I, for one, am an obsessive goal planner. If you’re like me, you like to have clear, defined goals and specific expectations on how you would like to achieve them. From my perspective, having things outlined gives me one less thing to worry about because I have a general idea of what’s coming up and what to expect. I have goals for next week, goals for next year, and even five to ten years after that. And while each week might not go exactly how I planned, my expectations are usually pretty close to what I had in mind. However, in the last few months, the pandemic kind of burst that bubble for me. Each week, what will happen or what will even be possible, is up in the air, and much of my future plans have been thrown into a cloudy haze. When plans fall apart, expectations fall with them, and the goals I’ve set for myself seem further and further out of reach.

I can lie and say I’ve handled all of this ambiguity with grace and composure. Instead, I’ll tell you that last week, I had a breakdown coming home from my lab, called up my mom to talk about it, and proceeded to have another (slightly smaller) breakdown after we hung up the phone. The fact of the matter is that some of my goals for grad school and the future beyond are just not possible anymore. Or, at least not possible with the same expectations and degree of planning that I had tied them to. While I cannot control the state of the world around me and its ruinous consequences that it has had on my goals, expectations, and plans, I can control how I respond to it. It’s inherently easy to watch this happen around me and respond with despair – to feel like I’m failing or that I, myself, am a failure. However, I’ve recently been trying to reshape my thinking on how I respond to this pandemic, and instead respond with resilience. 

​Resilience, or the ability to metaphorically ‘bounce back,’ is a key skill to develop regardless of one’s current situation. To some degree, we’ve all been forced into situations where we have the opportunity to be resilient. Whether it’s a pandemic confronting the world, or a day where everything seems to be going wrong, each is a chance to respond with resilience. Some people are naturally better at it than others. We all have that one friend who just seems to be overly optimistic regardless of the situation. The good news, though, is that resiliency is something that we can practice and develop. 
 
Here are some things we can do to learn how to be resilient: 

1. Connect with family and friends. It’s okay to ask for advice or help with something. Trying to be transparent might allow them to see something that you didn’t.
2. Take care of your mental health and wellbeing. Make time for things that make you happy that don’t involve work to give yourself a chance to clear your mind. For me, I typically go running to put myself in a more positive mindset before going back to the problem at hand.
3. Look at what the purpose of something is and seeing if it is in your control or out of it. Easier said than done, but if something isn’t in your control it isn’t something you can worry about. Look at the things you CAN control and set small targets for yourself to accomplish.
4. Try not to fall down the rabbit hole with negative thoughts, instead try to reframe them in a more positive light. For example, maybe you spent a lot of time writing a report, and then when you finished, you were told it was no longer needed. Instead of thinking the time you spent on it was wasted, maybe see it as practice for report writing. (Personally, I have the most  problems with this point).

 
It's not easy to respond with resilience at first – it takes a lot of conscious effort and practice to really start to feel it. However, even just putting in the effort to approach each day with a resilient mindset has allowed me to reframe my plans, expectations, and goals in a way that has adapted to our current world. We all make a choice in how we metaphorically ‘show up’ each day, and resilience is just another tool in our toolbox (or lab) to help us forge ahead.
 
Hope this helps, and hang in there!