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BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ - Making the Hours of Your
Life Worth More ™
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Issue # 21 - When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Learn
RESILIENCE
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To subscribe to "Beyond the Billable Hour" ™ go to
http://LawyersLifeCoach.com
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ARTICLE SUMMARY: Transforming change and adversity into
growth opportunities requires
resilience. Here are 14 steps to
guide you in your efforts to achieve
success in the face of difficult
challenges and turbulent times.
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Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., Editor
Ellen is the founder of LawyersLifeCoach.com (TM)
Personal and Career Coaching for Lawyers Determined
to Achieve Professional Success AND
a Fulfilling Life
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OUR PERSPECTIVE
Most attorneys -- especially women -- live impossibly busy lives.
Finding a balance between work and life without sacrificing
professional success, deciding on the best practice area or
work setting, and making career transitions can be a daunting
task, even for the most gifted and accomplished lawyer.
Just as every person deserves the best possible legal
counsel, every attorney deserves professional, dedicated
support in accomplishing her most important goals.
You know how hard you've worked to get where you are --
you serve others, both personally and professionally.
You've earned the right to both career success and
a fulfilling life.
This newsletter is intended to help you create a
satisfying life -- within, or outside of -- legal practice.
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When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Learn RESILIENCE
"More than education, more than experience, more than
training, a person's level of resilience will determine
who succeeds and who fails. That's true in the cancer
ward, it's true in the Olympics, and it's true in the
boardroom."
Diane L. Coutu, quoting Dean Becker,
CEO of Adaptiv Learning Systems.
Harvard Business Review, May 2002, p.47
As attorneys, change is probably the one constant in your
life these days. Changes in the economy, in the legal
marketplace, in the profession, and in technology all
require adaptation.
* Perhaps your firm is "downsizing" because business
is slow in your practice area.
* You may be feeling insecure about your job.
* Possibly you're among those attorneys who thought
that your position was secure only to have been
told to look elsewhere.
* If your firm has merged with another, you have to cope
with new reporting relationships and adapt to a
changing work culture.
* If you've recently become a partner you're faced
with new demands for business development and
greater leadership responsibilities.
* Increasing numbers of women in the profession require
adaptations from their workplaces. Work norms and
long-standing assumptions are being strongly challenged.
* If you're a parent, you may be finding the adjustments
you're required to make to your workplace to be in
conflict with the needs of your family.
* You may be returning to work after family leave and
be concerned about how your absence will effect
your career.
Work changes, life changes and transitions are stressful.
Change is disruptive. It creates uncertainty and requires
you to make adaptations above and beyond your already
excessive workload.
Whether you work in private practice, in the legal
department of a corporation or in the government,
the changes to which you have to adapt are probably
coming at you so rapidly you barely have time to
reflect upon them.
Fortunately, psychological research has identified
the characteristics of people who cope well with
adversity and change. Many of these attributes are
skills you can learn - skills that a professional
coach is trained to help you acquire.
Whether you call coping well with difficult times
"resilience," "adaptability," or "hardiness," here
are a list of 14 attitudes and behaviors that you
can practice in order to become more resilient:
1. FACE REALITY
Resilient people truly understand and face the
reality of their situation, even if it's
emotionally difficult. Sugar-coating a difficult
situation doesn't help you cope. Instead,
face reality in a way that allows you to prepare
to manage it.
2. DEVELOP AN OPTIMISTIC OUTLOOK
Optimism doesn't mean looking at the world through
rose-colored glasses. It means facing problems
with an eye on how to solve them. Rather
than feeling like a victim of change, consider
the opportunities that change presents. Difficult
situations often offer important learning experiences.
The core of resilience is the ability to transform
adversity into a challenge from which you can learn
and grow. Resilience involves going beyond coping and
adaptation to actually making "transformative" change.
When faced with change, try to tolerate ambiguity
and remain open to new experiences. Look for the
possibilities in uncertainty, rather than focusing
on the dangers. Although most people prefer
predictability, try to appreciate that you grow
more from challenge than from routine and comfort.
3. MAKE A COMMITMENT
People who are committed to what they do - who
are strongly interested in their work - are
resilient in the face of challenges. Resilient
lawyers look forward to doing the work they've
chosen to do. Resilience requires finding a way
to turn the difficult situation you're experiencing
into something interesting and important to you.
If your work feels trivial or meaningless,
it will be very difficult to persist in the face
of hardship. This is one reason why it's so important
to do work you love.
4. BE PROACTIVE
Resilient people are the sculptors of their life
and career situations - not the sculpture.
Take the initiative to identify opportunities and
act on them. Go beyond adapting to adversity
and actively work to change your circumstances for
the better.
Proactive lawyers select and influence the situations
in which they work rather than merely reacting to
situations created by others. Try to identify and pursue
opportunities for self-improvement such as establishing
relationships with mentors and acquiring needed skills.
Develop a career plan. Seek a work environment that
matches your needs and values. Build a network of supportive
colleagues, friends, mentors and a professional
coach to help you anticipate change and prepare for it.
5. DEVELOP A SENSE OF HUMOR
The culture of the legal profession is very serious,
but the fact is that you need a sense of humor to
be resilient in the face of change and adversity.
Humor provides you with perspective. While facing
the reality of your situation, it's also useful
to see the absurdity in it. Try to remember
the crises with which you successfully coped and
how enormous they seemed at the time. Laughing at
how seriously we can sometimes take ourselves can allow us
the psychological space to see alternatives we
hadn't seen before.
The ability to reconstruct the stressful situation -
to stretch your imagination, broaden your perspective
and deepen your understanding - is crucial to
resilience. If this is difficult for you, then consider
this an opportunity to learn how to cognitively
reframe adversity.
6. STAY FOCUSED
Have a clear sense of what you're trying to achieve
and use your goals and priorities to stay on track
during turbulent times. Don't waste your energy
on unimportant details; stay focused. If you do
become temporarily sidetracked, refocus on your goals
and what matters most to you.
7. BE RESOURCEFUL
Resilience requires that you be inventive in using
whatever resources you can find. This includes
your internal resources as well as those you can
access from others - including their emotional support.
Improvise; be creative; be willing to try something
and see if it works. You can always discard it if
it isn't effective.
8. BE FLEXIBLE
Consider a wide variety of options in addressing challenges.
Rather than getting stuck repeating ineffective strategies,
pay attention to obstacles and use them as information that
a shift to a new approach is required.
9. STRUCTURE AMBIGUITY
The uncertainty of change can be made less stressful
by organizing the information you have. Categorize
and prioritize information in a way that allows you
to approach challenging situations with a plan.
Keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed -- develop
an organizational structure that enables you to
systematically evaluate approaches according to their
effectiveness. When you're systematic, you hold onto
important details and discard those that are irrelevant.
You can avoid re-tracing your steps and continue to
move forward.
10. BE SELF AWARE
Tranforming change and difficulty into useful experience
requires that you stay open not just to the reality of
the situation, but also to the reality of your strengths
and limitations. The only way you can develop a self-
improvement plan is through an honest assessment of
the kinds of assistance you need. Lawyers often feel they
have to be able to do everything themselves - this is
not a path to resilience.
Resilience also requires insight into your own motives.
If you have the willingness to acknowledge and express
your feelings and a genuine desire for self-understanding
you'll be better prepared to face adversity.
11. BE PERSISTENT
Persistence in the face of adversity is one of the
cornerstones of resilience. Take responsibility
for your own fate. Stay resolute in your values
and goals and remain determined and self-disciplined
in your efforts to achieve them.
Persistence doesn't mean you never feel discouraged.
But it is important to maintain your focus on the
goal in spite of your feelings of discouragement.
Like a marathon runner, you keep going because
you believe in what you're doing. You simply will
not give up.
12. DEVELOP YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Resilient people see to the heart of the problem and
are perceptive of interpersonal cues. Be assertive,
willing to tell others about yourself, and socially
skillful. When your emotional intelligence is
well-developed, people experience you as warm,
caring and compassionate. They like and accept
you and want to be helpful.
13. BELIEVE YOU CAN
The belief that you can influence the events and
circumstances of your life is essential to resilience.
This doesn't mean you think you can control everything.
Instead, cultivate your ability to focus on what you
can influence and control. It's important to focus
on what you CAN do when faced with things you can't
change.
14. HAVE A STRONG SENSE OF PURPOSE
People who succeed in the face of great adversity
have a strong sense that life is meaningful. Their
sense of purpose allows them to build a cognitive
bridge from the difficulties of the present to the
better future they're trying to construct.
This kind of vision is a hallmark of great leaders as
well as survivors. The image of something meaningful
provides you with an anchor to hold onto during
turbulent times. It can transform an overwhelming
situation into one that's manageable.
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Consider the lawyers you know who have succeeded in spite
of the most difficult challenges. Odds are they've
developed the attitudes and skills that constitute
resilience.
Professional coaches are trained to help you develop
your cognitive, emotional and behavioral ability
to adapt to change and transform it into opportunity.
Remember -- more than anything else, resilience will
determine who succeeds and who fails.
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NOTE: BEYOND THE BILLABLE HOUR ™ is intended
for informational and educational purposes only.
It is not a substitute for a personal consultation
with a mental health professional and should not
be construed as a form of, or substitute for,
counseling, psychotherapy, or other psychological
service.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D.
LawyersLifeCoach.com
Phone: (301) 578-8686
email: Ellen@LawyersLifeCoach.com
Web: http://LawyersLifeCoach.com
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(c)Copyright 1998 - 2007 Ellen Ostrow. All rights reserved.
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