Eight Ways to Build Resilience at Work
The following are not the only ways to strengthen resilience at work. Some people find keeping a journal useful, while those with a religious or spiritual conviction find prayer helpful. Practicing mindfulness or meditation also helps people connect with themselves and restore a sense of purpose. The key is to identify ways that are likely to work well for you as part of your own personal strategy for fostering resilience at work. Some ideas to consider include:
- Foster social support and interaction. Good relationships with family and friends and others are vital. Being active in the wider community also helps.
- Treat problems as a learning process. Develop the habit of using challenges as opportunities to acquire or master skills and build achievement.
- Avoid making a drama out of a crisis. Stress and change are part of life. How we interpret and respond to events has a big impact of how stressful we find them.
- Celebrate your successes. Take time at the end of each day to review what went well and congratulate yourself. This trains the mind to look for success rather than dwelling on negativity and “failure.”
- Develop realistic life goals for guidance and a sense of purpose. Do something each day to move towards them. Again, small is beautiful; one small step amid the chaos of a busy day will help.
- Take positive action. Doing something in the face of adversity brings a sense of control, even if it doesn’t remove the difficulty.
- Keep a realistic perspective. Place challenging or painful events in the broader context of lifelong personal development.
- Practice optimism. Nothing is either wholly good or bad. If we allow our thinking to dictate how we view something it will take over. Make your thinking work for your benefit, rather than letting it stymie you with doubt or by seeing only the bad side.