CHAPTER 6Joy in the Hard Times
Post‐2020, we're living and working through more disruption than anyone planned on. For so many reasons, it can be hard to keep your head above water, much less swim toward joy.
How do we find joy in the hard moments?
During the pandemic, two professors at Harvard Business School created a class about leadership and happiness. They used the course to guide business school students through the spring of 2020, a time of major uncertainty and unhappiness for many. I later heard them present about the core lessons they'd shared with students. Here's one that stood out to me: Keep your line in the water.
The tides are changing very quickly right now. It's hard to know which way is up. You might want to throw up your hands and retreat. Give up. But they suggest that we should do the exact opposite. Professor Arthur Brooks says we can use these times of tide change to learn, grow, innovate, and thrive: “With a shift in mindset, we can make transitions into a source of meaning and transcendence,” he writes in the Atlantic.1
“The best time to catch fish is during a quickly changing tide,” he says. “Practically the only mistake you can make is not to have your line in the water.”
In this chapter, I'll share ways you can keep your line in the water—to lean into the current environment of disruption, change, and confusion and welcome what's coming next, even if you can't control it.
Embrace change
Gerri Elliott led sales and marketing at the tech giant ...
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