I’ve been studying resilience for almost 15 years now, and what I can tell you is that it is a much-used but little understood concept. We’ve moved on from defining resilience in terms of bouncing back as it’s apparent that being resilient can make us feel anything but bouncy.
Why resilience is so important
We define resilience more in terms of steering through whatever is facing you so you can continue to feel good and function well or get back to doing so in the future. Resilience is hard work – it’s messy and can involve a long, hard grind to get through the days, weeks and months while not losing hope there are better times ahead.
Our research and experience of working with over 30,000 leaders globally last year also suggests people rarely bounce back. Instead, humans learn from adversity – it shapes them and changes them. Instead of getting people back to normal or pre-event functioning, we focus on helping people learn and grow.
We are all now living in a period of ongoing disruption, challenge and change faced with handling daily uncertainties, unpredictable supply chains and inflation. Resilience isn’t just for life’s darkest days – we all need to understand this stuff to help navigate the daily stresses and strains of running a business, delivering on deadlines, managing staff relationships, juggling family commitments and staying on top of finances, paperwork and project management all at the same time.
What people can do to promote personal resilience
There are three go-to strategies we share with our clients.
Know that suffering is part of life
This doesn’t mean you welcome it in, but knowing that suffering is part of every human existence stops you from feeling discriminated against when challenges arrive and also stops the ‘why me?’ question. Not enough of us seem to know this any longer. We live in the era of perfectionism where shiny, happy photos on Instagram are the norm. Perfectionism is toxic and prevents us from performing at our best when we encounter daily set-backs or someone makes a mistake.
The science is clear – when we operate from a perfectionist mindset, we are more likely to encounter anxiety, depression and shame and to procrastinate. When we dial back our inner critic, we are more likely to persevere in the face of challenges, learn from failure, pick ourselves up and try again, while co-workers are more likely to own their mistakes rather than hide them.
Choose where you focus your attention
Resilient people have a habit of realistically appraising situations, somehow managing to focus their attention and resources on the things they can change and accept the things they can’t. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it is possible – this is in fact a vital and learnable skill. As humans, we are good at noticing threats and weaknesses. Being wired this way has served us well from an evolutionary perspective so we know why we have this negativity bias.
However, working in environments where we are constantly bombarded by threats – overcommitted subbies, toxic colleagues, mounting bills and unrealistic deadlines – our stress response is permanently dialled up, which is no good for
our psychological health. Resilient people counterbalance the natural negativity bias by noticing the things that do go well, preventing workplace stressors from spilling over into family time and finding ways to put the daily sources of friction into perspective. Your work is not your life. Make a deliberate, ongoing effort to tune in to what’s good in your world.
Is what you’re doing helping or harming you?
Teach yourself to reflect. Ask yourself: is the way I’m thinking or the way I’m acting helping or harming me in my quest to do whatever is facing me right now? Whether it’s overcoming grudges at work, catastrophising situations by only thinking about what can go wrong, halting the tide of ongoing ‘what if?’ questions that come crowding in at 3:16am, or recovering from a health issue, asking yourself ‘is this helping or harming me?’ puts you back in control.
Resilience isn’t a fixed or elusive trait that some people have and others don’t. It involves growing your awareness of what works for you and what thinking habits and behaviours make-life harder.
Translating science into daily practices
How can you translate the science behind resilience into daily life? Here, Lucy’s husband, Master Builder Trevor Hone, offers valuable insights into how he works the practice into his daily life:
- Middle of the night – catch yourself catastrophising about the next day. Being aware that you are doing it is the beginning of stopping yourself doing it – you know that nothing good comes of this thought process.
- On the way to work – make the conscious decision to acknowledge the things that go well in the day ahead.
- When on site – praise the good stuff you see going on. It’s all too easy to just focus on the cock-ups that are part of everyday life, which instantly lower morale on site.
- Work breaks – do they seem to have become silent? (Bloody phones!) Rediscover the art of talking. Ask someone how they are or how their weekend was, and listen to their reply.
- On the way home – think about the good things that happened during the day as well as the annoying stuff.
- When you get home – shock your family by telling them about the good bits when they ask how your day was. Your mood is contagious to those around you – make it a good one!
This is simple stuff, but it works. Try it out and make it part of your daily routine.