Photo by Biegun Wschodni on Unsplash

A Call for Stories of Resilience

The wake of the COVID-19 pandemic—locally to globally—has yet to be realized or fully understood. When yesterday's rules may not apply tomorrow, there's one quality that helps us navigate endless possibility: resilience.

In this unprecedented moment, we are invited to sit face-to-face with our greatest fears. We are called to be courageous, to continue anyway. Each of us is being asked to discover the strength and creativity we have always had within us, yet only now recognize.

It is only through great struggle that we gain strength.

From the beginning of WholeStory, we’ve known the importance of identifying people with the qualities that make up resilience: perseverance, steadiness, adaptability, courage, humility, and self-awareness. These are the qualities of great leadership. Four years ago, we set out with the mission to raise the quality of authentic leadership across organizations and broader society.

The foundation of our work is based on science and intuition that confirms: the person and the professional are one and the same. We are so conditioned to separate the two, to live and work in this false dichotomy. Yet events like this pandemic remind us of our singular being, unified in our humanity. In an instant, the facade has crumbled.

Life is where we form and transform who we are as people, and that is professionally relevant. WholeStory was born out of a need to better understand people in the hiring process. So we built a hiring platform to help us tell our stories of transformation, to share what makes us uniquely qualified to do the work.

In this moment, we are gifted with an acute awareness of just how critical these qualities are for companies to survive and thrive. We are witnessing the reordering of society and business in real-time. As the dust settles in the coming months, we will need people who are resilient in order to rebuild.

Over the last two weeks, with each revolution of reality, our conversations lead us to a profound need to hear stories of resilience.

We need to see what is possible.

We need to hear how others have overcome significant obstacles.

We need to know that WE ARE RESILIENT.

Every single one of us.

To those of you who have risen from the ashes...

To those of you who have gained everything through losing it all...

To those of you who have made something out of nothing...

We need to hear your story. Help us light the way.

#WeAreResilient: A Campaign of Hope

Over the next 60 days, we want to elevate stories of professionals who have been courageous, persisted through great challenge, and adapted to a major change.

From prevailing over poverty to surviving cancer to getting lost in a foreign country—these stories can act as beacons of hope and inspiration for the individual and collective work that will be ours to do in the coming months as we rebuild our economy and our culture.

Step #1

Record or write your story of resilience

Think about what story best illustrates this quality in you and record or write about it. For video, keep it to ~2-3 minutes and use your smartphone (it's the best quality). For written stories, keep it under ~1000 characters.

See Guidelines and Story Help for more info:

Guidelines

Be sure to answer these three questions:

What happened? Or, what realization did you have around this experience?
In what ways did you change as a result?
How did this realization or change influence how you work as a professional?

Avoid anything that feels raw or unprocessed.

Keep it relevant by connecting it to how it's made you a better professional.

End it with: My name is [your name]. I am [your profession]...And I am resilient!

Story Help

Step #2

Share it on LinkedIn & challenge your friends

Include the text below in your post and tag us so we can help amplify. Challenge 3 of your friends to share their stories of resilience by tagging them. The more people who share their stories, the more light we can spread!

I am sharing my story of resilience to help light the way in this challenging time. Join me and @WholeStory to help the world remember that #WeAreResilient! Read about the call for stories of resilience: https://wholestoryhq.com/ I challenge [@ mention your friends] to share a story of resilience too!