How can you be more resilient and overcome those big challenges when they arise?
‘Never give up.’
‘You can get through.’
‘Be more resilient!’
Easy to say right, but to this point, way too difficult for you to do. But you’re here, so you’re fighting, looking for solutions, that in its own right shows you can be resilient.
I read a lot of stuff about resilience, how important it is, and how necessary it is for businesses. What I haven’t found is quality information on how to be more resilient.
What is true is that developing resilience helps when dealing with adversity and challenges. In fact it is a must have. Resilience is like your armour and weapons rolled into one. Equally important is it is an important personal trait for those successfully dealing with stress, the biggest cause of work-related illness.
You surely realise how important that makes it?
The World Health Organization describes stress as the “global health epidemic of the 21st century.” It is a huge problem. Finding your personal solution must be your priority.
Resilience is the capacity to cope with stress. Simple! Best still you can learn to be more resilient. It isn’t just a god given trait. Yes I’m saying you can learn to be more resilient.
Resilience builds a happier, less stressed, more engaged and focused you.
Everyone benefits. Your family, your work, and of course you.
Businesses nowadays pay us coaches good money to teach their staff resilience. Why wouldn’t they when it can lead to higher productivity, lower healthcare costs, less absenteeism—and better overall performance and wellbeing. If you are a Human Resources Manager looking for Resilience Training give me a call.
Let me share some stats I’ve read:
- Highly resilient workers have 46 percent less perceived stress than low resilience workers.
- Compared to highly resilient workers, twice as many employed individuals with low resilience have reported absent.
- Individuals with low resilience are twice as likely as those with high resilience to quit their job.
- Four times as many highly resilient workers are highly satisfied with their jobs, compared to those with low resilience scores.
- Employees with low resilience are more than twice as likely to be overweight and twice as likely to report a hospital stay in the past year.
What does it mean to be resilient?
Resilience is our ability to adapt and bounce back when things don’t go as planned.
Resilient people don’t practice self-pity; hold everyone and everything responsible; they just refuse to dwell on failure; they acknowledge the situation, learn from their mistakes, and then move forward.
Resilience is important because it keeps us on track until we reach our goals, it allows us to deal with difficult situations, and it helps us to grow by encouraging us to look at the positives and to manage stress.
“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” Japanese proverb.
Famous Resilient People
Think of Thomas Edison. He tried nearly 10,000 times before succeeding with the electric light bulb.
What about the Colonel Sanders story? In 1952 at the age of 65, when most people are looking at slowing down and retiring, Harland David Sanders began travelling the highways trying to find support for his idea. Many laughed at his idea and showed him the door. Today there are approximately 20,000 Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurants globally in 123 countries.
Jack Canfield has published more than 250 books, including the New York Times #1 bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series which has sold more than 500 million copies in 47 languages, he was initially rejected by 150 or so publishers when trying to launch his first book.
Their resilience made the difference. Resilience is about getting through pain and disappointment without letting it crush your spirit. Are you ready to follow their example and learn to be more resilient?
Resilience is needed, as Stress is going to keep coming
In almost everybody’s life’s journey there will be many challenges, difficulties, and failures. We all face them. Life wasn’t meant to be easy, but that makes our successes so much more enjoyable. It takes learning to be resilient, so you can always bounce back no matter what.
I met Jo Higgins-Cezza the creator of a brilliant resilient training programme. She has been training individuals, companies and schools since 2009 how to be more resilient. You can check her out at Home Of Resilience Training. During our conversation, we talked about resilience, all things personal development, and how driven we both were to help improve the lives of others. I learnt stuff so I have no doubts so can you.
What is obvious is that in this day and age where stress is as common as breathing, and pressures to survive seem to be common place, then Resilience is an absolute key to teach people.
Let me share some of the key characteristics needed to be more resilient.
To be Resilient you need a Sense of Purpose
How many of you feel lost in life? It is essential that we have a picture in our mind of the future we want to live. This gives us a purpose, showing the life we want to live. It gives us our reason for being. The stronger your sense of purpose, the better equipped you are to handle challenges and setbacks and to recover from them. Start designing your big hairy audacious goals! Know what drives you, find your purpose.
Have a Positive Mental Attitude
It is important that you think positively about situations and events whilst being realistic about what can be achieved. It is having your glass half full. It is believing in yourself, but not fooling yourself. We have to be realistic, yet positive about what we are doing, and the results that ultimately, we will achieve. A constant barrage of negative thoughts will leave you stressed and unable to tackle your challenges. You need to back yourself. Can you overcome negativity and get into a positive mindset?
You need to Connect well with others
We were never meant to be alone so it is important to develop positive, supportive and caring relationships. We all need people we can count on, ones that we can talk through our ideas, who can offer us alternatives to what we do. Are you good at making friends? Able to communicate well with others? Your interpersonal communication skills are an important element of resilience. We need allies not enemies. If you haven’t got one already, start building your support team.
Increasing Resilience through your Determination
How good are you at seeing things through? I have long believed in the motto ‘never give up.’ When faced with challenges do you deal with them by having a “can do” approach, being proactive and taking action, or do you wilt at the first obstacle? How well do you finish tasks and things which you have started, seeing things through to the end? Are you able to keep going in the face of adversity rather than giving up? You need to show a determination to get to the winning line. After all you don’t want to be a quitter, do you? Determination is empowering, want what you want and go for it.
Focus on what you can Control
The ability to focus on what you can control makes sense, so isn’t it crazy how some people spend so much time stressing over things they don’t and can’t control. What a complete waste of time and effort. If you are one of these don’t. Concentrate on what you can control. Be effective and stay focused. Take responsibility, don’t keep coming up with excuses as to why you can’t do something. If you have control assert it, assert yourself. We really are responsible for our outcomes, so make sure you achieve what you set out to do by doing what you need to do. Are you prepared to take control over your life and therefore influence your destiny big time?
Looking after yourself
Looking after yourself, both physically, mentally and emotionally, is key. Do you lead a healthy lifestyle? To succeed in life you need to be at your very best. This requires you taking care of yourself. How do you do that? Well easy, you need to exercise regularly, get enough sleep, and eat healthily. Now what would you expect from a healthy lifestyle blogger. Want more of this type of advice go to www.healthylifestylesliving.com. Cut out that comfort eating, reduce down on alcohol, quit smoking if you do. Your health matters.
Use Relaxation Techniques
A calm physiology & neurology will help tremendously. Using deep breathing exercises, progressive muscular relaxation, meditation and other awesome relaxation techniques. Take brief, real-time relaxation breaks and just be calm and still. You have to give yourself this time, to recharge, to calm every muscle, to quieten your mind. You’ll come back revitalised. Check out this article of mine, it takes you through exactly how to breath deeply and well. There’s an audio which will enable you to do this while listening to the instructions.
Keep your emotions in check
The most serious challenge to ourselves is the constant flood of destructive emotion that can follow challenging events. We are talking about fear, sadness, anger. Mad panic takes over quickly followed by defeatism. Well that can’t be the way you react any longer. You have to pick yourself up quickly and know you still have the fight within to go on. It is a lot down to your mindset. Choose your response.
Remember, we all experience bad days and we all go through our share of crises. But we have a choice in how we respond; we can choose to react negatively or in a panic, or we can choose to remain calm and logical to find a solution. Your reaction is always up to you. First you have to begin noticing your feelings? If you notice negativity and fear, replace it with positivity and courage.
Build your self confidence .
Remember, resilient people are confident that they’re going to succeed eventually, despite the setbacks or stresses that they might be facing. You need to be working on your own confidence, no matter how hard this may be, and it will be worth the effort! How Confident Do You Seem to Others? Fake it if you have to. In time you will become that which you fake. Get your body strong, lift those shoulders, make sure you are radiating a positive body language, control your words, what you say, how you say it, so you sound confident. Again this will become who you really are in time. How you carry yourself and how you move your body, how you stand, how you sit, what you do with your hands, how you speak concentrate on yourself at all times. When you begin to get intentional about your own body movements, it really will affect your inner perceptions and build self-confidence.
Learn from your mistakes
We all make them. No ones is ever perfect. Yet every mistake has the power to teach you something important; so don’t stop searching until you’ve found the lesson in every situation. The ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback gives you a fresh opportunity, to get up and make the results you want happen. There is always something you can take from any situation, to help you learn from what’s happened, so you can improve and ultimately succeed. But you have to look for it. This means getting the most from everything that happens.
I have just given you 10 traits that you can adopt. Practice makes perfect. Resilience is an essential thing for you to learn if you are going to both succeed in life, and stay free from the adverse effects of stress.
Life unfortunately can always throw curve balls at us. These can make things difficult, but never impossible. Resilience ensures you have the ability to bounce back in the event of any adversity. Just know you can cope with what ever gets thrown at you, if you are resilient.
From now on be resilient able to respond to the pressure and the demands of daily life. Ready and able to deal with those inevitable challenges, problems and set-backs you will meet in the course of your life, but from now on you will always come back stronger and succeed.
If you have anything to add or share I’d love to read it in the comments. If you think this article can help others feel free to share it in your social network.
I’m Larry Lewis. As an Executive Life Coach, entrepreneur and writer, I am an unshakable optimist dedicated to helping you become the person you most want to be. I am devoted to sharing ideas, tools and resources that will help you create a better, stress free, well balanced life. If you are struggling with stress and need to find solutions arrange a free 1 hour consultation with me, just go to www.larry-lewis.com/free-consultation.
