Building Resilience and Hope Through Adaptability: Lessons from Hurricane Season
My Turbo Thinking brain turns into a spiraling hurricane in the Gulf this time of year. Like so many of us, it sometimes gets stuck swirling, hovering, creating destruction in our path and self-sabotage, with no movement inland to dissipate and calm down. I can’t seem to execute and self-regulate. One of my clients recently shared: “I’m so behind I can’t seem to ever catch up, and I keep getting invited to other opportunities. I’m drowning, and I will lose my job if they ever find out.” Sound familiar?
What Drives Hope When Everything Feels Out of Control?
I am a survivor of Hurricane Katrina. We are in the middle of hurricane season now, and I often ask myself: What do I need to remain calm and confident? I need to feel prepared enough, and I need to retain my sense of hope. But I also need to remember that I have the skills to adapt and go with the flow. I cannot control climate change; however, I can control my thoughts, actions and emotions.
Last night over dinner, I had a fascinating conversation with my companion, David, a hydraulic engineer who works daily on our disappearing coastline. I wondered: How does he stay so upbeat about his work? One could think, “What’s the point?” when Mother Nature is going to act of her own accord at all times. Or why bother doing the work when the administration could change the guidelines at any moment?
What drives hope?
I thought of clients that day who felt they have no agency yet still have hope. They desire a better future for themselves. But they still get stuck in rumination, remembering only failed attempts, and they don’t know what to do next.
I shared with David some of my frustration after my Katrina experience. The city of New Orleans had built a levee system that was 100-year proof. I had lived in the Netherlands for almost a decade with a dike system that had been built for 500-year protection. Why weren’t we also building for 500-year protection?
The Mindset Shift: From Prediction to Adaptation
David’s response shifted something in me. “We now focus on risk management, adaptability, and resilience rather than guessing the one most likely scenario or preparing for 100-year or 500-year predictions and protection. We now look for the most likely scenarios—a window based on evidence and data that continues to change as our climate changes. We now build for adaptability. This is our foundation, and we budget for adaptability based on what makes the most sense, with the ability to change and remain flexible.”
This is the balance we crave as Turbo Thinkers—between being prepared and being flexible. Our brains need the structure and the spontaneity.
Understanding Hope vs. Magical Thinking
I asked David what he thought was the difference between hope and magical thinking or being a doomsayer. His answer changed how I think about hope: “Hope is the ability to visualize potential future outcomes and know that you can manage them. It’s knowing that you are prepared enough so that you can see these outcomes. Then it’s less frightening when we can visualize the full spectrum of scenarios.”
This is why we Turbo Thinkers can thrive when we’re not stuck in our own hurricane spiral. We have the ability to imagine scenarios that others might not see as possible. We can connect dots in unique ways.
When Questions Unlock Possibility
The conversation reminded me of a session earlier that day. Alex came in frustrated about his one-year goal to go to the gym consistently. Over the course of our session, we explored different questions: Why is that important to you? Why now? What is hard about it? What is your real desired outcome? When have you had that in the past? How did you make it possible then? What was easy about that?
Alex had put on over 30 pounds after surgery, and COVID prevented him from regular physical therapy sessions. He was fixated on the gym as his only solution. Now, over five years past his surgery, he felt stuck and hopeless.
But when we explored what he really wanted—to feel confident in his own skin—he started making connections I could never have made for him. “The last time I felt that way was in my twenties playing on a soccer league.” Suddenly, his face lit up. He smiled, reminiscing about those days.
Then came his own insight: what he enjoyed most wasn’t the exercise—it was the sense of play and community. Joyful movement with others. And then, his own connection: “Wait, I remember reading about a 35+ soccer league in my city.” He immediately looked it up. The season started in four weeks.
Of course, his brain immediately said, “Now I must go to the gym every day to get ready for soccer season.” But as we explored the evidence together—when he felt most at ease, what brought him joy—he made another connection. He felt best when moving outdoors with someone he enjoyed. His own solution: walking around his neighborhood with his partner to prepare for the season.
The shift from fixed solution to adaptable possibilities happened when he could see different sets of data. He found hope not in a rigid plan, but in his ability to flow with what worked.
Expanding Our Data Sources: What Are We Missing?
David’s question stayed with me: “What about data we’re not even considering?” I thought about this during recent New Orleans City Park Planning Commission meetings I attended. When researchers opened the survey to include children and teens, the results shifted completely. None of the adults had ever considered prioritizing play in a park. But as soon as the kids were involved, even the adults had to agree that the ability to play and have fun needed to be a priority.
This reminded me of my own expanded perspective from living in Amsterdam, where I witnessed a society where the bicycle is the number one form of transportation. What seemed like a pipe dream back home was functioning beautifully for decades there. Just today, a client returned from Canada amazed: “It’s incredible to see a society where everyone I encountered could be so kind, curious and polite. I didn’t think that was possible in our day and age.”
As Turbo Thinkers, we can see patterns that linear thinkers miss, but we can also get trapped in our own perspective. How do we open our scope to visualize other paths to success? When we see the bigger picture, we can connect even more dots.
Defining What Matters Most
David’s work gets complicated when administrations change. What’s important may shift according to the chain of command. Is it humans? Houses? Fish? Waterfowl? The priorities can change overnight.
But as Turbo Thinkers, we get to define what’s most important to us. What matters to my client might not matter to another client. What matters to you might not matter to me. Do you value freedom? Financial stability? Health? Connection?
Like preparing for a hurricane, what do we need to protect and safeguard? What do we prioritize? We get to do the same with our time and energy. We get to determine what we want to solve for.
David gave me an example that stuck: If your town floods, are you okay lifting your house for road access? And if that road floods later, could you adapt to boat access? It’s about living comfortably within our range of possibilities, knowing we can adapt.
Moving from Analysis to Action
Here’s where we Turbo Thinkers can get stuck—seeing all the possibilities and solutions, caught in the optimization cycle. I asked David, “How do you know when you’ve reached a good-enough decision to act on it? When do you stop collecting data so you can actually move forward?”
“Well, there are guidelines,” he said. “Sometimes these guidelines take years to develop. We discuss as a team, decide on the guidelines, and hold each other accountable to agreed standards across the entire country.”
I thought of my own simple example: We wear clothes at the dinner table. I set this rule years ago when my son was a toddler running around in superhero underpants. “No shirt, no service” became our rule.
But when we’re on our own, aren’t self-imposed guidelines arbitrary? As Turbo Thinkers, we need accountability partners. We can process with trusted friends what our guidelines might be, then hold each other accountable to standards that serve us.
We need structure, but one that aligns with our values and purpose. Not one forced upon us, but one we identify for ourselves.
From Surviving to Thriving
Some of my clients come to me like I feel during hurricane season—hunkering down, hiding, expecting the worst. Living in fear, crisis to crisis. They’re ready to live their best lives and come out with hope and confidence, but sometimes they only see catastrophic endings ahead and failed attempts behind.
Together, we explore new ways of collecting data. We explore windows of possibilities. We visualize potential outcomes and find evidence of resilience and adaptability they already possess. They discover their own confidence to take next steps, managing their actions, emotions, and thoughts. They find calm and confidence in all scenarios, no matter what weather comes.
Finding Calm in the Storm
David’s engineering perspective gave me something I hadn’t expected—a framework for hope that doesn’t require predicting the future perfectly. We don’t have to execute every scenario immediately. We can accept that we’re incapable of knowing everything or predicting the future. The question becomes: Can you do something about it? No? Then why worry? Yes? Then why worry?
The key to calm and confidence is a sense of hope and agency. We get hope and agency from knowing we have the ability to adapt and be resilient. We get adaptability by looking at a wide variety of data to visualize the most likely outcomes and know how to manage them.
This is what we Turbo Thinkers can do when we’re not caught in our own spiral. We can see patterns others miss. We can make connections in unique ways. We can envisiion possibilities and trust that we’re creative, resourceful, and whole enough to navigate whatever comes.
Questions for Your Own Hurricane Season
As you think about your own spiraling moments and the storms you’re weathering, consider these questions:
What does “prepared enough” look like for you? What would need to be in place for you to feel calm and confident, even facing uncertainty?
Where might you be limiting your data sources? What perspectives or experiences aren’t you considering that might offer new solutions?
When you think about your current challenges, what is your real desired outcome underneath the “should do” solutions your brain offers first?
When did you last feel hope with adaptability? What evidence from your past shows you can navigate uncertainty and find creative solutions?
We don’t have to predict the perfect storm. We just need to build the skills to weather whatever comes our way. And sometimes, in the eye of our own hurricane, we discover that the calm we’re seeking was inside us all along.