Personal Resilience: Developing the Foundation
Our working lives are undergoing organizational changes constantly. From remote/hybrid work, burnout and a skill shortage, we are consistently faced with new challenges and building personal resilience is more important than ever.
Building your resilience at work is a great way of decluttering your mental space to create better decisions in your career. After all, resilience is our ability to adapt positively to changes, challenges and pressures in order to optimize our performance fully and, most importantly, our well-being.
When you have personal resilience, you are more likely to bounce back from a setback, like illness, losing a loved one, job loss or other challenges. Those who do not have personal resilience are more likely to resort to unhealthy coping behaviors such as eating disorders, impulsive spending, substance abuse or more.
How can I build resilience?
There’s no easy or perfect answer to this. Developing the foundation of your personal resilience is a matter of truly understanding who you are, what you want and your capacity to overcome change. Still, we have strategies at imatters that can help you improve your resilience.
The most important thing to remember is that resilience is a skill and like all skills, resilience can be learned with practice.
Strategy One: Mental Resources
Your experiences play an important role in how you develop a resilient mindset. Mental resources like how you behave, feel and think can help you persevere through challenges and be agile in the face of adversity. Our experiences shape who we are. Learning how we reframe our experiences can help us to relate to ourselves and others, and understanding ourselves, our strengths and our motivations will help us create a master plan for our own development.
In certain cases, such as radical changes in the workplace, this is especially important. Ongoing stress that could occur from mergers or massive layoffs could be detrimental to your mental health. Developing hardiness can lessen the negative effects of stressful events.
Strategy Two: Our Physical Well-Being
Like your mind, your physical well-being also plays a vital role in developing the foundation for personal resilience. Understanding aspects such as your nervous system and how it connects with the rest of your physiology gives you the tools to regulate your emotions.
The connection between mind and body can help you better understand how you experience challenges. Having enough sleep, exercise and food for your body to operate properly will help you to navigate changes that come your way.
Strategy Three: Finding Balance in Renewal
Resilience isn’t like being a rubber band that gets stretched and stretched until it eventually snaps. Resilience is about bouncing forward—not bouncing back. Take the time to renew your energy and motivation for work. Your needs and your growth are worth the effort, and renewal is needed to rebuild your overall well-being—mental and physical.
Reset your body by going for a walk, listening to music, meditating or taking a small break. Don’t be afraid to protect your downtime. Actively replenishing your needs will prevent you from burnout and help you build the foundation necessary for you to target your stress and enhance your resilience actively.
At imatters, we understand that you cannot have goals without obstacles. We want to be your resource for how to navigate changes and life’s challenges. We’re in your corner. Reach out to one of our eye care recruiters today.