Brilliance at Resilience

Building resilience is one of the best ways of combating stress and mental health.

When we look at the literal definition of Resilience we find this in the dictionary: “The ability of matter to spring back quickly into shape after being bent, stretched, or deformed.”

And the reason I particularly like this definition is because that is what resilience is all about. It is about how well do we ‘spring back into shape’ after an adversity or a challenging time. It is the ‘bounceback-ability’ that determines our resilience.

When we go through stressful periods and challenges we can all cope. It’s ‘how’ we cope that is important. Most of us can get through these situations. But the ‘how well’ is what measures how resilient we are.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A RESILIENT PERSON?

DO WE:

Sustain good health and energy when under pressure

Think and behave optimisticly Adapt and change to new ways or working and living when the old way is defunct or when the need arises (a great example of this was when the whole world went through the mother of all changes during the pandemic. How well did we cope and adapt?)

Do all this without acting in a dysfunctional or harmful way — and have positive impact on others

Now, I would like to touch one of the points regarding ‘being optimistic.’ Yes it really helps your resilience levels if you are optimistic. However those who have a healthy dose of pessimism or a healthy dose realism can sometimes be more resilient than very optimistic people. Take the scenario of someone who always looks on the ‘bright side’ and every time something goes wrong they say ‘it’s going to be fine, it’s going to be fine’ then when it’s not fine they might find they are less resilient than someone who actually foresees there might be a problem.

BUILDING RESILIENCE — WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Pressure Vs Stress

It is worth talking about the difference between pressure and stress.

Stress is excessive pressure. Stre occurs when the demands placed o us exceed our ability to cope. Wi pressure we can actually be qui productive and effective. Some pe ple work really well under pressur It is very unlikely that you will b productive under stress. With pre sure you can still be in control. Wi stress there is very little chance yo will be in control and therefore order to build resilience it is impe ative to recognise when the ‘exce sive’ pressure is manifesting itse and know when and how to ask f help when you need it. Asking f help at the right time is one of th best ways of building resilience.

IDENTIFY PRIORITIES AND ‘CHUNK’ THEM

Identifying what your prioriti are and then breaking them dow into smaller chunks can help hug ly as we get completely ove whelmed if a number of issues a facing us all at once. Then this da fog descends on us rendering u quite useless. Therefore, breakin down each issue into small chunks and dealing with each on in turn by prioritising what is th most important can really help wi your resilience.

Recognise that negative emotion are not wrong.

We are frightened of negati emotions. This encourages us to t to suppress our emotion Paradoxically, research shows th causes more of the negative em tions that we didn’t want. It human nature to experience neg tive emotions.

People think that bad feelin don’t have a purpose. And that ba feelings such as guilt, shame an frustration are only negative. B research shows that bad feelin can galvanise us to do things diffe ently: we need them to succeed.

A broken egg isn’t ‘bad’ it just what it is. It’s the story we attach it that makes it good or bad. It’s ba only if you didn’t want it broken for example, in your bag whe bringing it back from the superma ket! But, it’s very good if you’ making an omelette! Bad feelin are normal. Only psychopaths an dead people don’t have bad feeling

So, recognise the feelings and u them to help you build you resilience.