The Poetry of Resilience: Inspiration at Hand!

Greetings Dear Readers,

Sometimes if you’re dealing with change and challenge it’s great to have something on hand to inspire you. I have a favorite resilience poem to share – many of you may have heard it before from our beloved poet laureate Maya Angelou:

Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Leadership Resilience Quote of the Day

“I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.” – Barack Obama

Good morning dear readers. Whatever your political persuasion, I want to share a quote from our President’s speech of last night – I was struck specifically when he talked about hope.

When we look at great leadership and how we develop resilience in ourselves, on our teams, and in our organizations, one of our top jobs is instilling a sense of hope and possibility, even during times of stress.

According to the cutting edge research being done on Psychological Capital in the workplace by Luthans, Avolio, Youseff (authors of the book Psychological Capital from Oxford University Press), and others in the field, this is a definition of hope at work:

Hope – Is defined as a positive motivational state where two basic elements – successful feeling of agency (or goal oriented determination) and pathways (or planning to achieve those goals) interact.

Hope is one of four components of Psychological Capital that makes for effective organizations. What are the outcomes we see when our people are more confident, hopeful, optimistic and resilient?  Research has found that employees with high Psychological Capital:

• Perform better
• Have higher levels of engagement
• Create more stable organizational growth
• Have less absenteeism
• Are more effective at leading or participating in organizational change

How are you creating a hopeful, optimistic environment in your workplace?

Resilience Thought of the Day

www.theresilienceproject.net

www.karlinsloan.com

 

Resilience Quote of the Day: People who Soar

People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualize in their minds that they are not quitters; they will not allow life’s circumstances to push them down and hold them under. – Charles Swindoll