When I made Resilience the theme for my 2020 blog series (www.ammconsultingstrategies.com/articles) and speeches, little did I know how important resilience would really be this year.……
Earlier this year, I delivered a speech on my Resilience journey, reflecting on how I had come back from surgeries due to accidents, and survived career ups and downs and challenges with teenagers and aging parents. I shared that my self-given grade for resilience was previously a D, yet I am moving up to a B-. I spoke about my recipe for resilience which I call the PAC solution – Practicing kindness (to yourself and others), Asking others for help and Choosing action. The last few weeks, I used this recipe by taking actions such as walking every day (have walked more than 70 miles), doing puzzles, reaching out to friends, putting together some new programs for my business and expressing gratitude for the important things in my life. However, some days were also full of struggle, feeling anxious about my family’s health and financial condition, worrying about my Asian American children being targeted by bigots, and wondering what our society will look like in the future.
For this blog, which I apologize is longer than the usual, I reached out to a few friends to see how they were doing and to ask them about their current resilience strategies, including Melissa Armijo (National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation staff member, candidate for the NM Public Education Commission); Pauline Lucero (owner of Corazon Training and Consulting), Lori Patton O’Hara (owner of marketing and graphic design firm Design5sixty4); Dr. Suzanne Gagnon (Certified Nurse Practitioner at the UNM Cancer Center); Mary Clark (UNM Facilities Sustainability Manager); Hope McIntosh (CEO of McIntosh Consulting Group) and Dr. Frances “Panchi” Ortega (principal at FTOrtega Consulting LLC).
Coping Day to Day, Keeping Our Work and Families Going
This team of friends all admitted that they have also had good and not so good days, as they have been anxious about their family’s physical and economic health. The “taking it one day at a time” mentality is helping. And, we’ve all approached resiliency in our work with different strategies.
Like me, friends Hope and Panchi have their own consulting firms. While starting our own firms felt like a high-risk game a year ago, we are feeling it even more now. For all of us, projects have stalled, either as some businesses have faced financial challenges and other businesses have at least temporarily shut down. It’s also a very challenging environment to get new business. Hope, who is a technology consultant, is using social media to share advice on important issues such as how to supervise teleworking employees. She says she is also learning the magic word of “yes” as she gets more creative in how she uses her skills and takes on side jobs she never imagined she would. Panchi, whose work depends on important grant cycles, is spending time exploring more grants related to her work.
Lori and Pauline, who have both operated their own businesses for some years, are also feeling the pressures. Even though marketing is critical at this time, Lori has clients who have slowed or stalled on projects but she is trying to be more flexible with pricing and maintaining overall space for patience. Pauline, whose business offers counseling services and provides services to Medicaid Developmental Disability patients, has a career that has focused on resilience, helping children and families come back from traumas and also serving special needs’ populations. Like many of us, she and her subcontractors have been forced to make a quick transition to providing services via telephone and computer while she helps many of her clients cope with stress, anxiety and depression. Routines are especially critical for the developmentally disabled population, and Pauline indicated that they are really struggling as day centers, Special Olympics events and other events tailored for this population are cancelled.
Suzanne has always served as a “front line” employee in the medical world, where she helps patients who are fighting cancer at the UNM Cancer Center. She is working hard to keep these vulnerable patients safe and talking to many of them by phone, some of whom are very concerned about making it through this time period. She indicated that it is a stressful time as they try to keep the Cancer Center very contained, protect patients’ health and help them manage the uncertainty. Mary is also a front-line employee at UNM, managing her facilities team who are still working but on altered but on altered schedules. She goes in on days that staff are there to show them support, help keep morale up and continue to remind them of ways to stay safe in their work.
Melissa is balancing her work remotely for the Hispanic Cultural Center, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, while also kicking off her campaign for the NM Public Education Commission. She initially had a strong personal outreach plan in place to meet voters but is now navigating a campaign that’s transitioned to a virtual and mail campaign which can be challenging for an incumbent.
We’ve Been Training for this Resiliency
In some ways, many of us have had some training for this moment when other significant challenges have hit our life. Many of my friends have learned some resilience in the last few years through loss of family members, loss of jobs and experiencing other challenging situations like being left to raise children on their own.
Here’s a compilation of suggestions from this group on staying resilient during this time period include:
- Keep normal household routines going as much as possible, ranging from regular dinner times, to making the bed, to showering every morning.
- Maintain boundaries and healthy work hours.
- Be exceptionally sensitive to others during this time period.
- Stay active and engaged, whether it’s through work, cooking, exercise, puzzles or other activities.
- Appreciate and use humor.
- Mental, physical and spiritual resilience is important. Meditate, exercise and eat well and get outside if you can.
- Keep positive relationships going through telephone and other technologies like Zoom.
- Get through this period by acknowledging your weaknesses and then making strong choices.
- Accept that we can’t control everything, but we can try to improvise, overcome, adapt and prevail.
- Give yourself permission to have some down days. Let yourself feel the emotions and then try to let them go.
- Find ways to give back to those in need and to honor the legacies of those you have lost.
- Focus on the science and the facts while not letting your imagination run wild.
- If you are more fortunate than many in our community (and this group recognizes that they are) express gratitude for your health, having food and shelter, loving families and friends, and the opportunity to get to spend more time with pets and K-12 and college-aged children!