Nov 7, 2023

What is resilience?

I specialise in resilience and wellbeing. My experience in dealing with my own past trauma and challenges in my life have provided a good baseline. Developing a deeper understanding of myself has helped me overcome these challenges.

When I started studying psychology I was fascinated with ‘the why’. Why do people do certain things, why are some people seemingly happy all the time, why is the world the way it is? Psychology helps answer a lot of these questions.

Our brains are fundamental to our existence and yet we forget to look after them. Working on our resilience should be part of our brain care strategy.

So…. what is resilience?

The dictionary definition states:

“The ability to bounce back after setbacks, to respond to adversity with flexibility and see challenges as opportunities. “

It also makes reference to resilient material, which is again flexible and strong and often waterproof. I think the second definition makes more sense. After all, skin is waterproof. If we become more resilient, we can withstand more. We can succeed in the face of adversity.

“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Vivian Greene.

Building resilience starts from when we’re born and continues throughout our lives. There are things we can do to speed up the process or at least put ourselves in the best position.

Building resilience:

If you want to build up your resilience, try the following steps:

First identify what good looks like for you, no comparing!
Check in on the basics for wellbeing. For example, sleep, food, water, exercise.
Use Maslow’s Hierarchy to check other concepts of mind health.
Set some goals. What can you do to improve…? (GROW is a great tool to use for this).
Reflect. We learn from reflecting on our experiences. Diary this time into your week and use a journal to note down successes and improvements.

Remember:

We learn more from failure so push yourself outside of your comfort zone and if you failure, recognise that is not just ok but a great opportunity to learn.
Bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but the ability to keep going despite it. Find something that scares you a bit and do it anyway.
Small steps add up to huge success… don’t change too much too quickly, a 5-minute stretch each day soon adds up and you’ll notice the difference within 14 days of doing it.

Organisational Resilience

Resilience is also about maintaining what you have in business and building on that success. Sickness, retention, conflict and complaints can take up a lot of time, so prevention is always the least costly way forward.

Here’s 5 steps for building business resilience:

Check what’s going on. This could be through observations, a survey or data.
Pull together key themes where concerns are highlighted.
Address concerns by planning how, using a workshop approach will help keep people involved.
Follow through on the plan. Deliver what you say you will.
Check that any actions have had an impact and what else might be needed.

Remember:

As with individual resilience, if initial actions don’t work then don’t give up. Reassess, and get feedback. We learn nothing if we don’t try.
Start small and offer variety.
Get people involved.

If you want to know more about resilience at a personal or organisational level, then get in touch at laura@hampsoncoaching.com