What are some effective ways to promote resilience in your audience?

From my experience, I think that resilience is often misunderstood as the ability to "bounce back" from adversity, but it goes much deeper than that. True resilience lies in our capacity to navigate through challenging circumstances rather than trying to go back to the way things were. In the last five years my dad, mum and wife have passed away. This has been very tough but I have been resilient because I have adapted, grown, and found new ways to move forward in the face of difficulties. It's been about consciously STOPPING, acknowledging the reality of the situation and summoning the strength to move through it as well as grieve. I want to redefine resilience as the ability for people to STOP and see where opportunities are for growth.

Resilience isn’t about bouncing back and coping, it’s about overcoming potentially stressful adversities without experiencing negative stress oneself. This requires us to mentally transform a threat into a challenge, rise to the challenge, overcome it and move on leaving the adversity behind. People who experience genuine stress don’t fully recover; they recover to a different level. They don’t, therefore, bounce back. Strengthening personal resilience can be achieved by strengthening self esteem, self efficacy, motivation and mental control. Not only can we do this by adopting exercises, but, in the workplace, the environment including leaders and managers play a huge part in providing positive triggers to strengthen each element.

couldn’t agree more / resilience is bouncing forward stronger than you were before. Developing a resilient mindset skillset and toolset is the way to becoming more resilient. It demands commitment to practice but the reward are worth it

I have found that using my own personal story (how I have dealt with Parkinson’s & how I am navigating life post my wife’s death) creates an environment that facilitates a way in to talk authentically about the power of reframing even the most difficult of circumstances.

Passive resilience is about coping with events. But you don’t overcome them. You find a way to tolerate them. They continue to be in your life. Active resilience turns the threat into a challenge to overcome. In my Guide to Strengthening Personal Resilience I use a framework based on three forms of control - over responses to oneself, over responses to events, and responses to other people. Each has loads of exercises that strengthen personal foundations of resilience, so strengthen self esteem, self efficacy, motivation and mental control. Active resilience requires control mentally as well as a motivation to be resilient. Resilience is a choice based on the benefits to us of being resilient.

We must educate engage and empower people to build their resilience backpack of skills- important to note is that this varies from person to person. It’s about giving people a range of skills that they can learn understand and use in context. Self awareness is critical and with that the ability to reframe thoughts understand emotions and regulate behaviour using tools such as mindfulness, values based goals, using strengths etc

This is an element in my development framework - relationships. But not any old relationship but those that are both important and strong in helping me achieve my success and happiness. These relationships will help turn threats into challenges and help me rise to the challenge by providing a strong motivation to choose to be resilient.

Leading by example by being honest, transparent and showing vulnerability. Creating a safe, supportive and inclusive culture at work. Encouraging participation, showing that failure is part of the learning process and that no one has all the answers. Finally just taking the to time to authentically ask how people are. There’s more to life than work.

Relationships are critical to resilience. The more resilient person trusts their network and asks for support when needed. Learning to understand who drains you and who sustains you is important and then investing time in strengthening this support networks will pay dividends long term

Taking the time each day to think of three things you are grateful for and three things you are thankful for. It’s a simple thing to do but I believe it reinforces a positive outlook and prevents the brain from focusing on the negative. There’s a great Ted talk on this and there’s scientific research behind it.

We should be encouraged to become a thoughts detective. Not all thinking is true or indeed helpful. Learning to reframe negative thoughts and replace with a more objective stance is going to develop the positivity muscle which builds resilience

Recognizing things that are going well and taking in the good will promote people’s intention to want to replicate such behaviour. By celebrating wins it will only lead to more wins