In a Disruptive World, Choose to Be Resilient and Thrive

Business Professionals all over the world are generally comfortable making and executing plans very quickly.  They create them almost daily for their assigned projects or company success, as well as accomplishing their personal desires and family goals.  Sometimes, it seems as though our entire modern world is governed and run by plans. We all plan, revise it once or twice, and push it forward as an “achieve success” path for ourselves and families.   

• Sometimes everything works.
• Other times plans may falter or even fail though careful thought and execution was in place.

Often it feels as if our external world’s life expands and grows more complicated and increases in complexity daily.   Large- scale, random events just pop up from nowhere, completely disrupting our life in the moment and impacting future events.  

Major large catastrophic life events usually make us feel small, fragile, raw and uncertain.  Instantly, we’re forced to carry burdens that seem too big and heavy in another world that’s suddenly empty of everything that once mattered. This is hard.  This hurts. The worse part of all is you didn’t even see it coming. We stand in pain, afraid of our own weakness.   

If the situation I described above feels a little too familiar, let me first remind you that you will survive the catastrophic event and most likely come out of it as a better version of your current self. Most importantly, you alone have the power to decide to recover.  To help you get started, I recommend a book guide for your journey.  

Answers to your Help!! call, can be found in “Didn’t See THAT Coming” by Rachel Hollis. 

She presents her ideas in straightforward language with wit and humor.  Laughter and sorrow can be found in this non-fiction book that was written during the 2020 pandemic.  “Didn’t See THAT Coming” addresses the personal and professional challenges of running an event business during a times with no gatherings while also being divorced by the father of her four children.  Based upon her experiences, she affirms that all of us are strong enough to work through external upheaval and personal pain if we become courageous enough to examine and confront our own weakness and vulnerability.  

“Didn’t See THAT Coming” assumes the readers have some major part of their world turned inside-out and are determined to find a way back.  Advice is presented in three parts but I’m only discussing Part 1 now.  Part 2 and Part 3 will follow in later posts.

1. What to Do Today   2. What to do Tomorrow   3. What to Do Forever

These are her recommended action steps to begin recovering from one of life’s biggest blows.

• Admit it is impossible to move forward before acknowledging the terrible reality of where you are now, how frightening it is, how much we wish it wasn’t happening. 

• Give ourselves permission to be deeply disappointed because someone or something has failed to live up to our hopes or expectations.  

• Be honest about what’s going on even if only to you. Admit what you’re feeling, what you’re going through – polite or not. Be still and feel. Get real in your bones.  

• Don’t worry about what comes next; just survive the most difficult moments.  Exist in suspended reality without fearing that you’ll lose yourself.  What comes next doesn’t matter at this moment; anything longer than today is too long.  

• Being fine in the end will take tremendous effort in the present.  Stay present in your body and remember your strength.  Remember all the other parts of your life that are good.  “What’s been good will always be good; a job well done, a perfect cup of coffee.”

• Identify the new you.  After catastrophic loss or hardship, humans come out on the other side a changed person, but with a mind that is still processing what happened based upon who you were before, not who you are now.  

• At this stage, you get to choose who you will be going forward.  No one else gets to define you.  You are so much more than the trauma you’ve lived with (for example not just a cancer patient). If you feel like a creative genius, live into it.  Remind yourself daily who you are now.  

• Create boundaries for yourself and honor them. You’re in charge.

• Acknowledge that Identities evolve. Something earthshattering can happen.  And at other times we simply outgrow the identity we started with.  

• Stop questioning your suffering. Quit asking endless questions that are incredibly dangerous to your peace of mind during hardship or a crisis.  You are defined only by what you turn your pain into.  

Short notes on Disruption and Thriving

Words are interesting to me. They always have been whether they are used in spoken conversation or written form.  After a career spent around words in sales and marketing, I get particularly intrigued by words that appear and then disappear in the vernacular of “business speak” over time as we all attempt to understand and define our working world and the outcomes, experiences and successes we hope to achieve for ourselves, our families, our businesses, customer, products, and team members we serve.  

During the period of 2024-2025, my nominee for words of this era are “Disrupt and Disruption.”

Webster’s Dictionary tells us that Disruption is a “disturbance or problem” which interrupts an activity, event or process.  Disruption may also be radical change to an industry or market, (often due to technological innovation).  Disruption as used in Sociology refers to significant disturbance or breakdown in our normal social systems caused by events, conflicts, or crisis that results in radical transformation of societal norms, structures or power dynamics.  In all cases, old structures are falling away while something new is emerging and at the same time the social fabric of a community, business or society can be led into instability or conflict, breaking down social norms and relationships.  

In this modern, disruptive era, many businesses and their people are challenged to cope and deal with the experiences or feelings created by disruption.  I hope the Information we’re including from the book “Didn’t See THAT Coming” will be useful to you personally and your colleagues as you evolve into Resilience and become capable of withstanding disruption with no permanent damage or rupture.