alone. In fact, being able to reach out to others for support is a key component of being resilient.” Do what Rachel finally did to increase her resilience—reach out to others, express what you’re thinking and feeling, and devise a plan to get back in the saddle.

2) Try again

Psychologists say resilience is a learned skill. When things go wrong, try again. Then try again if need be, just like you’d practice any new skill until it becomes second nature. Creativity expert Ken Robinson points out, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

3) Have a calming chat with your inner critic

In situations like this, your inner critic is probably working overtime. Through 15 years of study, Martin E.P. Seligman, author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, “discovered that people who don’t give up have a habit of interpreting setbacks as temporary, local, and changeable.” Heed what the inner voice is saying, yet exercise control of how much power you give to it. You control whether or not the inner critic halts you in your tracks.

4) Focus on learning

Look for the teachable moment. We’re quick to call ourselves failures when things don’t go right on the first try. Cut yourself some slack. You’re learning and probably developing strengths and abilities beyond what you initially imagined. Explore what worked well and what didn’t. Rachel began her blog to gain writing experience, and that’s where she needed to focus.

5) Identify lessons to be learned

Look to the past to learn lessons, yet make sure you don’t get mentally and emotionally stuck there. Studies have shown that how one thinks about setbacks impacts their coping abilities. Rather than dwell on what went wrong (someone declining an opportunity to write a guest blog), look for the successes (starting a blog and rapidly gaining subscriber’s in Rachel’s case) .

The most important lesson to learn is to not give up entirely. That’s truly when you do become a failure.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. ~Mark Twain

What say you?

Image source before quote: Gratisography

8 Comments

Mike Henry Sr. on April 26, 2011 at 10:44 am

Jane, very well said. Resilience is an under-appreciated quality. We should all be challenged by this post to resist our own lizard brain (according to Godin) and the Resistance that exists in the world. So much of what passes for energy in the world is simply momentum and inertia. When people like Rachel bring real energy the world resists and our lizard brains kick in. I hope she kept going.

Mike…
- Jane Perdue on April 27, 2011 at 6:10 am
  
  Mike –
  
  Appreciate your kind words! I agree with you with that resilience is under-appreciated, thinking there’s some link to fear of failure. Society and business in general have low tolerance levels for failure, so perhaps it is easier for people just to say “well, it didn’t work out for whatever reason” and move on.
  
  “Rachel” did crawl back up into the saddle!
  
  With a smile,
  
  Jane
Gwyn Teatro on April 26, 2011 at 1:39 pm

Jane, this is such an important message and in reading it, I feel the discomfort of many a personal setback. It is easier to give in and find reasons (or excuses) to stop trying and learning. The trouble with that, in my experience anyway, is that what I may gain in short-term comfort, I invariably lose again in long-term regret.
Thank you for a thought-provoking post.
- Jane Perdue on April 27, 2011 at 6:20 am
  
  Gwyn –
  
  Delighted that you stopped by to enrich the discussion! Your observation resonates – it’s a bit like a mirror in which I also see myself. Those dreams and hopes forfeited at the first sign of trouble have a pesky way of not going away, lingering in the sidelines of our hearts and minds.
  
  With a smile,
  
  Jane
Anne Perschel on April 28, 2011 at 10:49 am

My wish for women is that we would forego the botox and get our skin thickened. Can plastic surgeons do that yet?
- Jane Perdue on May 2, 2011 at 2:57 pm
  
  Plastic surgeons are a third party solution. The desire for that thicker skin has to come from within!
Elijah on June 16, 2011 at 3:48 pm

If we allow life’s blows to harden us, resilence becomes less and less likely. It appears that life gives us two options: bounce back or break into pieces.

These are lessons that may generation needs to learn. Those of us entering the our 30s are learning lessons the hard way. Reach out to us…plenty of us will listen!

Thanks again…your words plant good seeds in the soil of my life on a regular basis!
- Jane Perdue on June 21, 2011 at 8:05 am
  
  Elijah – what lovely words you share! The nugget of wisdom rests in your first phrase “if we allow.” Whether or not we choose to admit it, how we respond to what life hands us is in our control. We can choose to be victims or victors. I appreciate you sharing that our small bites plant “good seeds” – smiles and thanks!