Turning a Bad Situation Into a Positive

Timeshare salespeople who must deal with rejection almost daily; resort managers trying to placate irate guests or protect the property from assault from all sorts of threats; financial department employees caught between debtors, collections personnel, and lenders – who suffers more stress? We recently came across a book by Sheryl Cattell, Turning Adversity Into Purpose, a self-help book written by a resort veteran which can help. Following are excerpts from her May 2023 Resort Trades Learning Center interview with Publisher Sharon Scott Wilson, RRP:

SHARON: Welcome to the Resort Trades Learning Center. I’m your host, Sharon Scott Wilson, and today, we are going to drill down on how to turn adversity into a positive.

Many of you may be acquainted with Sheryl Cattell from her position as an executive with a major timeshare development company and, prior to that Travelocity. Recently, she launched her own company, which you can find out more about at Allmaya.com. She is a a master certified life coach, a LinkedIn trainer, speaker, a writer, and published author. You can find her “LinkedIn Minutes” column in many issues of Resort Trades, and a number of her other videos on our YouTube channel.

Welcome, Sheryl!

SHERYL: I couldn’t have done it without a lot of help from my friends, including you and the team at Resort Trades.

SHARON: Well, thank you so much. We do appreciate your many contributions.

To begin with, what made you leave the industry or leave the corporate world and start your own business?

SHERYL: What made me leave? Let’s see, I think it was three years ago….Well, yeah! COVID-19!

I was let go, along with a lot of my peers. I saw this as a devastating development. And yet, here I am to say that a lot of good has come about in my life as a result of COVID-19. I never thought I would say that after I lost both of my parents early on in the pandemic. It felt like all of this negative was piling up. But what I learned is that, actually, I was growing my wings. There was still good to come from something that looked so awful.

SHARON: Turning Adversity Into Purpose is such a good title. Why did you feel the urge to write the book?

SHERYL: Thank you for cheering! The book actually chronicles my journey from leaving a corporate job of some 40 years, and doing what I love the most, following my passion. Some would say ‘following my purpose.’

I find myself now teaching digital marketing at Florida Atlantic University. (Go Owls!) And I’m also a mental health coach. So, the idea of turning adversity into purpose came partially from my own journey, but also in guiding hundreds of clients that I’ve spoken to in the last three years, and talking about their challenges and their adversities…their crises.

I work for Lyra health now [a firm that provides mental health services to businesses for their employees] and I coach private clients, as well, helping them take a situation that may not look so great, and finding the purpose in it; finding the gift. So that’s what the book is all about.

There’s a wonderful story about a butterfly that illustrates how the struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow. And so don’t give up. And that as a mental health coach, that’s really what I encourage my clients to do, is to see whatever struggle they’re going through as an opportunity to grow. In the case of the butterfly, the story of metamorphosis is about a boy who finds a butterfly cocoon. And he brings it home to watch it emerge, right, this is a miracle right to go from a worm to this beautiful, colorful flying insect. And so, he watches it for several days. And finally, it starts to move. And then the butterfly actually, after many hours, finally gets one of its little tiny legs out and the boy is getting really impatient and feeling awful for this poor butterfly. So he goes in and gets a pair of scissors and clips open the cocoon.

And what comes out what emerges is an insect that has a bloated body, with little tiny wings. And what the boy didn’t know, and what we don’t know sometimes as we have to watch our children or our employees go through struggles, is that that’s part of the way that they get their wings. So, the butterfly as it’s struggling to get out of the cocoon is pushing all the fluids in its body and growing its wings over many hours of struggle and trials and trepidation. What the boy didn’t know is you can’t save someone from that. And we can’t save ourselves by going and hiding in a hole or running away or getting angry. It’s really about embracing that struggle, and learning the gift that it has, in other words, getting our wings.

SHARON: In your book, you have a list of the Top Ten Tips for Overcoming Adversity. Would you mind explaining these in more detail?

SHERYL: The book is full of exercises and list. I think almost every chapter has an activity that you can do and apply immediately in your life.

Humor is my number one, I love to inject humor. I think even when I was meeting with the people who had to let me go, I had them laughing. And I shared a poem with them, even as they told me that, they were letting several 1000 people go. It was nothing personal. But I have them laughing at the end of it. And that, to me is just a gift, such a gift.

Another thing you can do is prepare, make sure that you have done all you can do to prepare for the worst case/best case scenarios.

Remember who you are, remember what adversities you’ve overcome in the past. And if you’re like me, I’m somebody who has a growth mindset. If you tell me something, give me some feedback. I am going to grab that and go for it and learn how can I make that there’s no such thing as failure, only feedback.

That is a growth mindset. You can be somebody who wants to embrace anything that happens, any criticisms, and learn from it and make it better next time.
Number five is one of my favorites. We call it ‘name it to tame it’. One thing that still comes in and visits every once in a while is perfectionism. So, I named her Judge Judy, because anything I did, she would judge. “It’s not good enough. You should have spent more time. You should have done this.” Nothing was good enough. And so, by naming her I realized I wasn’t her. It was just a bad habit I had. And it stole so much joy.

Making peace with yourself means to rely on unwavering faith, knowing that everything is really unfolding for the best.

Embrace what’s coming so that you can expand your awareness, expand your understanding.

Be tenacious, definitely something you have to be as a digital marketer. If at first it doesn’t work, ‘Ctrl Alt Delete,’ and try again.

And remember why you’re here. Remember your own passion,
And then of course, as one of my favorite TV shows, Ted Lasso, posts in his locker room, “Believe.”

Now, the great thing, Sharon, is that there are huge gifts that you get from adversity. Number one, we had a group when we were talking about adversity in our lives. At the end, our facilitator said, Now, if you had a choice, and you could avoid that, would you? And 100 percent of the people in the room said, “No, because it gives me gives me an empathy that I would never have had. It gives me a taste of my own humanity.”

SHARON: I learned a lot about calming myself, learning to calm the negative emotions. Anytime you have a negative emotion, you’re operating out of fear, uncertainty and doubt. You called it “FUD.”

SHERYL: It’s either fight or flight, that’s your reptilian brain that’s at the base of your brainstem. That’s really what’s going on. And we naturally fall back into embracing that like a child. We want to bring our emotions back into ourselves. And now we can start using our executive functions, the prefrontal cortex, our creativity, our sympathy, our curiosity, our problem solving, and those can’t operate when our fear fight or flight is pumping toxins.

SHARON: FUD! I love that. And as you remember from the timeshare and hospitality industry, and I’m sure every business, there’s often a lot of pressure which can certainly lead to the production of FUD. Dealing with customers, as well as with internal staff, we often can build up stress. How do you suggest we turn adversity into purpose in the business environment?

SHERYL: One example I’m very familiar with is the rejection our salespeople face so often. As you know, they’re on the front line. They’re critical to the success of any timeshare company. So, how do we frame that? Do we focus on the negative rejection? Or, as my favorite, wildly successful salesperson used to say, “I got rejected! I’m only nine more away from a sale! I love it.” And they would rejoice and celebrate every single rejection because they knew it was another step closer to success.

SHARON: When it comes to using the precepts in your book in the business environment, if a leader of a group or organization, wants to instill them into the corporate culture or the group think, how do you suggest they go about doing that?

SHERYL: One way is to lead by example. Another is through books, webinars, or meetings. We used to have a monthly award for people that emulated the values that we were trying to promote. And so that’s one way but I think also having leadership, that’s a role model, they’re showing the way.

Another thing that I think you want to do is to admit and actually celebrate our humaneness. Encouraging humaneness, encouraging people to be authentic, supporting them wherever they are, whatever at whatever place they’re at is key. And I think that you give loyalty and, as a result, you get loyalty in return.

SHARON: Sheryl, you’re such a positive person. Thank you so much for sharing your inspirational thoughts. And to our viewers, thank you for watching!

Be sure to look online for this and other videos at YouTube.com/Resort Trades.