Build your resilience

RESILIENCE

Definition:
‘Thick skin’, tough-minded, able to deal with setbacks, ‘grit’, ‘steel’, focussed – not easily distracted from task, self-belief, able to depersonalise comment

Breaks resilience:
• Lack of trust
• Decisions overturned
• Failure, getting it wrong, lack of competence
• Feeling excluded, being undermined
• Poor sight of objectives
• Poor working environment, inadequate resources
• Personal /other stresses
• Lack of progress
• Bored, tired
• Overawed
• Lack of support, lack of team spirit

Builds resilience:
• Experience
• Accept mistakes and learn from them
• Self-belief
• Trust and support – peers, team members, bosses
• Healthy competition
• Success, winning (or being part of …)
• Acknowledgement, praise – external / internal
• Achievable objectives
• Successful experience of overcoming adversity

How to build resilience for self:
1. make sure your purpose is clear – to you and to others
2. focus on your goals
3. believe in your goals
4. communicate confidence (behave as if you are confident)
5. be open to learning from all experiences
6. build self-belief –
o affirmations
o challenge your beliefs to check that they are helpful to you and if not change those beliefs (eg ‘who are you to ….?’ Becomes ‘shine your light and let others shine theirs’)
o give yourself permission (eg to not be perfect, just good enough)
o visualisation (eg imagine yourself handling a situation well and keep playing the ‘tape’ until you believe you can handle it well)
7. be self-aware of your coping style (eg do you need a friendly ear to talk to, do you want space, etc)
8. say ‘No’ and do so in an acceptable way, (eg offer alternatives, make your needs clear)