We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth Miner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
My resilience comes from watching others overcome, persist and live fully whatever that means to them in that moment.
I was raised by a terminally ill mother, she had four cancers and one catastrophic illness throughout the 22 years from her first diagnosis that really should have ended her time here. Watching her suffer, recover, thrive and choose what defined her definitely shaped me.
I was seven at her first diagnosis so initially these were formative years, then it was just our lives, every cold could turn into a disaster, every few years a check up would turn our lives upside down. She kept living her life in between, she finished college, built a career and showed me that life is to be lived.
I became a young mother and had my own struggles to face. Raising two children as a single mother living below the poverty line was challenging to say the least. I had been groomed to find a way or make a way, and I was able to make a life for my little family.
I grew up with an acute awareness that our tomorrows are not guaranteed. This one underlying current has run through how I choose to live my life, what I choose to focus on and my ability to act in the moment.
Steve Jobs once said that knowing you are going to die one day is the best motivation to do something now. I agree, and I have weathered many storms by knowing that if they don’t take me out, I will come through stronger. It doesn’t make things easier, it simply allows me to feel there is something to be gained.
Resilience is born not only of weathering storms, but learning how to use them to fuel you. I use all the battles and challenges I have come through to fuel me for my next ones, because there will be more for sure. I use my knowledge of what I have overcome to give me strength to face what lies ahead. I recognize all the growth I’ve achieved each time I’ve gone through something and it gives me the courage and excitement to see what is on the other side of any darkness.
I am grateful to my mother for unknowingly teaching me how to be resilient by her example.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I spent 20+ years as a corporate paralegal working with small and boutique law firms It was during those years that I was able to work with entrepreneurs and small businesses and get to learn about the intricacies of their companies. I eventually moved to multi-national corporations like Thermo Fisher Scientific and Apple, Inc., where I focused on international corporate subsidiaries.
Although I credit my paralegal career for raising my family, there came a point where the work I was doing felt hollow. I had been working part-time on the side as a life coach and most of my clients ended up deciding they wanted to create businesses.
With the knowledge and experience I had, I transitioned to mostly business coaching in 2015. After one year of full-time, self-employment, I decided to become a digital nomad and moved to Panama, Central America. I spent the following 8 years living around the world creating communities of entrepreneurs and helping people build their businesses and lifestyle to what their dreams are.
I’m currently based in Boston, MA, although I’m not done being nomadic, and I work with my clients from around the world and also locally in Boston. While here I founded an online group, The Entrepreneur Circle, for support and resource sharing for budding business owners and Boston Beauty Coalition, a community for beauty and fashion professionals serving the Boston area. I have published.a book to help entrepreneurs use emotional intelligence to succeed through the hardships of entrepreneurship called, The Entrepreneur Advantage, and am working on my next, to help sales professionals use emotional intelligence for their career.
I love being in the front row seat to entrepreneurs making their dreams come true. I am grateful every day for the work I get to be a part of.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The most important thing I think all people need to succeed in business and life in general is emotional intelligence. I strongly believe that the better you understand yourself, how you make decisions, what influences your preferences, your views and your reactions, the better you can be in all areas of your life.
Once you recognize behaviors and reactions in yourself, you can start to give more grace to others and work better in some of the most difficult situations because you have more insight to what might be involved in the circumstance you are in. I have worked with people with strong emotional intelligence and weak or non-existent emotional intelligence, it makes a huge difference!
All things stem from one’s ability to grow so next in line is a growth mindset. The ability to be flexible and open to change is critical to happiness. Life is ever changing and those who resist change or fight against it suffer more and ultimately, as leaves on a tree must fall in autumn, change will happen regardless of desire.
Empathy is the final of the three most critical skills that have helped me in life and business. This skill accepts people as they are and instead of changing them to fit a mold, looks to celebrate who and where there are at any given moment. This benefits everyone and brings more depth and color to the world we live in.
Everything stems from having a deep emotional intelligence and if there is one area I encourage anyone to focus on to improve the quality of their life it is to explore how they show up and intersect with the world around them.
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
I am often asked by clients to help them work on their weaknesses. Often the belief is that a weakness needs to be strengthened to excel and be successful.
My philosophy is that it is best to clearly know one’s strengths and perceived weaknesses and then to evaluate them. What makes them a strength? Is a weakness something you find limiting or is your perceived weakness something society has told you was not adequate?
Look, there are no mistakes in humans! Everyone is unique which means that some people have certain strengths and others have different ones. As Albert Einstein said, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”
I often feel that strengthening a perceived weakness is like trying to teach a fish to climb a tree. You would never do that, fish can’t do it, so why focus on what is difficult or maybe not in one’s zone of genius or even capability?
I encourage strengthening one’s gifts and backfilling for your weaknesses. It is a philosophy that I know many successful people have employed whether knowingly or not, and it serves each genius well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.elizabethminer.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethminerofficial
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minerelizabeth
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ElizabethLMiner
- Other: Also have a website for Boston Beauty Coalition. https://www.bostonbeautycoalition.com and instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bostonbeautycoalition. The Entrepreneur Advantage is available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and your local independent book store worldwide.
Image Credits
photo credit: JFP Memories
