Do Something That's Bigger Than You
When asked why it was dishonourable to return without a shield and not without a helmet, the Spartan king, Demaratos replied: “Because the latter [helmet] they put on for their own protection, but the shield is for the common good of all.” (Plutarch)
It’s the iconography of The Resilience Shield model and methodology. And it’s also the definition of a selfless, trusting, and resilient team.
In our work on resilience, high performance, leadership and specifically the research alongside our resilience survey (available at www.resilienceshield.com) we know that a few things are crucial to optimising performance and resilience at individual and collective levels, including:
1. Finding purpose in our lives; specifically (but not exclusively) our professional lives. No purpose means risking diminished fulfilment and a degraded professional layer of your Resilience Shield.
That we experience profound problems when our role and identity fuse. We must be more than what is written on our business card. Be a great father, an average didgeridoo player and a dashing midfielder in your 4th grade football club. Diversify your identity portfolio.
That loneliness is an epidemic and has the physiological equivalence of smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Courtesy: US Surgeon General, Dr Vivek Murthy). Don’t be lonely.
Indeed many struggle to connect in mid-life to new friends and while social media isn’t very social, it can be used as an onramp to making meaningful in person connections.
And that contrast and context are important to frame and reframe our perspective and mindset… and mindset is crucial component to resilience.
All of these reasons (and more) led us to including the 6th value in our own Mettle Manifesto: Do Something That’s Bigger Than You.
We can achieve this by showing a sense of civic duty, empathy and compassion. We bring this to life through picking your charitable cause and making your commitment to it. What will you personally sacrifice?
We encourage everyone to select and do work for their preferred charity. It assists in bolstering your resilience by:
Creating purpose and meaning for us.
Broadening our identity by adding 'volunteer'.
Removing loneliness by adding another angle for social interaction over shared and common purpose.
Being a perfect trojan horse to connect to like-minded people (friends) that can become part of your Master Mind Group (MMG).
And to give you context and contrast….Work for any charity and you’ll quickly appreciate how good most of us have it.
So, we now give you permission to look at Facebook. Find that group to volunteer with and send them a message. Make the commitment. Commit to a sacrifice of time and effort, remember this wont be a two way street and indeed, you should expect nothing in return, not even a selfie.
Do it - we can guarantee that it will build your resilience.
Stay safe and #buildyourshield.