Several years ago, I attended a leadership workshop with several other CEOs of businesses from a wide range of sectors. The workshop was facilitated by Sue Firth, the title of which was ‘Taking the Stress out of Leadership’. Sue Firth is a renowned performance coach and business psychologist, specialising in helping people navigate change so that they can perform at their best.
I recall our first challenge was to draw a straight line across the middle of a large sheet of paper. This line represented the number of years we had lived so far. Then, we were asked to create a continuous timeline, from birth up to the present day, to show the highs and the lows, on a scale of -100 to +100, that we had experienced on our journey through life. The higher the peak the more significant the high, the lower the trough, the more significant the low.
We first looked at the peaks to understand what it was that made us feel so good about those times. Then we looked at the troughs and during the workshop and shared the ‘bad’ times (we had all had them) with each other. We then set about trying to understand how those troughs may have changed our perception of the world. We focused very much on how resilience played a part in helping us through those darker times, and what we could learn from those experiences to take us forward in later life.
As this extraordinary year draws to a close, I thought it might be enlightening to revisit this concept of using a graph to illustrate highs and lows, covering just 2020 and this is what my year looks like.
What was fascinating about this graph is that the lows were far shorter in duration than in my lifelong graph. Over my life to date I have been fortunate enough to have mentors, peers and coaches and along the way have developed strategies for dealing with stress and anxious times, which allows me to understand my own state and choose how to react to certain situations.
You will have noticed that of the people around you, some seem to be able to overcome setbacks and disappointments with ease while others struggle. This is what resilience is and here are my 10 tips for building up your own resilience.
1 - Expect change
As ‘Mentoris’, you would expect my first tip to come from a Greek source, so I will not disappoint you. Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is quoted as saying: ‘Change is the only constant in life.’ If we accept this as being so, then we can expect change and hence remove some of the element of surprise that change brings.
2 - Be flexible
Being able to adapt and change to suit the situation is a key to being more resilient. Rather than set your plans and ideas in stone, think in terms of plasticine, so that if you need to change them you can without too much effort and upheaval.
3 - Think ahead
One of the traits of resilient people is they expect to face challenges at different points in life. They build resilience by planning for certain scenarios in advance, so they are ready when those appear.
4 - Be a life-long learner
When you have a negative experience, look for a gift or opportunity that can come out of it. Rather than focusing on blame and feeling like a victim, try to look for what good could come out of the situation.
5 - Be accountable to others
Thinking about what you can do to improve your own situation is one thing, doing it is sometimes tougher. Have people in your life to whom you are happy to share the actions you want to take in your life and ask them to hold you accountable for taking such action.
6 - Talk and share
Staying connected is key if you want to use the support of others to help you. Rather than withdraw when you are going through a hard time, reach out to friends, family and those who care about you. Resilient people have at least one or two confidants in their lives they can turn to for support.
7 - Have an overarching sense of purpose
Spend some time understanding your sense of purpose and do things which feed that purpose. Ring-fence your own time to make sure you spend time doing things that bring purpose to life for you.
8 - Be healthy
Regular exercise, a healthy diet and proper sleep are well documented ways of reducing stress and helping you to feel good about yourself, a key prerequisite for improving resilience.
9 - Keep smiling and laughing
Hold on to your sense of humour. Smiling and laughter relieves stress and helps to keep a sense of perspective.
10 - Be an optimist
Having an optimistic outlook will help you find the positives in life and add to your resilience. Many of the problems we face are temporary. Our brains are incredible things and can find ways around the most challenging situations – if we allow it to.