A Resilient You: A Free Handbook of Secrets

Her question startled me because I’d only revealed the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Perhaps there was something better I should be doing with my time than running a cash register?

Adverse Childhood Experiences are proven to hurt health and well-being later in life. Everyone can compute their score based on what they experienced between birth and age 18, with a maximum score of 10. People with a score of “four or more showed a 12-times-higher prevalence to health risks such as alcoholism, drug use, depression, and suicide attempts,” according to Queen’s University.

Statistics are not predeterminants. Experts say that there are people with high scores who thrive and stay out of these problems in adulthood, but that wasn’t my experience.

I experienced negative outcomes, and only now am I thriving. I did it by building resilience, one practice at a time.

Unimaginable Consequences

As a score, there never is a perfect one. Still, this score misses out on things I can’t imagine having to go through, like the open use of drugs, community violence, homelessness, racism, or living in foster care, as Jarvis Jay Masters describes in his book That Bird Has My Wings.

His story of survival through those things is remarkable; not only did he find a way to survive, but he also found his way to peace. Today, he’s a Buddhist on death row, and if prison is to protect innocent citizens from danger, I can’t fathom why he’s there.

I know personally that taking time away from someone who hurt me did nothing to help me and only gave that person who hurt me a reason to hurt me harder.

I raced to retirement because I couldn’t find a workplace culture I could tolerate. Yet, to be oppressed, harassed, demoralized, and undermined is to be an employee in today’s workforce. It’s wild that this is the status quo of acceptability and not called out as a health epidemic.

Unnatural Competition

I used to think it was just me, a woman in STEM. Then I thought it was just me, an introvert in unnatural competition. Then, I realized that unnatural competition likely contributed to my introversion and preference for ideas over people. My early experiences with people didn’t go so well, while an idea never tried to hurt me.

Competition becomes unnatural when you forget the point of the organization. We organize in a clan because no person can feed themselves and protect themselves alone. We organize in a business for the same reason, if we are all dressed up in evolution and suits. Families are supposed to protect and nurture us, not be the source of agony.

Unfortunately, there’s no taking the cave mentality out of the human being. Some places even corral and amplify that environment, valuing aggression and dominance over service and encouragement.

To each their own, and that’s the idea. Fit and belonging- it’s up to you to figure it out and find it if you can.

Unacceptable Conclusions

Deluded by the idea that hard work and honed skills made a difference in life, I ignored my siblings, who didn’t study a lick but kept telling me, “It isn’t what you know—it’s who you know.”

Today, I know a Liberal says that, but not a Conservative.

Behind closed doors, I believed in the power of my grades to liberate my potential. I earned my engineering degree with long nights at my desk. I lived at home in year one, but my family never saw me.

On graduation day, I was opening a stack of mail when I came to a letter from the university. Tearing it open, I read the shocking news that I would not graduate because I hadn’t fulfilled all the requirements. It was surprising because it was wrong.

To graduate, you need to pass all the courses, but you also need to write a minimum number of work reports and have a minimum number of work terms. I knew I had the minimum and no more, but I had the minimum.

On graduation day, I met my dean for the first time. I called him at home and told him of my problem, which I had created by not providing my new address to the university. My mail sat unopened at my dad’s house for months of advance notice. I don’t understand why he didn’t forward it or tell me about it, but he didn’t.

Thankfully, my dean agreed to head into the school to check into my claims. He called me back and asked me to list the titles of the reports I’d written. He said he found all but one. I told him that there should be proof I wrote it because it won me an award.

“Oh,” he said, “Then it would be in a different place.”

Because I won something small, I lost something significant.

My engineering university indeed had poor systems or people who couldn’t count.

Misplaced Work

The person who sent me my letter kicking me out of graduation hadn’t known about this different place. It’s a faulty system, but anyone else who won an award probably wasn’t the type to do the minimum required. Unfortunately for me, I’d had a terrible time getting work placement.

My engineering career was almost over before it began after failing to secure my first and then my second co-op placement. Without a job that met the criteria, my academic performance didn’t matter – I’d be kicked out. Luckily, a distant uncle gave me a job in his bakery. I’d love to think employment goes to the best qualified, which never happens. It’s who you know.

Who you know is everything that you need to know. The relevant question isn’t whether or not you can trust them – it’s what you can trust about them. For instance, knowing I could trust my colleagues to betray my confidence within two hours was helpful.

Predicting what people will do in any situation is the point of getting to know them. When your predictions are off, you don’t know them, do you?

Predictable People

Every person runs their program. Few bother to notice it, and fewer still try to rewrite the program, but it’s possible.

When you know people well enough, you realize that everyone runs a program that makes them predictable. With enough motivation, planning, and good timing, you can line them up like chess pieces on a board and master them like puppets—handy stuff when they stand between you and happiness.

Today, what I know and trust about engineers led me to remove my iron ring and laugh at the oath I took. The rampant sexism has not changed an iota and likely never will as long as those stereotypical engineers continue to have zero idea how to have a conversation with a woman.

Sexism will never change as long as women think men are there to protect them, while women who come from my walk know who we need protection from. I’ve found lines cannot be drawn by gender, class, race, profession, or anything so simple and obvious.

Purposeful Learning

There is no question that lines must be drawn. You cannot take a simplistic approach. You need something individual to you, situational to the here and now, and practical for the systemic problems you will encounter in the wild world of employment.

When you are in the hierarchy, whether they are above you, beside you, or below you, knowing about the people around you and what goes on in those minds is the ticket to your success – and how you decide to define it.

Maybe you will get what you need and leave; perhaps you will stay and transform it; maybe you will rise above and rule it. The choices are not yours but could be when you realize who you know and what you trust.

Bullying, prejudice, and poor treatment are part of the game of work. You might be far better positioned to survive if you see it not as a game but as a war. Games are fun, harmless things.

People die in war, and the workplace is no different. You may not get a bullet in the brain, but you will get stabbed in the back, stressed to the limits, and used and abused according to the agendas of others. If a specific incident doesn’t claim you, the chronic accumulation will take your health and happiness and leave you broke.

If the men are physical and violent, the women are verbal and insidious. It was the women I reported to that made me swear I’d never work for a woman again. Not unless she was prettier, skinnier, and happier than me. When they are not, they suddenly have an outlet for their destructive emotions, which has your face all over it.

At least with men, you know what’s coming. It’s coming for your private parts, and it’s all about conquering you. A threat to their intelligence or status is immediately crushed the only way they know how. Since they aren’t that emotionally mature, it will be a reaction.

If men know not to hit a girl, they certainly know other ways to restore who’s on top. Watch all the porn you want, but know that no girl wants to have her hair pulled, her pussy grabbed, or have bruises to show for what was supposed to be nothing more than adult fun.

It’s not fun when you are just trying to settle a score. It’s competition, rank. It’s not a game; it’s a war. Your focus is on status, and you aren’t earning any points.

Humans as Resources

As a human resource, you are a human resource. You have resources that are machines and materials, but you are a human. Resources are to be used, and do not fear; they will use you. However, no one wants to be used. Utilized, yes, but not used.

When you learn that the function of the human resource department in any organization is to protect the legal interests of the enterprise, their behavior and decisions start to become rational.

No matter where you go, there are always three groups: those who get promoted, those who get bullied, and those who do all the work and receive no rewards.

I’d been groomed for the third group. A woman. Middle child. The silent martyr. Unfortunately, I had enough of self-sacrifice before I’d even made it to the corporate world. Because I didn’t happily slide into the role I was expected to take, they tried bullying me into it. With bullies, I had my experience.

To survive corporate culture, every employee must know what to do in the face of harassment. Reporting anything to HR should not be your first move unless your second move is to sign a job offer that you already have in hand.

If you operate under the assumption that they are there to serve the interests of any human resource, you will first frustrate yourself trying to make sense of it, then drown in your egalitarianism and fairness ideals before you find yourself ousted from the job.

Voicing Dissent

I hope you didn’t need employment, but you would never have said anything if you relied on income to support your needs. Your brain would have blocked the information from your perception, prevented you from forming a dissenting opinion, and crushed any words your voice might have formed.

Principled dissent is only for the independently wealthy, whether that is already deposited in your financial accounts, exists merely as potential in your social relationships, or manifests as an ability to embrace poverty without feeling lack.

In my case, I’d been investing since I was twenty-one and read The Wealthy Barber. Since then, I’ve socked away savings and executed a four-pronged strategy to retire as early as possible.

Financially, the race was between how fast I could get out and when I expected to get kicked out.

Free of Harassment

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says every Canadian has a right to a workplace free of harassment. The fact that one of his Ministers felt compelled to record the evidence that would back up her claim of harassment came directly from him. Why would the Governor General behave any differently from his example of leadership?

If it’s such a right, why have two decades of experience taught me that it’s an unattainable privilege? At first, I thought it was the manufacturing industry, so I put my engineering skills to use. In service, I added the logistics industry, the financial and insurance industry, and finally, the leadership industry. Anywhere I went, my femaleness went too. Everywhere I went, there I was.

In the automotive industry, I bought and concealed a tape recorder to catch the evidence of harassment I thought would strengthen my case while protecting my livelihood or career prospects. Ultimately, I decided the lack of evidence was not the problem but that it was run-of-the-mill stuff. Not only would they not be shocked, but they would probably ask why I thought I was so special.

There was nothing special about sexual harassment. There is nothing special about being paid far worse than the men and nothing special about wondering whose side management will take, even when it’s clear who is wrong.

Nothing is special about being touched when you don’t want to be. If there is a silver lining in coronavirus, it was coming home on March 14, 2020, slamming the door and deciding the whole world could keep their hands to themselves from now on.

Every single one of you, man and woman.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It’s true in technology, as one might have realized before unleashing radiation into the atmosphere with the testing of the atom bombs. In politics, protests attempt to draw the long arc of justice toward what is fair. It’s true with personal choice, as we might realize as employees when tempted to right those scales ourselves.

You need a handbook that tells you how to survive if only to counter the one that HR will give you that will get you eaten alive. As you are a human and a resource, do not follow that assumption down that idealistic dead end.

You are born for great things and the only one who can make them happen. Employment is just part of the journey. Survive it, and go on to do your incredible things. First, survive, then thrive, and here’s how.