What does resilience mean to you?

Resilience is not just your ability to bounce back, but also your capacity to adapt in the face of challenging circumstances, whilst maintaining a stable mental wellbeing. Resilience isn’t a personality trait – it’s something that we can ALL take steps to achieve. Learning how to successfully move through adversity rather than completely blocking it out is the key to helping us cope better and recover more quickly.

Here are my 5 Top Tips for Building Resilience:

1.Face your fears.

Overcoming a fear means we are forced to tackle our emotions head on. The first step towards this is to gradually and consistently expose yourself to the thing that scares you, also known as ‘exposure therapy’ – where we change the associations we have with a particular stimulus. Though the fear may never be fully eradicated, you’ll have far more courage in confronting and dealing with it. For example, if one of your fears is public speaking, you may set yourself a target to talk up more in meetings, or put yourself forward for small speaking arrangements. Over time, you can up the ante until you are ready to nail the big speech at an event.

2. Practice self-compassion.

Practicing self-compassion involves offering compassion to ourselves, confronting our own suffering with an attitude of kindness, void of any judgement. Remember that you’re not alone in these experiences. This is all part of being human, although the circumstances may vary. Once we start to develop a more positive attitude towards ourselves you will start to realise and accept that you are more than enough. No matter what anyone else says. You possess everything you need to be happy and experience genuine success in life. Embracing self-compassion will enable you to welcome gratitude. Get into the habit of documenting and sharing your wins, no matter how big or small – you will be more likely to persevere and keep up the positive momentum in being the best, most resilient version of you.

3. Cultivate patience.

Many of us live worrying that success has passed us by. That we’re too old to start something new or change our path. Good news is that these narratives are completely irrational. It’s never too late to start again or to change the narrative. Life is a long journey with many different detours and through-roads – but that’s what makes it interesting and worth living. Don’t push yourself too hard for not being where you want to be when you want to be. Some of the best paths can’t be discovered without getting lost along the way. I know that’s easier said than done but know that some of the most successful and highly regarded people in life had their breakthroughs later on: Stan Lee (the godfather of Marvel comics) didn’t create his first comic until he was 39, Vera Wang started her fashion career when she was 40, Colonel Sanders (founder of KFC), franchised the company at 62. Embrace and accept your growth journey with both hands. It’s never too late to create the change you desire.

4. Be selfish with your time and energy.

Do you ever feel like at times life or work is running you rather you running them? Do you find yourself in constant calls or meetings back to back without a proper break at all? Start to prioritise your time and be strict with your boundaries. If a meeting is due to end at a certain time, ensure that it does and follow up with any additional points via email. Keeping meetings to certain time frames ensure you cut the ‘waffle’ and get straight down to the key points. It may sound ruthless, but ask yourself – do you truly want to get your well-deserved time back? And remember, checking in with people in your network and your friends is equally as important as team meetings and completing tasks.

5. Improve psychological safety.

This is an area I am hugely passionate about. Feeling psychologically safe means ensuring the environment around you reacts positively and respectfully to all ideas, without judgement. There are very small changes that can be implemented to have a huge impact in your day-to-day interactions. Creating a safe space where you can openly and honestly discuss and share your challenges and embrace a culture of failure is a good place to start. Ensuring that you and your colleagues are open to feedback, are all equally involved in decision making, avoid blaming to build trust and champion one another is also massively important in step changing culture towards one that is more psychologically safe. Often in life, it’s the smallest actions day-to-day that make the biggest impact overall.

Love,

Catherine x