"Are you dragging yourself to work because you don’t know what to do about your workplace or home challenges?
Continue reading to discover effective strategies used by
resilient women that you too can use to succeed at work! Discover,“You’re stronger than you think!”
Message from: Patricia Morgan
Dear Friend,
You have probably had times when you asked yourself, “How will I ever get through this?” and you ended up proving to yourself that you were stronger than you thought. Yet, there are proven techniques that can help you better get through those inevitable days when you would benefit from a boost of encouragement, added confidence or simply a step by step solution.
Sometimes a basic process to help you do what you need to do is the little nudge that makes all the difference. Other times you may know what to do but a dose of inspiration would spark you into action.
You are not alone.
Many women before you have faced unfavorable conditions at home and at work that interfered with their best work performance. These challenges can be viewed as two kinds of adversity—internal and external.
Internal adversity is easier to solve in some ways but requires soul searching and sometimes some painful self awakening. Examples include despair, fear of conflict and self-doubt.
External adversity requires effective communication and a clear strategy to resolve the issue. Examples include blame, caregiver demands and being micro-managed.
You might be thinking, “How is looking at this list supposed to help? It only deepens my dismay.”
I get it! Plus when you think of your situation you may feel frustrated, angry, discouraged, disheartened, incompetent, stupid, trapped, torn, fearful, victimized or helpless. Your feelings are not a fantasy. You are not alone. I was there once and still visit those feels now and then. So do many other women. But the deal is this: a problem named is well on its way to be solved.
Consider some of these facts to validate your reality:
- More than a 1/3 of workers (35 percent) say their jobs are detrimental to their physical or emotional health and 42 percent say job pressures are interfering with their personal relationships; half say they have a more demanding workload this year than last. American Institute of Stress 13 Jan. 2009
- Fifty-seven percent of those who reported being targeted for bullying were women. Men are more likely to participate in aggressive bullying behavior (60 percent), however if the bully is a woman, her target is more likely to be a woman as well (71 percent). Workplace Bullying Institute, 2007
- The median weekly income of full-time working women is only 70.5 percent of full-time working men. Wikipedia, Oct, 23, 2009
- Less than one in five Canadians are highly engaged at work. Towers Perrin Study, 2005
- One in five Canadians will be affected by a mental illness. Canadian Mental Health
Who am I, Patricia Morgan, to speak and write on strengthening resilience?
Perhaps like you, I’ve irrationally questioned and doubted myself. Although I’ve worked with colleagues, managers and clients who behaved critically, abusively and sometimes unethically, my longest-lasting challenge has been as mother to our adopted daughter, Kelly, who as it turns out, has Partial Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
Our story is thoroughly described in the book, Love Her As She Is: Lessons from a Daughter Stolen by Addictions. To summarize in her childhood years, we did not have the appropriate supports or knowledge to really be of help to her, to me or our family.
My professional identity as a college instructor and parent educator took a battering and my behavior at home became erratic. I detached with calm or lost my temper, withdrew or sought support, pleaded or screamed, sought answers or crumbled into a weeping heap. The distress on my body necessitated visits to the hospital for irritable bowel syndrome attacks, a cardiac arrhythmia attack and an overnight in the psychiatric ward.
That was before acquiring a degree in psychology, then a master’s degree in clinical psychology and hours, weeks and months at personal development retreats and trainings. My training includes family therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Assertiveness Training, Body Focused Psychotherapy, Contemplative Dialogue and dozens of other frameworks.
Since 1984 I have facilitated the healing and empowerment of countless women in shelters, support groups, psycho-educational groups, conferences and retreats.
My chronic mental, emotional and physical woes were before I boosted and boosted some more my own resolve and confidence—proving to myself over and over again that I was stronger than I thought.
You, too, can prove you are stronger than you thought.
Loving our daughter under challenging circumstances and writing about it definitely strengthened my resilience. Then came other books such as Frantic Free and now From Woe to WOW. I was once asked how my readers and audiences were different after experiencing my work. I blurted, “They are more resilient.”
Resilience refers to people’s ability to cope with, adapt to and rise above hardship and crisis. It also refers to a cluster of protective factors or interdependent capacities which function like a reservoir of stress-hardiness resources. This quality eventually helped me and the women I write about bounce back or sustain wellness in the face of a wide range of personal, family and work challenges.
I became fascinated with this ability to recover or stay steady when the going gets tough. As a professional speaker I had the opportunity to ask audience members three questions which were given to me by mentor, Dr. Al Siebert, author of The Resiliency Advantage. You might want to ask yourself these questions as well.
- What is the worstwork related experience you’ve endured?
- How did you cope?
- Looking back, what did you learn?
Three hundred and seventy-six women in my audiences took the time to respond to those questions and then I interviewed 27 women in North America who were identified as resilient women. Their stories are inspiring and enlightening. Add to the data and stories, research findings and processes used in women’s empowering circles and you end up with From Woe to WOW: How Resilient Women Succeed at Work.
From Woe to WOW is filled with inspirational examples of survival and thriving plus over 42 strategies to face tough situations. Here is what Dr. Siebert had to say about From Woe to WOW:
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Valerie Cade 
Peggy Grall 
Michelle Cederberg 
Mark Bernard (& Claude Pellerin) 
Patricia Katz
Patricia Morgan
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