Increasing Resilience One Affirmation at a Time: Growing Hope and Optimism

Our times provide extraordinary opportunities to understand, use, and strengthen psychological, physical, emotional, and community resilience. It's not easy for anyone to get through the disappointments, challenges, and grief as we collectively move through the global pandemic and national political transitions. But, as we have done before, we will come back stronger.

Our capacity to recover increases when we find ways to change courses, heal, and move forward to achieve goals. These capacities are relevant to the workplace, as people and culture leaders now know well. 2020 has been a year of changing courses, helping others adapt, and revising goals.

Resilience gives us the strength to cope with life's stressors and hardships. Resilient people, despite the severity of disappointment or setback, approach situations with optimism. They seek ways to reduce stress, to have clear feelings, and to regulate their environments. Failure is feedback to adjust, to change, and to grow.

Resilience doesn't go up and down like a serial dieter's waistline but instead grows as a bank account does, through attention, investment, and time. Some experiences provide windfall deposits to your resilience, will your actions over time trickle to steady growth.

Elizabeth Edwards, an author on the topics of grace and resilience, offers this valuable description of resilience:

"She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails."

This article repositions content in an earlier article on growing resilience. I hope you find that it contributes to your understanding and that it helps coaches, consultants, and others in the people business to care for themselves and others.

Everyone has ups and downs at work. There are failed projects, challenging coworkers, and missed goals and opportunities. There are also the eureka moments, captured in product and process breakthroughs, incredible teamwork and collaboration, and extraordinary performance advances. But it's adversity that tests our resolve and resilience and helps to define who we are and how we show up at work.

Age doesn't guarantee wisdom. Wisdom is generated by our experiences and what we make of them. In a world of unstoppable change, the skills and abilities to learn from experience and increase resiliency define career success.

Many factors determine and influence resilience, and they are not always about work and career. Every day, people come to work worried about health and wellness, family members and relationships, or current tensions in the world. Life's events profoundly influence how we respond to and shape our world of work.

Change and uncertainty shape and condition personal resiliency. Moments turn into days and weeks and months, and, if you're resilient, you can gracefully acknowledge endings, transform periods of transition to growth, and prepare to begin anew. In growth organizations, leaders learn from adversity to drive forward. Like a muscle, we can choose to strengthen resiliency, deepening our reservoirs of strength and emotional wellness.

When we develop resilience, we develop approaches and strengths to meet adversity and rise to the daunting occasion. In organizations, resilient people do not let failure define them. While some events seem to take every ounce of resilience, successful people know that resilience is a renewable resource. Because resilience is not a trait, it can be learned and developed. Attitude, ability, and a sense of optimism all contribute to improving your resilience.

Every once in and awhile, we have a front-row seat to experience the incredibly resilient. Regardless of crisis or opportunity, these individuals demonstrate uncanny abilities to acknowledge derailers and setbacks. They use their experience and reflections to chart new goals and to forge new paths. We are all the better for the presence of resilient people.

Aspirations to Encourage Resiliency

Based on my observations of resilient leaders and individual contributors, I'm offering some brief reminders or affirmations to encourage your resiliency, even during periods of radical disruption and transformation.

• You recognize both the challenge and opportunity in situations.
• You acknowledge your discomfort and talk with others about that discomfort.
• You propose a new idea, offer a fresh perspective, or seek others who can assist you.
• You look towards the horizon.
• You focus on your strengths and work on your development areas.
• You set new goals.
• You remember others and are kind to them.
• You maintain perspective, change, and develop an outlook to help you to succeed.
• You make a change or some changes, regardless of the difficulty.
• You vary approaches and try at least two or three times before giving up.
• You empathize and help others.
• You find channels and outlets the are healthy and productive.
• You step outside of yourself and recognize the forest for the trees.

Why wait to replenish your resilience? Through communication, collaboration, and reflection, you can deepen your resilience. Your strength in this area not only supports your success in adverse times but extends to help your coworkers. In a world of change and uncertainty, when you strengthen your resilience, everything will change!