Resilience in a Time of Change

We hear the term resilience a lot these days. Organisations offer training to their staff on what it means to be resilient and how to be resilient in the workplace. What we don’t see so often is guidance on how to be resilient in our daily lives. Sure, the notion of resilience can be transferred from the workplace into our personal lives but how do we really cope with all of the change that is going on around us? Only recently the world has experienced unprecedented change and we seem to be in a state of perpetual transition. We are seeing rapid changes in our way of living due to increases in the cost of living, a shortage in resources and changes to our ways of working. It’s no wonder that mental health is such a prominent topic nowadays and maintaining our resilience can be a challenge. According to Mind UK (2020) 6 in every 100 people are diagnosed with a generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) each week, while 8 in every 100 people are diagnosed with mixed anxiety and depression. How exactly do we manage to stay resilient while juggling work, family and other priorities?

Essentially, resilience is our ability to bounce back from difficult situations. Speaking from personal experience, I refer to one year during which I experienced the end of certain relationships, the beginning of new ones, family changes, I moved house, I left my job and then moved countries, upon which I had to adjust to a new way of life! It was the most transitional period of my life and looking back, I wonder, how did I manage to cope with all of the changes? I was stressed and anxious for a period of time during and after the transition, which was my body’s natural response to what was going on around me. On the one hand I was happy to have made these decisions to change my life but at the same time I found it overwhelming and feared uncertainly due to a feeling that I had less control over outcomes. Now that I am a coach, I am familiar with tools and techniques that can help a person to manage these types of situations and if I were coaching my younger self, I would certainly have shared these resources with her! It is not so much about preventing the uncomfortable feelings from occurring during challenging situations but equipping yourself with the tools needed to adequately cope and be resilient when they do arise.

The three qualities that resonate with me in achieving resilience are mindset, clarity and acceptance. It is important to remember that we are all different, we will all have our own take on what works best for us and of course there are many other qualities that can be considered together with helpful resources. These qualities are what have stood out for me in particular. If I were to coach myself back then, I would have worked on mindset techniques to reframe the challenging experiences and perceived negatives by asking questions such as, What is important to you? What are you getting out of making these choices? What is the worst thing that can happen? What is the best thing that can happen? How do you see your future self as a result of making these choices? What else can you do now to work towards this future vision of yourself? These questions are powerful in that they provide clarity amongst all the chaos and once clarity is attained, you can reach a state of acceptance of challenging situations, knowing that there is a bigger picture to draw your focus.