Have you ever wondered what trait makes someone successful at work?
Is it their high IQ? Their relentless hard work? Or networking their way to the top?
The truth is, it is none of the above.
I work with a lot of successful business leaders who have shown me that in the modern workplace, an individual’s ability to thrive during periods of stress and change is really what sets them apart from the rest. The other factors above may help, but not in the face of failure, stress, and emotional experiences.
Enter the concept of resilience. Resilience is defined as the ability to overcome obstacles on the way to a goal, without being distracted by the things that happen along the way. It means having a home base to return to, even when things get hard. It means knowing how to ride out the hard times without being too hard on yourself. It’s the ability to just keep going.
The best thing about resilience is that it’s a skill-- something you can practice and get better at over time.
It is something that I am constantly cultivating in my own business.
So, what are some ways you can flex your resilience muscle? Keep reading.
1. Access your inner calm
Applying various mindfulness tools can help us come back to our own foundation of resilience. Everything from meditation, to breathing exercises, journaling, and more are great tools for leaders to continually train their resilience.
2. Emotional reflection
Like all emotional experiences, success and failure manifest strongly in our bodies, so we must develop and strengthen our ability to reflect on emotional experiences.
3. Cultivate cognitive resilience
Failure is a part of doing business. What sets successful people apart is how they experience and explain their own failure to themselves. People who are pessimistic tend to internalize their failures, take them personally, and think they are pervasive in all areas of life. On the other hand, people who are optimistic see their setback as outcomes of certain conditions and temporary in nature.
By practicing positivity at work, leaders are better equipped to adapt to challenges that may arise.