After reading last week’s blog, what did you learn about your personal resiliency? Are you able to pop back quickly when struck down with a mistake, error or bad event? I had a thought about talking about the difference between reasonable resiliency and the requirement of taking time to heal.
I’m guessing that the way to classify this is to sort the “events” into categories. Something simple, like misstating a fact and being called on it, is a mistake or error and obviously the faster you can rebound from that the better. If you agonize over it for 2 or 3 days you need to take a look at what’s going on. Are you building it up much bigger than it is?
Look at how much different it is to miss a statute and cause serious harm to the client. That’s a mistake too, but a much bigger one. Not only do you have to do everything to mitigate that mistake, but your work life will be disrupted for some time because of it. There is a time when fear sets in because you don’t know what will happen…..all this takes time and the important thing is not to let it totally disjoint you from looking after your practice as well as your family. This will resolve at some point.
The next highest category would involve a death, a divorce, an illness or some other significant loss or struggle you might be facing. This will obviously take considerable time to heal from. Where does your resiliency come in for this kind of event? We read about people who have lost their limbs or their sight and in a year are back to almost normal life. We can learn from these people. They have intestinal fortitude and energy to fight their way back.
Healing from a death or divorce is sometimes a different deal. If not enough time is given to the “healing process”, the event can hover in the corner of the person’s life forever. On the other hand, sometimes the lawyer can lose everything while this is happening. How many firms have been ruined by a divorce? How much tension can the children endure when a death happens in the family? The initial “loss” sometimes triggers untold other “losses” that could be avoided.
So what does this all tell about the steps we can be taking:
- CATEGORIZE YOUR “EVENT”
- THINK ABOUT YOUR ABILITY TO RESOLVE YOUR EMOTION OVER THE EVENT.
- DETERMINE IF YOUR EMOTION TRULY FITS THE EVENT.
- SEARCH FOR WAYS TO DECREASE THE NEGATIVITY OF THE EVENT
- GET APPROPRIATE SUPPORT IF YOU FEEL THE EMOTION IS BECOMING IRRATIONAL OR GOING ON TOO LONG.
- JOIN CHAT ROOMS OR SUPPORT GROUPS IF IT IS REALLY SERIOUS.
- TALK TO YOUR MENTOR OR COACH.
- TAKE SOME TIME TO THINK ABOUT ALL OF THIS BEFORE IT HAPPENS (AND IT WILL).
Hope this hasn’t been too much of a downer for a Monday, but I think it is worth your time and energy to take a look at your own resiliency.