It happened in a weak moment, I looked at everything in front of me, the emails, the open requisitions, the Instant Messenger, the weight of perceived change, the choice to pursue a home after renting for so many years, the shifts of staffing momentum and the shifts of personal choices in my friends, church, home life, et al.  I pushed back and told myself I need to take a walk.  For 10 minutes I just took a walk and took everything in.  It was a moment where I was overwhelmed.  It was a test of my mettle and my resiliency.

I had returned from a vacation invigorated and renewed but then found myself as I got knee deep back into the thrust of life and knowledge that our rent was going up, that we would be leaving a neighborhood and folks that I had come to love, and now in a short period of time have to think about packing up a house full of everything, helping move, helping staff, and helping to serve.  It was in all of the surrounding circumstances and the amount of volume I had been experiencing in what has been a full pedal to the metal type circumstance that I ask the question of myself - where is my resiliency?  

Normally happy go lucky I have found myself really needing an uplift.  It is perhaps in my blog I can find some peace.  Multiple changes rapid fire, moments of uncertainty in one's immediate environment, mixed with a perfect storm of recruiting volume, there may be a moment or two where I might have to seek out old staffing friends, old colleagues, acquaintances and others whom approach you once again with a renewed vigor only to exclaim - I am at a point of self introspection.  Having achieved much but then to be humbled at the overwhelming circumstances it is one thing that makes me say okay, I AM GOING TO DO THIS SOMEHOW.

Staffing resiliency might mean sacrificing one's ego to say I need some help.  Having been one whom tries to attack with a vengeance what is on my desk - in a few short days I have had to learn that I can say - "My bandwidth feels overwhelming, I may need some help." It is in that moment where the greatest test of character arises.  When your personal life, and the responsibilities of being a parent, to balance home and work life, and still keep your perspective, when you have strengths of your utmost zeal but yet one cannot approach others and reveal all going on, instead you must put on your poker face, your focus and grin and bear whatever cross the world of recruiting and life might throw at you.

I have pondered this.  As I was speaking to my mom this evening she mentioned something quite important.  Namely - if you do not take care of yourself first, then everything is a domino affect.  I realized almost immediately - that health and our frame of mind are VITAL to our staffing success.  If you are pushing and pushing to fill roles only to neglect your lunch, allowing yourself to take breaks, or to let yourself move in a reactive state in your recruiting juncture I am afraid you might be less effective.

And so this is a key area of thought.  I leave it to ponder what I might do better, that is - allow time for some part of the day to take stock of the challenges on your desk and then when it is most vital, when you need that resiliency to re-energize you, it is right there and then you may need to attack even more the challenges by renewing your purpose and energy to keep yourself fully revitalized.

This quote by Vince Lombardi sums it up: "The will to win, the will to achieve, goes dry and arid without continuous renewal." RENEWAL.  I can think of no greater focus to renew one's resolve to build again once's success and focus to become better and greater than before.  It is that focus that I think and I know I will find again.

Determination and resolve are the keys there.  In this I think I found the answer to the life challenge that this particular point in time has posed.  90% is showing up. The other 10% is perspiration.  Somehow - I will renew that effort and as one wise friend said it - THIS TOO SHALL PASS.