Resilience

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Feeling a bit stressed?  High levels of personal stress within and outside of the workplace are commonplace.  Stress is not going away; developing your resilience skills will help you deal with your daily stressors.  Resilience is being able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. Resilient people can experience both negative and positive emotions even in difficult or painful situations. They can find potential or value in most challenges. The following characteristics will help you develop your resilience.

Filtering information and interpreting your world

  • Personal Responsibility – Believing your success is determined by your talents and motivation instead of external factors such as luck or good timing.
  • Realistic Optimism – Positively seeing the world, while remaining grounded in reality. It is noticing and appreciating positive experiences whenever and wherever they occur, not taking things for granted.
  • Personal Beliefs– Seeking and embracing the sense that life has meaning and purpose. This can be achieved through religious observance, spirituality, or devotion to a particular value system or cause.

Handling challenges

  • Self-Assurance– Having confidence that you can successfully perform tasks or behaviors. Challenge your reflexive thoughts and negative self-talk; change emotional patterns, restrain your negative thinking, and stoke positive thinking.
  • Self-Composure – Managing your stress and remaining calm under pressure. Resilience Use strategic positive thinking to increase gratitude, which then builds resiliency.
  • Self-Care – Good physical health, including a regular routine of healthy habits, is foundational to mental and emotional resilience. This includes taking mental breaks and time to relax, especially being outdoors and surrounding yourself with people you enjoy. Research suggests that spending just 20 minutes outside leads to more expansive and open thinking.
  • Problem-Solving– Planning and resolving problems effectively. One strategy to fostering a learner mindset is to use “question thinking” (“What is useful here?’ or ‘What are my available choices?’), as opposed to ‘Judger Questions’ (‘What’s wrong?’ or ‘Why me?’)
  • Goal Orientation– Setting appropriate goals and monitoring your progress on those goals.  The more you can consider challenges as opportunities to learn, grow, and develop, the more resilient you are likely to be.

Communicating and connecting with others  

  • Courageous Conversations– Communicating with others candidly and courageously.
  • Social Support– Leveraging a supportive social network.  Being of service to others is a potent way of increasing resilience.  Studies have shown that serotonin (the neurotransmitter associated with feelings of happiness and well-being) is used more efficiently by people who have just engaged in an act of kindness. There is a cumulative effect to continued acts of kindness and the serotonin boosts that accompany them. You can fill up your well of resiliency when you consistently add to it. When times get difficult, you can draw upon this well

What are you going to do today to start depositing into your resiliency account?

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