How to be more resilient at work

Everybody will experience frustrations, disappointments, conflicts, and failures at work. Projects run over time and budget, you make mistakes, your manager treats you unfairly, things break and need fixing when you’re most stressed, people complain, problems pile up. The list is long.

Correspondingly, everybody experiences negative emotions at work from time to time. That’s just a fact. The following is some of the best, time-tested advice to boost your resilience.

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Use Your Relationships

First, you want to use your relationships. Strong relationships are key to resilience. Your colleagues, friends, and family can often help you get your thoughts and mood back on track – and even if their advice isn’t particularly useful, it usually helps to just talk with someone about your problem. Putting it into words and saying it out loud helps your thinking become clearer.

So, don’t keep your problems to yourself. Share them with trusted others. And don’t assume that others know you’re having trouble; you might have to ask them directly for support. Even if you feel embarrassed, angry, ashamed, or have other strong emotions, it’s better to try to calm down and tell them the story of what’s happening. And don’t wait for too long.

To get the most out of talking with others, dare to speak about what you’re feeling. Dare to be vulnerable, and don’t keep your weaknesses or mistakes a secret. You may learn that you have much more support and understanding than you thought, even when sharing personal things.

Also, try not to only talk with people you know will support and comfort you. Sometimes, it’s even more important to dare to speak with people who aren’t afraid to challenge you and help you see the situation from another point of view. You may have some thoughts going around in your head that need to be debated or challenged. That kind of advice and coaching should especially come from people with relevant backgrounds and experiences. Those people who challenge you may also turn out to give you the best support.

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Understand your circle of control

Some things you shouldn’t spend energy being frustrated about! Those are the things you have no control over. Because when it comes down to it, you can only control your own thoughts and actions. Everything else is outside of your control. Other things you can influence, but their outcomes are still outside of your circle of control. For example, you can influence other people’s opinions, but you cannot control them.

This concept is called the circle of control: what is inside you can control, and what is outside you cannot control. And resilience comes from 1) accepting what you cannot control and 2) instead focusing your efforts on what you can control. Let’s examine these elements separately:

1. Accept the things you cannot control. Sometimes, things don’t turn out the way you would prefer: your manager is unreasonable, people react negatively, etc. That’s just reality, and you have to accept it. Accepting reality doesn’t mean you have to like it, though; you obviously have preferences for some outcomes over others. It only means that you know what reality is and recognize that it is what it is. Focusing your energy on feeling offended, angry, or annoyed (nonresilient reactions) will not help; instead, you will only waste your energy in the wrong place.?
2. Focus your efforts on what you can control. This allows you to focus on what you can take responsibility for, while letting go of the rest. And what you can control is your own thoughts and actions. For example, while you cannot control how your manager evaluates you, you may be able to influence your manager’s evaluation; you can do your best to perform your job well, you can ask for feedback so that you can learn what is expected and adjust accordingly, etc. Such actions are entirely within your circle of control.?

Challenge your automatic thoughts

Automatic thoughts are those that you’re not aware of – because they’re not based on conscious thinking. They just pop up spontaneously in your mind. Most of the time, automatic thoughts serve you well. It’s like when you drive a car: you react more or less automatically to the events in traffic, like red lights or green arrows.

However, automatic thoughts are sometimes based on old experiences that are no longer relevant or underlying beliefs that simply are not true. But you still react as if they are. And that can be a problem. For example, if you’re used to driving on the right side of the road and travel to a country where people drive on the left side, your automatic thoughts will need to change quickly in order to keep you safe.

The principle can be illustrated this way:

Event --> Automatic Thought --> Reaction (a behavior or an emotion)

This is crucial because if you understand that some of your thoughts are automatic, you can intervene. You can mindfully choose to respond differently instead of just reacting reflexively.

As an example, let’s assume that a colleague is noticeably grumpy one morning when you come to work. As soon as you notice your colleague’s attitude, automatic thoughts kick in. They could be very different interpretations: from “what a jerk” (an angry reaction, you feel rebuffed) or “he must have had a bad morning” (an understanding reaction) to “I must have done something wrong” (a self-critical reaction). The point is that you actually don’t know why your colleague is grumpy, but your brain automatically picks an interpretation anyway. And, to strengthen your resilience, it’s important to recognize and challenge such automatic thoughts so that you can respond appropriately.

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One of the simplest ways to challenge your automatic thoughts is to consider how you would talk to a friend in the same situation. That way, you step out of your upsetting situation and try to see it from a different perspective. Let’s say that, in the above situation, you jump to the conclusion, “I must have done something wrong.” Then you can consider what you would say to a friend with this problem. For example, you can ask your “friend” the following types of questions:

1. What is the evidence for the thought “I must have done something wrong”? The answer could be: There is no evidence; nothing supports that I was the cause.

2. What is the evidence against this thought? The answer could be: My colleague hasn’t given any specific signs that I am the cause of his grumpiness.

3. What is a more accurate way of thinking? The answer could be: My colleague is grumpy, and I don’t know why. I can ask later if he’s okay, if there’s anything I can do to help, or if I’ve done something that upset him.

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Another technique is to look for alternative explanations. Often, there can be several different explanations for a given situation. However, when your brain interprets the situation, it may quickly pick only one of them, making you blind to other possibilities. It’s like your brain is completely satisfied as soon as it gets an explanation.

When you look for alternative explanations, you instead force yourself to deliberately think about other possible explanations, which can give you a more nuanced picture of what may have happened. For example, some alternative explanations for your colleague being grumpy may be: He has a frustrating work issue that has nothing to do with you. The traffic was terrible this morning and annoyed the s*** out of him. Your colleague had an argument with someone in his family before coming to work. And so on. Thus, by forcing yourself to look for alternative explanations, you can avoid (erroneously) picking the first one that comes to mind.

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Distract yourself (for a while)

Sometimes, when you get overwhelmed by emotions and feel unable to think straight or focus, the best you can do is to distract yourself so that you can calm down and ground yourself. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reflect or challenge your thinking as discussed above – only that you may choose to postpone this exercise until later, after you’ve calmed down. Let’s say you get angry with a colleague and can’t stop thinking about this person and the situation that created the frustration. Then, it’s probably a good idea to take a break and work on something else or take a walk (or whatever works for you) and then tackle the situation later. Taking time out to think and do something else can help you gain perspective.

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Strengthen your soft skills

Learning soft skills will not only benefit your performance and satisfaction at work but can also prevent many conflicts and adverse events from happening in the first place. For instance, people who are good at building trust, giving and receiving feedback, managing their time, communicating effectively, and disagreeing constructively will (obviously) experience fewer interpersonal conflicts and less stress ... than people who are weak in these skills. Many good reasons to sharpen your soft skills!

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This is the fifth in a series of 14 articles that will convey the main concepts of our book 12 Universal Skills to LinkedIn readers – especially those at the beginning of their careers.

For more on the topic, have a look at our book 12 Universal Skills: The Beginner’s Guide to a Successful Work Life.