Inflation+interest rates+lay-offs+pandemic = uncertainty + change. I see building Resilience as an antidote to uncertainty and change.
What is resilience or grit or hardiness?
Personally I reject the definition of resilience as “bouncing back from adversity” because it feels static in terms of incorporating new experiences. The concept of grit(Dickinson) feels more apt because it captures passion, focus and perseverance, or resilience as a flexible skill set which incorporates elements of: purpose; self-management; decision making; perseverance; collaboration; and self-care hygiene. Hardiness (Stein and Bartone) to me says it all – facets of personal commitment, novelty and challenge, and perception of control.
TIP: Your approach to stressful situations can affect your short term as well as your long-range outcomes. Read on to learn how you can assess your own resilience.
What is your value proposition? Your raison d’etre?
TIP: Dollars? Success? Congruence? Consistency? Achievement? Reputation? Notoriety? Happiness? Peace? Status? Harmony? Know your “why”, pursue your “why”—it’s your north star.
What are your goals?
TIP: Focus on your priorities. Match objectives to your priorities. Goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. When you set any goals, plan small steps for success.
How will you prepare for change?
TIP: Build a challenge mindset. Credit yourself for your successes. Treat failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.
How do you build a positive mindset?
TIP: Listen to your self talk. If you notice that your narrative is negative, stop, and deliberately reinterpret it to reveal options about how you perceive the situation and what you can do to impact the outcome e.g. “I’m too nervous, I can’t get up and make the speech.”Instead, “I am pretty nervous, but I will try. I am confident that I can try.”
What decisions are you proud of that required planning and practice?
TIP: Notice the effort that you made in facilitating the outcome. Your behavior made a difference for you. Having a growth mindset, being resilient or hardy, refers to the cluster of habits and skills that you draw upon to manage how you face challenge and change. Building these skills requires deliberate practice, whether in the decision- making phase to take a risk with something novel, or in the practice phase where you evaluate your effectiveness in relation to the outcome. Your choice: willingness to try; which behavioral options; and how you did.
Do you routinely alert/inform others about changes that you are making?
TIP: Communicate your expectations to important others and invite others to question your thinking and offer feedback. In addition to the specific situation, you would be creating the opportunity to receive support for your new habits and reduce the likelihood of pushback or friction as a result of change.
Reflect on your ease and skill communicating with others, ie. boss, colleagues, friends, mentors, romantic partners.
TIP: Boost your listening skills. A good metric to check is your questioning to statement ratio in conversations. Be willing to check on your understanding in conversations. Be curious about another’s point of view, particularly when you disagree and try to take the other’s perspective to arrive at some common ground. Your resilience extends beyond your self interest and skills to genuinely becoming aware of and caring empathically about the needs and feelings of others.
Are you in touch with what you are feeling when you are overwhelmed and stressed?
TIP: Your approach to stressful situations affects short term as well as your long-range outcomes. Develop your emotional literacy to help you identify what you are feeling and to enhance the range and variety of your emotional expression. Many self-help books are available to guide you e.g. 21 Days to Emotional Literacy or Emotional Flexibility. Seek coaching if this feels too challenging. Understanding and identifying your emotions is the first step in managing them.
When you know that you are feeling stressed, what are you doing about it?
TIP: Research stress-reduction strategies to create your personal toolkit and to effectively manage your stressors. You may draw upon apps like Headspace, Calm, 10% Happier, Insight Program, and Aura for guided meditation; or use Progressive Muscle Relaxation; breathing exercises; visualization; journalling; yoga; or physical exercise. Use these tools to provide renewal periods during your daily routine. Once you develop your decompression routine, practice these skills often for best results.
Reflecting on your priorities, how does your self care stack up?
TIP: Check your nutrition and meal regularity, hydration, sleep patterns, exercise, relaxation breaks, play, and socializing. Evaluate how you are doing with self care. Decide what you want to do more of and create an intentional plan for your progress. Evaluate your efforts in terms of your consistency in following through, whether you set realistic targets, as well as whether you achieved your goals.
How is your work-life flow?
TIP: Consider whether your behaviour does in fact match your priorities. If not, realign and explore what, where and how you have/have not set personal boundaries.
Are you easily distracted from your tasks?
TIP: If you expect others to respect your boundaries, start with yourself – you need to become more reliable with your commitments to yourself, ie. maintaining the boundaries you have set. Your choice, your control. Commitment is an ongoing process of making a realistic plan, sticking by it or making changes as necessary. Your responsibilities includes self-encouragement, requesting support and feedback, monitoring and evaluating your progress. Written objectives including the small-steps-to-success with corresponding time frames, and charting are helpful tools.
Do you have difficulty saying “no?”
TIP: Recognize that saying “yes” to something always means that you are saying “no” to something else. It is a good idea to be deliberate and intentional about saying “yes” or “no” instead of finding yourself defaulting to one or the other. Be mindful of your priorities, and your own goals. Reflect on recent past decisions, were you intentional vs. defaulting? If you are concerned with the reaction of others to a “no” decision, plan and rehearse your “no’s” to become more comfortable with them.
Are you at high risk for Burnout?
TIP: Burnout can seem sudden or be insidious and slow. Signs of Burnout include exhaustion and detachment, loss of motivation, feeling edgy and worrying excessively. Burnout is a signal that you need to do something – it does not go away by doing nothing. Acknowledge it and tell someone close to you or someone who may be able to help. Reach out to professional resources e.g. HR, on-line platform e.g. Hello Driven, therapist or psychologist. Burnout is real and does require a reset for activities, emotional management, and goal setting.
Are you aware of your inner mindset, your inner theory about yourself and the world?
TIP: These theories can be called your outlook or perspective, optimistic vs. pessimistic, for example. Are you someone who sees challenge and adversity as temporary and specific, or do you tend to assume that these are permanent and pervasive conditions? Your theory affects your perception of how much control you have about the events that challenge you. Seligman and Dweck among others, strongly advocate for developing a growth mindset and learning to acquire the habits of an optimist. Developing the belief that you do have some control and experiencing success handling adversity provides some inoculation for future challenges and an expectation of “I can.”
What do you do when you cannot solve a problem?
TIP: Resist the temptation to give up. Think about turning your attention to something that you can control. That something is your reaction. What we say to ourself guides our feelings and our actions. Notice what you are saying when you get stuck and you can choose to say and do something different.
Are you satisfied with your awareness and understanding of others?
TIP: Be willing to share your vulnerabilities as well as your strengths with others. Building social networks and relationships act as resilience buffers not only for you but also for others. Help build a more resilient community.
Do you make time to reflect?
TIP: Adam Grant suggests we get into the habit of rethinking. It frees us to unlearn and relearn certain strategies, “…we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking.” I call that reflection. Try making a habit of reflecting by setting aside even 15 minutes/day. Your consistency will pay dividends in allowing the opportunity for creativity to emerge.
Were you aware that novelty is integral to strengthening our resilience?
TIP: Novel experiences actually pump up our positive neurotransmitters, chemicals in the brain like Dopamine, which we then experience as pleasurable. So, deliberately trying new approaches, (new foods, new routes, new solutions) rather than adhering to the same pattern regularly, challenges you and thereby strengthens your resilience.