Four Ways to Boost Resiliency

We often just take a long weekend or think that one week is enough. It’s not!

Hi there and welcome. My name is Kerstin Jatho, and I’m a transformational coach who helps people shift from languishing to thriving.

In today’s video, I want to talk to you about four resilience boosters in the workplace. Resilience has become an absolute buzzword both privately as well as in the workplace Many organisations are sending their employees on resilience workshops so that they can firstly buffer against burnout, because that’s one of the key factors of what resilience does.

But what really is resilience? Resilience is the process of being able to bounce back after adversity. I would actually like to correct that, and say you want to bounce forward. You don’t want to bounce back, because then you go back to square one. You actually want, if you have the resilience to bounce forward, to be in a better position than where you started off.

I would like to differentiate further between the small R and the big R as I call them.

The small “R” are elements or challenges that happen in your day-to-day life. So, traffic, receiving negative feedback, things just not working out, but it happens the entire day. We don’t often have control over them. So that’s the small R. They affect us by about a good 80% and they cause a lot of irritation, stressors for us, and they make us feel overwhelmed.

The big R is when you had to buffer against a traumatic life experience. Be it a death in the family, unemployment, or an illness. Suddenly, in the hybrid workplace, we’re confronted with both of these Rs, which is why people are burning out exceptionally fast. The great thing about resilience is that it’s a learned behaviour, and I can share that with you through my own personal experience.

I was never a resilient child. I always gave up very quickly. It was just so easy to do that. However, I’ve had a few life challenges come my way, which made me more and more resilient. And when I had my car accident in 2017, where I took 18 months to recover, I only realised then how resilient I actually was.

It had become so part of my personality that I just knew how to draw on it, but I had learned it and acquired it through life experience. So, you will also if you practice the following four boosters that I share with you, both in your private life, as well as in a team.

1. Become Mindful

The first one is become mindful. What are your thoughts, emotions, and feelings? What do you need right now? Start tuning in what’s happening for you, and then addressing them. Very often we’re quite mindless. We don’t always understand what’s going on for us. So, we push through, and if you push through before you know it, you’ve reached burnout. Two exercises that will help you foster more mindfulness is something like a gratitude journal or a gratitude exercise, where at the end of the day you reflect about what you’re truly grateful for.

2. Savour the moment

And the second one is to savour. Savour a moment of the day, literally sit still and just absorb that moment. And it can literally be a three-minute moment where you’re sipping your coffee or having a conversation with somebody, but really savour it like you want to store it to your memory card in your head.

That really builds a lot of mindfulness and buffers against burnout and boosts resilience.

3. Instil positive habits

The third one is to instil happy and mental positive habits. I’m sure if you reflect back over your working day, there are a few habits there that you have developed that are not very helpful. So, replace them. Some of them are taking regular breaks, not working late in the evening so that you can disconnect from work, that you have got enough rest and recovery time for your body to be ready for the following day so that you can perform and be productive. Look at your nutrition and your sleep. All these items and habits add up and buffer against burnout, and again, build your resilience.

4. Take Time off

The fourth one is take time off. And here, I’m talking a little bit more than just the evenings, but really take vacations without a laptop. You need to learn to detach from the work. And the first week you’ll start slowly detaching, but you really need two solid weeks of rest and recovery so that you can say you’ve had a holiday and come back refreshed.

We often just take a long weekend or think that one week is enough. It’s not enough. You give so much every day, and again, you need to recharge. So, if you want to build resilience, you need to take time off.

BONUS TIP: Be authentic to yourself

And the fifth one is, be authentic to yourself. If you’re not feeling 100% or well, it’s okay to say so. If your needs are not being met, then it’s okay to say so. It’s not okay to carry on and pretend as if everything is alright. That drains your resilience, and before you know it, your resilience battery is on zero.

So those four resilience strategies buffer against burnout and help you develop it. And, as I mentioned before, through regular practice resilience is the current soft skill to learn and acquire.

Thank you for watching. I look forward to connecting with you in the next one.

Over to you for sharing your comments and experiences.

What strategies are you applying to remain resilient in these times?