On Developing Resilience: How to Get a Hand Up instead of a Hand Out

When things are tough, and you need to change direction in your life and have no money to do so, here is an idea that might work for you to get back on your feet again.

Photo by Austin Kehmeier on Unsplash

I’m going to share a personal story that I classify as a story of resilience.

I’m sharing it in the hopes that it gives you, or others you know, the spark of an idea that will help you get out of a rut, and get ahead in life when financial doom threatens, and and things seem hopeless.

There is always a choice. You always have options.

I believe that what I decided to do would work well for others too, if they just knew about it.

Please let me know in the comments if you have done something similar or have another idea related to this strategy.

Life happens.

The pandemic lockdowns threw a wrench in many people’s career plans and lives.

I know it did for me. I am still recovering from it years after the lockdowns stopped, because I had to dramatically change careers, burned through my savings, and tried many of the online jobs that simply didn’t suit me, or bring in big money as quickly and easily as promised.

Every course out there seemed to cost $1000 to register for, and that was not no longer affordable for me. The one course I chose to invest in two years ago with my dwindling funds proved to be a great idea, but not something I could do. I couldn’t put what I had learned into action without building afollowing on social media, or getting an email list with a decent number of people on it first, so that hasn’t panned out (yet). I hadn’t done enough testing of my ideas for courses yet to see which would be feasible, and so it was ont to Plan B. Then C. Then D.

I know this is the case for many people out there.

And like many people out there, I was forced to go back to a previous career to make ends meet while I decided on yet another career trajectory.

I went back to teaching English online to make steady money, but to be honest, most of the teaching platforms out there are just a race to the bottom.

Sure enough, teaching online hasn’t been enough to make a consistent income that I can rely on to make ends meet each week and month. And it’s time consuming and draining, so I have struggled to get the energy necessary to get a different career going.

But the biggest reason I hit rock bottom a few months ago was that I had a series of iphone and computer malfunctions and was suddenly not able to work online at all.

In retrospect, the malfunctions were probably all related to the unreliable electrical grid here in Mexico that I did not have a UPS switch to mitigate. Recharging my devices burnt them all out.

The upshot was that I suddenly had no functioning technology, no money to buy new devices, and no way to earn a living. Since Mexico is not my home country, I have far fewer friends here than back home, and there are far fewer people in any of my social or family networks who are in a position to be able to help anyone out, with skyrocketing inflation and exorbitant costs of living in my homecountry.

So I found myself in a pickle. I needed money to pay rent, buy food and pay bills and the necessities of life and I had less than a week to figure something out.

All my solutions involved using a computer, but I didn’t have one, or access to one, and there are no decent internet cafes here.

I didn’t want to beg for the money for it. Besides, there was no one I could ask that would be in a position to say yes to my request.

And to be fair, I didn’t want a hand out.

I wanted help geting up and out of my financial hole once and for all, and have a chance to get ahead on my own steam.

So I thought about what I could exchange or provide in exchange for the money I needed and wanted.

I asked myself:

What idea could I pitch to get seed funding and a nice return on investment to someone I knew?

Who do I know that knows about business?

Who has some money that they might be able to spare for a micro business venture if they were offered a very good return on their investment?

Who might agree to giving me money for start up funds to buy a new computer and pay my bills for a couple of months to do the work to get my content driven business going?

With delight, I realized I did indeed know someone who had been decently successful in business, someone who might appreciate the idea of seed funding, or at least double the money given to me to buy that computer I needed to start my content driven business.

I pitched my idea for seed money for my content driven business (ghostwriting and affiliate blogging) and a new computer during a coffee chat, and he went for it.

He said he really liked the idea of giving me a hand up, not just a hand out. ç

He knew nothing about content driven businesses and affiliate blogging, or how to offer courses online, but believed in me. And so Resourcefully Resilient.com and my Ghost Writing services were launched.

And then he surprised me: he asked if he could get in on my idea.

I thought about it. And I thought of a way to help him start a content driven business for him that we could partner on. He had the cafe and 22 years of expertise, and I have the writing and marketing skills to do the affiliate blog related to cafes (as well as 15 years experience working in various restaurants). And so Breakfastcafeadvice.com was born!

A week and a half later, my shiny new, beautiful, lightneing fast Macbook Air arrived.

I was thrilled. I felt like this was the fresh start I needed and that this would work were other ideas I had tried flopped.

I settled in and immediately started writing and planning content happily.

But a week later, a ‘battery needs servicing’ alert kept popping up.

I actually tried to ignore it, and tried to fix it on my own, but it was a refurbished computer and obviously had not been refurbished correctly, despite the certification. Nothing suggested in forums online worked. They it started overheating and one day it black screened on me.

I had saved everything to the cloud, so no biggie. I hadn’t lost my work.

Just the ability to work.

It was a Mac, and I had insurance, so I thought it would be quick and easy to sort out and get a replacement. ç

I was wrong. This turned into a huge, and time consuming issue that nearly bankrupted me.

First off, it was not clear where to return the laptop, since I had bought it off Amazon and not from the Apple store direclty. It took many live chat sessions and phone calls and finally we just sent it back to the central depot, despite the notification that you can’t return anything with a battery there. The return was processed within 24 hours, but only a fraction of the money was returned, instead of a full refund.

After five frustratingly long phone calls and numerous attempts to get through the automated menu to a live person, we were told to wait for the rest to be processed.

Only after 6 weeks would we have the chance to complain that a mistake had been made.

This derailed all my timelines. The money I had recieved to pay for my living expenses for the first month so that I could churn out articles and content was spent un productively to allow my son and I to live. Without a laptop, I couldn’t teach online (teaching platform rules, not my choice).

And boom! I was back to square one. No computer and no way to make a living.

But I refused to give up.

I evaluated my options to find a way to keep going.

I used my cell phone to write a lot of articles and do research for my upcoming planned content, but it was far, far slower than using a laptop. Juggling writing time with a kid who needed my cell phone for a lot of his homelearning and entertainment didn’t help.

Then the much anticipated 6 week deadline arrived, but the remainder of the money did not materialize.

After another round of 7 phone calls, we reached a live human being who could confirm that a mistake on the refund had been made and they issued a second refund for the outstanding amount.

And then I hit another roadbump: to buy another Macbook Air from Amazon them would take another 5 to 6 weeks to arrive.

I couldn’t wait that long. It had already been 90 days of struggling.

I was at my rope’s end.

I had no way to make money and my seed funding had run out.

What now? I thought.

I decided to go to plan D. I took the cash of the refund and bouth a laptop from a local store so I could get back up and running again.

With a laptop in hand. was able to get back online to teaching instantly, and so could earn some stop gap money while I get my other content businesses up and earning something.

The computer I bought is much lower quality, but functions adequately. I hope it doesn’t burn out and have a corrupt bios chip like my last cheap computer.

So far, so good.

But I will admit it had a lasting effect to be derailed so many times.

I was starting to feel defeated and like the universe was against me, or trying to tell me something. In my head I started to only remember the hardships and setbacks over the past few years, and they amplified and made a big obstacle that I had to overcoe to get started again.

Adding to this is the fact that the constant strain of not having enough money to live comfortably is exhausting and paralyzing.

While you might think it would be motivating to work twice as hard to recover from financial hardship, the truth is it’s not. There are a lot of reasons for this that I might discuss at some point in the future.

While I had the ability to work on my content driven businesses again, and knew I HAD to do it, I procrastinated for a few weeks.

Going back to teaching English full time was very tempting, despite what a dead end it is. We gravitate towards the known over the risk of the unknown. Once I realized I was doing this, I could pull up my socks, and forge ahead.

I took stock, looked at my poster plan and decided to forge ahead as best I could with my original plan.

I just changed the timeline.

LESSONS LEARNED

Decide to be Resilient

What I learned from this ordeal is that you have to realize that setbacks WILL happen and that you simply have to decide to stick to your guns and simply find another way to reach your goals even when plan A, B and C don’t work out.

This is were cultivating resilience comes in.

You have to accept that sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back, but the key is not giving up.

Don’t let feelings of failure creep in.. You need to have a way to make money as a fallback measure, so ‘never say never’ to using a skillset you thought you had left in your past if it helps you transition into a new and much better career. Don’t let yourself think of setbacks as failures.

Be Your Own Cheerleader

You have to find ways to be your own cheerleader and gently supportive best friend instead of critical inner critic.

I don’t have a supportive group of people living near me that I can talk to over coffee everyday (my dream support system), so I use posters on the wall.

On the posters I note milestone steps, steps that others might now think would be milestones, but that were huge for me.

A secret to my progress has been to force myself to spend time on a task for even 10 minutes before taking a coffee break or doing something else.

Sometimes that’s all I can do. And sometimes that low threshold for success is all I need to get rolling on a long work session.

I tell myself that no matter how small, I did something that moves me closer to my goal, and this counts as success.

Some days are harder than others, so the time I put in has become my ‘track record of success’ more than the number of tasks I managed to complete in a day.

Patience

Related to the last point, be patient with yourself, and don’t get hung up on timelines.

I am focussing on steps accomplished rather than whether I meet the arbitrary dates I assigned each step at the beginning.

My timelines for my content driven businesses have changed, but I’m still on track with my grand plan for the next 2 and ten years.

Acknowledge the Past, but Don’t Get Bogged Down By It

Financial hardship happens to everyone at some point, especially to single moms who can’t work full time traditional jobs and who have double the expenses of single people and who have to should all the household expenses by themselves.

I had to get over my ego, and ask for help. If I hadn’t asked for a hand up, and had money to get a new computer, and instead accepted a hand out, I would have been on the street, or worse off than I am now. I would have beenlooking for another ‘gift’ or handout from a friend in a month’s time.

I wouldn’t have been able to get a computer and go back to teaching online to make a bit of instant money and survive, and I wouldn’t have had a way to transition into a new online career at all.

if I hadn’t taken action and found a way to get a hand up, instead of a hand out, my idea of starting a content driven business would still have been a dream, not something that is coming into reality.

I hope reading this story triggers some revelations for you.

If you are not in a dire situation needing a hand up, then perhaps if nothing else, you will now know new ways to truly help a friend or family member in need, in a way that empowers them to get up and out of a financial hole.

Together we rise.