The Barbosa Resiliency Quotient: Lessons in Grit from the Lab to Life
This passage comes from Chapter 10 of our upcoming book, Beyond the Lab Coats. It introduces the Barbosa Resiliency Quotient (BRQ), our way of measuring resilience at work and in life — equal parts humor and hard-earned lessons.
Chapter 10: The Heat in the Kitchen: The Barbosa Resiliency Quotient (BRQ)
A Corporate Survival Scale for the Bold and the Brave
Let’s face it, most of us spend more time at work than we do with our families, our hobbies, or our bed. Ideally, those hours should be mentally stimulating, emotionally fulfilling, and, dare I say it, fun. For many though, work feels more like a recurring spin class run by a manager with a megaphone and zero chill.
People often ask me, “How are you always smiling?” Truth is, I struggle too, missed promotions, lab meltdowns, end-of-year reviews that read like lukewarm Yelp posts. I’ve learned that a positive mindset is like fuel for the “fire in the belly”, it’s what gets you through the hard days, and sometimes even sets you apart.
Some days, resilience means channeling your inner Rocky Balboa while “No Easy Way Out” blares in your head, and refusing to let one more lab disaster, bad end of year review, or skipped promotion knock you out of the ring. With resiliency comes adaptability and the ability to adapt is well known in scientific circles as the Darwin rule. Resilience is a precursor of and leads to adaptability, and if Darwin taught us anything, it’s not the strongest who survives, but the most adaptable. In corporate life, that truth is gospel. In our world, resilience isn’t just a mental skill, it’s also a technical one. Ingredient gets banned? Reformulate without losing taste or texture. Supplier goes under? Re-source and re-validate without delaying launch. Adaptability is survival, both for products and for people.
To help put this into context, Yelena and I, lifelong food scientists and self-appointed resilience anthropologists, have cooked up our own version of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index (yes, the one dreamed up by entomologist Justin Schmidt and made internet-famous by Coyote Peterson’s bug sting escapades). Only instead of bullet ants and tarantula hawks, our index measures corporate and life curveballs that test your grit, patience, and sense of humor. Except ours is less venomous (mostly), more relatable, and aimed at helping you grow, not just survive.
Introducing...
The Barbosa Resiliency Quotient (BRQ™)
A light-hearted, yet frighteningly accurate, diagnostic tool to measure your ability to take a career punch to the gut and keep moving forward.
This isn’t meant to scare you (okay, maybe a little). It’s here to help you prepare, like a good Boy Scout, or a parent before back-to-school shopping. Think of it as your psychological weight-training for when the career barbell gets too heavy to lift alone. Use the following scale to test how resilient you currently are to career curve balls. For example, “Resigning with no next job lined up has a Barbosa Resiliency Quotient of 8.5, it demands courage, but can be a powerful career pivot and embody the ultimate growth behavior.” The higher the score the more resiliency you build but comes with a “tough experience” tradeoff.
Level 0.5 – The Mandatory Ice Breaker
That awkward moment in a meeting when someone says, “Let’s go around and say two truths and a lie!” You feel a strong urge to fake a Wi-Fi outage. Your palms sweat. This is low-stakes discomfort training. The career equivalent of dipping shrimp into something you thought was tartar sauce but turned out to be horseradish, you’ll survive, but your sinuses may never forget. Mild discomfort, but a necessary first rep in your BRQ training. If you break out into a sweat at the words 'Ice Breaker,' you may want to start working on your resiliency.
