6 Ways to Build Your Resilience

According to the Oxford dictionary, resilience is defined as “the ability of people or things to recover quickly after something unpleasant, such as shock, or injury.”

The concept of resilience and its relevance in all aspects of our lives -- work, well-being, relationships, quality of life -- has taken the spotlight in recent years, especially following COVID-19 and its massive effects on a world scale.

Let’s be straight. Life in general is never void of adversity, challenges or everyday stress. The secret lies in finding ways to adapt and face these life-altering burdens to be able to go through them and emerge with lessons rather than with “injuries.”

Here are six fundamental ways to build your resilience and face any difficult situation with which you may be confronted.

Get to know yourself on a deeper level

You might have read or heard this several times, but we can’t stress enough the importance of self-discovery as the basis for facing challenges! To know your values, personality traits and emotional triggers enables you to look at situations in a clearer way, to build a stronger life foundation and to take hardships as lessons.

Pinpoint your challenges and stressors

Getting to the source of stress allows you to assess what measures you can take to alleviate this stress and to avoid possible future negative conditions. Introspect in order to come up with a list of stressors and rate these latter according to their importance to you and their effect on your life.

Take action and focus on what you can control

Focusing on things you can’t control will only keep you in a vicious cycle of pessimism and helplessness. Once you pinpoint your sources of stress which you can control, think of ways or actions to take in order to overcome them the best way possible with the available resources.

Working toward your goals by fostering small regular habits greatly helps with building resilience on the long run.

Learn to see the bigger picture and keep things in perspective

Try to analyze the situation in a realistic and logical manner. Keep in mind the long-term repercussions and that nothing stays the same as circumstances change. This way of thinking allows you to look at the given problem in a more reasonable way.

Take care of your well-being and keep a positive outlook

Incorporate physical activities such as team sports, regular exercising or walks in nature, and make time for practicing hobbies you like. Mindfulness and breathing exercises will help you with stress management and with balancing your emotions.

Working on having a growth mindset rather than a fixed one will enable you to withstand any type of stressors, whether at work or in your personal life. Focus on self-improvement as this will impact the way you look at things around you.

Work on your confidence

Self-confidence is a building block for facing life challenges and emerging intact and stronger than before. The aforementioned steps will help you build better confidence. Additionally, work on your motivation, and concentrate on your strengths and talents and on cultivating them. Smile when you look at yourself in the mirror and surround yourself with positive reminders you can read on a daily basis.

Need more in-depth help on how to build your resilience? Reach out with your request and we will be glad to communicate.

For building teams’ resilience at work, check our corporate program for resilience.