Real-life resilience - Arianna Huffington

In 2007, Arianna Huffington woke up in a pool of blood at her desk. After years of pushing herself in an intense career and also balancing a busy personal life, she reached a significant breaking point.

While working one day, she collapsed from total exhaustion, hitting her face on the desk on her way to the ground. She woke up in a pool of blood with a broken cheekbone and a cut over her eye.

This is what total and utter burnout looks like.

But here’s the thing - she claims that it was the best thing that could have happened to her.

In an article that she wrote 10 years after the day that she collapsed, she describes at length how that day put her on a new course of life. It was the wake up call she needed and became a catalyst for writing two books (Thrive and The Sleep Revolution), and also led her to launch a brand new business endeavour - Thrive Global.

“For me, it’s a prime example of how good things can come out of bad things - how, very often, events that come to define our lives in positives ways would never have happened without events that were painful and sometimes, yes, even bloody!” - Arianna Huffington

The burnout piece of Arianna’s story is unfortunately still too common - we seem to be operating in a world of constant overwhelm and it’s actually accellarating. Just recently I read a report on burnout statistics in Canada and a whopping 42% of Canadian employees say that they are experiencing burnout (up from 36% the year prior). When looking closely at the Millennial sector (those aged 27-42) the percentage jumps to an eye-watering 55%!

Applying in our day to day.

There are a few strong lessons from Arianna’s story. The first is that burnout is far from ideal! While we can’t always see the signs, with a bit of self-assessment, we can usually see that we’re not thriving. When we feel that we’re getting close to exhaustion, we will ideally notice the signs before we collapse at our desk. There are plenty of easy-to-use tools out there to assist our burnout, most of which are preventative tools. My favourite is practicing letting go.

However, the other lesson is that we can look at failures as blessings in disguise. Too often we are hard on ourselves and each other when bad stuff happens. We berate ourselves, wishing that we could go back in time, notice the signs beforehand and proactively make changes. But we can’t get it right all of the time. And what is actually more important is that we shift that failure into a useful lesson.

Thinking about it in our day to day…

Ok, so the latest ad campaign didn’t go well, or our colleague failed to communicate that critical information in advance and now we’ve all wasted time. Ugh! Ok yes it’s not ideal, but let’s immediately look for the way forward that allows us to do our best work.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the concept of perspective (CVS to BVS) and this is a brilliant example of this in action. Arianna could have looked at her collapse in many ways, but she chose the better view of that situation (the BVS!). She saw it as an opportunity to pivot her approach entirely and, as a result, ended up generating an entirely new business model from it.

So that’s our opportunity. What challenge is in front of us today, and what can we do to adapt accordingly?

I teach workplaces and individuals the strategies we all need to improve our mindset and resilience. These are preventative ideas and practical tools to improve our mental health and well-being. Book a free discovery call today.

Until next time friends, stay resilient!

Carre @ Resilient Marketing Minds