“I can be changed by what happens
to me. But I refuse to
be reduced by it.”
–Maya Angelou
What a great definition of resilience! Whatever stage of life and career, there’s no denying that strength of mind and spirit are powerful keys to succeed and overcome life’s hurdles.
From job interviews, applying for promotions, working to get recognition to achieve that promotion, all require tenacity and resilience.
Not everyone passes exams or aces their job interview first time. Most of us have to learn through making mistakes.
Along as we can recognise where we have gone wrong, and have the will to make sure that the same mistake is not made time and time again, that’s progress!
The spirit to keep trying to achieve your goals despite setbacks, that’s true resilience.
All extraordinary achievements come from an ordinary person giving that little bit of extra
effort.
The extra in extraordinary comes from that seed of self-will to try one more time.
To make that final push.
To revise for that extra hour.
To re-read that cv one more time before an interview.
Reading from autobiographical books by champions from the worlds of sport and business, or all have one overriding strength in common.
Resilience.
At some point, all of them have had problems.
Often huge setbacks.
From injuries, failed attempts to ‘win’ to bankruptcy, but they have bounced back.
They have refused to accept defeat on their paths towards their goals.
They have had an inner steel core that has said, ‘You are enough. You will get through this. You will succeed’.
What are the keys to building your own personal bank account of resilience?
We’ve broken them down into 5 bitesize ‘keys’.
Each one will need consistent, hard work to maintain and develop, but together they are a set of keys that will unlock your true potential, and help you achieve strong levels of resilience personally AND professionally!
Let’s turn each ‘key’ and see what it could unlock for you..
What are the five keys
to unlock resilience?
Think of people you feel are resilient. Chances are, they will have some core strengths in common.
1. Inner self-belief/ drive
2. Strong personal sense of emotional well-being
3. Forward/ future focused mindset
4. Solid friend/ relationship/ social network
5. Strong personal sense of their own ‘Physical well-being/ physical health’
For employers and businesses, a crucial strategy to develop in their staff and teams are strong levels of personal resilience.
For example, in a sales / recruitment environment- high levels of individual resilience allows individual consultants to overcome a declined job offer, or failed recruitment campaign, chalk it to experience and crucially move on.
Equally, in a pressurised accounts team, it allows the team to bounce back when a deadline is missed, or accounting error is made.
High levels of resilience will create a positive ‘can do’ mentality in teams to overcome the problem and create the shared impulse/ desire to make sure the same error/ difficulty isn’t repeated.
Individual resilience in a team setting, will encourage an underperforming, overworked, or even an under-challenged employee within a successful team, to gain a fresh and objective perspective on the situation at hand.
Sometimes thats all that’s required to make lasting positive, changes. A simple gear-shift towards a more positive mindset.
So, here are our 5 ‘keys’ to unlock resilience.
Emotional wellbeing
The first and most fundamental key to unlock resilience is emotional wellbeing. This is all about how someone – an employee/ manager – understands and is able to manage their emotions.
This is all about being able to see things from multiple perspectives, able to resolve internal arguments, whilst smoothing conflicts between others, and healthily being able to express emotions.
Resilience is critical in times of stress AND conflict, and it’s crucial to achieve a rational, calm responses to ‘difficult situations’.
When something upsetting or frustrating happens, we recommend trying these four easy steps;
• Stop. Take a second (or 20 🤣), to think about the emotions you’re experiencing. Breathe in, breathe out, take the time to pause. Allow yourself to ‘be in the moment’ and truly ‘be present’. Be properly focused on the issue at hand. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted.
• Remind yourself that emotions are short-lived/ temporary, but your actions/responses won’t be!
• Attempt to identify what exactly upset/frustrated you.
• Explore ways to handle the situation in order to reach the most positive outcome
Looking to the Future
A resilient person is a person focused on their future – ready to embrace change and new challenges.
Until someone invents a time-travelling Tardis or Delorean, nobody can predict the future.
But, it is possible to be prepared to successfully handle unforeseen obstacles. The ability to ‘Look to the future’, is the ability to plan ahead, and to ultimately be ahead.
To achieve this, a person must set themselves a realistic goal – or a ‘SMART‘ objective.
Specific,
Measurable,
Achievable
Relevant,
Time-restricted.
Write down your SMART goal(s), or if you have a few, keep the number achievable.
Write down any achievements that you’re proud of. Anything important that this taught you.
By doing this, if you find yourself feeling unmotivated at any point, you have something real to refer you back to of how adaptable and successful you can be when you put their mind to it.
———————-
Inner drive
Inner drive is all about a person’s ability to focus on themselves on a daily basis. Although a person shouldn’t put too much pressure on themselves, they can do the following things on a daily basis:
• Be ‘in the moment’ – in other words, use their own self-awareness as a guide
• Practice managing thoughts, emotions, and actions
• See constructive criticism and setbacks as opportunities for development. Learn not to take criticism personally, but see it as an opportunity to grow. To improve. Actually encourage constructive feedback if you face a work criticism from your boss.
• Write a to-do list that keeps you on top of your tasks and holds you accountable
• Focus on your core values
A person’s core values can form a major part of their personal identity, and include the things that are most important to them. If they make choices that deviate from their values, they are likely to lose motivation. As a result, their mental health could suffer.
Knowing what they believe in can allow their core values to help them make decisions that drive them to succeed.
Adopt good physical health habits
As we’ve mainly focused on ‘fluffy’ things like thoughts and emotions, it might be a surprise that physical health is a definite key to resilience! It is vitally important!
To truly take care of their physical health, a person needs to eat properly, get enough sleep, stay hydrated, and actively listen to their body. By maintaining good physical health habits, it will give a person the energy and drive to maintain all of the other keys to resilience.
When a person takes care of their body on a daily basis, it sets a reminder of something many people often forget – that small, consistent improvements stand the test of time in comparison to sudden, grand gestures.
Relationships
A person’s relationships can drastically improve their resilience, and their life overall. By having a healthy social network, it becomes far easier to develop and maintain resilience, even if the social circle of friendship is small. Quality not quantity counts in relationships.
This means having trustworthy people to lean on when a person needs support, advice, or someone to listen.
Those looking to develop their resilience should ask themselves:
• When was the last time they were stressed at work?
• Did someone help them?
• If so, who was it?
A person must recognise those who are loyal and helpful, to be able to recognise and identify their meaningful relationships. If they found that the answer to their question was that no-one helped them, think – did they reach out for help? Or did they keep it to themselves and find that things escalated – to a bad day or even a bad week?
But a person also needs to make time and emotional space for others – this is all part of being resilient. Being genuinely interested in what others have to say and showing them that they can lean on you in hard times too. This will create genuine, lasting relationships built on trust and empathy – and it’s an enormous source of strength. Good social connections give a sense of belonging and it will increase happiness, enjoyment – and in turn – it will reduce susceptibility to stress and increase a person’s ability to handle adversity.
So there you go.
If you follow the above consistently – you should notice that your average mood will be more positive. Your relationships will be happier.
Your work colleagues and job may become easier to manage.
Who knows? You may be ready to go for that promotion, new job or take that exam!
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