We are all in the same boat: no one is spared from failures and the unpredictability of life. However, there’s one difference: those who are resilient do better. They have that strength of character which drives them through life despite obstacles and this makes them stronger. Let's see if you are part of the lot:
- Do you regularly dwell on the wounds of the past?
- Are regrets part of your daily life?
- Does nostalgia keep you from appreciating today's world?
- Do you try to replay past scenarios to find relief?
- Do you need a lot of time to digest a difficult event?
If you answered yes to at least two of these questions, chances are your resilience level needs a boost of development. Let's first explore what resilience is and train ourselves by putting our three tips into practice.
What is being resilient?
A resilient person knows how to learn from their experiences, even painful ones. They look forward to the future and free themselves from past difficulties, knowing that we cannot go back in time. They absorb failures by taking their share of the responsibility and remaining confident about the future. They know how to mobilise their power to act in situations that concern them. Through their proactive attitude, they see challenges as a great opportunity to surpass themselves and go above and beyond.
How to develop resilience?
Tip 1:Use humour to put a situation into perspective
Less resilient people often tend to ruminate on a past situation and overemphasise it. Their thoughts are captured by a difficult event that prevents them from moving forward peacefully. To get rid of these unconstructive thoughts, humour is an exceptional tool. By making fun of what happened, the individual plays down the situation and puts it into perspective. This allows you to see things differently and give another meaning to reality. Humour is good in both challenging situations and in the lightest of situations since it allows one to let go, which is necessary to turn the page on a difficult event, by offering a new interpretation of their story. Did your meeting go badly? A dissatisfied customer was aggressive towards you? The job interview was not conclusive? You just have to find a roundabout way to laugh at the event to make it seem less important.
Tip 2:Put things in perspective
An experience of failure can seriously demoralise a less resilient person and discourage them from moving forward again. To change this mindset, a simple technique is to put things into perspective. The goal is to take some distance from the situation in order to reframe it and put its importance into perspective. To do this, try to project yourself in a year and ask yourself: how important will this situation be for you? And in five years, will you still remember it? Also ask yourself what this situation would have taught you, in other words, reflect on the positive impact it would have had on your personal and professional development. Because what we consider today as a failure, is ultimately a tremendous opportunity for development.
Tip 3: Practice mindful meditation conscience
For several years, studies have proposed the benefits of mindfulness meditation. This even invites itself into the professional world since its repercussions can be observed in stress at work, concentration, creativity but also in resilience. If the method requires effort and regularity, its principle is simple. By focusing on the present moment, we manage, with practice, to take the necessary distance to let negative ideas escape. This contact with the present allows you to gradually get rid of the obsessions of the past and anchor yourself in a positive and benevolent state of mind towards yourself.
Curious to know the level of resilience in your teams? Tools exist to measure it. The most common ones are those based on emotional intelligence. They make it possible to see precisely where a person is positioned on the scale of resilience. High results will attest a great capacity for resilience through flexibility and inner strength in the face of life events. Lower results will help people realise the full development potential available to them.
