Becoming Resilient: The Key to Thriving in Today’s Challenging and Uncertain TimesResiliency – the ability to deal with stress, pressure, and change - affects every aspect of our personal and work lives. With greater Resiliency we:
By David Lee
Reprinted from The Employment Times
- deal with everyday hassles and frustrations without becoming worn out
- face major life crises with greater confidence and optimism
- perform at our best in high pressure situations
- respond gracefully to change
- possess greater energy and vitality
Regardless of how Resilient you currently are, you can increase your Resiliency by utilizing simple techniques and engaging in practices that increase your capacity to deal with stress and change. Despite their simplicity, if you use these, they can make a huge difference in your level of Resiliency, and therefore the quality of your life. Of the many principles and practices available, here are a few:
Use The Instant Perspective Technique When Faced With Hassles, Embarrassing Situations, And Painful Events
This technique allows you to “fast forward” the natural process we’ve all experienced of looking back with equanimity or amusement at a situation that was dreadful while it was happening. While you’re in the midst of the stressful situation, ask yourself “Will this be a big deal a month from now?” If the answer is “Yes,” up the time frame to a year, five years, or whatever it takes to get to a “No.” Then ask yourself if you want to torment yourself while pumping health damaging stress-induced biochemicals throughout your body in the meantime. Since the answer to that is an obvious “No,” ask yourself if it might be a good idea to have that “looking back with equanimity or with amusement (if appropriate)” perspective in the moment. I’ve used this in many frustrating and embarrassing situations and have found it to be one of the most useful techniques for dealing with stressful situations.
Use Your Body To Change Your Mind
Make the Mind/Body Connection Work For You
The fastest way to shift your emotional state is to shift your physical state. Because of the mind/body connection, the subsequent shift in emotional state influences your ability to think clearly and creatively.
If you want to calm down, you can shift your physical state by breathing slowly and deeply, and/or moving more slowly. If you want to feel more confident in the face of a challenge, try standing up straighter or walking more purposively. By changing your emotional state, you start thinking about the situation differently. Just like getting a good night’s sleep often puts problems in perspective, shifting into a better emotional state through these techniques can help you both feel and think differently about a stressful situation.
Use Your Face to Change Your Mood, and Then Your Mind
Another simple, yet very effective way, to use your body to change your mind is to use your face to change your mood. Because the face has a wealth of nerves fibers going to the brain, it is one of the major body regions that sends signals to the brain about our emotional state. In short, our facial expression helps create the emotions we experience. We can use this influence when we are feeling troubled by shifting our facial expression from morose or beleaguered to serene.
Try it. Think about something that is bothering you and notice your facial expression. Also notice your thoughts. Then put on a peaceful smile and hold it for a few minutes. Then notice how you feel and what you are thinking about the situation. You will find yourself seeing it in a whole new light.
You can also use your face to keep yourself in a serene mood throughout the day. Every now and then, focus your attention on your face and if you have an expression that is less than serene or cheerful, change it. A nice ancillary benefit to changing your expression is that you will find yourself eliciting more friendliness and goodwill in others, which further boosts your spirits.
Practice Seeing The Gift In Problems And The Opportunities In Crises
The Chinese recognized the dual nature of Crisis thousands of years ago when they created the character for Crisis by combining the characters for Danger and Opportunity.
As Denis Waitely, peak performance psychologist for Olympic athletes and CEOs notes “Crisis is opportunity riding a dangerous wind.” Napoleon Hill, who studied some of America’s most successful people during the early part of the 20th century, noted that many of them held the belief that “in every problem is the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” People who subscribe to that belief have two advantages when dealing with stressful situations. First, they are more calm and serene because they believe that something good will come out of the negative situation. Second, by believing crises contain hidden gifts and opportunities, they tune their subconscious mind to pick out opportunities in situations others would have missed.
This phenomenon is identical to the experience most of us have had when purchasing a car. When we decide on a particular make and model, we begin to notice that make and model everywhere. These cars were obviously always there, we just hadn’t noticed them because they weren’t relevant to us until the moment we decided to purchase one. Once they became relevant, they got onto our radar screen, and we began to notice them. We can put this principle to use by practicing looking for the hidden gifts or opportunities in challenges and crises. By doing that, we not only feel more confident and optimistic during major life challenges and crises, we also increase our ability to find opportunities and options in difficult situations.
Engage In A Flexibility Development Program
Being Tough Is Not Enough
Today’s rapidly changing world requires our being flexible. Flexibility is the primary component of Resiliency which makes it different from the type of stoicism that enabled our ancestors to endure grueling, stressful lives.
Life generations ago required that one be steady and sturdy like a river barge. in today’s world, you need to be durable and nimble like a white water kayak. You need to be able to respond flexibly and resourcefully to the kinds of rapidly changing situations we are facing in today’s work world; changes such as mergers and acquisitions, re-organizations, business models becoming obsolete, or being downsized.
A Simple Approach to Cultivating Flexibility
You can increase your ability to respond flexibly to major life changes by practicing on the less important areas. You can do this by breaking out of some of the routines (i.e. ruts) you have created, like eating dinner at a certain time every night, dining at the same restaurants all the time, or going to the same grocery store all the time. Although these may seem inconsequential – and they are by themselves – the cumulative effect is that you become more flexible. If you question the validity of this, think of how often the opposite happens to elderly people. They get so locked into their routines that any deviation becomes a crisis.
To put this into action, take a mental inventory of all the routines you have and play with breaking them and notice what happens. At first you will feel anxious, just like a child when his or her routine is broken. After awhile, you will feel comfortable being flexible.
Practice Choosing Spontaneity
One of the best ways to develop greater flexibility is to “chose spontaneity.” For instance, think of times you’ve received a call from someone wondering if you wanted to, on the spur of the moment, go to a movie, shopping or some other fun activity. Did you feel uncomfortable about deviating from your plans, even though they were something uninspiring like “vacuum the house” or “balance the check book”?
From this point on, that little feeling of uneasiness can be your cue to choose spontaneity. The very fact that you know it would be more fun to go with your friend, but you feel an irrational sense of discomfort about breaking free from your planned out day or your age-old routine is your cue that you should say “Yes.” By doing this, you train your brain to feel comfortable, and even enjoy, responding flexibly.
Remember that Life Can Be Difficult – And That Can Be a Good Thing
Nobody Promised You a Rose Garden
M. Scott Peck began his much acclaimed book The Road Less Traveled, with the line “Life is difficult.” He goes on to say that much of the distress we experience when life throws us a curve ball comes from our expectation that life is supposed to be easy.
Some people almost seem offended by the unpleasant surprise, as if life had broken some unspoken agreement. By challenging our assumptions that life is supposed to be easy and that problems are aberration, we can respond to difficult times with greater equanimity.
Life Being Difficult Can Even Be a Gift
We can go a step further and recognize that not only is life difficult, but that life being difficult can be a good thing. When things are going swimmingly, it’s easy to become smug, arrogant, and insensitive. We can be so self and career focused that we become insensitive to the needs and plight of others. Focusing on the “fast track” can lead us to realize with regret in our waning years that we have missed out on what is really important in life. Getting knocked down can save us from that fate. It can lead to the transformation Wordsworth spoke of: “A deep distress hath humanized my soul.”
Trials and tribulations can transform a person into someone more kind, humble, and compassionate. And today’s world could certainly use more people with these qualities.
Engage in an Ongoing “Comfort Zone Expansion” Program
Building Emotional Strength Requires “Pumping Fear”
Weight lifters know the only way to get stronger is to continue to challenge their body by pumping more iron. There’s no way around it. Becoming emotionally stronger requires the equivalent; it requires that we “pump fear.” Pumping fear means stepping outside our comfort zone and facing our fears. It means not letting fear keep us from doing things that would make our lives better and more fulfilling.
In my Resiliency workshops, I ask people to make a list of things that, if they did them, would improve their lives, but that fear has kept them from doing. Then, I ask them to step outside their comfort zone and do them. For those risks that feel like to big a leap, I ask them to think about what kind of “baby step” (remember the movie What About Bob?) they can take to build up the strength to get one step closer.
For instance, if you tend to let people push you around and this has resulted in your boss being disrespectful, you might not want to make your first step be “Confront the Boss.” You might want the first step be “Stand up to my 7 year old.”
Train Your Brain To Like Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone
When you face your fear and take the risk, reward yourself. A key point in rewarding yourself is that you don’t want to reward yourself only if you succeed, you want to reward yourself for “going for it.” Doing this helps your brain associate “going for it” with pleasure. Just like training a dog to come by giving it a bone, you are training your brain to like being brave by giving it a reward.
I believe stepping outside your comfort zone is the most important – and most difficult – Resiliency building practice you can engage in. Without taking risks and facing our fears, we will never increase our emotional strength, we will never increase our confidence and serenity in the face of challenge.
Practicing On The Little Things Can Get You Ready for The “Big Things”
In his classic Talks to Teachers, Dr. William James, considered by many to be America’s most esteemed psychologist, wrote:”… be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.” Dr. James recognized the importance of regularly practicing facing one’s fears, so that when it really matters, we can respond with courage and equanimity.
Close The Knowing/Doing Gap
In the training field, one of the biggest sources of consternation is the Knowing/Doing gap – the difference between what people know and what they do (e.g. “I know I should take time for exercise, but….”) As mentioned earlier, many of the techniques for increasing Resiliency aren’t complicated or mysterious. Chances are, you know many of them. But whether or not you know them isn’t what matters. Whether or not you are practicing them does matter.
So, as you reflect on these principles and strategies, and others that you know, please ask yourself “Am I actually doing these things?” If your answer is “Yes,” reviewing them is still a good thing. Often when I am reviewing my material prior to giving a program on Resiliency, I come across a principle or technique that I had forgotten. Reviewing them keeps these “tools” ready when you need them.
If your answer to the question “Am I actually doing these things?” is “No,” then ask yourself what price you are paying in terms of your stress level, diminished energy, and quality of life. Hopefully that will inspire you to close the Knowing/Doing gap and use the principles and practices that increase Resiliency. By doing that, you will not only increase your ability to deal with stress, pressure, and major life changes, you will have more energy, vitality, and goodwill to bring to work and share with your loved ones.
About the Author: David Lee is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. The founder of HumanNature@Work, he has worked with organizations and presented at conferences throughout North America and overseas. He is the author of Managing Employee Stress and Safety, as well as dozens of articles on employee and organizational performance.
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For More Information:
David Lee, President
HumanNature@Work
P.O. Box 430
Bar Mills, Maine 04004
Tel: 207-929-3344
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