5 Habits of Resiliency and Disrupting Oneself

2014 is the year you must be resilient!

So many changes coming at you so fast — you must find the Force within you to be extremely resilient.



If resiliency alone was enough, I would simply refer you to the excellent FastCo article by Gwen Moran — 6 Habits of Resilient People — and that would be it. Case closed. Those 6 are:

• BUILD RELATIONSHIPS: We all need others

• REFRAME PAST HURTS: "You have the power to determine how you're going to look at a situation."

• ACCEPT FAILURE: Understanding the lessons it teaches you also teaches you optimism

• HAVE MULTIPLE IDENTITIES: Don't rely on just one portion of your life for joy, energy and passion

• PRACTICE FORGIVENESS: Crucial to letting go

• HAVE A SENSE OF PURPOSE: "You have to know what's important to you to be able to take action."



Awesome! But resiliency alone won't cut it. 

Implicit in those habits is that the outside world is disrupting you, and that you need to be able to adapt. You must ALSO Carpe Disruptus. You also must disrupt yourself!





5 Habits Crucial to Disrupting Yourself








1. Demand More Accountability One of the challenges with ANY corporate job is that there are so many places to hide. Accountability for success is so spread out. Start asking for more and more accountability. Especially for things that are beyond your control. Yes, that may sound crazy, but it's necessary for you to disrupt yourself. "You'll never know just how much of an impact you can make until you get in there and flex your disruptive muscles," says Bud Caddell is this FastCo article on disrupting yourself.




2. Have Lots of Affairs On Your Boss 2014 is the year in which no one — NO ONE — can be solely an employee. Everyone — E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E — must ALSO be an entrepreneur. Even if it's just a very small side business or freelance job, you must do this! Everyone must. Not just for the financial security reasons. (Whose job will ever be safe again?) 




Entrepreneurship is the best, most direct way to disrupt yourself. "More and more people are going to require the freedom to work on their own projects while they’re under the employment of somebody else," says Jude Goergen, of SBN Interactive. "Freelance projects. Businesses on the side. Pursuing their own ideas. Employers need to understand that in order to keep tomorrow’s employees, they’re going to have to loosen their clutches." Don't wait for your employer to do that. Start now!



3. Audacity Matters "When you think nothing else can be done — that's bullshit. You have to have the courage to take the leap of faith. The amount of possibilities is infinite." That's Mariquel Waingarten and Gaston Frydlewski, who launched the number one boutique hotel in Argentina in their 20s, sold it, then came to New York to start a new business. 



Everyone else's belief in you and your ideas begins with you. Get aggressive with your ideas. Now. Disruptive times (which include everyone being on overload and every idea fighting for attention) call for epic dreams, goals and actions. You've got to be more audacious with your ideas and your advocacy for them.

  

4. Question Everything "How would you design a healthcare system if there was no such things as doctors? Or if we weren't so tied to chemical [pharmaceutical] solutions?" That's Jamie Heywood, co-founder of PatientsLikeMe, which bypasses the usual double-blind, secretive approach to collecting and sharing health information, and opens it up so everyone can learn from everyone else.



We are in the midst of a digital revolution, where all the rules for everything are changing. Beyond the digitizing and the tools, that means most of our assumptions about how everything works or should work are being thrown out the window. That means you need to begin everything by questioning everything...

• "What if..."

• "Why?..." or "Why not?..."

• "Let's do it differently..."

...need to be the new norm for how every project begins, how every day begins.



5. Make a Mess Fail fast, fail forward is the idea that began with tech start-ups and is now on the lips of most every senior exec. And yet, for most of us in most companies, we know that that's hardly practiced the way it should be and could be. Most of us have good reasons to fear failing, as their are usually unpleasant consequences afterward.  



One exec who practices what she preaches is Francois Legoues, who heads up Innovation Initiatives for the CIO's office at IBM. "Nobody is smart enough to know what will work and what won't," she says. "We try, we fail, then adapt. You have to embrace failure."



We all do. One way you can do it — even when your boss or culture are not as enlightened as IBM's Legoues — is to assign yourself Failure Projects. That doesn't mean intentionally failing. What it means is taking on at least one project per quarter where you are going to push your own boundaries: Ask more and tougher questions, go with your gut more, speak out more, etc. Try it at least once. You'll find that soon your risk tolerance for failure is much greater and your concern about failing or looking bad is much lower.



Resolve to yourself: "2014 is the year I will put all five of these habits into practice!"



For How Tos on These Five Habits and more: Download Click , the FREE How To addendum to the book, Disrupt! Think Epic, Be Epic