Adam Markel - The I Love My Life Challenge: The Art & Science of Reconnecting With Your Life, A Breakthrough Guide To Spark Joy, Innovation, and Growth

The Power of Resilience

For many leaders, professionals, and individuals, the inability to respond to unexpected change can have dire consequences, ranging from despair to even suicide. Resilience provides an anchor through the storms of rapid change. It gives us the resolve to not just survive but thrive in challenging circumstances.

As a resilience expert, speaker, and author, I discovered a set of simple yet powerful questions that transformed my life and my clients lives. The first of which is simply:

What if you decided to love your life no matter what?

This is why I created the I Love My Life Challenge: To live a fulfilled life no matter what. To lead your business and life with love no matter what. You meet this challenge by making mental shifts in a matter of seconds.

I know firsthand the devastation of burnout and the consequences of ignoring the shifting sands of the workplace. Twice I have found myself at a dead end in my career that I hadnt seen coming despite the warning signs. Each time, I brought myself back to life using the tools I share within this challenge.

If you can apply these small but powerful practices in the midst of the storm, you become the eye of that storm, and your calm becomes your greatest asset and ally. By unapologetically loving my life, no matter what, I raised myself to a new level of awareness, personal fulfillment, and success.

To be honest, you have to experience challenges in your life before you can love life.

One morning in 2017, I stood on a stage before a lively audience at a motivational training. The crowd included employees, managers, and CEOs. As with the hundreds of trainings I had led before, in just a few short hours, attendees moved from skepticism and impatience to excitement and joy.

But all morning, one man in the audience kept rolling his eyes and pursing his lips. He sat with crossed arms, and his legs fidgeted, as if he couldnt wait to leave the room. He never cracked a smile.

During the lunch break, I approached him and asked how he was doing.

He responded in a dismissive voice.

Ive been to these touchy-feely events, he said. It may work for some people, but with all due respect, its not my thing.

The with all due respect part threw me for a second, because I knew from my days as a litigator that respect was not really the intention.

To protect his privacy, lets just call this man George. After a little probing, George let me know that hed recently been through a divorce, health challenges, and a company downsizing. Now, at a new company, he wasnt sure he wanted to stay, because his job didnt give him the recognition or pay he felt he deserved.

Motivational events like this only made him more frustrated. I wont drink the Kool-Aid, he said.

I knew I couldnt turn George around in the few minutes I had. I could only nod in agreement. Then I looked him in the eyes and threw out a buoy.

George, heres a challenge for you, I said. What if you decided to love your life, no matter what?

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. After lunch, I didnt see him again.

Six months later, I got an email from George. Since we met, his life had gone downhill. He went through a series of bad relationships. His job got worse. He slipped into depression.

I just didnt know what else to do, he said. Then I remembered the question you asked me. What if I decided to love my life, no matter what? I decided right then and there I had nothing to lose. Id take the challenge. I felt something change. Things started to get better. Your words changed my life. I havent felt this good since as long as I can remember. I really do love my life .

Georges willingness to take on my challenge surprised me. Whats more, the extent of the transformation he made astonished me. Once George made that mental shifteven after all his hardshipsthe universe responded to his belief.

I wanted to challenge others. When I spoke to leaders at business, industry, and personal-growth events, I started asking the same question: What if you loved your life, no matter what?

A few months after attending my events, people would reach out to me and share they were turning their businesses around, creating vibrant company cultures, enriching their relationships, improving their emotional well-being, and feeling more engaged and joyful in their lives.

I was humbled. Have you been hit by unexpected change? Has the change made it hard for you to fully love your life right now? You may have experienced massive upheavalmarket disruption, business failure, job loss, divorce, or death of a loved one. Or maybe youre dealing with small, sometimes unavoidable, changestechnology, rules, expectations, to name a few. The relentless pace of change can be overwhelming. How can you be happy in the face ofuhhh, everything?

Maybe you are

• an overwhelmed professional or manager who must reinvent to stay relevant;
• a burned-out CEO or leader who has lost vision and direction; or
• an individual who just feels irrelevant and alone. You feel like you dont belong.

Maybe you are

• working for someone you dont like, in a place you dont like; or
• caught up in achieving and striving, but you have no joy.

And maybe you feel

• exhausted, burned out, depleted;
• fearful, doubtful, or worried;
• overwhelmed by the pace of change;
• disappointed, depressed, or even suicidal; and/or
• resigned and cynical.

This sense of failure and lack of connection can erode your performance, exuberance, and love for life. With all the societal shifts going on, life seems to be changing faster than ever. Maybe you have a feeling that you too should change direction, but you dont know how. And you cant trust yourself to do it.