Inner excellence: Resilience for VUCA Times

I’m not one who is usually short on answers. But last week, sitting down with my new financial advisor, I found myself staring silently into space. All she had done was ask me the few questions necessary to build a customized financial plan: “How long are your adult children going to need financial assistance?” “What are you thinking about in terms of your life expectancy?” “How long should we factor in for long-term care needs for you and your husband?”

Give me a crystal ball, and I’ll do what I can to address these cornerstones of financial planning. In the end, we went with statistical norms, and that was that. But it got me thinking.

Every day, we are being asked to make decisions based on a future that seems clearly to be beyond our control. I spoke about this with my friend Louis, who is looking for work right now, and he agreed. That same day, he had gone to see a career counselor who affirmed what he already knew: the industry and skill sets to which he’d devoted his long life had gone obsolete. “What are your interests?” was the simple question that had stumped him.

“Finally, I had to admit I didn’t have a clue.”

Clearly, Louis and I aren’t alone. In fact, the U.S. military has coined a phrase that aptly describes the times in which we live. They call it “VUCA,” an acronym for “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.” Obviously, the U.S. military has to adapt to changing times, and so do we.

Admittedly, some of us do better at this than others. We call those who handle ambiguity and adversity well “resilient.” Resilient people have the know-how to put the past behind them, go about restoring trust in their own decision-making abilities and rejuvenate their faith in the future. Happily, resilience is a skill that can be learned. In fact, there is growing emphasis in the social sciences on the study of individuals, teams and organizations who when faced by challenge, uncertainty and complexity nevertheless thrive, while others falter or succumb to even lesser challenges.

What the researchers have found is that individuals who do the best in VUCA times are those who have traded in old concepts about what it takes to succeed for something new. The old notion is that we can rely solely on strength, will and perseverance to make things go our way. We know the answers and we use discipline to do what we must. While it’s often useful to “pick ourselves up by the bootstraps” as our front-line strategy, in VUCA times we need a back-up approach for when our normal problem-solving efforts fall short.

The new approach to resilience replaces old notions of strength with flexibility. In the words of Mayo Clinic: “Try not to be so rigid that you become anxious in the face of uncertainty. Expecting changes to occur makes it easier to adapt to them, tolerate them, even welcome them.”

Those who succeed in shifting resilience paradigms challenge themselves to think out-of-the-box, digging deeper to uncover untapped wells of resourcefulness and creativity. They call on others for support and assistance and when they have done all they can, they take comfort in knowing that they’ve brought about the best outcome possible.

And sometimes, resilient people even find themselves sitting dumb-struck before a financial or career advisor, uncharacteristically short of answers. In VUCA times, this is perfectly all right, as long as you can find it in yourself to do just one more thing. Remember to laugh.