Personal and Organizational Reset

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” said Friedrich Nietzsche. However, that requires a willingness to go through a Reset process.

It’s summer, many enjoy their vacation time. However, this question haunts me these days:

Is sickness an opportunity to Reset? Are critical situations (like pandemic) opportunities for people and organizations to Reset?
I think it they are, although people react differently when they occur.

When they get sick, some keep pushing, neglecting the symptoms or downplaying their gravity. Or feel guilty if they stop doing what they think they should do (to take care of themselves). However, this attitude only puts extra stress on the body, which is already affected.

Does this attitude help? I doubt.

Recently, someone I know ended up having surgery (almost lost a kidney) because she believed she’s still ok… she can still work on the more important things she thought she needs to do. Well, her body didn’t agree.
Was that situation an opportunity to Reset her beliefs and attitude about work and priorities? You bet. And she learned important lessons.

Are you grateful when you get sick or feel pain in your body?

A coaching client wasn’t: “Why should I thank my back, which is giving me so much pain?”
“Because that pain is a signal, not the cause. It’s your body alarming you that something is not ok, and you should identify and work on the real cause (which could also be mental or emotional). What if your physical health could deteriorate even more if this pain wouldn’t have stopped you?” I said.

She paused for a second. It never occurred to her that pain could be a sign, her back “crying” for attention because it almost reached the limit it can handle.
Instead of blaming her back and focus on killing the pain (the effect), she could look for the real cause and remove it. Or, at least, be grateful for that situation, since the pain was a signal to slow down or stop doing whatever she worked on and pay more attention to her health.

The calming and relaxing effect of a simple “thank you” surprised her. It didn’t take the pain away completely, but it decreased its intensity. Enough to help her realize that an attitude change could also have a physical effect.

Reset: stop, be grateful, reflect, learn, and make changes. An attitude that we’re not usually taught by a world that teaches us that “doing” is the most important.

I too got sick a couple of weeks ago. However, I embraced the symptoms with gratitude and got curious: What would I learn this time? Which of my attitudes and beliefs need adjustments? What new ideas will I unexpectedly get by going through this experience?

I quickly reassessed what I was working on to see how the new situation changed my priorities: What can I postpone, delegate, do differently, or simply drop?
So I can let myself fully immersed in the sickness experience, to help my body heal faster.

Approaching the situation with this attitude is much better. Instead of putting extra stress on my body, I cleared my schedule and allowed my body to relax. I also eliminated any mental resistance to what was going on with me. “It’s not the end of the world if I’m out of my normal life for a while,” I told myself, putting the guilt aside.

It was not Covid, but was not fun either having fever during the hottest summer days without air conditioning (which is my choice, and I’m totally ok with it). It took longer than I expected to get my physical health back, but I enjoyed what came with it: new ideas, lessons learned, and a renewed eagerness to work on my projects. Yeyyy!

You know, our physical body is a well-designed system. It has the capacity to heal itself if the mind gets out of the way (to remove the stress).
Which means a Reset is needed when sickness occurs: stop, be grateful, reflect, learn, and make changes.

If you’re not familiar with the word “system” when I talk about human beings, let’s talk about an organization as a “system.”

A company or organization is a man-made system. It doesn’t have the self-healing ability the human body does. That’s why many businesses fail. And those that don’t, they survive and excel through the creativity, resilience, and dedication of their employees—their human resources.

The company might have systems in place to minimize the risks and optimize the operations and sales, but when a sudden situation occurs (i.e. a pandemic)… a Reset is required!

Such situations are great opportunities for Reset: stop, find things to be grateful for, reflect, learn, be creative, and make changes.

While the company’s “body” suffers, its “mind” (the collective mind of employees) needs to release stress… so it can go through the Reset process.

In other words, the most precious resources for a company or organization in critical situations are… their human resources!

If the employees are already stressed, and you put more pressure on them during challenging times, their ability to accompany the organization through the Reset process decreases.

What about the good times? You might say.

Actually, that’s when you need to take great care of your human resources. Because you never know when a critical situation occurs—which throws everything into chaos—and you need them to be fully functional and on your side when this happens. Since they’re your most important resource for bouncing back.

Without an auto-healing ability, a company/organization relies on its human resources ability to take it through the chaos to the next level.
BTW, chaos is a normal state between two states of order, if we do properly the Reset.

Whether we talk about sickness or a sudden situation that occurs, the seeds for a better future are present in the current situation and… the people’s capacity to let go of what’s not serving anymore and Reset!