We’re talking about RESILIENCE in today’s blog. Resilience is a quality we will all need to draw on at different times in our life, and one that we can actually GROW and invest in. There are several different SORTS of resilience…some you will naturally have in spades, and some you will want to UPSKILL.
Resilience is about being able to cope and adapt to stressful situations. Some people seem inherently adept at “rolling with the punches” whilst others can really struggle in times of stress and change that are thrust upon them. Learning how to boost our resiliency equips u
s to better ride the inevitable waves of adversity that life throws at us.
Here are five strategies that you can use to cultivate resilience 👇
- Know that “this too shall pass”. A bad situation does not equal a bad life. Anchor in on the temporary nature of the situation as a strategy to overcome it, that it will end, that it can be transcended. Perhaps life will never be the same again, but believing that you do not have to remain in this experience long-term and can create a new version of the future.
- Release expectation that life rolls out in a straight line. Life rarely goes exactly according to plan for anyone; I don’t know anyone who doesn’t get some curly ones thrown at them through the course ofa lifetime. Resilience is helped by accepting that this is part of the human experience, and sometimes shit really does just happen – be that inadvertently created by our own hand, someone else’s choices impacting on our lives or Mother Nature showing her full force – that coping with the downsas well as the ups is an inevitable part of life.
- Allow yourself to feel your emotions. Bottling it up, denying that what’s happening is happening, can lead to massive overwhelm in a crisis. So resiliency can mean allowing feeling what we feel. This can help us move through our feelings to a place of calm and acceptance with more speed. Tears have healing power.Having more compassion for ourselves in that it’s okay to feel vulnerable from time to time, it doesn’t meanwe are weak or we have failed.
- Drawing on previous times of previous capability. Being able to look back with the perspective of hindsight at other situations where you have previously weathered the storm to draw strength in their self-efficacy to face the current situation. Creating strength and purpose by connecting to evidence of your capability to not just survive and cope, but rise and ultimately thrive when encountering the worst, is an effective technique for boosting resilience.
- Taking action even when everything seems too hard. Just finding the right next thing to do and then taking action is powerful. It might not be the thing that solves the whole problem (because such an option is unlikely to exist) but generating positive energy through taking action – even imperfect action – so a sense of momentum builds and the feeling of stuckness dissipates.
