Ep. 261 How resilient are you?

Having your own business will inevitably involve plenty of ups and downs and you’ll need to be resilient to respond effectively to challenges and keep going towards your goals.

In this week’s episode, we take a look at…

• The stagnation and lack of motivation that can come from not being very resilient
• How resilience can help you bounce back from setbacks and maintain focus and momentum
• Cultivating resilience as an entrepreneur as you build a support network and practise self-care

Tune in for more on becoming more resilient.

*Resources mentioned during the episode*

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Resilient

Hello there. Welcome back to the podcast as we have a final episode in the series, we’ve been having a along the lines of thinking like an entrepreneur. So if you haven’t listened to the previous episodes, I’d love for you to go back. There’s no particular order, although there is sort of a logic in my own mind. But that’s just for me. There is a sort of chronological order, I suppose, and how we implement these, and resilience as a topic for day because resilience is sort of when we’ve done all the other things, we’ve got the amazing self awareness, growth, mindset, courage, intrinsic motivation, adaptability, we’ve done all the things, we’ve been accountable, and it still doesn’t go well, it still doesn’t go as we’d hoped. That’s when we need resilience.

So that’s why I’m finishing with resilience, in fact, is one of my pillars of the five pillars of building a business.

And the life outside the nine to five is my second pillar, cultivating confidence and resilience. So that’s the final topic in this series. Next week, we’ve got an interview, and then we’ll see where we go in November. But let’s talk about resilience. So, as I think I’ve talked about stagnation and challenges quite a bit, the last few weeks as we’ve looked at thinking like an entrepreneur, but the problem is, there are challenges. And we’re all adults here. I think we’ve all experienced setbacks and challenges along the way. And if we’re not resilient, and it sounds a bit flippant, but we can become paralyzed, it’s easy to say, oh, we need to be resilient. But, you know, the person I most think of in this context is my granddad, he tragically lost his mother, his brother, and eventually his dad, very young. And he had this really hard upbringing without going into any details part from that’s already pretty tragic. And I can’t imagine that kind of, yeah, that kind of trauma from early on, he was the most positive, amazing, funny, loving, like, he’s just my favorite person in the world. And, you know, talk about resilience growing up like that, and still coming out, you just would not have known and yet not to belittle people’s experience, because everyone’s experiences their own. We all know that person who seems to just always have something happened to them, and doesn’t seem to be particularly, you know, who are we to judge, but it just they seem so unfortunately, unable to cope with the tiniest little thing. And to be honest, you know, I’ve always thought of myself as really, really strong and independent, and so on.

And maybe that’s to my detriment, because if you build that up, you’re likely to crash at some point. And with lack of sleep with, with my little ones, with, you know, stress and various things that can happen. We can be less resilient, I have been less resilient in different phases in my life more recently. So you know, it’s not that you are resilient or not. And if we’re going to embrace that growth mindset, we need to know that this is something we can absolutely cultivate. Now, yes, some people are born with it more naturally than others. But it’s definitely something we can cultivate. If we’re not so resilient, then you know, it’s very likely that we’re going to lose the motivation, enthusiasm we have for the thing that we’re working on, right for the business for the project, and for the role that we’re in. Because if we just keep having those repeated failures, setback, after setback, after setback, and sometimes, you know, that’s telling us something and itself, and that maybe we do need to pivot and be adaptable, but unfortunately, you know, it can wear us down. And at that point, it’s almost a self fulfilling prophecy, because we’re not motivated. We don’t have that drive within kind of making it an inevitability almost.

Because, you know, we’re just not doing the things we need to do. We’re kind of leaning back instead of leaning in at the very moment, we need to make more efforts. And I think I’ve said this about 100 times, the last few weeks, we’re missing out on opportunities for learning. Because if we’re just Oh, my goodness, why was me this has happened, we’re blinded by all means, you know, scream and shout, I always say for a moment for a few minutes, whatever, but then we need to get back to work. We’re missing out on those opportunities for okay, what can I learn from this? Well, no one showed up to this workshop, maybe I didn’t advertise it enough. I only talked about a couple times, because there’s a bit worried or I was a bit busy. Okay, next time I can, what can I do, I can message these people who are warm leads who you know, are interested before I can publish, like, I can do some live videos on it, blah, blah, blah, or maybe a workshop is not the right thing for me right now. Because I just don’t have capacity. So maybe I need to think of another way to show up and add value, etc, right?

So there are opportunities to learn and grow. And I think not having the resilience and knowing that we don’t have that resilience, again, is going to cultivate that fear of failure.

Because we know it’s gonna be so hard to bounce back from it, we’re not going to be able to bounce back from it and therefore we stay maybe in our comfort zone. We don’t take those risks. We don’t push ourselves we don’t look for the opportunities to grow. And then again, it becomes almost a self fulfilling prophecy as the comfort zone shrinks around us. And we become less resilient as a result. If we can win Wait, let’s be positive. When we develop that greater resilience, we can far more easily bounce back from let’s face it, the inevitable failures and setbacks, we can turn failures into stepping stones for success. It all sounds very rah, rah, but it’s true. You know, I can learn from this. Okay, I didn’t show up there. So I need to do this. All I got that feedback, how can I apply that next time? Not taking it personally, you know, there’s the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, that I read years ago. And one of the Four Agreements that I always remember is don’t take things personally. Don’t take the setback personally, even if it is your business, the project you’ve been working on. So an extra strictly link with who you are, and you’re so passionate about it. And they’re not saying no to you, they’re saying no to the product or service, the offering the thing. Don’t take it personally. You know, they don’t care.

Let’s be honest. That’s the harsh truth. They don’t care at all. And then as much as you do, they’re not, you know, if they’re not responding to you, when you’re proactively doing outreach, if they’re not picking up the phone, if they’re not answering, if they say no to proposal, it’s not you. There’s 3000 Other reasons why they’re saying no, we’re not wanting to work with you, let’s say. So bouncing back is so much easier. That is really the definition of resilience. In fact, in fact, I think it actually is that Latin, who resilience have sort of bounced back from failure, and adapting to change. We’ve talked about this and adaptability, we’re so much better equipped to adapt to those changes in the market in the industry, if we’re adaptable if we were resilient. And then we can thrive even in those very uncertain and ambiguous and volatile times. So we’re like, yeah, yeah, whatever you throw at me, I’ll deal with it. No worries, you can always like laugh it off. I know, it’s easy to be flippant about it again.

But if we can have a bit of sense of humor, haha, this happened, what can we do now, that’s better than being sort of really attached to it and taking it really personally again. And my goodness, focus and determination and momentum is so important to keep things going in the business and in your work. And so if you have that resilience, it helps you to maintain that focus and momentum rather than always having to go Oh, it’s so terrible. Now I need to pick myself back up again, and re motivate myself and get myself going and get back into a routine. If I can stay in that steady rhythm. And it won’t always be steady. There are seasons, there are ups and downs as pool, there’s push, there’s illness, there’s holiday, all sorts, but try to stay in that routine and the rhythm and you can’t see me but I’m kind of moving my hands in a forward motion, circular motion, cyclical motion, whatever you want to call it. I’m so ready to stay committed to your long term goals despite the challenges. And finally, as ever, how can we cultivate that resilience then? Well, it comes down to a few of the things we’ve talked about the growth mindset. And again, the book is Mindset by Carol Dweck, it’s a growth mindset rather than the fixed mindset is so key in fostering resilience, right, we need to reframe any challenge as an opportunity for growth and improvement, this is actually testing my idea to the point that it’s going to be so much stronger coming out of it will be so much stronger, once I’ve addressed this challenge and adapted, right. And if your business idea, let’s say just magically has some incredible stroke of luck, and just kind of zooms through everything without having any kind of challenge, most likely, it’s not as robust as it would be if it had gone through all those different challenges and pivots and feedbacks, and so on.

And there’ll be something else that kind of makes it crash and burn, not to mention makes you suddenly lose your confidence because it’s gonna go this going so well. And you think, oh, must be because I’m amazing. It’s like your first child is really easy. And then you go, Oh, I’m such an amazing parent. And then your second one comes in, I was like, Oops, no, it was just genetics. It wasn’t my parenting.

So developing a growth mindset is so important, reframing the challenge as an opportunity for growth and improvement.

And then building a support network. You know, I said that my second pillar is cultivating confidence and resilience. And one of the key parts there, that I’ve talked about in the Business Academy in the book, outside the nine to five as well is about building a support network. Do not underestimate the importance of surrounding yourself with a supportive network of mentors, peers, advisors, look for guidance, share experiences, I have the ABCDE. Let’s see if I can remember them. So A is accountability. We talked about that ownership mentality last week, but holding yourself accountable, having other people to help you be accountable accountability partners is so important. The B is belief. People who believe in you whether it’s a supportive partner is often the case if you’re lucky, your family or friends or peers, right? See is community. So really having that sense of belonging, again, among your peers, feeling paths of like, Hey, we’re all working. We’re all trying to make this work. This is what we’re doing. We’re out there doing it. That’s so so important. Again, if we come back to intrinsic motivation, that sense of belonging is really one of the core foundational human needs. So that’s C D is disconnecting. So having and we’ll talk about self care in a moment, but just connecting from work having friends and family who don’t care so much about your work and who will help you just completely, you know, enjoy, disconnect, take time off, whether it’s a holiday or an evening, or weekend, whatever it is, or a moment, and going for a walk with someone and having a phone call as someone will start by connecting with someone. And then finally, the E and the ABCDE is the expert, right? So having a mentor or coach, someone that guide you is really valuable as well. But that support network, especially when you’re on your own is indispensable in and necessary, in fact. And then finally, yes, practicing self care.

So this means, of course, finding coping mechanisms to manage stress, hopefully, to avoid it.

Now, we can’t completely avoid it, but at least first, designing our week in our schedule in a way that that’s not, you know, at least insofar as we can, optimally planning around our time and our energy, not putting back to back calls and meetings, not putting stressful things together, when we’re about to go on holiday, or we know the kids or whatever it is, right? Sometimes we have to, but trying to avoid those. And I have in the past taken on, you know, workshops, webinars to do like either super early in the morning, or when the kids were home, which I wouldn’t usually do. And I think I just do exceptionally inevitably, the kids are screaming next door, you know, something’s not worked out, they don’t want to leave the house, whatever it is with, with dad, or whoever they’re with them. In fact, it’s always dad, say. So you know, taking care of yourself finding a way to design your shedule I always want to say schedule, I think that’s the American and then managing the stress when it happens. So in the moment, you’ve got your short term way of dealing with it, what can I do deep breaths, go for a walk. And then long term, you need to start saying no to things, aligning, making sure you’re saying yes to the things that are aligned and so on. Finding a self care ritual, whether it’s meditation, practicing mindfulness yoga, for me, the non negotiables are going for walks, fresh air. Sounds so trivial, but so basic, right? Ultimately prioritizing your well being. In fact, I almost want to make that a trait in itself, this whole piece, because taking care of yourself is so foundational, and it cuts through everything in terms of taking ownership and not blaming others. And you know, you can go to bed early, you can drink more water, you can plan healthier meals, and so on, you can make that a priority. I don’t want to patronize you but it’s so foundational to how we feel and how we are, if you think Maslow, whatever your thoughts on this, but you know, the foundation of having that basic survival and wellness is necessary in order if you’re ever to try to self actualize yourself and have all this high fluting and fulfilment and so on, you need to be well, when I haven’t slept, oh my goodness, I do not care about purpose and meaning I just want to sleep. You know, speaking from my own experience, taking care of yourself is absolutely foundational. So you know, not judging anyone, things are hard can be hard. So, you know, I connect with a lot of you and I hear that really sad things have happened are happening unexpected health family, really tragic things and and every empathy and understanding for that. And if we can develop, if we can prioritize that self care, have the support network, and really try to cultivate that resilience. It’s not to say that that pain goes away. So when there’s a book in fact, I recommend a few are going through something that sold for happiness by my goddess and his son tragically died. And his he sort of as an engineer, super smart guy, ex Google, I think was was very sort of scientific about trying to find out okay, how can I still find a way to live and be happy even with this video, the worst thing that can ever happen to you is your child dying. And so, you know, that that’s a book that I recommend is sold for happiness by my good dad, but we’re talking here, still, whatever the circumstances, and you have to judge where it’s, you know, this is not a priority right now. I need to take care of myself and my family. And that’s absolutely the way to go. And then other times, it’s like, no, no, in fact, I do want to learn and grow and develop this business. My career is important right now.

I can’t just take step back from that right now. I want to pursue this I am intrinsically motivated to keep going. I’m in it for the long haul. And despite these challenges and setbacks, I am going to learn, grow and move forwards, then then having that resilience is so so powerful. So that’s it. We’ve been looking at the traits of sort of thinking like an entrepreneur, whether you are an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur, or anything in between. We’ve looked at self awareness, intrinsic motivation, courage, adaptability, growth, mindset, accountability, and resilience. If you missed any of those episodes, and do go back and have a listen, if there’s anything you think I’ve missed, I’d love to hear from you. So you can email me at podcast at one step outsider comm ping me on LinkedIn or Instagram Whoever else but connected and I’d love to hear from you. I know there are things of course that I’ve missed out on. And I’d love to hear your insights, your your lessons, your own experiences, stories of perhaps where you did exhibit some of these things, perhaps where you were missing it. And that held you back and said, Do you please get in touch I’m not loving just talking out into the empty vacuum of space so much prefer when you respond to me and tell me how you’re getting on and, and help me learn with feedback as well learn and grow. So I’m happy to take your feedback. We’ll have another interview next week with someone other than me talking as well, which is always good. And then we’ll see where we go in November and December. My goodness can’t believe it almost the end of 2023. What is going to happen to any thought, well, we’re going to take ownership of that, aren’t we and set our intentions for next year. But in the meantime, I wish you resilience, growth and courage. And I’ll see you back next week. Bye for now

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