How To Be Resilient At Work

Linked In: [00:00:00] Linkedin presents.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:08] So ever feel like the rug kind of got pulled out from under you at work. A project imploded. A promotion evaporated. Your role did a 180 you never saw coming. If those punches to the gut sound familiar? You know how quickly setbacks can shake your confidence and derail your drive. But what if you could bounce back stronger from those inevitable career curveballs? That is the power of resilience. The ability to adapt, to grow, to thrive through adversity. With resilience, you don't just survive challenges, you use them as fuel to grow and soar higher. In today's episode of SPARKED, I'm joined by Shelley Adelle Bliss, one of our fabulous Spark Endeavors team members, and together we unpack the essence of career resilience. We explore the core mindsets and habits that allow you to stay grounded yet flexible when things go sideways and you'll learn practical strategies to build your support system, regulate tough emotions, and proactively mitigate risks. We'll reframe failure from a soul crusher into a growth catalyst, and you'll walk away with tools to confidently navigate any professional obstacle. Let's dive in. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, and before we dive into today's episode, a quick share. So if you're a coach, a consultant or a leader, and you would just love to stand out more in 2024 and beyond, with a powerful new credential and a set of results driven superpowers, we have got something for you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:40] With nearly a million people now discovering their profiles, the Sparketypes have become a global phenomenon. People want their work to light them up, and oftentimes they would love some help along the way, which is why we developed our certified Sparketype advisor training. As a certified advisor, you will discover cutting edge tools at SPARKED. Profound work life client transformations stand out with a highly unique credential and skill set in a crowded market. Find ease and flexibility with templated engagement flows, you'll become a part of a global network of change makers, and you'll rack up 40 ICF continuing education credits. Our fall cohort is enrolling now with visionaries just like you, and we would love to invite you to uplevel your capabilities as a coach or consultant or leader by becoming a certified Sparketype advisor. To learn more about the fall training and see if it's right for you, just click the link in the show notes now or visit sparketype.com. Slash pros. Shelly is good to be back with one of our topic deep dive episode conversations here. We like to choose some of our own topics and sometimes tee up topics from our listening community. Where are we going today?

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:02:59] Well, we've had a lot of requests to talk about how to build career resilience. Creating thriving in the face of setbacks and uncertainty is where we've landed.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:09] Yeah, and certainly we are in a moment where there's a lot of uncertainty. It's been that way, I think, for a long time, but I feel like it's just ratcheted up for a long time. So, so maybe let's let's open up with resilience I think is a really interesting word. Um, resilience in your career is is a word that sometimes I think gets a little confusing. You know, sometimes we look at it as just, how do I survive this thing called work, which I think is a very negative frame on it. It's very defeatist. You know, I tend to look at resilience more in the context of it's about learning, adapting and thriving through setbacks, challenges and uncertainties. And those aren't things that are we just have to endure with work. You know, these are things that are an essential part of work. We are going to have setbacks. We are going to have challenges. We are going to meet adversity. There will be uncertainty. And that's not a bug of work. It's actually a feature. And these same moments, they can be really hard on us and for us, but at the same time, they often can be the things that are most defining and enriching and open so many doors for us. Curious what's been your experience in the context? You know, you for a number of years you owned your own business. You were an entrepreneur, a founder, and that is about the ultimate, the ultimate challenge when it comes to being resilient. What was your experience of navigating resilience in those days?

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:04:32] Well, I guess what comes up for me is that it just is defined as a critical skill for handling everything from issues, interpersonal issues. Uh, when a project fails and I try to launch a workshop or a product and it goes nowhere, or it takes off, but in a completely different shape. So for me, the idea of being resilient is really just adaptability and action.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:58] Um, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. So why don't we start out by just broadly defining resilience in the context of this conversation? If we think about the concept of career resilience, what we're really talking about is the ability to bounce back from challenges, to adapt, to change, and to grow stronger through adversity. It's really about maintaining positive, a growth oriented mindset and taking proactive steps to really navigate whatever comes our way. You know, I think there's so many interesting examples of this. Certainly we saw resilience as something that, you know, especially during the pandemic, everybody on every level was forced to deal with, often over and over and over. You know, this comes up often in the context of job transitions or job loss. And, you know, especially, you know, one example might be a professional who is facing the potential of losing a job due to company downsizing. You know, this is how many people have showed up at work one day, and either with some sort of signaling or just completely caught out of the blue, realize, hey, I got called into an office these days, unfortunately. It's it's sometimes not even happening that way. It's sort of like a quick digital message. And they learn that the company is actually downsizing, and you've got a very short amount of time to to figure out how to pivot, how to learn new skills and transition to a new, more fulfilling role in maybe a different industry. You know, I think these are the things it is a we tend to look at the core skills of sort of careering these days as what will allow me to make my mark, to get ahead, to build a career, to succeed. And we don't often look at, well, what if one of the core skills is being confident in navigating all that comes my way, no matter what comes my way.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:06:55] Yeah, that maintaining that positivity and that growth mindset is what stands out for me. It's, you know, not just putting my head in the sand and saying everything's gonna be great, but really taking a bet on myself and having the confidence that whatever comes up, I will be able to navigate it. And I can really trust myself to get there.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:14] Yeah. So why don't we walk through some of what I think we consider the the core benefits of building career resilience? Yeah.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:07:22] So I guess the first one that we talk about is adapting to change. So an example of that might be like a marketer learning to master a new digital toolkit in order to stay relevant in their industry. We see that a lot now with the automation and AI driven campaigns that are coming up. So this this idea of resilience that equips you to stay adaptable and flexible as the industry changes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:46] Yeah. And it's interesting. You know, the word adaptable, um, is And when I hear that word often, my brain translates it to being agile. Um, and, you know, because an agile, it just assumes that, you know, there are going to be a ton of changes that come your way and your ability to kind of tap dance on any given moment, on any given day, you know, to be agile in the way that you think about things, whether you move through things is critically important. So so one of the big benefits to building career resilience is really your ability to adapt to change, to be agile, no matter what happens. What else do we see here? What is another big benefit.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:08:27] Yeah another benefit would become overcoming setbacks. So career resilience really enables us to recover from personal or professional setbacks, like a job loss or that promotion that you were really counting on. Or in my example, a project that just falls flat on its face.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:45] Yeah, and we've certainly had projects like that. You know, the notion of overcoming setbacks, I think is interesting as well. But I think oftentimes it's not just change that comes our way, it's it's little outright failures. You look at something, a project, you know, like a business, something that you're doing. And it's really hard to frame this as anything. But this didn't work, you know. And that comes often with this fear that this is going to affect not just me on a personal level, my ability to flourish, but it's going to affect my career, my career trajectory, my ability to keep moving in the direction that I want to move in. And that can be stifling. It can be paralyzing for so many people, but it's going to happen. Like, there's no way to stay in the world of work for any amount of time and not at some point experience a fairly substantial stumble. And sometimes it's stumble that's sort of like foisted upon us. Sometimes it's just on us. We make mistakes like we screw up. That is human. You know? It's going to happen eventually. And sometimes that happens when the stakes are high and that can be devastating. So, you know, if those things happen and our response is we basically just get floored and we have a lot of trouble figuring out how do we move forward from this point, then that can be career defining in a really limiting way, you know. But if we have this ability, this career resilience, then when a setback happens, we have this skill set, a toolbox that we can draw upon to actually say, okay, so this wasn't what I wanted. It's not what I planned. But I also realized there's something in my brain that says, you know, like, this is not going to stop me from doing what I want to do, becoming who I want to become, and building the work and the life that I want to build.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:10:26] I mean, what comes up for me is really managing your stress and your burnout. Like managing your expectations and your reactions to win those inevitable fails will happen.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:36] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And and that also brings us to one of the other big benefits of having resilience. It's this ability to manage those high levels of stress to actually not tip into a space of burnout when the world seems like it's kind of caving in on you. You know, resilient individuals often manage stress. They just manage it more effectively, and that kind of helps opt them out of the the rapid spiral down into burnout. And burnout is so pervasive these days in the world of work. And oftentimes we don't realize that we're in it until we're so deep into it that we literally are having trouble functioning. We become so cynical about the work that we're doing that we just we don't even want to get up and do it anymore. And we don't realize it's not actually that the work has changed in a meaningful way. It's that we are just so burned out that we can't even see the the all the amazingness that may still be wrapped around it. We're bringing ourselves to the experience in a way that is actually relatively gutting for us. We are burned out, so you know when we can actually figure out how to be more resilient. It helps us manage the natural stress and complexity that comes from high stakes, complex work, and avoid tipping into that state of burnout.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:11:57] Yeah, and when we what comes up for me is when we're talking about reducing burnout and maintaining that long term career satisfaction, what was really useful for me was the tool of the satisfaction spectrum. So when I start to find myself really tipping into depletion or obsession, I'm better able to kind of create a guardrail around the why around that and maybe switch up my tasks in order to create a little bit more of that, like mental and emotional resilience that we're aiming for.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:26] Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought that up. You know, so for those who are not familiar with the broader Sparketype body of work, where, you know, a lot of our work is focused, you know, we have the Sparketypes of these set of archetypes that help you identify what kind of work makes me come alive. There are ten of them. We all have a blend. And what we've learned in our research over a period of years, you know, nearly a million different people in 50 million data points is that all ten of these different impulses are archetypes. They exist along a spectrum of satisfaction, and some of them are much more satisfied or fulfilled when you're doing work that is heavily process oriented. Some of them you really need to be doing work that is heavily service oriented to feel very fulfilled. And just like you were describing, what we see is that there's often a really interesting connection in that if you are a very process oriented Sparketype like The Maker, which is me, that's all about making ideas manifest. It's a creative driven impulse that's very heavily process driven, like the process of creation is what gives me what I want. And you find yourself not being able to work in that very process oriented mode and being in a very external, sort of like outflow service oriented mode a lot of the time that there's a lot of friction that ends up happening, and that friction increases the the potential for stress, which also then increases the potential for misalignment and eventually burnout. So it's a great point.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:54] You know, it's sort of like if you're starting to feel these things, it's kind of like step back and say, huh? You know, like, what are my personal impulses here? What are my sparketypes? And am I doing work that actually satisfies them in the way that needs to, you know? Is it very process oriented? Is it very service oriented somewhere in the middle because it can make a huge difference. You know, there are a couple of other benefits that I think are really important when we talk about career resilience. You know, one of them is also this ability to step into any work experience with a growth mindset. And this is work that was popularized by Carol Dweck, a researcher who literally wrote a book called mindset. And it became this huge book and this huge body of work. And, you know, growth mindset is largely about being able to meet a challenge and believe that it is work through. Able and not believe that you've just hit the edge of your capabilities or your innate gift or talent. And that's it. You're done. You don't have any ability to learn or grow. And what we find is that resilience is deeply tied to having a growth mindset, which allows you to view challenge as opportunities for development, rather than just viewing it as something that shuts you down. So you know, the benefit of being able to actually enter into a work experience with that mindset. It allows you to not just bounce back from adversity, but to literally grow and become better through the process.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:15:20] Yeah, I could see how viewing challenges as the opportunities for development or how we speak internally, an opportunity for an experiment. I can see how that directly ties to another benefit of resilience, which is it builds our confidence, builds our self-confidence, as we can prove to ourselves that we can navigate that challenge and that we can come out stronger.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:43] Yeah. No doubt. And we see this also, you know, every time that you're working and adversity comes into your experience and you somehow figure out a way through it, you have the resilience to say, you know, like, this is here. I didn't want it. I didn't ask for it, but it is what it is. This is my reality. And there's something inside of me that believes I have that growth mindset. I can learn from this. I can grow from this. I have the skills and the tools to reframe it and to move through it. And then you do, and then you're on the other side of that and you're like, you know what? That was hard. I didn't want that. But I actually was able to not get just completely shut down from it. But I was actually able to turn it around and literally use it as fuel for growth. And now I'm a better person. I'm a more skilled person. I'm a wiser person. I'm more able to actually function on a higher level and do more and contribute at a higher level. That does what that does is over time, every time that happens, you're like, oh, wait, there is a sense of self-efficacy. Like, I can make things happen and and self-confidence, you know, that can be incredibly empowering. And it doesn't just, you know, like make you feel good, which is an amazing part of it, but that also I'm curious whether you've experienced it. In my experience, you can feel that in people, you know, when somebody moves through a room or through a meeting or like through an interaction and they're carrying themselves in a way that, that, that, you know, like, has this like radiance of confidence and self-efficacy. I it's my experience that, you know, that is palpable by other people.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:17:18] Absolutely. For me, the big difference is somebody who really has a grounded and integrated wisdom and experience versus somebody who's just parroting facts. And I can think back in my university days where we'd have professors who would just Absolutely radiate, and you could see a clear enjoyment with the subject matter that they were teaching and the confidence that comes through that versus the style of educator who's, you know, just teaching you the math problem or just teaching you the facts and isn't really anchored in, in a lived experience. So let's talk about the core elements of career resilience. You've mapped out five here that I think would be important to touch on. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:18:04] You know, I think everything pretty much starts with awareness. It's really hard to develop any skill of the mind, whether it's resilience, whether it's the ability to access calm, whether all all the different things. It's very hard to actually be intentional in any meaningful way, no matter what comes your way, unless and until on some level, you are also self-aware. So I think awareness is often the meta skill for any sort of skill of mine, because you've got to be aware before you can be intentional, and you've got to be intentional before you can actually make a conscious choice and then make a behavior based on that conscious choice. So awareness is the starting point for pretty much everything. Understanding your strengths, your weaknesses, your triggers, your stress points, your Sparketypes, your anti Sparketypes, your values, your all these different things about yourself. It just enables you to better handle whatever comes your way. So I think to me, sort of like the meta skill, the big starting point for career resilience is self-awareness. That's where it all begins. If we don't have that, then we can't really. We don't have anything to build on. We have no foundation to actually start to add to, you know, so example of this might be product manager in an organization who is struggling with their particular role, but at the same time, they recognize that they also have this pattern that they tend to struggle under tight deadlines and that they see this coming up.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:42] You know, they look at their work and like I am in a role where it is non-stop tight deadlines, right. And I'm seeing this pattern happen over and over. So it's that ability to actually be aware of the fact that, oh, this is my environment externally. This is what basically keeps coming my way. This is what's happening internally when those things happen. Huh. Isn't that interesting? Like, I'm now aware of this pattern that's formed, and that then gives them the ability to then proactively seek to develop it better time management skills and team support to really help step into those moments, step into that environment in a way that lets them feel more resilient. So that self-awareness was the starting point, to then allow them to notice and then start to make decisions to change how they move through the experience of the work that they're doing. Well, that.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:20:34] Leads us then to the second core element, which would be growth mindset. I would imagine it's difficult to have a growth mindset if you're not anchored in self-awareness.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:44] Yeah. And it's interesting, right, because we talked about growth mindset as a benefit of actually being resilient. When you're resilient, then when you meet adversity, then instead of having it just knock you back and feeling like you can't get up, it allows you to see it as an opportunity to actually grow and move forward and learn. But this is also a component. It's a component, and it is a trainable component of career resilience as well. Viewing challenges as learning opportunities rather than obstacles is one of the fundamental sort of skills. Or I don't want to say traits, but states learned states that allows you to build resilience as you're going. I would I mean, I'm such a huge fan of Carol Dweck's work. You know, the book mindset, I think was was powerful. She's also written in more recent years about how growth mindset, as a skill that is buildable, has been misconstrued and misapplied in a lot of different ways. So I think it also makes sense to read or pay attention to what she wrote in mindset on how to actually cultivate this. But also, I would take a look at some of Dweck's more recent writings and expositions around the growth mindset and how, especially in the world of teaching teachers, it's been taken a bit out of context and misapplied, and how to actually step into it and support a growth mindset, both for yourself and potentially for others. If you're a leader in a much more effective way.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:22:14] I certainly see where that has come up in my own career, where I got hired for one job, but then maybe a year later, the I'm still employed. But the role has significantly changed, and early on in my career, I would really get hung up on perfecting the skills and the tasks that I thought my role required and getting really nervous and sort of, you know, set off balance when I have to quickly learn and integrate a new skill. Now, I can kind of just roll with the punches, because I've done it so often that I've been able to prove to myself that I can actually learn a new skill and with some level of competence, execute it in the role at hand. So that definitely comes from the ability to have experimented and tried that hat on a lot.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:00] Yeah, and and for sure, even in the context of our organization, like we I've seen you evolve roles numerous times over a period of years. And it's just the growth curve. You know, the opportunity to learn and change and shift has been kind of endless. You know, we're still in a bit of a startup environment here, which means that, you know, it's sort of like everyone has the opportunity to shift and change and do anything at all times. So so we start out with these two elements of self-awareness And then, you know that second component of a growth mindset. A third one that I think is super important to resilience is also, I think, what I'd loosely describe as emotional regulation. And Susan David, who talks about emotional agility, actually is somebody who has written extensively on this. But being able to manage your emotions in times of stress or in times of adversity and times of failure is just so critically important to staying resilient. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't feel emotions, you know? And I think that's one of the areas where people get tripped up. So you're saying like, I just I shouldn't get freaked out by this. I shouldn't be anxious about this, I shouldn't. That's not what it means. You're nodding along as I'm saying this.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:24:18] Well, yeah, I go back to early in my career in the field of yoga. I remember thinking, what is the meditation for? Like, what is the yoga postures for what does all this work that I'm doing that's helping my emotional regulation? And it was years before I realized that the work I would do on the mat, or the work that I would do on the meditation on the meditation cushion, was actually building the skill to handle the unknown so that if, you know, let's say my boyfriend broke up with me instead of spiraling off, I could actually feel the disappointment, feel the disregard, but it didn't have to color my entire day gray. It didn't really have to, you know, bleed into my other relationships. You can kind of take the punches a little easier when you have that emotional regulation at your root. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:06] And I think that's such a great example. And it's just an important skill. You know, if you're whether you're an employee, whether you have your own business, if you're a startup founder who has the capacity to remain calm and focused after adversity comes your way, or just a really stressful moment comes your way that can be so powerful. If you're working on a team in an organization, right? And the team has a really big high. You won this big client, and then you realize that the complexity and the depth of the work the entire team is completely unequipped to do, and then, you know, all of a sudden you just crash and it's devastating. You know, this is not an extreme example of day to day life, especially in a big company in particular industries. You know, and if there are circumstances that present the opportunity to feel like extreme high, extreme low, somewhere in the middle, and there's a sense of whiplash that happens and it's kind of devastating for you, where if you have the ability to actually say, oh, this was amazing, this was super cool, and then, oh, this is really hard and it's going to be really hard, but you can regulate your emotions around it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:09] You can feel it and then say, okay, um, yes. And like, how will I then take this emotional experience and be able to actually be baseline, okay. And then move into a decision making and action taking mode where I can do what I need to do, and we will figure this out, you know. So that ability to self-regulate on an emotional level, I think is critically important. That brings me to, in my mind, the fourth element of career resilience. And this is where we get external to ourselves. This is where we start to support. We talk about support, you know, support networks leaning on personal, on professional people in our world to help provide everything from encouragement to resources to guidance when we're faced with challenges. I'm wondering if you if you felt like you have people or groups that you've been able to turn to on a regular basis? Shelley, when you feel like it's that time where it's like, I'm not entirely sure that I can figure this out on my own.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:27:11] For sure. I have one group of really close women were really sisters that when I decided to close my business, which you mentioned at the top of the episode, I had no idea what would come next, and I just needed to check in and not so much even looking for an opportunity, but really just a place that I could go and express my fear and my, you know, discontent and but also sort of tease out my curiosity. And one conversation leads to another, which leads to another, which eventually led to a work opportunity. And just realizing that you don't have to tackle every situation alone, that it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable to lean on your support networks. That's where the juicy stuff happens, in my opinion.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:00] Yeah, and one of the struggles, one of the challenges with this can sometimes be this very Western sense of rugged self-reliance. Um, you know, which a lot of people point at the rose having popularized, but it can be really destructive in a lot of different ways. Yes, we want to have that sense of self-confidence and self-efficacy. And at the same time, nobody exists in a vacuum and nobody does it alone. You know, we we all need others. And the fact that you actually are really greatly benefited by relying on other people to help you through. You have those support networks. Doesn't mean that you're lesser then it doesn't mean that you're weaker. Then it's not a it's not a reason for a feeling of guilt or shame. Like this is just saying, like some things are hard, some things get a lot better and easier with other people. And thankfully, you know, like we have the ability to become resourced with relationships. So it's a really powerful element of it. And I think that brings it in my mind to the fifth element here, which is a sense of proactivity. You know, it's this notion that resilience isn't just about reacting well to setbacks, you know, after the fact, after it happens.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:04] It's also about anticipating challenges and taking proactive steps to avoid or mitigate adversity. So this is about, you know, I'm somebody who loves to, you know, try and really be present in whatever I'm doing. I'm also hopelessly future oriented. I'm constantly thinking and looking ten steps out or like two years out. And part of that is, you know, envisioning for the future. I'm like a possibility oriented person, but also I'm I'm asking myself, huh, okay. You know, if this happens in a good way, how would we respond to that? But if this happens in a way that I didn't want, how might we respond to that in advance? And it's often that proactivity that allows you to almost pre-plan your workarounds in anticipation of something happening, so that if and when it does happen, you're already sort of prepared to understand what to do in that moment or circumstance. Or if you think, well, there's actually a reasonably high likelihood of this thing happening that I don't want to happen. You may change your plans in real time now to try and actually see if you can avoid the light, or dramatically reduce the likelihood of something negative happening down the road. Does that does that land?

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:30:23] Yeah. The big one that comes up for me is, you know, I'll be on LinkedIn and just see how many people are taking proactive steps to integrate and learn the new AI technologies at every level, and just running experiments with where can it ease the workload and some of the, like, more mundane tasks so that they can, you know, really open up their bandwidth and be more creative in those spaces that, you know, like require a human brain trust, as it were. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:50] So agree with that. So why don't we just drop into there are a couple of other things I want to talk about here. And that is the main thing is also like how do we actually overcome barriers to career resilience. And one of the big ones here. Well the first one. Yeah. Go ahead.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:31:04] The first one that comes up for me is just fear of failure. You've touched on that several times. This idea of like, I must get it right and I must get it right the first time can really lead to that whiplash that you describe. Yeah. So how would I how would I shift my perspective on that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:20] You know, I think we are so concerned, like, what if I make the wrong decision, especially when we're working around others and we feel like that wrong decision is not just going to affect the project, but it's going to affect me and maybe my career trajectory, the way that I'm perceived by others and the opportunities I might have. So we just we're constantly in this sort of like anticipatory mode, like we're anticipating what might go wrong. And that leads to fear. And I think a powerful reframe for this is to really reframe failure as a learning opportunity. It's that growth mindset. Okay. So like it may indeed fail. And I have the ability to figure it out on the other side of this. But there's another reframe that I felt is really powerful. Often when we're talking about fear of failure, and that is we tend to say, what if it fails? But we don't ask a couple of other questions, which are what if it succeeds? Tell that story. And then a third one is, what if I do nothing? What if nothing happens here? And that often is actually the most terrifying scenario.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:19] There's a fourth one that I'll throw in here also, and it's sort of like my immediate follow up to the the failure question. Like we asked, well, what if this fails? What if I fail? Okay, so paint that story. It's a realistic scenario. And then you ask yourself, well, how would I recover? What is the recovery story from that? And invariably, most of us are actually able to actually figure out the recovery story. And then we say, what if I do nothing? And then what if I succeed? So we have we have not just one story that basically enters the spin cycle and just deepens the fear in our head, but we have now a more realistic set of stories that we can tell ourselves that help us break out of the sort of the fear of failure doom loop that so many of us find ourselves in. So I think that's, you know, that's one of the big barriers to career resilience, and it's the internal reframing and storytelling that often allows us to short circuit that.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:33:12] Hmm.Let's talk then about another barrier being lack of support. You. You mentioned the importance of building that supportive professional network. What do you do when that's not accessible readily?

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:24] Yeah, and I think earlier in the career, a lot of folks tend to feel like, well, I just don't have those people, you know. So first I would append the word yet to the end of that sentence. You may be right. You may be 21 years old, fresh out of college. You may be 18 years old. You may be, you know, working in the trades. And you feel like I just I don't have those relationships. I'm super early to this. Or maybe you're you've completely changed your career in your 30s or 40s, and you're stepping into an entire new industry and field and organizations and culture, and you don't have the touch points there, right? But the beautiful thing is that there are now so many different ways to quickly develop relationships, you know, and that can be looking within your own organization and asking people for. It's interesting. I was interviewing somebody recently and one of their biggest tips for actually developing professional relationships, especially mentorship based relationships, was to ask somebody for help and often help just in the form of, hey, look, there's this thing going on. Can I just run it by you and get your take on this? And oftentimes we don't do that because we don't want to be perceived as being like not having the answers or being viewed as weak or ill equipped to do something. And we don't want to, quote, pester somebody else who's more senior and knows what they're doing. Well, we don't realize is that actually most people who are in the particular field or know what we want to know, the vast majority of people, when they're asked a question like that in a in a respectable way without saying, hey, can I have five hours of your time? But like, can I have five minutes of your time? And phrased in a really tight way, they actually loved the opportunity.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:01] They relish the opportunity. There's a there's a phenomenon called the givers glow. And when we have the opportunity to give and that often is giving in the form of shared knowledge or wisdom, it makes us feel good being on the other side of that ask, Actually, it makes us feel good. It is a phenomenal way to build new relationships, is to actually own the fact that you value what somebody else's input might be, and ask them for it, rather than just not wanting to be perceived as that person who needs insight or wisdom or knowledge from somebody else. And like, I'll figure it out on my own. So it goes back to that rugged self-reliance thing, too, that myth that just keeps kind of wrecking us in different ways when we take it too far. The other thing, there are so many organizations that we can reach out to there. There are groups there, community members there literally for anything that you want to do or know. There is an organization, a community, a club. If you literally just type it into any search engine, go to meetup, go to any of the places where you might find ways that people gather. I mean, you can find places where the people that you would love to be a part of your support network and you to be a part of theirs. Somebody else has already done the job of organizing them. So you don't necessarily have to create that yourself. You can find that and then basically say, how can I opt into this pre organized group or community and then get to know people by giving to them.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:36:25] For me, that brings up another barrier then is just the perfectionism of it. All right. Like what you've been describing is really showing a lot of grit and courage and vulnerability and a willingness to reach out. And I could just see how perfectionism can just hinder that resilience by making relationships setbacks or work setbacks just feel, you know, utterly catastrophic.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:49] Yeah. And I am somebody who has dealt with a lot of sort of like perfectionist impulses for a lot of my life. And, you know, it can be devastating. And so many people experience it on some level, this notion that it has to be just so everything that I do has to be done at the highest possible level. The reality of life just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way in life. It doesn't work that way in work. We always want to show up and give ourselves the best. But this is a very sort of like Buddhist point of view, you know, which is that the only thing that we really have control over at the end of the day is how we bring ourselves to any particular endeavor, not what the ultimate outcome is, especially when we participate in something where we are not the only ones involved. And that is basically the entire world of work. Even if you're a solo practitioner, even if you're a coach or a consultant, you have your own practice. You are still in service of someone else, which means there is somebody else who is in the mix. Oftentimes it's multiple other people. Maybe, you know, your client is a person who's on a leadership team in a company or an individual who then also has to interact with other individuals. So the minute that you actually bring other people into the mix, it gets so much more complex. There's literally zero ability to control 100% of the outcome. And once we own that frame, we start to kind of, I feel at least it sets up more of a context of self-forgiveness, saying, you know what? Um, okay, there's literally no way for me to absolutely know that the outcome that I want to make happen is going to happen on the level that I want it to do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:31] But what I can control, what I can control, is not the perfect outcome, but I can control how I show up. And on any given moment, on any given day, on any given week or month, during the context of this project, whatever the endeavor is that you're saying yes to. So I feel like, you know, when it comes to perfectionism, what's helped me a ton is saying there is an outcome that I would really love to see happen. I aspire to it. I have a sense of taste that's really strong, and it tends to be, you know, like really pushing the edge of what's possible. And I will always have that in the back of my mind. What I can control is how I show up on any given day. And if I keep showing up in the best possible way, and to keep developing myself and learning and growing and applying myself on any given day. I need to actually know that that is all that I'm fully capable of doing, and whatever the outcome is, I can be proud of the fact that I did everything that I was capable of doing on a level that makes me feel complete and continually sort of like saying yes to that reframe, at least for me, has been really helpful. I'm curious whether, like you have an approach to perfectionism that's been helpful.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:39:40] Actually, it just comes back to this old saying that my father taught me that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. And it's so simple on its face. But really coming to that, like in a grounded, integrated way of, okay, what what do I actually have control over in my situation? That's really helped me a lot.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:04] Yeah, that makes so much sense. So in my mind, those are often sort of like the three big potential barriers to career resilience. It's the fear of failure, the the feeling like you don't have access to support and the sense of perfectionism. And if we can sort of like step into them a different way. I think a lot of those are pretty readily addressed, and we can just get back to the work of thinking about those elements of resilience that we talked about earlier and figuring out how do I just a little bit every day, build those elements, build that skill set so that when things happen, when adversity comes my way, I don't get actually knocked down, knocked back and feel like I am unable to get back up, unable to learn to grow from it and able to move forward. But I look at that and say, this isn't necessarily what I wanted. It's not what I saw coming, but here it is, and I feel like I can find my way through this. And when you feel that sense, that can be transformational. When you're trying to actually create a work path for your life that is nourishing and healthy and gets you the feelings that you want to feel. Any final thoughts on this topic, Joe?

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:41:09] Yeah. Just that, you know, it sounds like career resilience isn't about avoiding those future failures or challenges, but really learning to thrive through them and just knowing that you can face any career obstacle with confidence and emerge stronger.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:25] Yeah, 100%. You know, by building a growth mindset, developing that support system, practicing emotional self-regulation, you can really face anything that comes your way. Well, I've enjoyed exploring this topic and as always, I hope you and our listening community have gained something from it as well. And we will see you all here back in the next episode of SPARKED. Thanks, Shelly.

Shelley Adelle Bliss: [00:41:46] Thanks, Jonathan.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:49] Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life. Take the time to discover your own personal Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It will open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. This episode of SPARKED was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and Me, Jonathan Fields. Production and editing by Sarah Harney. Special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.