Persistence vs. resilience: The difference matters
I talk a lot about hardwiring accountability in my books and talks. There are four factors of hardwiring personal accountability for a goal you have set in your life or at work (commitment, resilience, ownership and continuous learning). The second factor of resilience is what I want to dive deeper into today because many people mistake resilience for persistence — and knowing the difference really matters.
Persistence is all about how can I muscle my way through, how can I live through it, how can I survive this, how can I prove that I can take more than the other guy, and how can I last with my stamina? It all sounds hard, doesn’t it? That’s because persistence is based on some beliefs your ego likes to hold onto, which is, “I’ve got to do it on my own. If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.”
Persistence keeps us from realizing the amazing resources we have at our disposal. In fact, persistence is frustrated when other people seem to achieve things and make it look easy, because persistence ties in with the ego and our own religion of suffering. We love to suffer and so persistence is all about who’s the strongest.
But that folks, is how people succeeded in the past. I want to talk to you about how people succeed going forward, it’s called resilience.
Resilience is all about asking for help, recognizing when your way is not working, and rather than going solo, it’s about looking up and out and collecting resources that other people are glad to give.
Whether it’s crowdsourcing, whether it’s benchmarking, whether it’s just asking a cube mate if they have some ideas on how you could approach something differently.
In fact, we did this great experiment that I used when I was teaching a college course. We put third and fourth grade children in a gym, turned the lights off and watched how they behaved. Then we put only adults in a gym, we turned the lights off and watched how they behaved. The difference we saw was amazing.
When the lights went out on the adults, they sat quietly, isolated, without reaching out for one another. They waited for one or two innovative people to come along and figure out what might have gone wrong. They were so well behaved, they hardly moved from their spot.
When the third and fourth graders experienced the lights going off, they moved from their spot and reached out to others. It was hilarious! They were trying to figure out who was beside them by feeling each other’s hair, and asking their teachers who might have a cell phone. They were thinking about reaching out and connecting with others. They were very noisy and very extroverted. They were grabbing ahold of others, sticking together, looking beyond themselves. You see, while the adults sat alone, quietly persevering, the children were resilient.
Now when you hit a snag in your program, or a goal that you’ve set for yourself, the path that you’re taking, what I want you to do is avoid looking down and thinking about how you can succeed on your own. I want you to look out and start crowdsourcing. Ask for help and find people that you have a positive relationship with, that will give you great ideas on how you could take the focus away from why you can’t, to how you could. It’s a great exercise just to come up with a question, and ask successful people how they got there. What is their one best tip?
Because here’s what we know for sure; resilient people ask for help more often, and they have the highest number of positive relationships there to use when they need to crowdsource.
It’s a big difference. Persistence will make sure you abandon your goal because even you aren’t that strong. Resilience means that together we’re genius, that you can rely on the ideas, the innovations, and the energy of everyone in your environment. Sounds like an easier way, and I’ll make you one promise, the ego hates easy, so be prepared.
For more on hardwiring accountability, read Personal Accountability and the Pursuit of Workplace Happiness on Forbes.
