What is resilience and how can it help us? Resilience is a word we hear a lot of, but it isn’t something we can be told to have or be, it is something we learn and develop over time, and is often something that comes as a result of being faced with and overcoming a period of adversity.
Some people believe being resilient means that things which happen to us have no effect, however what I believe it means we can recover more quickly, we know we can overcome things, we can find a different perspective more quickly, and are adaptable being able to turn adversity into a gift and opportunity. Meaning we can return to being happier more quickly and my wish is for us all to be happy!
I know a lot about building resilience, it is something I have had to learn from a young age, growing up in a very challenging environment, finding myself homeless at 16, having a major car accident at 21, experiencing the loss of loved ones too young, surviving an abusive relationship and being self-employed the list could go on… and most recently Covid-19 turning my world upside down as I was about to jet off to live and run my business from Asia for a while.
Any of these things in isolation could have been over whelming and stopped me in my tracks, but each time I have learnt to become that little more resilient and that helps me the next time. I’m sharing this with you, to show you that we can overcome things no matter how challenging. We can look for the positive, we can build resilience and we can find happiness.
We all face adversity of some kind at some point in our lives. Covid-19 means we have a shared experience, it is impacting different people in different ways, and we are by no means all in the same boat, but we are all on the same rocky sea and being impacted in some way. So how can we use this experience to build our resilience, to help us feel that little bit better. What would that mean to you personally and professionally?
Firstly I believe as with most things this starts with us, it starts with taking good care of ourselves, to give ourselves time and space to relax and recharge, to spend time doing the things we love with the people we love, because when we are OK, when we are happy, everything else is easier, we are more resilient.
Resilience can benefit us in many ways. Something I believe helps us in building our resilience muscles is to take a moment to step back, to give ourselves space to reassess and respond, rather than just react. Taking this time makes a lot of difference to our well-being, happiness and our relationships in life and business.
When we aren’t feeling very resilient, we tend to see the worst, we react with emotion, with a sense of hopelessness, or the feeling of why do I bother? Whether this is in our personal or professional life, when we feel this way it is easy to give up, to react emotionally and to become stressed and disillusioned, which also has a knock on effect on our well-being, happiness and relationships. If we felt resilient, we might take a step back, reassess, review and find an alternative perspective, one where we respond rationally, without emotion, removing the stress, meaning we will feel better about ourselves and our ability to overcome challenges and we will be happier.
Another thing I like to do is think about the learning from the experience, good or bad. I like to use the phrase, I either win or I learn, so even bad stuff I can grow from. This means when things go wrong, instead of beating myself up and feeling bad or stressed, I try to look for the learning it brings, or the opportunity it offers. Granted sometimes it involves looking a little harder for that silver lining, but there is always something to be taken from every experience. Doing this build resilience and the more we do this, the easier it becomes, the stronger our resilience muscle gets and the more easily we can recover the next time.
If this resonated with you, please do get in touch I love to hear from people. Also, if you are thinking that you would like to explore building your own resilience, or that of your loved ones or teams, then please do get in touch, I offer everyone a free 10 minute discovery call.
Until next time,
Emma
