Today was Valentine’s Day, and as someone who has been writing for the web for almost a decade, I had planned to jump at the opportunity and write about all the things you can do to love your job or love your job again when you have fallen out of love with it. You see, professionals in the Middle East were quite clear about their feelings towards their work: 91.5% of them said that what they do adds purpose to their lives (as revealed in the Bayt.com 'Passion for Work in the Middle East and North Africa' poll, February 2016). Until today, I believed that loving what you do, and being good at it, were the secret to success. But after careful thought, I realized that there was another ingredient in the recipe for success.
A much more important ingredient, the father of all ingredients: resilience. Looking back at my life and career, and recalling the hardships I’d been through and the battles I’d fought, I realized that neither love nor talent had anything to do with my achievements. And no matter how I looked at it or thought about it, it always pointed towards one direction, and one direction only. Resilience. But what is resilience? Psychology Today defines resilience as:
“an ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever.”
Did life ever knock you down? What did you do? How did you react? Did you run away? Did you give up? Did you fight? Is resilience an innate or acquired quality? The discussion among scholars is still ongoing, but I think it is innate. Stubborn children grow up more tenacious and persistent than others; they won’t take no as an answer, and will go the extra mile to run faster than anyone else or get a straight A’s bulletin or pass mathematics when mathematics isn’t really their thing.
Resilient adults are just stubborn children who have grown into stubborn adults and have learned that life isn’t a cause-effect equation. You don’t always get rewarded for putting the extra time or effort. Sometimes you get defeated or rejected. Sometimes you’re number 2, or 3 or 4. Sometimes you fail, no matter how hard you try. But resilient adults have also learned that it’s not about failing - we all fail at some point or another - it’s about getting back up when you fail. And this, my friends, is the secret to success. So how did I teach myself resilience? And how can you do it too? Here are a few tips to help you.
1. Look for the good. Think of it this way. If things don’t get tough, how will you ever know how to solve a problem or come up with a better solution or learn something about yourself or simply grow to the person you’re supposed to be? In Arabic, we say “Youm Lik Wa Youm Alik”, which literally translates to “a day for you and a day against you”. I know you’ve heard it a thousand times, but I’ll repeat it anyway: life does get better, and a bad day doesn’t equal a bad life. A bad day is simply an opportunity to learn and grow.
2. Mistakes are lessons. Whoever tells you that people don’t change or that God doesn’t forgive, do yourself a favor and walk away. We all make mistakes, but the difference between us is that some of us admit their mistakes and learn from them, while others, well, turn a blind eye and live in denial or regret. Your mistakes are your lessons, so learn from them and move on.
3. Stories to tell your children. Now come on, if your life was all rainbows and butterflies, what stories would you tell your children? How will your son know how his father managed, in just five years, to move up the career ladder from a bank teller to a branch manager despite all the odds (bad boss, workplace politics, toxic environment)? How will your daughter know how her mother broke the glass ceiling and became her company’s first female CFO at just 32? Your hardships may sound unbearable now, but these are the stories that will give you the wisdom and will teach your children the true meaning of hard work and success.
4. Have a support network (or person). Tough times bring people together. They also uncover real intentions and separate those who truly love you from those who don’t. You can choose a person – a parent or sibling – or a group of friends who will have your back and offer you guidance in your times of need.
5. Flexibility is key. I won’t brag here, I am not the most flexible person on earth. I could give you excuses for all the times I refused to be more flexible; I could blame the stars for my rigidity, but the truth is, I learned flexibility the hard way. I also learned - after falling a thousand times - that life is tough when you’re not flexible enough. And the less flexible you are, the more life will knock you down. My advice to you? Say YES. Your boss needs you to manage a new project? Say YES. Your friend wants you to go out with them on a Tuesday evening? Say YES. Your little cousin needs help with her science project? Say YES. You won’t be able to overcome challenges and survive all the lemons that life throws at you until you say YES. YES. YES.
