A Personal Toolkit for Growth and Resilience
Periods of transition and reflection are inevitable in all our lives – there's often a mix of good intentions, the weight of challenges, and that persistent hope that a shift in perspective might bring different energy or opportunities.
Recent years have been packed with adventures that were both positive and challenging, as I suspect they are for most of us.
Moments of significant change inevitably bring with them time for reflection and a desire to share my personal tools for navigating these periods in a meaningful and lasting way. These are also times to take care of ourselves and the people around us. Family dynamics can be stressful, and the prospect of major transitions can feel daunting.
As someone who has, in the past, been crippled by poor mental health, I have been blessed with amazing people, professional support, and the care of friends and family who have helped me find lasting solutions to some of the counterproductive feelings I share with many others.
My toolkit for maintaining resilience draws heavily on the lessons from learning to thrive with a tendency towards anxiety and depression.
1: Self-Awareness
This has become my ultimate goal as a human and as a leader. One cannot really have any significant personal or professional victories in life without a full and unvarnished vision of yourself. It's good to know your blind spots as well as your talents. It's excellent to know what brings the best out in you and what causes frustration. Without a thirst for this knowledge, it's impossible to make good decisions about what you should be doing with yourself and how you should be spending your time.
For me, this analysis is an ongoing process—as we get older, we're changing every day. It also helped me identify the bits of me I wanted to work on, helping to mature in the right way. Be quick to forgive yourself if you slip up, but don't stop trying to understand who you are.
2: Balance
When you know a little about yourself and understand your tendencies, a search for balance becomes a perennial goal—and sadly not something that ever gets resolved. Classic questions I ask myself daily are: Am I working too many hours and neglecting other parts of my life? Am I trying to take over too much or not providing enough support? Am I overreacting to this? I can often trace a negative contribution to a problem to a single moment where I haven't operated with balance in mind. As such, these days, I often retire and even sleep on a problem before making a big decision. This distance helps bring perspective. Whilst none of us get everything right, it's possible to maximise our chances of bringing a positive contribution by seeking to operate with balance and respecting when others seek to do the same.
3: Find Meaning
The challenges we face are not necessarily a function of the facts as presented to us in a moment. An appetite to pause, take stock, and seek a deeper understanding of a challenge can yield better outcomes and opportunities to resolve issues at a deeper level, moving a whole operation forward.
Exploring systems and structures, people's motives and situations are often a good place to start unpacking problems. It's possible that this contextualisation of a challenge is all that's needed for those battling to fix things to move forward independently—surely the best outcome all round. Again, this is an ongoing process that needs regular discipline, ensuring that you don't get lost in the endless specifics of a situation. Solutions are seldom found there.
4: Journey, Not Destination
Finding small moments of joy in everything I do is something that cycling has taught me. I took far more pleasure from the little moments we shared along the way than the final moments of completion. With this in mind, it's so important not to lose sight of the relationships, teams, and small tasks that go into making the bigger goals happen. I have also found this helpful for keeping things in perspective when the inevitable setbacks happen—rerouting, seeking a new set of solutions can be some of the most satisfying moments. This mindset also keeps options open to refocus during the journey and maybe rethink the destination. Whilst not advocating a lack of follow-through, this level of awareness and agility can bring resilience and even joy to some dicier moments.
5: Grow, Don't Compare
I have dashed myself on the rocks of comparisons to others on too many occasions. Motivation yielded from this practice can often become unhealthy, frustrating, and unproductive. Being around awesome people is such an amazing gift. Look for learnings from people you admire or read about and feed this into how you want to evolve. Just don't indulge in copying or, even worse, talking them down—you ultimately just hurt yourself.
6: Lists and Goals
A massive tool for categorising, organising, and calming the mind, list writing remains my first task every day. I write by hand with a fountain pen, and it sets the tone for the day, week, month, and longer-term planning. I focus on Roles and Goals, first listing all of my roles in life: Friend, Father, Director, etc., and then listing the goals in each. The short-term stuff varies regularly, but I also take half a day monthly to look at the longer-term goals and direction I'm seeking to take. This exploration of different roles helps with both balance and self-awareness and keeps them in mind as you make your ad hoc decisions and prioritisation throughout each day.
7: Take Responsibility
Ultimately, we have no one to be angry with or blame for the many aspects of our lives. Tough times and tragedy will hit us all, and often at the worst possible times. Focussing on blame and fault is a waste of energy. The only thing we can control and develop is our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with the world around us.
Making our impact on the world a positive one is something we can all do, even if this is done in just a small way. It can contribute immeasurably, not only to the people around you but to your sense of purpose and wellbeing.
