How to go from surviving to thriving at work

How do you go from surviving to thriving?

It’s easy to rhyme, and hard to do. Thankfully, there are a few different ways people leaders can help employees—and themselves—achieve it, according to Jon Rosemberg, co-founder of professional training and coaching firm Anther.

In his new book, A Guide to Thriving: The Science Behind Breaking Old Patterns, Reclaiming Your Agency, and Finding Meaning, Rosemberg shares how to recognize and move beyond survival mode.

Rosemberg sat down with HR Brew to share more from his book.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What will HR pros learn from your book?

In the book I refer to something as “survival mode”...this state of emergency response where we’re kind of bracing for impact, and our thoughts, emotions, our sensations in our body are tense, and we get really reactive…I think, in the corporate world, a lot of us are experiencing survival mode, not acute like when a tiger is chasing you, but chronic, that it can go on for years…The alternative to that is thriving, which is a state in which we’re calm, connected.

We’re creative, and we get to be really proactive in the way in which we engage with the world. And, instead of being in this reactionary, scary state, we can be really in a learning stage…The general idea in the book is how to go from survival mode to thriving, and what I propose is that we do that through agency. And, I define agency as the capacity to make intentional choices supported by the belief that those choices matter and have an impact in the world.

How can HR pros help employees given how many of them are in this state of survival mode?

What I propose in the book is something that I like to call the AIR method, and AIR stands for awareness, inquiry and reframing…Awareness is the ability to notice what’s happening inside and around us without judgment…Our thoughts, our emotions, our sensations in the body. So, when we’re having a lot of negative thoughts to actually stop and say, “Ah, I’m having a negative thought.” Noticing that, or if your jaw is tense, or your shoulders are tense, just taking a moment to pause and notice that.

Inquiry is getting really curious about what’s happening in the moment. So, once we have awareness, let’s say we have the awareness to say, “Oh, I feel like I’m in survival mode right now.” Then, we can move into getting really curious and asking a lot of questions about what has happened, and these are usually open-ended questions that are very compassionate. And, the idea is to turn us from being subjects of the situation, to the situation being an object that we can explore.

Then, the third piece of AIR, which is reframing, is just a more empowering way to see challenges. So, when we can often say, “Oh, I’m powerless here. There’s nothing I can do,” which, by the way, is a great way to notice when we’re in survival mode. We can move to saying, “What can I learn here? What can this teach me? How can these help me grow in one way or another?”

How would someone know if they are thriving?

When we are in that state where we’re calm, and we can tap into our creativity, and we can connect to others…Our body feels relaxed, our thoughts can be really open. We can explore different things, as opposed to looping around. We’re in this learning mode. That would be a manifestation of thriving.

Thriving often gets confused with success, and success metrics are: “Oh, if I get that promotion, if I get that raise, I’ll finally be thriving,” and what I argue is that thriving is a form of engaging with the world and a way of being. It’s not necessarily measured by the things we accomplish, although accomplishment can be a pathway to thriving.