Reputation Building 101: Rethinking Failure

Fact:  If any of us believed that falling down once meant that we'd never learn to walk, we'd all be crawling on our hands and knees today.
 
If falling off of a bike repeatedly meant you'd never learn how not to fall, Schwinn would have gone out of business a long time ago and there'd be no such thing as the Tour de Cure.

I'll assume that your toddler mindset didn't let many tumbles, wobbles and falling on your butt keep you from walking upright.  Getting your knees skinned and dumping your bike more than once didn't end your quest to be a skilled rider.

Know why you can walk, ride a bike, write, read, ski, and so on?  Because your younger self didn't know what failure was.  It wasn't an option, so there was nothing keeping you from mastering those skills.  You picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and started all over again.  And again.  And again.  You figured out how to balance yourself just right so that you fell less and less often.  You eventually got really good at it.  You took repeated failures and used them as learning opportunities.

That's called resilience.
At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, I think that our ever-growing reliance on technology has been the death-knell of resilience.  I'm noticing that people who seem to always have a phone or tablet bonded to their hands, or folks who spend uncountable hours in front of a computer screen, are less skilled at dealing with obstacles that life throws their way.
  
The 24/7/365 availability of information and communication opportunities have replaced the practice-til-you-get-it method of building and honing academic, social and interpersonal skills.  It has also taken failure out of the realm of possibilities, and turned it from a singular event into how to describe oneself.

The result is a population that doesn't know what to do when things go wrong: 

• When they don't do something right the first time (or the second time.  Or the third).  
• When losing a competition and getting angry for not receiving a consolation prize.
• Giving up when learning something new and it doesn't go perfectly right away.
• How to lose gracefully and with sportsmanship.
• How to take failure as an opportunity to grow and learn and do better.

We don't need consoling when we fail. Or a trophy for participation.  We need to build grit.  Rethink what we can learn from the experience. Show our tenacity.  Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again...until we get it right.   


All images courtesy of Google Images, unless otherwise noted.

(c) 2011-2016 Robyn King. All Rights Reserved.

Reputation Building 101: Resilience

Image Source

Grit.  Tenacity.  Bounce-back.  Toughness.  Adaptability.  Resilience.  These personal qualities contribute to one's reputation.

When faced with a setback, resilient people don’t give in to anger or choose to quit because something is difficult. Instead, they tap into a greater purpose to bounce back stronger than ever.

“They find resilience by moving toward a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief by perceiving bad times as a temporary state of affairs,” says Hara Estroff Marano, editor-at-large of Psychology Today.

Highly resilient people know how to bend to failures and tragedies and not break. Here are seven habits of people who know how to confront adversity and move on with their lives stronger than before:

1. They have a strong sense of purpose.

Resilient people make a habit of being persistent. “Knowing what one wants is the first and, perhaps, the most important step toward the development of persistence,” says Napoleon Hill in “Think and Grow Rich,” one of the top-selling books of all time.

2. They are self-reliant.

Resilient people believe that they alone are fully capable of carrying out their purpose, says Hill, which allows them to rebound from setbacks.

3. They have a support network.

Just because successful people are self-confident and can rely on themselves doesn’t mean that they isolate themselves from others. Studies show that having intimate relationships with friends and family provides the benefits of belonging, increased self-worth, and security that reduces stress levels, especially in times of crisis.

4. They are accepting.

Resilient people understand that frustrating situations, failures, and tragedies are inevitable parts of life, and they’re able to move on because they don’t ignore or repress their pain. “Acceptance is not about giving up and letting the stress take over, it’s about leaning in to experience the full range of emotions and trusting that we will bounce back,” Brad Waters writes in Psychology Today.

5. They are optimists.

Those who move forward do not dwell in a state of victimhood or self-hatred. “What the resilient do is refrain from blaming themselves for what has gone wrong,” says Marano of Psychology Today. “In the language of psychology, they externalize blame. And they internalize success; they take responsibility for what goes right in their lives.”

6. They turn tough times into opportunities for growth.

In “The Obstacle Is the Way,” Ryan Holiday points to several historical examples of people who practice the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism by re-framing adversity as an opportunity to learn and grow. He cites Nassim Taleb, who defines a Stoic as someone who “transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”

7. They take care of their health.

Resilient people know how to keep stress from building up and possibly crippling them. Exercise and meditation can be great ways to clear the mind of anxiety. “Unplugging and stepping off the wheel of our doing can offer just the reset we need to re-find our center,” says psychologist Karen Horneffer-Ginter.

Source  
This article was originally published on Business Insider.

Images:  Courtesy of Google, unless otherwise notated.
(c) 2011-2016 Robyn King. All Rights Reserved.