Be aware of your improvement and be proud of yourself! Celebrating the successes, or even being aware of them is something that can easily be missed in this fast-paced world. Make sure that you are aware of how far you have got in building your resilience. Think about those adversities, in connection to which you are already resilient and compare the ‘now’ to your past experiences. Feel how much better you are now in this and be proud of yourself. If it helps, you can keep track of these situations in a written format for yourself, so that if you get into a hard situation again, you can read them and gain energy from them!

Resilience has been described as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Times are not easy now. How do we develop greater resilience to withstand the challenges that keep being thrown at us? In this interview series, we are talking to mental health experts, authors, resilience experts, coaches, and business leaders who can talk about how we can develop greater resilience to improve our lives.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dóri Padla.

Dóri has been working with multinational corporations in the finance and procurement areas for over 13 years, when after a career change, she found her vocation as Coach and Soft Skills Trainer. Being a big change in her career, Dóri faced various adversities during the transition time. Now she is leading her own business of coaching and training, using her own developed life coaching method, called HCT — Holistic Coaching Therapy and also delivering soft skills trainings for multinational organizations.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?

Ihave an economist master’s degree and in the first 13 years of my career I was working in multinational corporations in the finance and procurement area, out of which for 8 years as a leader. However, after a certain point I realized that being this way in the corporate world is not my genuine long-term goal. I managed to find my passion, which was the people development — through coaching and training — and I decided to change my career completely and start this completely new profession. But the new work direction didn’t give itself too easily, I faced many adversities by the time I could really start to work in this area. Then I worked for 2 years as a Global Trainer for GE and now I have my own business of life and business coaching and trainings.

Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

When I resigned from my last corporate job, starting my career change, I thought everything was ready for this big step. However, the life proved it otherwise. For a long time, I didn’t get the opportunity to start my new profession. So, in order to still have an income, I was doing completely different things, for example teaching Spanish. One of the very important lessons from that is if someone wants to change their career, it needs to be very well-prepared in advance. Another learning is that there are so many aspects of one’s knowledge and experience, that we might not even think of. All these things can help us a lot to bounce back from adverse situations, help us be more resilient during hard times of life. I, for example, would have never thought before that once I will teach Spanish. But having the skills for that (even though not used before in this exact way), helped me through my own tough period of my life. These ‘dormant’ skills can be found in everyone’s life, just a little mindset change is needed to shed light on them.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

What makes my own coaching and training business stand out is that through my corporate and holistic experience the issues of people on the sessions delivered by me can be understood and investigated from different angles at the same time. By combining these 2 different points of view it is ensured that whatever question, dilemma, topic we are talking about, real, deep and long-lasting solutions and support can be found for my clients. Furthermore, me having experienced many difficulties during my own career and career change, I can represent credible solutions to adversities myself.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I am honestly very grateful to many people who helped me along my path. Starting with my former leaders, who supported me in the past, people who helped me choose the right learning courses for me, coaches who helped me improve my own self in order to be the person who I am today. All these people supported me to be the best version of me, increasing my self-awareness and solving my own dilemmas — which is a crucial part in my profession as a coach and trainer.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?

In my own dictionary, being resilient means that no matter what the circumstances are in our life, we can keep ourselves in our center. Or if we are not exactly in our center, through resilience we have the capability to move ourselves back to it — through all those inner skills and techniques that we are already consciously aware of. In my opinion, resilient people have a high level of self-awareness, they are able to realize when such outside things are happening, which don’t necessarily have to affect them, so they can protect themselves from the unnecessary harmful effects of the outside world. Furthermore, resilient people also notice, if they are not in their center and instead of letting themselves dwelling in pain or hardships, they already have some hands-on practical methods with which they can help themselves to regain their own balance and overcome the obstacles.

Courage is often likened to resilience. In your opinion how is courage both similar and different to resilience?

Courage indeed has some similarities with resilience. Both of them help people to spring into action, to do things that otherwise they wouldn’t necessarily do.

However, for me, courage includes an extra amount of energy need from the person, as people normally need courage for things that they are for example afraid of. Thus, courage is something that is used occasionally, but not necessarily continuously.

On the other hand, people having resilience as a skill, use it continuously. It is like a background program running in the back of their minds, having a positive effect in their life in general to cope with difficult situations.

When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?

For me not one particular person comes to my mind, but in general the ‘everyday person’. Because each and every one of us can be resilient. When people find themselves suddenly in any kind of difficult situations and they decide not to drown in it, but try to find a solution. When they try to find another way of working, another type of way-out as before. Plus, they also see what they can learn from this situation they are in at that moment. And with that they help themselves to grow mentally, emotionally, in any other ways. That is how anybody can start to be resilient, even starting right now.

Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?

When I decided to change my career, I mostly got supporting comments from the people around me, but of course I got other people’s doubts as well. But I felt that their doubts are coming from their own lives, it is not about me not being able to do this, but themselves thinking that they wouldn’t be able to. What helped me in this case is that I felt it deep inside that this is the right path for me. I felt that the time has come to make this change, no matter what people around me think through their own filter of fears. I truly believed in my future, which was the most important thing at this step.

Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?

I absolutely had such a time in my life, actually, it was a longer period. I was working in an environment, where I constantly felt that I am being pushed down, not being really appreciated for my work and being put on the side-bench most of the time. Even though I asked for help from my leader at that time, I was pushed back to this side bench again. But the good thing in it was that every time it happened — after I got over the pain — I always bounced back from it. I always felt it stronger and stronger that I need to move on, that I am worth more than this. Strange fact, that adversities in life can build people just as much as positive things. For me at that time, these hard times were the ones which helped my self-confidence, sense of self-worth and self-appreciation to grow up to the healthy level and feel stronger than ever.

How have you cultivated resilience throughout your life? Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?

I believe that we all have such situations in our life, which give us the opportunity to cultivate resilience. The question is only whether from these situations we learn, whether we grow from them, or we let ourselves being buried under them for the rest of our lives. The loss of a loved one, being fired from a workplace, living in this current pandemic situation are only three examples of how big negative effect things can have on our lives. As a coach, I always say that negative feelings must not be ignored. They need to be experienced and eventually worked out from our system through solving the emotional issue. By doing this, we grow continuously and improve our resilience as well. By not doing this, these situations will drag us down and not allow us to live our own happy and fulfilling lives.

Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Be aware of the fact, that you are already resilient! Most people have already had adversities in their lives, which actually made them already somewhat resilient — even if they are not aware of that. Think about these hard times in your life, list them and also write down how you grew through each of them. What you learnt, what skills or emotional development you gained from them. All these all already part of your current resilience!
2. Think about what are those situations, where you still see a room for improving your resilience. There can be such difficult situations, during which you still cannot find your balance. Think about these and also, what you would need to be able to find your center in these cases. If you know what you are missing, you can start to work on these skills or capabilities, which will help you increase your resilience on your own.
3. Find practice opportunities for yourself and observe your development. When you already have the improved skills and capabilities of above, find some opportunities for yourself to test them. The most important here is to take it gradually, step by step, not by a deep-dive. By practicing continuously, you will be able to get used to these situations, hence grow your resilience on these areas as well.
4. If you feel stuck, contact a professional coach/therapist to help you through it. It is absolutely normal to have such adversities, which we cannot handle on our own. Fortunately, there are plenty of great coaches and therapists, who can support you in this development process. Find one, with whom you can open up, who you can trust and who can use their professional experience to heal your mental and/or emotional blockages, which prevent you from being resilient in these particular cases.
5. Be aware of your improvement and be proud of yourself! Celebrating the successes, or even being aware of them is something that can easily be missed in this fast-paced world. Make sure that you are aware of how far you have got in building your resilience. Think about those adversities, in connection to which you are already resilient and compare the ‘now’ to your past experiences. Feel how much better you are now in this and be proud of yourself. If it helps, you can keep track of these situations in a written format for yourself, so that if you get into a hard situation again, you can read them and gain energy from them!

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

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