When you are resilient you have a keen awareness of how to “bounce back” from stress, difficulty or change.
When we hear inspiring stories of resilient people overcoming adversity the word resilience conjures up traumatic images of death of a loved one, personal health crisis, homelessness, or tales of survival. Resilience is called for in many other contexts. You might think of resilience as the ability to face problems you have endured such as weeks or months of temporary unemployment, working with an unpleasant boss or bullying, but it also takes mental resilience to make quick and vital decisions when someone is hurt or dying in front of you. It would require resilience to overcome domestic violence or undergo spinal surgery and learn to walk again. Entrepreneurs might think about their company’s resilience through uncertain economic times. Athletes might think of the team’s resilience in being able to bounce back after a grueling competition and loss. The need for resilience also apples to situational changes or misfortunes in day to day life that can cause anxiety, impact relationships, or how you enjoy life and work.
Resilience is your ability to adapt well in the face of any change. Resilience does not mean that you do not feel the intensity of the struggle or the emotional distress when faced with changes in your life. In the face of hardship, you may even allow yourself to feel bad and let your emotions out. You may start out by recoiling in the corner of your sofa, sobbing uncontrollably, pounding your fists on your thighs, or sitting in silence while experiencing your worst feelings. But, you do not let negative emotions take over. Resilience means you put present difficulties into perspective to rise above the suffering of the moment to optimistically get on with life. Resiliency is more than bouncing back; it is your ability to grow stronger and wiser from any situation. Every time you adjust to change, you learn to improvise and learn new coping skills that you will quickly be able to apply in future situations.
Apart from transitioning from infancy to adulthood, here are some common examples of significant change that you may have already experienced with great resilience:
You may or may not be aware of your resilience, what skills you utilized, or how long it took to get through any change you have experienced. But, you did get through change, and often, too. On some level you embraced what was happening and here you are today, a different person because of all the changes and resilience in your life.
We think you will realize that no matter how much you want it to be otherwise, when it come to change these things are true:
Given these truths, being resilient or having strategies to enhance how you handle change is important to your overall well-being.
One of the things we all have to learn the hard way is change is inevitable; it can be challenging and stressful, but it is also an opportunity for us to experience something new and to grow as a person. it is literally impossible to grow without changing.
Resiliency should be a skill in everyone’s tool chest. Unfortunately, resiliency is not a subject taught in schools. Reading inspirational clichés or a few paragraphs on the subject does not give a person the skills. It is easy to teach a child how to boil an egg. Change and resiliency cannot be explained as explicitly as a cooking class, and unfortunately many people miss that life lesson in their experiences growing up. If it were easy to teach, maybe most people would be less fearful of change.
Most of us deal with minor stumbling blocks practically. The plumbing does not work, we call in an expert. A snow storm delays a flight, we buy a book and wait it out. Oops, I overcooked dinner, burned some of it, in fact – no problem, just order pizza. Major setbacks – a sudden illness, job loss, break-up of a relationship – can be more of an emotional letdown and what we need is resiliency to get beyond the hardship and take something meaningful from the experience.
Learning to be more resilient is learnable. It starts with the following:
These three aspects of resiliency are so interconnected and essential to your well-being.
The elements of well-being that allow you to be resilient and thrive are also the key components of what gives you satisfaction in life. For resilience you need to know how to answer this fundamental question: What gives meaning to your life?
When you know what is best in life you can be unhappy about some difficult life circumstance and at the same time engage in something that makes you feel good. You can carve out time in your day for pleasant things and doing what you love.
What is best in life? Is it a quantity of pleasures and freedom from pain? Your morning brew, eating chocolate, a back rub, a sunset reflecting off a lake, listening to your favourite music, the scent of freshly baked apple pie? These are sensory pleasures that can be quantified as significantly better than stubbing your toe, having a migraine headache, breaking your arm, or being hungry. However enjoyable sensory pleasures are, they are short-lived and transitory. They involve little if any thinking. Is the best in life something loftier – the pursuit of wealth, power, status, and beauty? You can put significant effort into dignified goals and measure them, but are they the most gratifying?
When we ask about the best in life we prefer to speak about how you thrive as a human being. What is best for your mental, physical health, and spiritual health? What is best in life for you and what makes you flourish?
What works for another person may not work for you. What is best in life is deeply personal. Only you can distinguish between your higher gratifying experiences and lower pleasures to determine where your own appreciation and contentment lie, what produces the great amount of long-term good feeling, what makes you flourish as a person, and what gives meaning to your life.
Ask these questions to generate ideas of what gives meaning to your life:
Some people worry they cannot achieve something commendable like feeding the hungry of the world or researching a disease. They worry that a lofty purpose sounds self-serving. However, living a life of meaning does not need to be an earth-shattering cause. It is about recognizing your own gifts and using them to contribute something personally meaningful to the world around you. You can find purpose in raising children, playing music for others to enjoy, helping a friend solve a problem, teaching children to read, volunteering to coach in minor sports, working for a good company, or simply bringing more joy into the lives of those around you. Living a life of meaning can be about helping your co-workers without seeking anything in return, your devotion to your faith, or aligning your life to help change the lives of other people, even in small ways.
Study this list of “abilities” that are central to resiliency.
1. Critical Thinking (being able to analyze facts to form a judgement)
2. Mental Agility (able to think on your feet and solve problems)
3. Flexible Thinking (your ability to shift thinking or attention in response to a switch in rules)
4. Self-awareness (clear understanding of your own thoughts, emotions, qualities, behaviours, strengths, and weaknesses; how to improve and use them to help yourself and others grow)
5. Mindfulness (attention on the moment, allowing yourself time to be curious, accepting and stimulated by an experience). The practice of mindfulness helps you to face suffering and transform it in order to bring well-being to the forefront.
6. Self-empathy (treating yourself with kindness by tuning in to what you are feeling; not self-pity, but a form of perspective taking because you look at yourself as if you are a third person engaging in compassionate observation)
7. Self-compassion (rather than being critical or judging yourself, you stop and are mindful to take action to comfort and care for yourself in the moment of difficulty, because you realize that suffering, failure and imperfection are part of the shared human experience)
8. Self-care (your choice to prioritize and care for your mind, body and spirit)
9. Self-regulation (controlling behaviors, emotions, and thoughts in the pursuit of long-term goals)
10. Growth mindset (you believe you can do hard things and can get smarter, better, or more skilled through sustained effort)
11. Reflective learning (ability to integrate and apply prior and current learning to new situations)
12. Problem solving skills (you can solve issues quickly and effectively)
13. Optimism (ability to remain realistic, hopeful, happy while encouraging others to be cheerful)
14. Connection (nurturing supportive personal and working relationships, using effective communication skills to support others to feel better, or mobilize their help when needed)
15. Curiosity (you desire to know or learn for the sake of knowing and to be fascinated with new information and experiences.
Learning how to effectively use these skills will also enhance your well-being and life satisfaction because these skills fundamental to resiliency are intrinsic elements of well-being and happiness.
Change is the common denominator of all the various adverse situations you may encounter in your life. Change is always external, and it will happen whether people agree to it or not. You can count on things to change. Everything in our lives and on our planet is cyclical. Change is a constant. Therefore you must learn to be resilient to handle change. Resilience starts with understanding and embracing change so you can learn effective ways to deal with changes as they occur. Basically that means you learn to work smartly and stay centered and sane no matter what happens around you or in your life.
In the beginning, it may not be easy to embrace change in your life or in your job because it means you also have to embrace the fear that accompanies change. However there are other constants in your life that will counteract that fear. One is choice and the other is the many opportunities for curiosity and learning. Embrace those constants, too.
#1 - Change is a Constant
All around you, change is constant. Our lives are cyclical. People, love, pets, workplace stability come and go. Every experience, no matter how good or bad, changes.
Your attention is drawn to obvious or sudden changes in the weather, economy, technology and your immediate environment, but you may not perceive subtle shifts in society, friends, family, or your body. Sometimes you only see change when you look backwards in time. It is when you look back that you recognize that some changes were really necessary and good.
Most of of the time you handle many relatively small changes on a daily basis, and manage to keep making it through your days relatively unscathed. When you stop to pay attention you may notice that change impacts all of us differently. When change occurs something transitional happens in your mind as you go through the phases of change. Some people are energized by change. For other people, who lack resilience, change is exhausting and disheartening, something to be endured.
Are you able to recognize that there will always be change of some sort in your life and that it is out of your control? Do you know how change affects you? Are you able to see that change is providing many opportunities for you to experience something new and to grow and evolve as a person? Your answers to these questions indicate how resilient you are.
Change is Demanding
All things ebb and flow, including success and failure. There is no greater widespread evidence of this than we see in business. Today, the pace of change is accelerating, making it difficult for every business sector – from financial services to manufacturing and technology – to cope with a dynamic environment that is unpredictable and complex. Organizations that cannot alter their perspective and adapt to constant change, encounter serious problems.
Changes in business place new pressures on the individuals who work there. In the past, leaders predicted threats to their business and planned strategies using a top-down leadership approach, sending out compliance memos expecting employees to fall in line and tough it out. That kind of manipulative strategy does not work well today. Employees expect mutual trust, accountability and psychological safety from their employers. They pursue skills for upward mobility and expect to be empowered by their abilities. Leadership also has different expectations. Employees are expected to be comfortable with the organization’s change efforts, and adapt to act quickly and decisively. If you have ever experienced these kinds of pressures, you know those are huge demands and how being resilient either hindered or benefitted you.
Changes in business place new pressures on consumers who have to deal with price inflation, different hours of operation, loss of services, lack of product, or waiting on hold to speak to customer service. Different challenges than employees face, but still difficult. Consumers have to be resilient in response to these changes. Otherwise we would be in constant stress.
Change is Stressful for People
Because change is challenging it is stressful. It is a normal reaction for humans to feel insecure or scared of change. Change causes inner turmoil and stress.
Not all stress is bad. The right kind of stress can help you focus your attention to work smarter to get things done. In the midst of change, however, prolonged stress or heightened stress makes it difficult to remain calm and focused. When change happens in the workplace, you may not easily re-imagine the work you will do. You may end up sacrificing accuracy and thoughtfulness for immediacy. You may even resist change or experience a fragmented or immature response. You may have grown so complacent; you let the stress of the situation overwhelm you.
Do you want to be stuck while others change? In failing to adapt and be resilient, you impede your ability to move forward. You may also hinder the growth of the organization and its efforts to compete with faster-evolving companies. Neither situation is good for you. Unfortunately, inspirational clichés and emails of reassurance from the CEO will not deter those feelings of uncertainty you can experience. With constant change and no mechanism for dealing with mounting stress, you may end up facing a compounding problem in life and at work. Some of the strategies you are about to learn will help you become resilient and reduce stress.
How many of us need a reminder that change is inevitable? Like most of us, you probably also need reassurance or hope because change does not come with any written guarantee. The idea of perpetual change is terrifying, because it often involves a risk of losing something big like a job, loved ones, home, what you enjoy – basically everything that is comfortable and familiar, predictable, and makes you feel great, today.
Because we are human, fear of change is also a constant. People end up wasting energy resisting change because it feels uncomfortable or scary. They want to stick to the way things are. Many people respond with a knee jerk reaction to resist change because of fear? Even when change is less daunting, such as a traffic jam, bad weather, abrupt changes in a schedule, a flat tire, the ATM doesn’t work, or a sudden case of the sniffles, people can experience feelings of fear and respond with a knee jerk reaction before accepting that not all things can be controlled. Unfortunately, uncertainty or fear can keep people from moving forward. They let change take control. They end up feeling insecure and sorry for themselves and get dragged along in the current of that inescapable change.
Why don’t we just admit to not being able to control all those changes that occur around us? Why don’t we admit we do not know everything? Why don’t we just say, "I don't know what's next?” Why don’t we just say, “Change is a constant in my life, so I will make resiliency a constant, too.”
We might be less fearful of it, if we could only accept change and stop resisting. That’s resiliency.
Someone who repeatedly resists change may never live up to their full potential or know what it is to be brave and face fear, or more importantly what it is to be happy evolving with change. They miss out on many things that are good for their well-being and happiness. You do not want that to be your story.
How do you tend to react to these fears? You may not have power over the change, but what you can do is control how you react to it.
Resilience starts with ditching the knee-jerk reaction. When we hastily react to difficult people or situations, we often get into an emotional flurry that keeps us from thinking clearly. We make the situation worse and regret it later. Or worse yet, we fail to recognize the extra harm our knee-jerk reaction caused. One of the most helpful skills you can develop is the ability to respond to any unexpected challenge, hardship, or change by pausing to gain your composure and regroup before saying or doing anything.
Focus on what you can change, not what you cannot change. In problem solving, it is possible to get stuck trying to change things that you really have no power over. Or sometimes you waste time and energy trying to fix someone who does not want our help and has no intention of changing. It is vital to focus your time and energy on what will move you forward, even in small steps.
Did you know that choice is also a constant? As long as you are breathing, you make active choices all day, every day. You choose your attitude, routines, and behaviours. You choose how much effort to put into your studies, work, relationships, or your hobbies, sports, and recreation. You choose how long you will try or when you quit. You choose your friends, and which of them will be privy to your secrets. You choose when to give or seek advice, what type of learning to pursue, and how you spend your leisure time. You choose in what direction to pursue happiness. You even choose whether you will choose, since not choosing is a choice in itself.
That is exciting news, because it means you can choose how you will respond to change and any underlying fear you experience.
We all face change that can be positive or negative experiences. We have to be prepared to make a choice no matter which we face.
Choice is the power you possess. That is exciting news, because it means you can choose what makes you feel content and what gives meaning to your live. You can choose your mindset and you can choose to make your well-being the priority. It means you are choosing happiness. Which is the best decision?
Where there is Change there is Ever-Present Opportunity
It is so easy to attach importance to easy, positive experiences. Sometimes we choose to ignore the moments of struggle as significant opportunities. Yet, time and again, people tell us stories of how they came to understand challenge and find ways to rise above it. Those kinds of stories spur us to ask:
What if?
How easy it is to forget that moments of adversity can either catapult you to new heights or beat you down, depending strictly on how you choose to interpret them and respond. You can choose to use moments of change to exploring the endless possibilities that are open to you through change.
From the moment you are born you embark on a continuously learning path, picking up important lessons from the changes you experience. You learn a lot from watching others or reading books. However, your most significant lessons come through experience. Experience can be a persistent teacher. When you think about it, there are many lessons in life that you simply could not have learned until you faced certain challenges or got caught off guard by change. Every time you fell down and rose up again there was some kind of change and a lesson to be learned. You demonstrated your resilience each time.
No matter what age you are today or what you are doing in twenty of thirty years, these lessons will continue to arrive at any time or place, often when you least expect it. No matter how prepared you feel, change will surprise you with new twists to expand your lessons in new directions or remind you that you learned that lesson once or twice before. Life will try to teach you something today. It is easy to miss the message when you do not pay attention, or when you resist change.
You can use the change, the fear, or the lesson as a compass, not a barrier. You can use the change to move forward, learn new things, master new skills or develop qualities like flexibility, optimism, courage and persistence. When change presents you opportunities often those are also chances to learn new and exciting things about new fields of interest, a deeper understanding of the people in your life, or the world in general. You always have room to add more clarity and meaning to your life.
Flexible thinking allows
you to think about something in more than one way. It plays a key role in reducing anxiety, as well as not being overwhelmed or stifled by unpredictable circumstances in
your life or workplace.
Inspiration can strike when you least expect it, but that is an inefficient way to develop an idea or approach decision-making and problem solving. Instead, try one of these 7 quick and easy individual brainstorming techniques.
True professionals do not do things just for the sake of appearances. Your commitment and what you do back stage and unwitnessed is garners the respect of others, gives you satisfaction in life, and contributes meaningful value to a project or organization.
Do you know why you procrastinate. It may not be that you are simply overworked and under pressure. Identify a cause and fend it off with an easy-to-implement strategiy that can be implemented easily and set the tone for an non-procrastination-type day.
With the right sensory technique you will feel a sense of assuredness and always have a rescue tool to relieve stress on the spot. What is your sensory resuce toolbox?
As a professional, you want to get the job done – and done well. You also want to keep advancing and identify opportunities. This easy pen and pencil tool can help you with a plan.
As a small business owner
you should assess whether you are sourcing enough good ideas from outside your
immediate think group. The more ideas generated, the greater the chance of
finding innovative ways to combine them into something new.
Inspiration can strike when you least expect it, but that is rather an inefficient way to drive innovation and creativity. Want a do-it-yourself approach to decision-making and problem solving? Try one of these brainstorming techniques to develop your ideas.
Professionalism is what you do visibly that impresses and inspires others and what you do behind the scenes – integrity, self-regulation, conscientiousness – that allows you to fulfill your role to the best of your ability and gives you a sense of satisfaction and self-worth.
When you are overworked and under pressure, try these two super easy-to-implement strategies to fend off procrastination. They can be completed quickly and more importantly they work best to set the tone for an excellent day.
Kindness should extend to our colleagues and work family. In the workplace, kindness is a catalyst that helps to build trust, drives morale, improves well-being, engagement, and productivity. Kindness makes you feel good and that is a good way to spend your day.
As a professional, you want to get the job done – and done well. You do what is necessary to produce results that exceed expectations. You recognize whatever you do to keep advancing personally and professionally also helps your business to thrive.
