A definition of resilience that helps me become more resilient

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How do you define resilience?

When I looked it up, I found:

“Resilience is the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from difficult life events. Being resilient does not mean a person doesn't experience stress, emotional upheaval, and suffering. Resilience involves the ability to work through emotional pain and suffering.”

And more definitions that revolved around that idea of being able to BOUNCE BACK which always makes me think of a trampoline ??

I’ve never been very stable on a trampoline so this image has never really worked for me…

But there are elements of that definition that do work?

“withstand adversity,”

“ work through emotional pain and suffering”?

So I’ve asked myself, what do I need to do to be able to do this?

One metaphor or image that does work for me is about going to the gym..

Stay with me ??

When you go to the gym and start working with weights, you tend to start with a low weight and do lots of repetitions and eventually get stronger and use heavier weights and less repetitions.

Have you ever been to the gym and then not been able to walk or sit or use your arms, two days later?!? I have! The funniest time was when I had to fly a couple of days after a gym session to deliver some training in Spain and when I tried to go to the loo on the plane I had to hold on to the walls in order to find a way to sit down and then get back up again!!! ?? ????

Well, this is called DOMS - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.? Basically, as you work your muscles, you create little micro tears and it’s the healing process that not only hurts but also makes the muscle grow stronger. This means that eventually you can lift heavier and continue to grow.

Well for me building resilience is the same - you have to go through some pain to get there.

It’s not possible to build resilience just by thinking about it or reading about it.? In order to do so you have to put yourself through an experience, sometimes that experience will hurt a little but you learn, you recover and you grow.

I always say that you cannot build resilience from the comfort of your bed!

You need to get out of your comfort zone, stretch into new situations and grow your resilience muscle.

What do you need to stretch into?

??About Sonia Gavira??

Sonia Gavira MBA, PCC?is a leadership and executive coach, consultant and Certified Practitioner in Brain and Behaviour Change and Master Practitioner in NLP. Coming from a strong commercial background in marketing to Marketing Director level. Sonia has spent more than 20 years working with Executives, Directors and Managers in organisations helping them lead themselves, their teams and their organisations successfully.

Today Sonia’s interest lies in helping leaders embrace a new style of leadership that allows people to be themselves and embrace compassion, care and kindness as well as strength, power and decisiveness - polarities that too often drive leaders one way or the other. This has lead her to be involved in a number of programmes helping women ask for and progress to senior roles within organisations, and do so in a way that balances all aspects of their life.Sonia is also an expert in motivation, enabling individuals, teams and organisations to tap into what will drive them to peak performance.

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