Imagine having finished a big project for which you made just the right decisions and carried out all the right moves to succeed. . . and succeeded big. You’re a superstar that everyone counts on and your team couldn’t be more happy and appreciative to have you aboard
Your team is on the road right now, so for the moment, you’re working far from family and friends.
Although you’ll miss them until the next time you get to go home, you’re looking forward to doing more great work and enjoying more wins and the reward that comes from being at the top of your game.
But suddenly, one tiny decision you made–one small, unintentional action you took–catapulted you into an experience that was beyond terrifying. It was unfathomable.
That’s how Brittney Griner, one of America’s best female basketball stars, described the 10 months she spent in Russia after she was suddenly detained in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport February 17, 2022 when authorities found vape cartridges with hash oil in her luggage.
Griner pleaded guilty, saying she’d mistakenly packed the drugs and had no intent of breaking the law. Nonetheless, she was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony. Her subsequent appeal failed and her situation looked bleak.
Experts on Russia along with former prisoners, report that conditions are harsh–even life threatening. They include overcrowding, assaults and abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages, inadequate sanitation, sleep deprivation, and forced labor from 12-16 hours per day under dangerous conditions.
But through the tireless work of family, friends, supporters, and the US government, she was released and returned home on December 8, 2022.
Although Griner has returned to playing for the Phoenix Mercury’s, she has said little about her experience except to comment that it had been a “battle at every turn.”
Many months after her release, Griner announced that she was working on a memoir about her experience and “the terrifying aspects of day-to-day life in a women’s penal colony,” adding that she was ready to share only after the passage of so much time.
Mercury head coach Vanessa Nygaard said of Griner: “Many people would have come back from the experience she went through and not even wanted to play basketball anymore or do anything.”
How was she able to get through her brutal ordeal? What gave her the strength to get back on the court? And how does she have the courage to share her experience in her forthcoming memoir?
Griner cites many factors that gave her the resilience to endure. Drive and her sense of connection to loved ones were just two of them. At the heart of it all was the psychological flexibility she had to act in the service of her deeply held values despite the tremendous hardship she was experiencing.
None of us ever expects to find ourselves in such difficult situations. But if nothing else, the last few years of global, community, and personal challenges–from the manageable to the unthinkable–tells us that anything is possible. And we better be ready.
How ready are you? How resilient are you? Does the psychological flexibility that grounds your resilience measure up?
Click HERE to find out.