To Become More Resilient In 2021, Do These 9 Things
Resilience is the ability to survive the ups and downs of life’s challenges without taking too much of a hit. It is the mindset to get back up and keep moving forward. It is the buddy of challenge and quality to stay in the game of life.
Now, when you hear the word resilience, you tend to associate it with phrases like toughening up, grinding through, pushing forward.
In my experience as a personal development coach and trainer, I have found this approach doesn’t always work, especially in the Covid pandemic. In this always-on culture, grinding through in times of challenge could leave you feeling excessively depleted.
The type of resilience you require now is less about toughening up but more about softening up. I am not suggesting mediocrity or lowering standards but rather adopting a more gentle approach that inspires and drives recovery.
In a recent HBR article, Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan confirm this view:
“The very lack of a recovery period is dramatically holding back our collective ability to be resilient and successful. Research has found a direct correlation between lack of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems. And lack of recovery — whether by disrupting sleep with thoughts of work or having continuous cognitive arousal by watching our phones — is costing our companies $62 billion a year (that’s billion, not million) in lost productivity”.
Here are 9 habits to navigate the pandemic and come through it with your resilience muscle in top form:
Own your attitude.
Your attitude is the lens through which you view the world. You can decide to have an attitude of self-motivation or self-defeat. When faced with a challenge, the attitude you show up with will directly determine how you approach it.
Instead of feeling like a victim of challenge, how about changing your attitude to become a student of challenge?
How can you adopt a lens that will enable you to create significance out of suffering? You cannot change the external situation, but you can decide the meaning you give it. When you can find the meaning in a tough situation, you can use that as fuel to move through it. Here are some questions you can use to help change your view:
• What values is this situation reminding me of?
• How can I transform this meaning as fuel?
• What is this here to teach me?
• How can I grow from this?
• What information is the event revealing to me?
• What new ideas, questions, or values am I now exploring because of that?
• How is life happening for me and not to me?
• How can I think about this challenge in a new way?
Redirect your self talk.
The conversations you have with yourself are the most important ones you will ever have, especially during hard-hitting times. If you think about a stereotype like a Navy seal, he will adopt a tough-love approach and tell you to suck it up and keep going. You can imagine phrases like ‘Don’t be a wimp and get over yourself’. The intention behind this approach is to use your anger as motivation to push through.
I don’t know about you, but when I find myself in a low place, the inner critic and tough love approach don’t inspire me to action. Reaching out to my inner cheerleader and adopting a learning mindset has catapulted me back into the game quicker. I ask myself questions such as:
Where have I contributed to the situation?
Knowing what I know now, how would I approach this differently in the future?
What is this here to teach me?
Accountability is crucial, but it must be done in a way that is helpful rather than hindering.
Cultivate relationships.
Drop the mindset that vulnerability is weakness. People often feel that they will be perceived as weak if they admit to going through a complicated situation.
The truth is that your feelings of helplessness take over when you are alone. Sharing a situation with a trusted friend allows them to give you perspective and a different lens you can’t see when you are in it.
Developing relationships is not about having hundreds of friends on Facebook but instead cultivating a few close relationships. How many birthday notifications pop up each day on your social media feed, and you have no idea who the person is?
Relationships help you stay accountable to your goals, help you see a different perspective and help you find meaning when you can’t.
Think about someone you haven’t spoken to in a while and reach out to them. Send a WhatsApp or call them to connect. Perhaps you have a close friend who has been in radio silence for too long. Do they need you to reach out to them?
Make your mess your message.
How can you use your experience of hardship to help someone else? Perhaps you have gone through a tough time and can share your insights and lessons with them?
A restaurant owner received a scathing review on the travel website Tripadvisor.com from a customer, noting it as a terrible place and the worst coffee she has ever had. This owner could have adopted a lens of panic and worry about how his place will be affected and how can he recover from this review. Instead, he made his message his message.
Source: Google Images
This image has gone viral and increased traffic to his restaurant. It is all a matter of perspective and the lens through which you view your world, determining whether you let setbacks knock you down or make you stronger.
Seek out new experiences and comfort challenges.
The reason challenge is so difficult is because you don’t like the feeling of discomfort it brings. You don’t like feeling like a beginner. You want to feel competent and confident in all aspects of your life. How can you safely practice the feelings of discomfort and overwhelm?
If someone fears flying, they can go through a flight simulation process to create turbulence conditions. When they go on a real aeroplane, they have rehearsed the feeling and feel more able to deal with the turbulence. They are better equipped to operate from a place of calm confidence rather than stress and panic.
Can you seek out new experiences like learning a new language or starting a new hobby? You can also create comfort challenges for yourself. If you are very busy and in constant doing mode, how about taking up a meditation practice? If you are incredibly active and a high-intensity person, how about doing a yoga class?
Sit with the discomfort of feeling like you are not doing anything. It will teach you contentment and give you permission that there is nowhere else you need to be. Never mind rehearsing the discomfort; a mindfulness practice will give you the tools to develop your resilience muscles.
Practice self-care.
A daily self-care routine is where you put in the real resilience reps. When challenge strikes, how can you show up powerfully if you are sleep deprived and exhausted? You will never make your best decisions from this state.
It is crucial now more than ever to look after yourself in the good times to be ready for the challenging times. An athlete doesn’t just train the day before the race. They maintain a consistent routine all year round, so they are ready to go when the time comes for a real push and extra insurance.
You already know what to do. Go back to the basics and make sure you tick the boxes of better sleep, hydration, good nutrition, mindfulness, relaxation and movement.
Self-compassion is the ultimate vaccine.
If you want to become more resilient, you must avoid the self-criticism trap. Instead of criticizing yourself when you are down, remind yourself that you did the best you could with the information available to you at the time.
Self-compassion means treating yourself with kindness and encouragement after a mistake. It is the ultimate vaccine that enables you to master setbacks. A vaccine doesn’t mean you can’t get sick; it means when illness strikes, you won’t be affected as severely. The symptoms are not as intense, so that you can recover quicker.
It’s the same with self-compassion — when a challenge arises, having genuine self-compassion helps you bounce back and recover quicker.
Embrace the power of reflection.
Author Benjamin Hardy speaks about the difference between someone who claims to have 20 years of experience versus someone who repeats the same year 20 times.
If you do not incorporate the lessons adversity has taught you, you will continue to make the same errors and not grow. You are not becoming a better version of yourself; you are simply hitting the same speed bumps repeatedly without a new strategy to improve.
Reflection is not a passive activity; it is a conscious choice. Journaling is a powerful tool to unpack the experiences of the past and the lessons learnt along the journey. When you can attach meaning to the situation, you can reframe your past as something positive that happened for you and not to you.
Knowing you could overcome setbacks in the past will strengthen your resilience to tackle anything life presents to you with confidence because you have a proven track record.
Reframe failure as feedback.
Failure is not the end of the road; it is a speed bump on your journey.
What if you reframed failure as feedback?
Instead of giving up when you experience failure or a detour, develop a resilient mindset by approaching the situation with curiosity rather than despair. Ask yourself, how can I approach this differently? What haven’t I taken into consideration? Thomas Edison only discovered the electric light bulb after 1000 failed attempts.
Marketing expert and author Seth Godin encourages us to view failure as a success and part of the journey to greatness:
“The rule is simple: The person who fails the most will win. If I fail more than you do, I will win. Because to keep failing, you’ve got to be good enough to keep playing.
So, if you fail cataclysmically and never play again, you only fail once. But if you are always there shipping, putting your work into the world, creating and starting things, you will learn endless things.
You will learn to see more accurately; you will learn the difference between a good idea and a bad idea and, most of all, you will keep producing”.
Reframing failure as a positive thing isn’t just motivational talk. The most remarkable story of resilience in action is J.K Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter series. Today, J.K. Rowling is the second-highest-paid author globally; behind the prolific James Patterson, her net worth has been estimated to range from $650 million to $1.2 billion.
What you may not know is that she was rejected 12 times before her manuscript was accepted. What happened if she gave up at rejection number 10 and figured it’s a useless idea? Bear this in mind the next time you hit a bump in the road; perhaps you are closer than you think?
Final thoughts.
Resilience is a mindset and a process. Just because you have endured the experience of 2020, you haven’t clocked up all your resilience points. You can never have too much resilience or grit; it is a practice and a conscious choice you have to make each time you face adversity.
“Learning is a gift, even when pain is your teacher” — Michael Jordan.
The next time you face a challenge, don’t waste the lesson life is offering; maybe it keeps showing up to remind you of something you haven’t yet learned?
Approach resilience not as something you must develop to make you as tough as nails but soften up to bring forth self-compassion, kindness and curiosity towards yourself.
Here’s to softening up in tough times,
Warm wishes
Lori