Finding Silver Linings: A Practical Guide to Personal Growth During Tough Times

In a time when every day in real life feels like some type of survivor reality tv show episode, it can be really hard to see the good in all of it. For most people, it’s much easier to make a laundry list of everything that sucks right now (it’s our negativity bias) instead of all that is going well. Now before I go on, I think it’s really important to talk about a concept I recently learned of – toxic positivity, which is the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. his post is not intended to paint rainbows and sunshine over a downpour of a sh*t storm. This post is meant to help you realize that your garden grows stronger after the rain and manure is actually an incredible fertilizer when used with intention. 

We must first honor, acknowledge, and accept the mess of “what is”. If we skip that step it’s definitely toxic positivity. Don’t gloss over the pain, grief, sadness, and loss that’s come through these last 7 months. You’re meant to feel the whole spectrum of feelings. And once you’ve honored those realities, you can go on a curiosity journey to find the silver linings and create a future playbook for how to make it through these times. It’s just as important to discover what you don’t want as is it to discover what you do want. The key is not staying stuck in the don’t want category.   

Here are a couple of examples in my own life:

Milestone: Never doing any workshops or retreats online and feeling incredibly overwhelmed, daunted, and concerned for the well-being of my business. 

Silver Lining: Learning how fast I can pivot, make mistakes and learn from them, and team up with amazing new folks who can teach me how to translate my work to the remote setting. 

Wisdom: I am one resilient leader who is willing to be vulnerable and take chances in order to step into the work I’m meant to do while collaborating with people who can show me the way.

 

Milestone: Having a loved one pass away during a time when we can’t mourn together as we had in the past. 

Silver Lining: Realizing how important it is to stay connected, show myself and others love, and never taking a hug for granted.

Wisdom: Physical touch really matters to me and hugs are big. I’ll make a point to hug my partner more often and grieve with greater intention to create connection.  

 

I’ve created several of these with my 1:1 Executive Alignment Coaching clients and I thought this community may enjoy the exercise too.

So here goes:

STEP 1: Grab a journal or blank piece of paper that you will keep sacred. 

STEP 2: Write a long list of all the milestone moments that have occurred in your life over the pandemic. Think: learning to work from home, changes in your job, family wins/losses, personal high/low points. You can bullet these out on separate lines. 

STEP 3: Once the list is complete, go back to it with a “silver lining lens”. Ask yourself “What was the silver lining here? What did I learn about myself at that moment? What do I appreciate about my ability to be resilient or flexible?

STEP 4: Now that you see it laid out, ask yourself, “What would I do in the future, if I had the wisdom I have today?” Then write out those realizations next to each silver lining. 

STEP 5: See what trends and themes emerge in your journey and highlight, circle, or record them. 

STEP 6: Write a letter (or make a video!) to yourself using your themes. Be your own greatest teacher and remind yourself of what you need to know in the times when you can’t see past the sh*t.

STEP 7: Keep this document safe and accessible so you can pull it out at any time. Perhaps you even want to encourage your loved ones to join you and see what wisdom you can crowdsource?  

Here’s the reality: we’re not going “back to normal” and most of us have accepted that, at least in part. So let’s decide what parts of “normal” you want to reignite, let go of, and transmute for your well-being. Your silver linings playbook can be one big stepping stone into figuring out what really matters in life and what you absolutely can control and what you absolutely cannot.

Let’s meet ourselves where we are and choose to walk the path of resilience, possibility, and growth.