Make Adaptability Your Greatest Skill
Resilience used to be the #1 buzz word of personal and professional success. As I am using this quarantine era to support clients, students, and followers with an uncovering of what lies beneath the very real strains of all of “this” as also very real opportunities to evolve, it has become clear that Adaptability is the New Resilience.
We realize that “survival of the fittest” is all about the adaptation of the species. Those organically induced adaptations happen over long periods of time. Adaptation as a skill is about the ability to pivot in mind and body with solutions or strategies to move through a situation until a resolution is reached. Sounds simple? Well, frankly, a NON-adaptable mindset is so common that it is one of the greatest contributors to the crash and burn of relationships, the dead-endedness in a job, and the proverbial midlife crisis. One of the upsides of quarantine is, therefore, that most of us have found ourselves in a position of needing to adapt our way of working, parenting, self-caring, and socializing.
What makes it challenging to live with an adaptable mindset? Fear, apathy, and lost creativity. The first interfering factor is related to that comfort zone concept. Our brain is designed to do one primary thing: protect us. Yes, it will do all kinds of amazing behind-the-scenes interventions to protect us from emotional and physical danger. In fact, when we are faced with an experience of any kind, our brain automatically sorts through our memory center to find the closest memory that is either most recent or most impactful. It then directs our thoughts and emotions to that experience and we often go into autopiloted behaviors to align with our brain efforts. Fear of change is a protective measure. Our brain and our body conserve energy to prepare to ward off danger during change. It keeps us clinging to our comfort zone. That’s why we need to make a conscious effort to use adaptation skills to rewire automatic responses by creating new associations with change-based situations.
A third-grader in one of my online mind:body wellness classes demonstrated it perfectly when she said, “I have been going to school the same way every day for eight years and now THIS!” If you don’t know, third graders are 8 yrs old. Her entire life has been one way and she has had to adapt to online school in the blink of an eye. These students were sleeping more than before #stayhome and having more energy to do their school work two weeks ago when this change to online school first started because it was novel. After one week of a honeymoon phase, however, they are reporting difficulty falling and/or staying asleep. The cumulation of days plus the overhearing of the news has caused them stress. Their bodies and brains are pushing back with increased cortisol to stay awake to ward off danger. Adults are not different. We rely on experiences to reduce our naturally protective fear-based brain response. We need to be aware that we can manage influences that elevate the fear response by reducing negative stimulus and increasing opportunities to lower cortisol levels.
The second interfering trait is apathy. We are all at risk right now of becoming apathetic if we don’t harness some level of hope about how we can overcome this ordeal. Giving up and giving in to what we believe to be the status quo is a common condition that some people identify as “lazy”. It’s not really about someone being lazy. It’s more about feeling hopeless or not in control of some part of your life that feels too big to ignore.
To that issue, I remind myself and others about the power of the Serenity Prayer: “God (please insert your own higher power here) grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”. Simple, strong redirection of energy and focus in order to look for what you can control and take action there. Often, areas of control open up in ways that the person didn’t ever expect. Adaptability is the grease for that wheel.
The last interference is lost creativity. For most of us adults, we have stopped using our imagination that once upon a time was so powerful that we truly believed we were a superhero or on the moon or a Princess married to the most incredible Prince on the Planet (my personal childhood and…um…adult fantasy…just kidding, sort of). Our imagination is key to being adaptable. Our brain requires two things as an adult: 1. Input of information and 2. Truth. Our brain won’t allow us to lie to it without detriment in some way. Denial only lasts for so long without negatively impacting choices and outcomes. So unlike when we were children, we can’t imagine ourselves leaping between tall buildings in a single bound or sitting upon a throne.
We can, however, imagine ourselves in the situations we want to be in: How would it look for me to re-enter into the workplace post quarantine? How do I see myself in the job that I want to have this year? What does it look like for me to be living where I want to live? In the relationship I want to be in? In the physical condition that I think is best? Visualization, the adult imagination technique, is a long-standing tried and true powerful tool for business leaders, professional athletes, and those interested in personal development. It allows the brain to become more comfortable with an adapted version of yourself or your circumstances. The brain will, therefore, cooperate with lightening up on the protective mechanism because it doesn’t feel foreign and frightening anymore. You will be able to create strategies or steps toward a new reality. Lead your brain to a new level of comfort outside the original “zone”.
One of my C-suite clients of a Fortune 50 company had been trying to adapt to the new work from home/learn from home dynamic. She is a single mom who has four children under the age of 10. She is also responsible for an international staff team of 160 people. She was in a great groove with her schedule, supports for her children, and self-care before #stayhome happened. Then, out of fear of losing her job because of the commentary of expectations by her higher up, she began to lose her patience with her children more than ever, couldn’t sleep at night, and felt anxious most of the time. We discussed and she implemented a Family Meeting daily to lead her children with a collaborative living agreement, a team approach to how they were going to get through quarantine together. We used creativity to build-in time to the work/school schedule where 10 to 20 minutes of fitness or fun could be shared that served both parent and children to decompress and feel good physically. She adapted herself and her family life to thrive.
So, CoVid sucks. Quarantine is brutal. Social Distancing is awkward. And more of the ugly truths exist. That said, in addition to my last story on how this era is actually bringing romance to a renewed place of intimacy (go ahead and read Quarantine Courtship), an UPSIDE of this downer is that we can practice and teach adaptability to our children to generate a more empowered, resilient, and successful approach to post-pandemic life.
