The Resilience Project: Negotiating your career and finances through life shocks

Saturday, 4 July 2020

Being innovative and agile in the face of adversity is a classic Kiwi trait, but what makes some of us thrive rather than just survive? In a series launching today the Sunday Star-Times investigates how people have survived life shocks, and why some fare better than others in crises. Over the next few weeks we’ll be telling the stories of survivors, sharing the lessons they learned. We’ll talk to experts about how children will be affected by the pandemic, to survivors of disease and crime about the mental and physical intricacies of overcoming anything, and we examine faith and churches’ role in helping people become stronger. This week, as more than 40 per cent of us agree Covid-19 has placed a stress on our finances, we’re examining how our finances and careers can best withstand crises.

Farmer Doug Avery faced eight years of drought in the 1990s. He laid off staff, cut back stock on his 2400 hectare land, and struggled with depression. The wind hit in 2013. A 225kph torrent destroyed fences and trees. Then, the earthquakes came.

“We were smashed by a magnitude 6.6 earthquake whose epi-centre was only a couple of kilometres down the road,” Avery later wrote in his 2017 autobiography The Resilient Farmer. ”Our possessions were broken, and sooty bricks ricocheted through the rooms of our beloved home. In November 2016 we had a second earthquake that made the first seem like a pup – 7.8 magnitude. It terrorised our small rural community and deranged the land itself, lifting our entire farm…brought hillsides crashing down and tossed us all around as if we were nothing.”

But even at his lowest ebb, Avery says he was always looking for solutions. During the drought Avery began researching the benefits of lucerne, a plant they’d always kept, but which they hadn’t maximised its hydration benefits. And while Avery subsequently spread the word of lucerne to his mates, there was something else he wanted to teach them too: resilience. He reckons you can’t begin to run a business without an understanding of what that really means.

**READ MORE:

* No thanks, Mr Orr, borrowers should hold on to their money

* Think you could pay the bills if you lost your job? Here's how to get ready

* Farmer and author helping build emotional resilience across the country

* Resilient Farmer founder Doug Avery made Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit

**

“I’m 65, I’ve had 60 awesome years and five terrible years but those terrible years were the starting point for an unbelievable life,” Avery says. The turning point was realising that “s… happens” no matter how hard you work.

“I was broken that, given how hard I’d worked, I (thought I) didn’t deserve it. Why wasn’t hard work a good enough recipe for a good life? To me resilience is a thing that can be deliberately taught but the greatest way to reach resilience is the constant inoculation of events where you are forced to teach it to yourself.”

With a new mindset Avery expanded his business interests. He launched a company, The Resilient Farmer, which unites farming communities through workshops and talks. He wrote a book, does speaking events, and in 2017 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. The farm is still running, and profitable.

Since the coronavirus pandemic reached New Zealand Avery has heard stories of broken people, but is heartened by others. Like Cantabrian Larry Waterhouse, who had worked for Bunnings for 20 years, but launched his own home improvement business after losing his job. Or, the businesses across the country that, faced with going bust, instead pivoted to new models, selling hand sanitiser or homemade bread kits, and repurposing employees.

Restaurants began delivering, apps were launched and companies and employees learned how to do business remotely. Avery had heard of out-of-work pilots turning to new careers in farming. “The sheer humility of their actions will nourish their soul, and they will come roaring out of that place in great nick,” Avery reckons.

But quietly, resilience is all around. Day in and day out, people keep on. Three weeks ago the Sunday Star-Times was inundated with stories of strength and agility after we asked readers how they survived a life shock. They wrote of marriage break-downs and custody battles, multiple health scares, sudden deaths, and surviving accidents and injuries. “What I have learned is this,” one wrote. “Don’t try and recreate your old life, that’s gone. You are stronger than you think.”

Former local body politician Sandra Greig was among the writers. In her lifetime three of her six children died, she beat cancer three times, overcame meningitis, and had a lengthy local government career for 25 years. She was widowed in 2008.

In 1992 Greig was voted in by the people of Lower Hutt as a Wellington regional councillor, despite naysayers telling her she didn’t have enough experience to represent people. She was one of the first women to be voted in, beating out several men in the process, and she was re-elected every year until she left local politics in 2016.

“You have to rise above it and do what you think is best for you,” Greig says of the decision to forge on, or crumble. “You have two choices, you either go under while people are stomping on you, or you rise above it. I decided I was going to rise above it.”

Christchurch author and career coach Kathryn Jackson recalls her life U-turn moment came as she was sitting in a boardroom in Edinburgh. Working in corporate financial services for the Bank of Scotland, a strategy presentation was ominously missing Jackson and her team of 14, including a few she had just hired. She had the “revolting, sinking feeling in your tummy” that life was about to change.

“I sat there thinking, ‘my team isn’t there’. You feel your blood go cold and you think, ‘I’ve just lost my job in front of everybody.’” What followed was a “hideous process” of having to make her team redundant, including herself.

Having married a Kiwi man Jackson saw an opportunity for a new life instead. They moved to New Zealand in 2006, but even then life wasn’t smooth sailing. The Global Financial Crises struck and then the Christchurch earthquakes. The couple lost their home and had to move into a shed with a port-a-loo with their newborn.

“Resilient people understand it’s a temporary point in time. I used to go and walk in the forest and sob my heart out and go, ‘this is not fair, I’m really angry about this, this is not how I expected life to go.’ But taking control of that and saying, ‘right, how do I want things to be?’ That’s one of the secrets.”

Jackson became an expert on resilience. She’s written two books, and does coaching, career transition and outplacement services. She says while a few decades ago schools of thought loosely sorted people into two camps: the resilient ones who’d lead a great life and the ones who weren’t, and didn’t, now it was accepted that everyone has a natural level of resilience, which can be improved. She believes anyone can make a resilient choice, regardless of their position in life.

“Our brains are hard-wired to focus on the bad stuff. If you’ve lost your job, you’ll think it’s awful, dreadful. Your friends will say, ‘how terrible’. The reality is, if you go to the library, for example, and go to the autobiography section, you’ll find heaps of inspiring stories about people whose lives went pear shaped, and they’ve grown stronger because of what is known as post-traumatic growth.”

She says hope is a huge factor in whether people see change as an opportunity to move forward.

Doug Avery agrees. He says the foundation for resilience is in four key things: connection, love, purpose, and hope.

“Hardly anybody goes through life without one of these things severely infringing, but virtually no-one can cope with all those things missing,” Avery says.

Resilience researcher, associate professor at the University of Canterbury’s School of Psychology, Joana Kuntz, studied businesses and industry following the Christchurch earthquakes, when many were asking why their employees and organisations weren’t bouncing back as quickly as expected.

The pandemic had brought a sense of “deja vu” and her team is now studying the resilience of the tourism sector. Resilience at work was just as much about bouncing back from adversity and coping, as well as being proactive about utilising resources and generating resilience, Kuntz says.

Behavioural traits in resilient workers tended to build off baseline traits, and increase as they progressed through their career. Their characteristics tended to be the glass-half-full mentality, viewing challenges as opportunities and moving past natural anxieties or fears to take a solution-based approach. They’re almost certain that things will be OK, and there’s no such thing as a dead end. Resilient people might be more likely to take certain calculated risks or opportunities, be less reactive and more proactive, take initiative and utilise professional networks, Kuntz says.

The catch was that resilience also had to be fostered in organisations. Employees who weren’t supported to be resilient, through things such as being given autonomy or rewards, knowing how to access support and resources, or their clarity as to the importance and purpose of their role, would struggle. Businesses who supported their staff to be resilient, would reap the benefits by becoming more agile themselves, Kuntz says.

The pandemic’s silver lining was that people’s values were crystallising. Workers were revisiting their contracts and asking themselves if their job was still rewarding. But, time for reflection was dependent on people having a cushion or a safety net. And people’s ability to adapt and be resilient was context dependent, on not just their organisation, but what other challenges they’d been through. There was a ‘sweet spot’, a perfect amount of challenges people have in their life to hone their adaptability, and too many had a depleting effect, Kuntz says.

Andy McDowell says if he had one piece of advice for people doing it tough, it would be, live for the present.

“Fundamentally, what I’ve learned over time is that you can’t help but look back at what you had and look forward to what you thought you were going to have. And that’s the trap. You have to live in the moment, not worry about the future or think about what you’ve lost,” he says.

The 54-year-old husband and father of two was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s Disease in 2009, aged 43. A high-flying, successful marketing consultant at the time, McDowell continued to work but, “It became clear to me that I couldn’t continue as a marketing consultant. I lost confidence in myself and I could see my clients losing confidence in me. You’re always selling in that role, and confidence was critical.”

Finding alternative work was very difficult. His brain didn’t work like it used to, and he couldn’t stand or speak like he once could.

“I found it impossible to find paid work of any kind.”

So he turned to serving his community instead. He knew his career as he knew it was over, but he had something to offer anyway, and began doing public speaking and presentations about living with Parkinson’s. He walked the Inca Trail with a group of global Parkinson’s advocates and has been an ambassador for the World Parkinson’s Congress. He won a global prize for a poem he delivered about his diagnosis, which lead to trips to Montreal, Portland and Kyoto.

“(It) opened an incredible door to opportunities for me. It is something I never could have foreseen.”

Staying financially resilient

Global crises is traditionally an informant of financial behaviour, Retirement Commissioner Jane Wrightson says. The child of parents born during the Depression, Wrightson, a Boomer, says her parents instilled in her a fear of debt, but she believes her Millennial daughter is careful with her finances after watching Generation X-ers struggle with consumer debt and the housing crises.

To Wrightson, financial resilience is walking the tightrope of having a buffer in tight times, and having the mental bandwidth to sit down and financially plan. It’s remembering to pay yourself occasionally, and allowing a bit of fun and frivolity.

“Many people will be feeling powerless, which is entirely understandable, but it’s important when you’re feeling strong enough to move past that, and go, ‘this will pass,’” she says. “The best way to take control of your life is empowering yourself with knowledge, and that’s how you start controlling your life again.

“Those of us that are older have already experienced financial shocks, and should be slightly better at thinking about it (but) those who’ve reached adulthood since the GFC, this is their first time. And this is a way bigger shock than the GFC I think, because…this one is a doozy. I think people are pretty scared.”

A Commission of Financial Capability study of households as of April 28, one month into the Covid-19 alert level 4 lockdown, revealed 13 per cent of households, 232,500, had lost a substantial part of their income – at least a third – or all of their income, as a result of Covid-19.

Twenty-five per cent, 447,000 households, had experienced a reduction of income equal to less than a third. One in 10 had missed a mortgage or rent payment. 41 per cent agreed thinking about their finances stressed them. 40 per cent, 715,000 households, had little financial resilience and were potentially exposed to financial shocks. They weren’t in financial difficulty yet but were at risk.

Pandemic or not, many people were just one life event away from a financial catastrophe, whether it be divorce, a health issue, a business going belly-up or an expected bill. “If you have any cash, it disappears, or you multiply your debt. Are we good at managing this? Clearly the answer is no,” Wrightson says.

Data suggested 30 per cent of New Zealanders were close to, or in extreme financial hardship, but most had a mechanism for some kind of financial assistance. But there was another 40 per cent, Wrightson says, “who are going to be careening towards the cliff in the next three months, and these are people with high mortgage debt, they may have lost a job, or two, and their resilience is enormously fragile.”

Wrightson says taking charge of the things you can take charge of, financially, was empowering and savvy.

For many, becoming resilient was a privilege reserved for those not already on the breadline. People with a bit of a buffer or still working, could aim to join KiwiSaver, consolidate and pay down debt, build up a savings account, and make a long-term plan. Having three months’ salary in savings was a good idea for future threats of job losses, and being careful to avoid debt and enjoying too much consumer spending.

“The only thing I would tell people to do is, don’t panic. Try and start thinking.”

Sorted’s finance expert Tom Hartmann says avoiding fear based decisions is important. People in already precarious financial positions risk worsening them by gambling or making bad investments. Households should also prioritise talking to banks, lenders or other organisations to let them know if their financial position had changed. People might be surprised at the support that might be available to them.

Paying down debt and saving was also good for future resilience, but Hartmann also wanted to talk about growth. “A lot of people think that money is for spending or saving, but it’s also for growing. Saving and investing needs to be little and long. A little bit for a long time will get good results.”

‘You’re born with resilience but it can be learned’

Resilience isn't about being tough or strong.

Denise Quinlan,​ of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience, says it's about being able to respond adaptively or constructively to the adversity we face. While some will have seen lockdown as a break, for others it was a major challenge and stressor.

'Some people are able to respond in a more resilient way to different challenges than others,'' she said. “It’s easy to label someone as resilient after one event but that’s not appropriate. We need to think about resilience as a dynamic process, and observe how people respond to different challenges at different times in their lifetime.’’

So are we born with it or can we be taught?

Quinlan says it’s a bit of both but more importantly it’s our support networks that can help boost our resilience. These can include family who care, a community that pulls together or has good resources like recreation facilities for young people, and a culture that has caring as a core value. Do we live in an environment that supports us when something is wrong?

“Resilience can also be about whether you've got someone you can call at 3am if you need to,'' she said.

Resilience can be developed by practising a range of skills and tools such as gratitude, self compassion and being aware of strengths but also realising that struggle is a part of life, and that everyone will face challenges, setbacks and disappointments.

It doesn’t mean that people don’t experience stress, emotional upheaval, and suffering, but it is their response to those emotions that shows resilience. “One of the most important skills of resilient people is being able to focus their attention on the things that matter, and the things they can control. Not worrying about things that you can’t control helps resilience.”

Reporting: Kelly Dennett, Marty Sharpe, Rachael Kelly.

* Next week for The Resilience Project, we look at parenting through a pandemic. The Star-Times examines how children will be affected by Covid-19 and we tell the stories of how young people have pulled themselves through tragedy and health issues.