Resilience

I had the recent opportunity to participate as a panelist at the Women in Cable Television (WICT) Event held in Seattle. Grace Killelea, Senior Vice President at Comcast, offered a keynote on The Four Cornerstones of Staying Essential. The cornerstones she identified were reputation, relationships, results, and resilience. Of these, resilience is perhaps the most intriguing, particularly in these times. How do we stay passionate and essential when business and life is harder than we’ve know it? How do we stay engaged when we are confronted with challenges that seem daunting and unending?

I took Grace’s challenge to heart. You see, my personal DNA is devoid of the optimism gene. “Looking on the bright side,” “making lemonade when life hands me lemons,” “walking on the sunny side of the street” – though I am familiar with the platitudes, they are not a part of my natural outlook. This is foreign territory for a pragmatist like me. And yet, I wholeheartedly accept the challenge to nurture, if not celebrate, my personal resiliency.

What I draw upon is my passion for helping transform workplace cultures to empower everyone to be their best in life and work. Thankfully, my work at ELI allows me to express this passion by inspiring people to be positive role models at work and in their communities. Whether it is one person at a time or one company at a time, it doesn’t really matter. What matters for me is knowing that I’ve made a difference. That’s enough to get me out of bed and keep trying. I realize that getting out of bed every day hardly seems the stuff of heroes, but for me it is at the heart of resilience. How about you? What gets you out of bed every day? Whatever it is, there’s your passion.