Q. I've worked hard, done well and always try to aim for perfect, but it doesn't seem to matter in our current economy. I lay awake at night double-checking whether I made any mistakes. How do I make sure I don't do anything that puts my job at risk?

A. Even if you stop sleeping entirely, you can't guarantee your job won't be at risk. You can guarantee that if you obsess about perfection, your anxiety will make mistakes likely.

Many of us believe perfect people don't have bad things happen to them. The trouble is, life never offered this bargain. We made up that it was available as a way of coping with the unbearable anxiety that comes with being human.

Most of us realize that, even if we were to live a life of complete happiness, it would end badly because we die.

If we walk through the world keenly aware of the transitory nature of everything around us, we get nervous. We realize it is not a question of whether we will lose something we care about, but of when.

I often tell clients that everything and everyone in their life is on loan from the universal library. We don't even get a heads-up on when the people or things we cherish are due and need to be returned.

Living moment by moment and day by day with this awareness can make you deeply grateful. You will also find you have more courage and live more fully because you know you don't know when change will come.

Obviously, perfection is no more a protection against change, loss or adversity than it is against gravity.

So my clients often ask, what can protect me during times like this, when we cannot afford to be unconscious of the certainty of change and the uncertainty of what will change? What can protect you is learning the skill of resiliency.

Studies on adversity done in the last couple of decades have shown that people who thrive in the workplace possess resiliency. These people share the following traits: Continued...