How to Easily Safeguard Your Resilience at Work

People who are resilient do not dwell or wallow in failures.

They accept and acknowledge a particular situation, learn from their mistakes and then move forward.

Resilience at work is vital to ensure that we continue to perform efficiently.

What is Resilience?

Resilience can be described as a person’s ability to prepare for, cope with or adapt to times of stress or adversity. It can also be described as the ability to adapt and bounce back when things don’t go as planned.

As social workers, we experience many changes and challenges. Being resilient will increase our self-esteem and we can then support others effectively.

In this article, I will explore different ways to safeguard your resillience. 

Why Should you be Resilient? 

Working towards being resilient or having resilience can help reduce the risk of common mental health conditions like anxiety, stress & depression.

For people who may already have existing mental health conditions, resilience can help them overcome and manage symptoms more effectively.

How can you Determine Levels of Resilience? 

As we go through life, we have our resilience tested. The good news is that we all have the ability to become resilient.

There are several tools that can measure resilience. A popular one is the Free resilience tool called I-resilience, a Robertson Cooper tool.

This tool provides a detailed understanding of personal resilience and allows users to build on existing areas of strength. Where potential areas of risks are identified, plans can be put in place to help manage them.

Resilience isn’t a personality trait–it’s something that we can all take steps to achieve.

To build a resilient mindset and attitude, incorporate some of the steps below into your daily life:

Step One: Take Steps to Look After your Wellbeing

You can follow these simple steps HERE to get started with wellbeing. When we take care of our mind, body and soul, we are able to cope with the challenges we face in our lives efficiently.

Step Two: Build Positive Beliefs in Your Abilities 

Having a good self-esteem and believing in your abilities plays an important role in coping with stress and recovering from tough events.

Remind yourself of your strengths, accomplishments, and what you are grateful for in life.

Engage in gratitude journaling or mental health journaling. 

Challenge your negative belief’s by asking questions such as;

• “what are the facts that support my thinking”
• “what else can I do to make this better”
• “how can I make things better”
• “what will make me feel better”
• “what will make the situation improve”

Step Three: Find a Sense of Purpose in Your Life

This might involve becoming involved in your community or taking part in activities that are meaningful to you through finding a new hobby.

You may want to take on a hobby in sports, music, teaching, community work or even volunteering.

Giving back to society is also a very useful way to make you feel a sense of worth and achievement.

Step Four: Develop a Strong Social Network 

Having caring, supportive people around you acts as a protective factor during times of crisis.

Ensure that your social network comprises positive people who will add value to our life and encourage positive thinking patterns.

My article on Why You Need Positive People in Your Life gives a detailed breakdown into why this should be your number one priority when forming your social circle.

Step Five: Make Self-love and Self-care a Priority

Self-love is that ability to love yourself first without feeling guilty. When you love yourself, you can then extend that abundance of love to others.

Love yourself unconditionally and do not waste anymore of your time by doubting your worth and value.

Within self-care, you will attempt to care for your overall wellbeing. A good self-love and self-care practice will help improve your mood and reduce anxiety. 

To find out more about ways to practice self-love, checkout this article on 57 Powerful Ways to Practice Self-Love and Be Happy. 

Step Six: Embrace Change and Accept the Things you Cannot Change 

Flexibility is an essential part of resilience. By learning how to be more adaptable, you’ll be better equipped to respond when faced with life crisis.

Changing a difficult situation is not always possible, accept things as they are and concentrate on what you do have control over.

Step Seven: Be Optimistic and Develop a Positive Mindset 

What you are dealing with may be difficult, but it is important to remain hopeful and positive about a brighter future.

Our brain adheres to its own findings and predictions, which may be false. If not attended to, it will affect our relationships and outlook on life.

Cognitive biases in our thinking, which exists in most people, can cause self-criticism.

The biases in our thinking, we create in our mind, will worsen symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Learning how to recognise our own bias allows us to rationalise how we think about ourselves, our future and past.

Step Eight: View Change as Opportunity

We should use setbacks and change as an opportunity for growth. In life, change is constant and our place of work is no different.

Each day in social work practice, we have system changes, IT upgrades, new processes and sometimes a change in legislation!

Having a positive change management skills such as being more adaptive and having a flexible approach can open up new opportunities for career growth and advancement.

Step Nine: Develop Your Problem-Solving Skills by Establishing Goals

Whenever you encounter a new challenge, make a quick list of some potential ways you could solve the problem.

When you become overwhelmed by a situation, take a step back to assess the situation and what is before you.

Identify all solutions and then break them down into manageable steps. Setting Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound (SMART) goals is a great way to track realistic goals.

When goals are SMART, you will be very clear on what you want to achieve, ensure your goals are not too high, determine or know when you have achieved your goal.

Why is Being Resilient so important?

You hear a lot about developing resilience, but why is it so important?

Therapist and counselor Joshua Miles lists a few reasons why resilience is a great trait to have:

• Greater resilience leads to improved learning and academic achievement.
• Resilience is related to lower absences from work or school due to sickness.
• Those with greater resilience are more involved in the community and/or family activities.
• Improved learning and academic achievement.
• Increased work attendance rate and lower sickness rate.
• Reduced use of risk-taking behaviours such as excessive drinking, smoking or use of drugs.
• Increased involvement in community or family activities.
• A lower rate of mortality and improved physical health.

Quotes about Resilience

1. Resilience is knowing that you are the only person who has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up. Mary Holloway
2. Each one of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” — Sheryl Sandberg
3. Life doesn’t get easier or forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient. Steve Maraboli
4. The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance. Jod Picoult
5. Grief and resilience live together.” — Michelle Obama
6. It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life’s story will develop. Dieter F Uchtdorf
7. Mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.” — Joseph Heller
8. The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat. Woodrow Wilson
9. Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with good, that it may prevail. Helen Keller.
10. The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived. Robert Jordan.
11. You say you’re ‘depressed’ – All I See is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn’t mean you’re defective – it just means you’re human — David Mitchell
12. Successful people have no fear of failure. But unsuccessful people do. Successful people have the resilience to face up to failure—learn the lessons and adapt from it. — Roy T. Bennett
13. If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces. Shane Koyczan
14. Have a fierce resolve in everything you do.” “Demonstrate determination, resiliency, and tenacity.” “Do not let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.” And, finally, “Use mistakes and problems as opportunities to get better—not reasons to quit. — Angela Duckworth
15. Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good. Elizabeth Edwards
16. Self-care is how you take your power back.” — Lalah Delia
17. No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That’s the only way to keep the roads clear. Greg Kincaid
18. Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don’t be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren’t paying any attention to you. It’s your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time, then you’ll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there’s no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.”
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
19. Don’t hope for better. Just be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined.” — Mark Manson
20. The human capacity for burden is like a bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance. Jodi Picoult
21. No matter how heavy and gruesome the cross you have to carry in your life, surrender to the suffering and RISE.
    — Tina Sequeira

Resilience Training

To become resilience, you could self-learn or be thought by a teacher. However, you might want to take it even further and sign up for a course.

There are useful courses available only such as ‘How to Develop Emotional Resilience to Manage Stress by Robin Hill on Udemy. These courses will not only improve your own resilience skills but also equip you to coach others in resilience.

Before You Go, 

Life is full of unavoidable change, however, when you develop your resilience, you learn to fall without falling apart. You also learn how to crash without burning!

Are you developing your resilience? Let me know how you are doing this in the comments below.

9 Ultimate Ways to Build Resilience

1. Step One: Take Steps to Look After your Wellbeing
2. Step Two: Build Positive Beliefs in Your Abilities
3. Step Three: Find a Sense of Purpose in Your Life
4. Step Four: Develop a Strong Social Network
5. Step Five: Make Self-love and Self-care a Priority
6. Step Six: Embrace Change and Accept the Things you Cannot Change
7. Step Seven: Be Optimistic and Develop a Positive Mindset
8. Step Eight: View Change as Opportunity
9. Step Nine: Develop Your Problem-Solving Skills by Establishing Goals

READ NEXT:

• Mental Health Journaling. 
• Why You Need Positive People in Your Life
• 57 Powerful Ways to Practice Self-Love and Be Happy. 
• How to Get Started with Wellbeing

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