10 Ways to Build Resilience

Just as some people are born with a high metabolism, others are born with innate resilience.

The rest of us must consciously work to watch what we eat - and act intentionally to build resilience. It doesn’t just happen, but focused attention on how you react to failure, mistakes, disappointment and an abrupt change is a great place to start.

These 10 steps will position you to recover from unpleasant events more quickly:

• Maintain Perspective: Don’t blow an unexpected turn of events out of proportion. A situation will feel overwhelming if you allow it to, even though it may not matter all that much in the long run. Keep the issue in balance.
• Embrace Change: At a minimum, accept that change is part of life. Resistance is truly futile and wastes valuable energy. You don’t have to love upheaval to focus energy on matters within your control.
• Establish Clear Goals: Defined goals keep your focus on the big picture. Commitments to personal and professional goals compel forward movement amid a setback. One act, however small, that moves you toward your goals rebuilds momentum.
• Develop Inner Attention: What stories do you tell yourself when something goes wrong? If you beat yourself up over and over, practice letting go of such damaging self-talk. Work to take the curveballs less personally.
• Learn the Lesson: Every setback holds a lesson. If you find situations repeat themselves, perhaps it is time to take a hard look at your productivity, choices, skills or attitude. Don’t just brush it off and move on - use each stumble as a growth opportunity.
• Make Smart Choices: You can choose to panic or not to panic. You can verbally lash out or take a deep breath and regroup. You also can rephrase your situation in more positive language. Words you speak aloud and private interior monologues carry power.
• Exercise Flexibility: Who doesn’t love when everything goes exactly as planned? How often does that actually happen? You can cling to “your plan” until your fingers are raw but if it isn’t working be willing to try something different.
• Cultivate Relationships: People will strong professional connections and solid friendships are happier at work and handle stress better. When life hits you broadside, you’ll have network of genuine support.
• Stay Healthy: Coping with stress from life’s surprises is much easier with a good night’s sleep. Don’t underestimate the ability of sleep, exercise and other healthy habits to make challenges more manageable.

As it happens, these behaviors also build confidence, which is core component of resilience. Resilient people are confident they will come out of a mess intact and even stronger. They also take more risks because they know how to recover from a misstep.

Developing greater resilience is like exercising a neglected muscle - it takes time and is uncomfortable at first. But it won’t be long before you feel a difference.

Related Post: Resilience is More than Bouncing Back

 Sameer Bhargava has led and turned around IT organizations in multi-billion dollar companies and created world-class R&D teams at startups. He is CIO of Onlife Health and founder of Callibrain, a cloud-based software platform that drives higher performance by strengthening alignment, communication, collaboration and employee engagement across an organization. The views, opinions and positions expressed are the author’s alone and should not be attributed to Onlife Health or anyone within the organization.