The Impossible Dream
“To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
And to love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.”
What do we have to do to reach the “Impossible Dream”? I believe that it starts with resiliency. Wagnild in “True Resilience: Building a Life of Strength, Courage, and Meaning” shares that as we face adverse events we have four choices; give up, lose ground, get by or learn and grow. Coaches play a role in helping clients work through adverse events and situations successfully. The following nine protective risk factors have been shown to help individuals move positively through life’s challenges.
Social/Family Connections/Collaboration
What stands out as central to resilience is to have a secure relationship with at least one person as an important foundation for developing trust and confidence in other people and for developing and maintaining close intimate relationships in adult life. These individuals can simply be with us as we experience challenges, they can guide us in solutions for overcoming what we believe to be adverse experiences, or they might even remind us about past times that we overcame something we thought was impossible. The most important component of these connections is their ability to help us craft a story we want to live into.
Meaningfulness/Purpose
Meaningfulness is a realization that life has a purpose, Life without purpose is futile and aimless. Purpose provides the driving force in life. When you experience inevitable difficulties, your purpose pulls you forward. Jim Loehr in “The Power of Full Engagement” shares a number of blocks to passion and purpose. They cluster in three categories lack of commitment and perseverance to what matters most to us, lack of alignment of core values with actions, misalignment of behaviors with ethical actions.
Grit/Endurance
Angela Duckworth in “Grit” defines grit as the combination of passion and perseverance. She adds that there are four aspects to grit: interest, practice, purpose, hope. Interest refers to enjoying what you are doing and a passion for doing it. It is something you look forward to. She conceptualizes practice in a deliberate practice framework which encourages continual development in skills and behaviors. Duckworth believes that passion is best defined as a belief that your work matters and has an impact on the lives of others. Helping those we coach connect the dots between the work that they do to a higher purpose can not only enrich their work lives but also impact resiliency when facing challenges. Finally, hope includes a growth mindset which allows for overcoming challenges and increasing capacity for achievement.
Positive Perspectives in Life/Happiness
Shawn Achor in “Before Happiness” recommends training our brains to attach more positives to any given situation or event encountered. Many authors suggest that our brains are programmed to identify negatives as an early survival mode. Being vigilant about how we describe or make meaning about an event is crucial to changing from a negative to positive mindset. For most clients this means tracking daily events, monitoring the meaning ascribed and exploring the narrative created for nuggets of truth. We must remember that we have the power to change our experience based upon our reaction to events and the narrative created. This action can help clients adapt to perceived or real adversity.
Previous Experience with Hardship/Adversity
Rick Hanson in “Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness”, suggests that the path your life takes depends on three causes: how you manage your challenges, protect your vulnerabilities, and increase your resources all of which impact rising from adversity. He shares that growing resources in the mind creates changes in resilient experiences occurring at a brain level. As individuals experience sustained and repeated success with adverse events, the brain makes changes in neural pathways. This process is an opportunity for coaching as Hanson believes that a process for deliberately internalizing the successes with past adversity is rarely taught yet can become part of the coaching process.
Subjective Well-being/Self Care
The focus on subjective well-being/self-care is on how individuals fuel their bodies from four perspectives: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Jim's reference earlier believes that engagement is a state that is acquired-requiring practice-and is the “ability to invest your full and best energy right here-right now” in what matters most. Loehr shares that we fuel our bodies physically by investing in good nutrition, exercise and recovery, and quality. Investment in the emotional dimension suggests we choose opportunity over fear emotional states. We invest mentally when our stories align with what matters most taking us into the best versions of ourselves. Finally, spiritual investment occurs when we identify our purpose and passions and remain focused on what matters most.
Independence/Self-Determination
Self-determination theory is most frequently aligned with intrinsic motivation. The most common components of the theory include autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy is directly related to a feeling of being in control of behaviors connected to goals. Often this is referred to as locus of control. Competence refers to an individual’s mastery of skills and a willingness to take action towards success when he/she believes in his/her own capability. Relatedness speaks to a connectedness with others often referred to as a sense of belonging. Coaches can guide conversations back to understanding what is controllable and what is not.
Self-acceptance/Authenticity
Kristin Neff in "Self-Compassion" shares that societal pressures encourage us to be self-critical and feel inadequate. This impacts our sense of self-worth when it becomes tied to our sense of the judgment of how we’re doing, both in comparison to others and to the standards by which we judge ourselves. Perfectionism is another trap according to Brene' Brown in “The Gifts of Imperfection”. She shares that perfectionism makes our own self-worth dependent on approval or acceptance from others. Coaches can steer clients to think about how to be the best version of self, realizing that somedays we are our best and somedays we are not. That’s authenticity.
Post-traumatic growth/Learning from Adversity
Shawn Achor referenced earlier shares that there are three potential outcomes when facing challenging times. Much like Wagnild, Achor believes that people can get stuck in neutral, not experience change, and possibly continue to face the challenge with no movement. A second outcome is to let the event drag the individual down even further. Finally, the third potential outcome is to use the event to become even stronger and more capable than before the event occurred. He cautions us that when we are facing adversity, we often lose perspective and stop believing that the third outcome is possible. Advancement doesn’t have to be huge, small steps towards overcoming adversity can make a big difference to the final outcome.
Passion Matters
If one word would summarize the nine protection factors it is the word passion. Coaches play a role in helping clients surface what they are most passionate about and then to align behaviors with that passion.
Life Must Not Kill the Dreams We Dream
One of my favorite songs is “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. It’s on my motivation playlist and sung powerfully by Aretha Franklin. A line Aretha sings differently at the end of the song is “Life Must Not Kill the Dreams We Dream.” I think it says it all when helping our clients respond to adverse situations and events.
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