Looking to 2021: A Hanukkah of Resilience

It’s hard to be apart in the season of togetherness. Tonight marks the last night of Hanukkah and I’m missing a good party! In fact, like you, I’m missing a lot of things these days.

Every Hanukkah, my family opens our home to friends for latkes, donuts and a diaper drive for our local diaper bank. We continued the tradition this year, for the fifth consecutive year, albeit as a drive thru event. It wasn’t the same, but one thing I’ve observed about 2020 is that it’s the “little things” that have kept me going.

As we close out Hanukkah — and an altogether very strange year — I’ve been thinking a lot about the Hanukkah story and the miracle of resilience: the miracle of finding light in the darkness and kindling it for longer than anybody could have imagined.

Arianna Huffington recently wrote that resilience is her word of the year. The “single word,” she concluded, that could encapsulate the shared experience of billions of people around the globe in 2020 is “the quality that allows us to overcome challenges, obstacles, hardship and adversity, instead of being defeated by them.”

She’s spot on about 2020 (of course she is—she’s Arianna Huffington!), and her piece serves as a great reminder that we’re all living our own little Hanukkah miracle daily: testing the strength and the limits of our resilience every single day.

As we look towards 2021, we are still going to need to kindle the flame of our resilience for at least a few more months. This year, I’m looking to how the two core messages from the Hanukkah story hold the key to our resilience at work this coming year:

Look for the ember — not the spark — then kindle it

One of the things I observe as a coach is that people often spend time looking outside of themselves for the answers. We live in a culture that’s obsessed with asking “what’s missing?” that would make us feel more fulfilled or successful at work. Identifying goals for what you want to create in your work life is critical but — pro tip — you have to get the order of operations right.

This is something the Maccabees got right: they didn’t leave the Temple to search for more oil (and, to be fair, that wasn’t exactly an option). They clung to what little bit they already had. The same goes for cultivating our resilience and fulfillment: it’s not about searching high and low for a piece of flint so that you can light some elusive spark. It’s about finding the embers that are already burning inside of you so that you can fan the flames. That’s why a more effective question than “what’s missing?” is “what’s important to me in my life and what actions can I take to make that more of a priority every single day?” 

Find the embers that are already burning inside of you so that you can fan the flames.

I often have clients explore this question across all different facets of their life: from their core values to their personal, professional, financial and family/relationship goals. Even when we can feel far from those goals, there’s usually at least a teeny, tiny ember of each one burning inside of us. For example, if you’re in a job you dislike, it’s illuminating to identify even a single thing you like about it. Be it the people, the mission, the work, the pay, the benefits or the flexibility. If you’re a leader who feels stretched thin, it’s illuminating to identify the parts of the job that you enjoy most or that make you feel most impactful.

It’s counterintuitive, but finding the embers of the things we want to “keep” can help us fast-track results when it comes to the things we wish to “fix.” While the rush to remediation can be tempting, if we put too much energy into “fixing,” it can actually distract us from optimizing our overall performance or goals.

To put it like Marcus Buckingham, a business consultant who began his professional career at Gallup (designer of the famous Strengthsfinder assessment), “We live in a remedial world [and] you don’t remediate your way to excellence.” Yes, certainly there is a case for change, but we can often achieve our goals faster when we take time to kindle what’s already inside instead of letting that flame burn out while we look for a spark we imagine will be brighter or shinier.

Spreading the light for others

Whether we’re at the top or bottom of our organization’s food chain, the actions we take impact everyone around us, even — and especially — when we’re zooming alone from home. There is a Kabbalistic belief that each thought, action and word we speak can tilt the balance of the universe towards good or evil. Or, in the case of 2020 workplace culture, towards helping cultivate resilience for others or contributing to burnout culture.

Are you exhausted? Drained? So is everybody else around you. It can be tempting to throw up our arms, but it is even more impactful to spread your light — even if it’s just a tiny ember — for others.

So hit pause before firing off that email, choose your words carefully on that call and check in with people to ask them how they’re doing. Then, don’t try to solve their problems, just listen. It can be enough for them just to know another colleague cares.

As Rabbi Nechemia Schusterman asks, “Remember the old JFK line: ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country? I propose that a deeper message of Hannukah is: ask not what your lights will do for you, but what your lights will do for others?”

One of the benefits of spreading your light for others (aside from just being a good person or a thoughtful steward to your team) is that it may actually help you kindle your own flame. Neuroscientific research confirms that helping others can actually increase our own happiness.

Looking towards 2021

My longing for each one of you is that you find that light in the darkness as we begin a new year — perhaps it’s just an ember right now — and that you keep kindling it, even when that feels impossible. Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year.

Randi Braun is an executive coach, consultant, speaker and the founder of Something Major.