Employers are actively seeking people who are resilient, flexible, and open to changes since they know they won’t let changes deter their productivity.
Your resilience refers to your ability to think creatively, bounce back, and blend in with the organization's culture without any trouble.
Moreover, resilience is also a testament to how well you can deal with increasing levels of stress at work. This is especially important because even if you are doing what you genuinely love and find meaningful, challenges and setbacks that will test your limits are almost inevitable. But it’s how you choose to handle these obstacles that matters the most.
So here are 5 examples of how you can be more resilient at work.
No.1 Develop your adaptability
Many companies and organizations deeply value adaptability as a skill in their employees.
Being adaptable means you have a natural ability to adopt different methods and approaches to different contexts. So, if you’re thrown any curveballs, you are flexible and dynamic enough to know how to handle them. The same goes for taking on a project that’s a bit out of your ordinary scope of work.
Developing your adaptability is essential to become more resilient at work because it shows that you won’t crumble under pressure or under changing circumstances. It also helps in the long term as you are able to remain focused on the end goal even as teams, work plans, or managements/structures shift and change over the course of time.
No.2 Cultivate mental agility
Mental agility entails that you take a step back when facing a stressful situation or when you begin to feel overwhelmed so you can choose how to respond instead of merely reacting to the challenge at hand. When you mentally de-center stress, this doesn’t mean you’re suppressing it, but rather allowing yourself to observe the experience from an objective standpoint.
So, you shift your attention from the limiting beliefs you attribute to stressors towards a more productive approach that will allow you to solve the problem. In this regard, labeling your thoughts and emotions enables the core resilience skill you need to reflect, switch perspective, create opportunities, and find pertinent solutions.
No.3 Maintain an offensive mindset
Maintaining an offensive mindset is key to developing resilience at work.
Having an offensive mindset means you’re proactive rather than reactive. It also means you’re the one in control, so you get to dictate the pace you’re going at, not your surroundings. You don’t sit and wait for things to happen, instead, you take initiative, you make.
You don’t sit and wait for things to happen, instead, you take initiative, you make it your mission to generate your own opportunities for success, you create momentum, and you’re able to think outside of the box to produce positive outcomes or find innovative solutions you previously wouldn’t have considered if you weren’t in the ‘offensive’ zone.
This is what makes all the difference between pursuing ventures that will allow you to win, versus pursuing those that will prevent you from losing. So are you actively moving towards positive outcomes, or are you running away from negative outcomes or outcomes you wish to avoid?
4. Practice self-care
A non-sustainable work/life balance will take a toll on your mental health. It will also make it that much harder to be productive at work, so you won’t be able to find any fulfillment in what you do. This is why scheduling detachable breaks into your day is important, especially ones that involve self-care practices.
Resilience isn’t just about how well you can bounce back from a stressful situation, it’s also about building your mental strength to tackle the challenges you face. This cannot happen if you’re not compassionate with yourself. Find activities (outside of work) that you enjoy doing, take the time to relax, clear your mind, and de-stress.
Engage with your loved ones, spend quality time with your friends and family, or even yourself, and make the most of your life outside of your employment. A small change of scenery can make the biggest difference and replenish your motivation to tackle more challenges at work.
5. Stay true to your values
By being authentic to who you are, you’re also staying true to the values and principles you hold in high regard. These could be things like being honest, living with integrity, loyalty, trustworthiness, etc.
When your beliefs and values are in congruence with your actions, this provides a tremendous boost to your emotional intelligence, and by extension, your resilience. So when you find yourself in the middle of a tricky or stress-inducing situation, you’re better equipped to handle those outside stressors.
In Conclusion
Developing your resilience at work is a process. While it won’t happen overnight, each step you take in that direction will help you get stronger in that regard. So, remember to be kind to yourself, choose to actively respond instead of simply react, and always honor your values!
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