Boost your Resilience

Resilience – what it is and how to increase your resilience.

We are in changing times. The idea of a job for life has gone. Politics is unstable. Each of us experiences knock-backs. Our ability to bounce back from these disturbances is our resilience.

Examples of things that happen that can knock us back are:

• failing to achieve something you set out to do

• an unhelpful or negative inner monologue

• redundancy or difficult change at work

• change in relationship status

• dealing with loss

• having to lead in challenging circumstances

• dealing with conflict

• losing your sense of purpose

Resilience comes form the Latin resilio meaning to leap or spring back, or to rebound. A common metaphor is that of a tree that bends in the wind yet remains upright after the wind has subsided. In ecological terms, resilience is that capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly.

There are things each of us can do to boost our resilience. And the time to put these things in place is now rather than wait until crisis strikes. Here’s some thoughts on resilience to get the conversation going.

Resilience test

How resilient are you? How resilient would the people that know you well say you are? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? How well have you dealt with setbacks before? What have you learned from setbacks? Reflecting on these questions will give you a sense of how resilient you are. Give yourself a score out of ten for your resilience with 10 being highly resilient and 1 being very low resilience.

If you scored 1, great! You can set about increasing it.

If you scored 10, great! You still might want to read on for tips to maintain that state.

Learning from failures

We all fail. It is part of exploring our capabilities. Failure is great because it gives us an opportunity to learn and achieve more next time or an encouragement to try something different.

Resilience is about bouncing back quickly. When you experience a failure, write down all the things that have gone wrong. All of them. Then, looking at the list, write down the things you have learned from them, the things you would do differently next time. Then tear the piece of paper up and throw it away, shred it maybe because you don’t need it. The learning will be within you ready to use, everything else, gone – shredded - you’ve no need for it.

Dealing with change

Wherever there is change there is opportunity. It might not be obvious at first, but opportunities are there. An unexpected change at work could provide the kick you need to take control of your situation. When change happens, take some time to think about what is changing and then think about your resilient response, identifying the opportunities that exist for you. Write down the opportunities. Go through the list twice, the second time challenge yourself to think of different opportunities – what would you do if you knew you could not fail? Think through how you are going to manage yourself during the change. What attitude are you going to adopt? How are you going to behave?

Reflect on what you have identified. Talk it over with a friend. How do you feel now?

These are just two exercises you can do to increase your resilience.

I’d love to hear what’s worked for you. For more ideas on how to boost your resilience, drop me a line and let’s have a chat.