On my flight home from 3 days with my coach Alan Weiss in beautiful Newport RI, I wound up sitting next to a woman who was a professor of nursing and an expert in health care policy.
She shared with me that her husband had taken a new position in Pittsburgh and they would be moving here soon. She was facing many of the challenges of relocation and I could hear the fatigue in her voice and the expression of frustration in her words.
I thought, she might like to hear some of my ideas on resilience so I told her about my book and we started discussing how she could transform her perceptions about the move from the stress column to the fun column by thinking of it in a different way. We talked about great areas of Pittsburgh to live in, new and trendy restaurants, the Airport’s success in bringing in expanded air service, and how getting her support systems in place will help her feel that Pittsburgh is home.
After talking for a while, she told me all that “sounded good, but it was easier said than done.”
As we deplaned, I mentioned to her that the research around resilience and stress shows that incremental change is the best way to go and that she might consider suggesting to her husband that they could think of this move as a great adventure. When we parted towards baggage claim, she thanked me for my ideas and told me that she was going to tell her husband to head downtown to one of those cool new eateries.
How we think about our challenges is the great silver bullet for building resilience and overcoming our daily stressors. It takes a while to get there, but taking a deep breath and doing it right now is a great way to start.
© Richard Citrin, All rights reserved, 2017
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