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A PERSONAL
PERSPECTIVE ON
RESILIENCE
WRITTEN BY LIZ FETTER
1 · 19 · 21
LEADERSHIP

0 COMMENTS

From cookies to a cosmic earthquake.

“Well, Elizabeth, it will always be some way. This, too, shall
pass.,” Grandma would say to me. My four siblings and I

would visit her every day after school and take advantage
of her wisdom (and Swedish cookies). She would listen to

our troubles of the day, from not being picked for

dodgeball to boy trouble. Grandma was always positive

about our abilities to handle any situation.

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 And, if I wanted

something and it
didn’t go my way,

Grandma was the

first to point out

there was

something better

just around the

corner. After one of

my teenage
romances went

awry, I can still hear her say, “Oh, just pass him off as a bad

job. You don’t need that.” She was unfailingly positive, even
though she’d endured many hardships in her own life,

including the sudden death of her husband in his early

fifties.

The emotional reserve Grandma taught me was abruptly

called into service just five weeks before I left for college.
Our family’s happy life on a central Pennsylvania

‘gentleman’s farm’ suddenly cracked like a cosmic

earthquake the night my father abruptly left my parent’s

21-year marriage and the family. He left with another

woman and all our family’s resources. His sudden

departure left a gaping hole in our family that we needed

to fix fast. My mother immediately started looking to go
back to work. She was enormously resilient rebuilding our
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 family’s lives, working two jobs while raising a family of five
kids alone.
My ‘resilience muscle’ was further developed during

college, as I was suddenly on my own to fund my tuition

and expenses. I developed a plan to garner as many

scholarships as I could, work in the summer selling

dictionaries door-to-door in the South (the hardest job I’ve
ever had), and work two jobs during the school year. It was

like a resilience boot camp for me, but was required to

accomplish my goal of graduating in four years and going

on to a top-notch business school. It was in college that I

learned how to do whatever needs to be done, even if it’s

unpleasant or difficult.

Years later, as my career progressed and I became the CEO

of several large tech companies facing tough challenges,

colleagues asked me how I was able to weather some

really bad circumstances. I was capable of withstanding

the heat because of the lessons in resilience I learned early
on. “Just put one foot in front of the other,” Mom would say.

Learning Resiliency
I experienced a set of life events in my late teens and early

twenties that allowed me to toughen up quickly. However,

regardless of one’s life circumstances, anyone can develop

resilience. It’s learned by adopting a set of thoughts,

behaviors, and actions to readily cope with stressful events
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 and bounce back even stronger. Resilient people know how

to tap into their inner strengths and capabilities when the

going gets tough, quickly find solutions to the problem at
hand, and move on to their next life phase.

Step #0 — Get out of bed and in motion

It sounds simplistic, but it’s not. When you pull the covers
over you to avoid facing a tough day, you’re taking the
burden of negative feelings with you. And, then the law of
inertia sets in—an

object at rest will

stay at rest until
an external force
acts on it. Having a
morning ritual is

the force that puts

you back in
motion. I call it
‘working the list.’

When faced with a

challenge, established rituals like making your bed, getting
dressed, and taking a short walk switch our thinking from
fear to safety and allow us to reboot.

My morning ritual takes less than 30 minutes, puts me in

motion, and gives me confidence to deal with any
challenges that may come my way. When I know I’m facing
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 a particularly tough day, I wear livelier colors. Scientists

have found that wearing bright colors such as red or

orange triggers a dopamine response in our brain which
makes us feel happier. The livelier the colors I am wearing,
the tougher I expect the day to be. I need to walk in happy.

Step #1 — Call on friends and/or family for support

When I went off to college, I needed to find support, both

emotional and financial, outside my family. By this time,
my grandmother had passed away, my father was gone
(and never returned), and my mother had her own battles.

It required resourcefulness and a willingness to ask for

help, but I found my own circle of support with my
roommate’s family, an uncle, and my community back
home, who was horrified by the turn of events in my family.

Step #2 — Take offers to help

Human beings are social animals and not meant to go it

alone. I’ve found that particularly in times of crisis, people
are more than willing to help, and, many times feel better
for doing so.

One of the first times I learned this lesson was the month
before my freshman year of college. My father had just left,

taking all of the family savings, some of which were meant

for my college education. After a week of despair, I decided
to ask my best high school friend’s father, who sat on the
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 Board of a local bank, if he could help me get a loan for
college. He set up an appointment with a bank officer, who
gave me a loan for my first -year tuition. It was only years

later that I realized that banks don’t give personal loans to

18-year-olds without a guarantor, of course. My friend’s
Dad had signed for the loan and spared me any
embarrassment about my situation. What a wonderful guy!

Don’t ignore the valuable things that others are willing to

offer you, from advice to jobs and more.

Step #3 — Understand the problem you’re trying to solve

Start by laying out the elements of the problem at hand.

Get rid of the chatter about the problem, and break it down
into elements that can be solved one-by-one.
Acknowledge your feelings of fear, anxiety, or panic about

the situation, but don’t wallow in them. You won’t make

progress and you may find yourself going back to a
habitual negative talk track which can make the problem
seem much worse than it really is.

Once you’ve processed the problem and made some

decisions, it’s important to commit yourself to a path
forward. Then move on.

Step #4 — Get advice from the experts

Once you’ve identified and analyzed the situation, you may

want to get some advice and counsel from experts if the
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 time permits. If it’s a relationship issue, you may want to
engage a therapist or talk to a family member. If it’s a

business issue, perhaps it requires a call to an attorney or

accountant. Ask if you’re missing anything important in

solving the problem. Call a person you respect who may

have experience in the area.

My grandmother was an invaluable sounding board. In

analyzing a situation, she first asked me how I felt about it.

Ask yourself if your reaction to the situation is appropriate,

or if there’s a nuance you haven’t confronted head on that

is causing an excessive reaction. For me, I look at a wide

range of outcomes and ask myself if I can live with the

worst possible outcome before making a tough choice. If

the answer is “yes” I move ahead.

Step #5— Understand the timeframe for response

It’s important to respond at the

appropriate tempo when faced with

problematic situations. There’s a critical

time scale for problem-solving. If your

house is on fire, you’re not going to spend

a lot of time thinking about whether to get out of the house

or not. It’s useless to stew on something until its relevance

is gone. Know if you’re dealing with something that must be

solved in a month, today, this hour, or in the next minute.

Minutes can matter.

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 People can get very stuck and not be able to move in any

timeframe. I’ve come up with a decision-making model in a

nutshell. I ask myself if next year or next month would I

rather be stuck with the problem, or would I rather have

taken steps and be out of it. Time passes either way.

Step #6 — Do what
needs to be done

After developing a plan

to tackle the problem,

one of the hardest steps

is to do what needs to
be done, no matter how

difficult. One of the

hardest jobs I’ve had

was selling dictionaries

door-to-door in Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee during

college summers.

My first summer, everyone on my 15-person team quit,

except for me. And my roommate decided to stay on and

date the local boys and smoke pot all day while I worked
my 12- hour days, six days a week. Getting accustomed to

the hard work outside in hot. muggy weather, combined

with constant doors slamming in my face required me to

harden my resolve and just do it. After the ten-week

summer, I had successfully earned the money for my next

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 year’s tuition, and had learned an enormous amount about
tenacity, discipline, and resilience.

Step #7 – Reset and recharge

After you’ve solved the

immediate problem,
you’re now in a reset

situation. It’s time to

assess how long the

problem-solving phase

will last, understand the

long-term

consequences of the
decision you’ve made,

and what you’ve learned.

It’s also important to turn off your brain and detox from the

stress hormones. If you don’t learn how to turn your brain

off and on, you won’t develop the agility required to

become truly resilient. Spending time in nature, exercising,

walking the dog, or doing hobbies you love can help you
turn off your unrelenting brain and ground you. After

getting a respite from the stress, planning, and doing of an

experience, it’s time to move on to the next phase of life. Or,

as my uncle and godfather put to me as a young adult,

“You’ve got to get back on the horse.”

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 Liz Fetter
Liz Fetter is a respected CEO, Board Director, and real estate

investor with abundant experience leading companies in

software, telecom equipment, and technology services. Liz helps

companies navigate critical inflection points of change.

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