How To Build Your Personal Resilience At Work
Life’s a bit of a slog at the moment. A disruptive global pandemic with no clear end in sight. A polarised political climate. Systemic injustice at every turn.
On top of that, my husband and I are dealing with a frustrated toddler and a long, stressful house move. Honestly, it’s exhausting.
And this is coming from a person who holds pretty much every form of privilege you can hold. If you are black, or trans, or in another oppressed group, the heaviness may be just this side of unbearable.
So it’s probably no surprise that the topic of Resilience has been front and centre with many clients recently.
In fact, last month my coaching membership was dedicated to Resilience. And I wanted to share a couple of the most powerful points we covered, in the hope that you’ll find something in here that will support you with your own resilience, now, and ongoing.
What actually IS Resilience?
Let’s start with the basics. There’s lots of metaphors of resilience being like an elastic band, but what interests me is the EXPERIENCE of resilience. How do you know that you’re resilient / not resilient at any given moment? We explored the question in my membership, and came up with this: resilience is the ability to remain steady, stay self-aware and maintain perspective, even when surrounded by turbulence.
What do YOU think of that definition? How resilient are you feeling right now, out of 10?
The Resilience Equation
I recently started playing around with the following ‘formula’ for resilience, and I really like it!
(Solidity) - (Knocks) = Resilience
Our resilience at any given point in our life depends on two sets of variables - how solid we are, and how many knocks we’re being exposed to. If you’re feeling solid, you can withstand more challenges and still stay grounded with a healthy perspective. If you’re feeling more fragile, you need to protect yourself more in order to stay resilient.
Controlling your Variables
So, following the resilience equation, we have two sets of variables to play with. Let’s look at each of these.
YOUR SOLIDITY
Being ‘solid’ means feeling mentally and emotionally strong. Here are three elements that contribute to this; a ‘toolkit’ to keep you solid. Read through each of them, and see what you might put in your own toolkit.
Self-connection: What practices help you settle into your own body, turn your attention inwards and turn down the external noise? For me, it’s yoga nidra, tarot and reading fiction.
Energy Boosters: What people, places and activities GIVE you energy? Leave you feeling positive and alive? Spend more time here, with these people, doing these things..
Attitude / mindset: choose a positive statement that makes you feel strong, whether it’s a belief about yourself (e.g “I can do hard things”) or a life philosophy (e.g “There is time enough for all my dreams”). Repeat it, as often as you need to.
LIFE’S KNOCKS
Every human being experiences challenges (although objectively some people seem to face more than others, which quite frankly sucks). In moments where we are less solid, we need to minimise exposure to life’s knocks if we want to keep our sh*t together. And we may have more control over that than we like to admit.
Using the two categories below, take a snapshot of your life right now.
Knocks within your control. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is essential for growth, AND it can expose you to possible knocks. Doing business development, being available for other people, posting on social media lots, having difficult-but-necessary conversations with loved ones, moving house - these are all vital for my personal growth. And they can be really bloody tough, leaving me feeling exposed and insecure. So if I’m not feeling solid, it’s ok to take a break from striving for a while.
Knocks outside of your control. Anyone heard of covid-19? Global pandemics, a child’s broken sleep, family caring duties… Many challenges are beyond our control and are a fact of life. As the classic prayer goes, we must welcome the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
So there we have it:
(Solidity) - (Knocks) = Resilience
What do you think? Does the Resilience Equation ring true for you? What one change could you make, on either side of the equation, to improve your resilience right now?