Dealing With Life's Detours
Like any journey, there are moments when the road is smooth and straight, and others when it feels like you’re navigating a complicated intersection during rush hour, surrounded by impatient drivers and endless honking. Life has ups, downs, and enough potholes to make you wish you’d sprung for that off-road vehicle.
But a journey also has delightful surprises and serendipitous discoveries that only happen because of the unplanned route you end up on—sometimes accidentally, sometimes because your GPS recalculates your route.
It’s those unexpected delays or detours where the real learning happens, even if at the moment, all you want to do is shout profanities and question your life choices.
Picture this: you’re on a trip, cruising along, when suddenly, traffic grinds to a halt, or a detour pops up out of nowhere. Your GPS—bless its robotic heart—starts recalculating, rerouting, and possibly suggesting you make a U-turn at the next possible moment. It knows where you are, and more importantly, it knows where you’re headed (even if you’re starting to wonder). It looks at all the possible paths and sends you in a new direction to keep you moving. That’s resilience in a nutshell.
Resilience isn’t about bulldozing through obstacles with sheer grit (Grit) It’s not about going harder or pushing until you drop. (Persisence) It’s about adapting! It’s your internal GPS saying, “Okay, here’s where you are, here’s where you want to go—let’s find a new path forward, no matter what.”
When we think about software design, there’s a clear process we follow:
Understand Your Users: Like, really get into their heads. Surveys, interviews, observation—whatever it takes to know what makes them tick.
Prioritize User-Centered Design: Because let’s face it, if the users can’t figure it out, it’s not them—it’s you.
Create Intuitive Navigation: Keep it simple. If your users need a map to navigate your software, something’s gone terribly wrong.
Focus on Usability: The fewer steps to complete a task, the better. No one has time for unnecessary clicks.
Perform Iterative Testing: Because nothing’s perfect on the first try, and feedback is gold.
Design for Accessibility: Everyone should be able to use your software, even those who navigate life differently.
Maintain Consistency: Stick to the plan—colors, fonts, icons—let’s not confuse anyone with a sudden change in aesthetics.
Provide Clear and Helpful Feedback: Be the software that talks back—nicely, of course. Confirmation messages, error messages, guidance—it’s all about making the user feel in control.
Now, imagine if we could create some mental software—an Internal Resilience GPS of sorts—that we could download and use over and over to recalculate our life’s route. That’s where my Resilience Route Navigator comes in. It’s a mix of science and stoicism boiled down to four simple steps I like to call T.I.P.S to keep you moving forward. When speaking I have an elegant animation to show it visually. But here it is in a nutshell:
Timeline: Put your current challenge in perspective. This moment is just a blip in your long, messy, marvelous life. Seeing the bigger picture can help take the sting out of whatever you’re facing right now.
Isolate the Problem: Focus on the present challenge, and leave past regrets and future worries at the door. When you strip it down to the facts, you’ll find you can tackle it more effectively, without the emotional baggage.
People: Who’s in this with you? Even if you feel alone, there’s always someone who’s been there or can lend a fresh perspective. Great success rarely happens solo—teamwork makes the dream work.
Story: What’s the narrative playing in your head? The words you tell yourself shape your reality. Ditch the self-sabotage and replace it with empowering, optimistic self-talk. Change your story, and you’ll change how you face challenges.
We all hit rough patches. I often say “It’s okay not to be okay, but it’s not okay to stay that was’. A woman came up to me after I spoke at a conference recently. she said she worked with women in crisis and she put it this way: “It’s okay to be in a bad spot, but don’t settle in and make it your residence.”
Remember, you’re on your own journey. It’s not finished yet—you’re a work in progress. Just keep moving forward.
And let me end on my third tip, the ‘P’ in T.I.P.S—People. I could go on for hours about this one, but here’s the bottom line: if you want to do big things, don’t go it alone. To me a journey can sound like something you do solo, so I like to think of a journey to success as an adventure. An adventure you share with someone! More on who’s riding shotgun in your adventure, in my next blog!