The Foreign Service Journal, March 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2019 39 such as passing adoption fraud legislation and persuading intransigent countries to join the Hague Convention on child abduction. I now run the Foreign Service Institute’s Center of Excel- lence in Foreign Affairs Resilience (FSI/TC/CEFAR), where we developed a personal resilience model that draws from leading resilience research in the fields of organizational development, psychiatry, neuroscience, social/cognitive science and disaster relief. We’ve identified five leading indicators of a person’s resilience. Intentionally enhancing these aspects of one’s life will increase personal resilience and, in turn, bolster the capacity to handle challenges. Five Leading Indicators of Resilience Self Care. Daily physical activity, healthy eating, sufficient sleep and taking time to recover are essential for both short- term and long-term resilience. We often overlook the need to recover—which can be as simple as taking a walk in a park, meditating or working on a jigsaw puzzle. This can be a chal- lenge in the Foreign Service, which is definitely not a 40-hour- a-week job. If you face long workdays and overwhelming workloads, build in short breaks and vacation days that allow time to recover from periods of high-intensity work. Study your daily and weekly routines and schedule the time you need to focus on each of the following four components. Prepare someone to act for you when you’re on vacation, and then resist the temptation to stay engaged when you should be disconnecting. Active Problem-Solving. Your level of resilience directly correlates to your ability to maintain a sense of control, even over the smallest things. Spend time and mental energy on issues you can control and influence, while letting go of things that are outside of your control. If you can’t influence larger foreign policy goals, find aspects of foreign policy you can influence, and focus on those smaller pieces so you have a sense of control. Establish goals for yourself, and work toward these goals with intention. Every time I bid, I start by setting goals for my next post, both personal and professional, and then bid on those countries that best meet my goals rather than getting distracted by myriad pros and cons that come with each potential bid. Set clear boundaries; communicate them to colleagues, friends and family, and then use your boundaries to turn down requests and work that would otherwise overwhelm you. You can say no diplomatically, explaining why your refusal will best achieve the foreign policy goals you are focused on. Remember that it is better to disappoint someone early by saying no than later by being so over- whelmed you either submit substandard work or don’t keep your promise. Ask “why” multiple times to get to the root of a problem. We often try to solve the wrong problem because we fail to see the root causes. We expend a lot of energy and then wonder why we haven’t achieved results. Take the time to find out the real problem before developing your strategy. Ask for help when you need it. In the Foreign Service, there is a strong culture of going it alone, which is unfortunate. All of us Spend time and mental energy on issues you can control and influence, while letting go of things that are outside of your control. There are five basic factors that contribute to personal resilience. U.S.STATEDEPARTMENT/FSI/CEFAR