3 Great Ways to Improve Resilience and Get Work Life Balance Back

Written By Dr. Michela

Across my client base, leaders are navigating the pressure to lead meaningful transformation in response to today’s shifting economic and political landscape. I partner with them to cultivate the emotional intelligence, strategic clarity, and resilience needed to guide their organizations through change with confidence and integrity. If you're facing similar challenges, I'm here to help.

This blog was inspired by the many conversations and behavioral observations I was carrying with me, late 2024 and Q1 2025. They were heavy and emotionally frustrating in that they were familiar but quite different from time before, complicating an intervention or change. It seemed the environment and expectations placed on ourselves, by ourselves and others, looked and felt unprecedented. Covid-19 fallout had had a different overwhelm, one that we experienced communally as many elements of our roles and freedoms were suspended, changed or removed. Responsibilities there were, but for many a lightened load. This time, it's different.

Underwater, reflective and in a state of inaction

This emotional state of overwhelm moves towards burnout when we are unable to process/manage/cope with the stressors. Resilience, the capacity to bounce back in volatile situations was not kicking in automatically and moving our behaviors to action. It looked a bit like this- overwhelm was felt, experienced and overload was confirmed and present. Discomfort felt. But change did not follow. An override of resilience capacity was needed.

This blog and the original O.ver.whelm Webinar (Feb/Mar 2025) were inspired by striving to understand the unique, yet shared experience of many leaders whose resilience was low - leading to emotional depletion. The complementary slides & workbook, offer support to regenerate resilience and get your work balance back. Download it here.

Emotional exhaustion when used as a symptom, an indicator of something more at play, allows you to look from the outside using an anthropological lens to look at you, the players, the roles and expectations, the culture and observe this sentiment as a message, a clue that there is an imbalance - without adding causality or blame to one individual, but the interconnection and interplay instead.

So what happened, how did so many of us get caught in a neutral zone of inaction, a holding place with little access to muscling up and positively adapting to the environment. Resilience is a process, you own (it's contagious too) that directly implicates what is experienced and enacted by individuals in the context of adversity that ultimately allows the ability to handle difficult circumstances over and over again. It's not a trait that you do or don't have.

This needs emphasizing, as trait like qualities (born with it or not) are often assumed - echoing self doubts - not enough, not enough emotional intelligence or agility. But resilience, the positive construct (made by you) enables individuals to overcome stressors or withstand negative life events and, not only recover from such experiences, but also find personal meaning in them. (Grant and Kinman, 2012).

To stay in inaction is a problem on a few levels and has a ripple effect on our decision making- let me explain further: when not in resilience or thriving there is a compounding decline in cognitive functioning, performance and mood. Not great, right and you feel it. Not great but the double loop is then how that lowered performance is perceived/judged and evaluated by ourselves. It creates an opportunity (don't need any thanks) for self depreciation and critical self evaluation on one level or another.

Specifically, lowered performance in decision making can be called a 'satisficing'. Herbert Simon coined the term first, when a decision-making strategy aims for a satisfactory or adequate result, rather than the most brilliant or optimal solution. This combination of a mediocre decision and self depreciation and self criticism merge to start or accelerate a downward facing spiral, a vicious cycle where you give less/less feedback/positive outcomes and get less positive in return. Holding this position, moves this faulty framing to a temporary distorted sense of accomplishment and achievement. A heavy price to pay and a hard cycle to break, as it is negatively reinforced, tightening in on personal motivation reducing the ability to do something about it.

Three Great Ways to Improve Resilience and Get Work Life Balance Back

Circles, Values & Gathering Places

Avoiding looking at one's own reflection can get in the way of growth

I have selected three tried and tested resilience strategies to counter balance overwhelm. One from a leadership empowerment session, the second from a team building workshop and the third from a session looking at the perception of time how best to manage inputs and volume. All three, embedded in the O.ver.whelm downloadable workbook are quick, applicable and will drive invaluable change to fast track your resilience and break the cycle, the holding space you might be in right now. All self development and change happens when reflected on and applied, merging the new idea to your exact situation, circumstance.

Growth and Accepting Limits

There is in our current national/operating culture an large onus on the dimension of individualism (91% according to Hofstede) Within this dimension it is expected that free choice, the individual, can change to effectively meet the dilemmas of the environment/external and produce effective change. We hold the power. We decide. Even without a show of hands we know that isn't quite our experience.

Accepting our limits, as leaders is powerful. We grow by accepting our limits, not denying them. Explosive growth and development are seductive because they do not require individuals to develop a maturity and a sense of limit that would help channel and anchor global, organizational, and individual change. (Surely this is at least partially why we have ended up with the recent global imploding?)

A surer path to grounded success and sustained performance at any level is to expect that any experience of growth and expansion will be periodically punctuated by the experience of deflation and contraction. What goes up must come down. Economists know this, and so does history, but such is our desire to ignore the unpleasant facts of life that we surround ourselves with a “cloud of unknowing” (Anonymous, 2014). Freud (1938) called this, the use of psychological defenses to help us cope with reality. Individually and organizationally, we frequently face complexity. Unfortunately, our all-pervasive age of speed and simplification has led us to apply the techniques of the marketplace to the problems of politics, life, and workplace. And this had led us to deny and mistrust our own experience. To that extent, we do not know who we are anymore.

I share often, in workshops and coaching sessions how we are lopsided externalizers (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). Externalizer dominance is a cultural fact. It occurs in most of our organizations, with perhaps the exception of those that measure success as a change in the inner life of their clients. Churches and counseling centers, for example, point their customers inward to reconnect with their own personal and spiritual cores. Trusting in your own experience, rather than in the multiple and massive meanings that have come to invade our minds, means that we must first learn how to fully experience. This means balancing the external focus of our business culture with an inner space orientation. External is speeding up, capturing market share, or reducing cycle time. Internal is slowing down, connecting with one’s inner power and grace, or growing an organizational culture of rich possibilities. In our national culture, unfortunately, and somewhat paradoxically, focusing inward is often perceived as navel gazing.

If we are to flourish during complex change, we must learn to trust our experience. In the face of global change, this means that we must spend at least part of our time focusing inward and gaining access to a spiritual center. The spiritual center is not just a brain, but a body, and a belief system that evokes self-transcendence. It is a place where all three overlap and interconnect. It is who we really are beyond the face and role we present to others. If we do not learn to trust our full experience, in the sense I am describing here, the strongest executive becomes weak in the face of global or industry dynamics that do not respond to externalizing, manipulating, controlling, or grasping behavior. Alternatively, the most powerful and graceful executives become ineffective if they cannot integrate these same attributes of inwardness with creative externalizing skills. In an age of change and discontinuity, we ourselves must change, and change deeply. Accepting the limits allows strengths to flourish and the team to lean in to you and your vision to become more, together. (Haldeman and Henke-Cilenti, 2021)

3 Great Ways to Improve Resilience and Get Work Life Balance Back

1. Exercise 1: Accepting Limits- Circle of Control, Influence and Concern

   Stephen Covey's Circles of Influence , is a key contributor to commercial leadership thought, but it was the Ancient Greeks who introduced the idea of concentric circles with personal power at the center to decipher personal influence and power.

   
   

   

   A combination of self awareness and proactivity are the dual levers here

   
   

   Three circles in total. The innermost and smallest circle at the center is the circle of control, symbolizing the aspects of our life that we have direct influence over. It represents the domain where we can make changes. This circle highlights the areas where we are able to take meaningful action and create a positive impact. Managing your energy and time through a re-evaluation of your choices is key.

   
   

   Many philosophers and psychologists agree that this area encompasses our inner world—our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, perceptions, and interpretations of external events. It's important to focus most of our attention, energy, and resources on this sphere. and the circle of your control are your thoughts, feelings, your reactions, everything that you wholly control.

   
   

   Next is the second circle, slightly larger, it's the circle of influence. In this circle, are the things that we believe are within our influence - the overlap between what we can directly control and factors that lie beyond our control. The intersection where our inner world meets the outer world. What we place within this circle is influenced by our level of outlook of optimism or pessimism, as well as our perceptions of agency and self-efficacy. Depending on our mindset, we might either overestimate or underestimate our ability to influence situations, particularly when we feel depressed or helpless (Seligman, 2011; DeAngelis, 2015). So knowing that your mood is being affected by a low level of resilience and a high level of overwhelm, affects estimations of what you can and cannot control and influence. For example, an action, orientated extrovert, a DISC-Dominant/Influential uses control and influence to bring about change and aspires to make a difference. Identifying those drivers and motivations are useful in particular to control and manage the volume and sheer amount of work. Knowing how you play your influence and your limits can be helpful here. Introverts such as the DISC Steady or Cautious behavioral profiles, approach the circle of influence, uniquely, differently. Each a path, as to why we are halted in the neutral space of inaction, when resilience won't activate alone.

   
   

   Circle three, the largest, the circle of concern. Everything has become our business, so we worry believing as externalizers dominants that we control more than we realy do in the external environment. Digitalization, with it's phenomenal contribution to development, has when looking through the theory of circles filter, has made us care about everything, things that you know we're no longer on our doorstep or in our community, is huge. This circle covers a wider range of external factors, challenges, and circumstances that we may be concerned about, but which are clearly beyond our control.

   It includes things like the economy, climate, and weather, as well as the actions, reactions, behaviors, and emotions of others.

We cannot control the world around us, but we can control our reactions to it Holiday (2016)

Standing back looking at you circles, what are your stresses, triggers? What's going on, what's within the circle of control or the circle of influence or concern? Is it realistic? Are you overconfident, over seeping and extending? How important is this to you? Are all of equal importance? I'm not proposing to push out your circle of control to eclipse your circle of influence. Or that should be more omnipresent and phenomenal- You are that already. Instead, look at what's in your circle of control, maybe get back, take back. Be really clear to yourself about what is within your control. Secondly, look at the gray area of the circle of influence and ask, inquire- is this in my influence? Is it important to me and why? Download the deck and exercises here

2. Exercise 2: Identifying and Prioritizing your Values  

The second exercise that I have for you, helps reidentify what you value, what is important to you, what gives you strength. Your foundational beliefs interconnected to motivation, shaped and fixed by about five or six years old, and stay somewhat stable throughout most of our lives. A return to your values, is helpful right now to activate resilience is to revitalize and boost the connection. That connection to your values creates a psychological protection, an armor, a moral guide placed closer into your consciousness. And so when we're looking to get balance/harmony back between work and home, work and play, values help prioritize what you are doing, achieving, focusing your time on. What's in your circle of influence, what's important here?

Using the lever to drive change, we know that our most impactful work is work that is centered around your strengths- work that you're most passionate about, the most exciting stuff that you do. So when you are close to your values, and let's assume that your values are aligned, give or take, with your organizational vision and mission, then you're producing some phenomenal work. Let me share why, an excellent field study illustrates why. It studied school principals personal resiliency and found that when they were aligned to their personal values, they were able to deal with extraordinary adversity. The study summarized that those who demonstrated more resilience were able to hone in quietly, individually, on their values, and then project those values into their space. This projection meant a steadfast emotional state without much change in their physiological and psychological state in spite of challenging circumstances.

To help hone in on your values, exercise two in the workbook not only rates your values against each other to identify your true top five, but re-examines prioritization in times of adversity.

When honed in on your values first, you automatically chose value driven behavior which reduces the perception of threats, reduces rumination and defence responses and truncating information

Re-identification and clarification really helps improve the quality of decision making, matched with the question of how much time and money are you allocating to the things you identified as important? The exercise is dusted off, complete with personal commitments, actions and SMART goals designed to drive change commitments in a specific, measurable way that removes obstacles to your success. Your subconscious and conscious mind will know what success will look and feel like. You built that into your meaningful goal.

3. Exercise 3: Gathering Places

   The third exercise, is more tactical than the first two exercises, a reframe, and a time management tactic. Start with a reframe of your relationship with time. Each day has 1140 minutes in it. That's fixed, imagine like a budget that doesn't stretch, it doesn't grow, it actually stays pretty constant. So if you're saying yes to something, it will mean that you will be saying no to something else. Something has to give, be left to prevent now what appears inevitable- overwhelm from multitasking, or it's technical word for its switch, tasking.

   
   

   It's been very well documented to try and do a few things at once using the same conscious capacity is very problematic for productivity, stress levels, error and overwhelm. Time taken to complete a task is also significantly longer. Back tasking is approved and beautiful, when it works right? That task you can do without thinking about it. Don't stop doing that. It's the switch task where you break conscious contact with a task completely to start another. This third exercise is called gathering places which is the technical term for anything that you have open physically or in your mind that hasn't been completed, hasn't got a home, hasn't gone to a place yet, completed. It could be a post it, browser tab (or 2) open, email in-boxes, Messenger, WhatsApp, all these different entry points are all gathering places. It is on inspection the incomplete task that's taking up your capacity.

   
   

   A virtual meet with a dear client for our monthly executive coaching call this week, illustrates my point. Brilliant leader, super productive (can be a double edged sword) and successful, but prioritization, capacity and overwhelm came up as the themes of the session. They hadn't heard of the idea of gathering points of open work but what I could see was that they were using two screens! I said, impressive- they replied- I know isn't it amazing? I said yes, lucky you, that's exactly what you need. I asked how many tabs have you open, on how many browsers? How many gathering places? Each browser, had at least 12 tabs open. 4 x 12 = 48 gathering points of incomplete work. Plus 4 inboxes, messaging, post its, white board, notes etc...... I also did the same exercise in a in a leadership and development session last month and the record number in the session was 94 gathering places! This fabulous leader, often came to the session exhausted, grateful for the time to reflect and examine what she's doing right, have a look at her strengths, capacity and her effectiveness as a leader. She won the prize for the most gathering places, because she truly earned it. She works in digital, was doing all levels of the corporate digital messaging leading to a continuous state of overwhelm, as opposed to resilience. It was a highlight of my work week to build SMART goals to change how she interacted with her environment and got different outcomes.

   
   

   Download and have a go at exercise three and walk through, in your mind and in your physical work space the gathering points, your places of incomplete work and mark and score how many there are. Low scores win here- 13/15 is about a good one, but less is even better, but it's completely personal, but just being cognizant as to why and what you can do with that information- is all that we have, the way we choose to respond to our environment. We control that purely to Improve Resilience and Get Work Life Balance Back.

   
   

michelahenkecilenti@gmail.com

Thank you for reading. I welcome feedback if you find this content useful or if you have suggestions for making it better. And if I can be of service, please let me know. I'm always looking for fun, challenging new clients.

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