5 ways for building resilience
As we go through life, we will all experience and overcome our own challenges in both our personal and working lives. The reality is, the world doesn’t care how sensitive or resilient you are. When challenges appear, they are there to test you, otherwise it wouldn’t be a challenge. The more resilient you are in these situations, the easier it will become for you to accept challenges when they present themselves and in doing so, grow through experiences.
Mental Toughness
Resilience and/or Mental Toughness can be described as “A collection of skills which lead to an individual’s peak performance that enables them to successfully cope whilst under pressure”
You can be extremely talented and/or experienced but lack the Mental Toughness when faced with adversity. To become mentally tough, you need to have some skill, some experience and most importantly, confidence in your own abilities.
Good vs. Bad Stress
No Stress - If things are calm at work, you may find this enjoyable after a busy period, at least in the beginning. After a short amount of time, you may begin to feel bored and unmotivated to do work as there is no pressure to do so.
Good Stress - There is an optimal number of projects or tasks that need to be completed. This “healthy” workload keeps individuals energised and focused and allows them to work at optimal performance.
Bad Stress - This is the result of an ‘unhealthy’ workload. Where there are more challenges that need to be completed than hands available to do them. This coupled with complicated systems or processes to achieve those tasks can lead to feeling fatigued, frustrated and - if not dealt with quickly - burnout.
5 Ways...for Building Resilience:
As we discussed, the world doesn’t care how sensitive or resilient you are. When challenges present themselves, your ability to operate at optimal performance under a “healthy” level of stress will show how resilient you are in these situations.
To increase your resilience and maintain optimal performance, we have suggested the below development areas:
Emotional Intelligence - Increase your self-awareness and ability to identify and adapt to the emotions of others. Being able to recognise these emotions and understand the level of stress you are under, will enable you to take decisive action to adapt and/or relieve stress.
Time Management - Prioritise your most important and urgent tasks first and leave the less important and non-urgent tasks till later. Knowing where you are with specific projects or tasks will enable you to effectively manage your time towards completing certain actions.
Positive Mindset - Problems are likely to come up and sometimes, they may seem impossible to overcome, at least at first. Someone with a positive mindset will look at these problems as challenges, in the sense that although they seem difficult, they can be overcome. Get into the habit of viewing situations with this attitude as it will push you to look for solutions, rather than ruling out the problem altogether.
Nurture Relationships - The truth is, you’re not going to be an expert in everything. You will have specific areas you specialise in and when faced with a challenge outside of your expertise, it’s always handy to have someone you can turn to for support. Dedicate time to networking with other experts and building bridges. You don’t need to be their best friend but keep a friendly open channel of communication so that should the occasion arise, you can ask them for help.
Accept Risk - In order to become more resilient, you need to accept risk, specifically, the risk of failure in order to succeed. When challenges present themselves, you need to accept that the worst case scenario is that you may not overcome them. Once you have accepted this, you can then start strategising and formulating a series of actions to overcome them. If you do this enough times, when future challenges arise, you will be more willing to take them on.
If you’re interested in similar topics, please check out “Entrepreneurial Thinking” category.
