Resilience at your workplace

A quarter of employees view their job as a source of stress to them.

The world today works in an on-demand work culture where the risk of burnout increases every day. Since the work culture doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon it’s important to build resilience to improve everyday work life.

Resilience is the ability to adapt and get up after a traumatic experience. In the simplest possible way to understand resilience would be the inner strength that pushes you to move forward.

When employees have worked with a particular situation, it trains them to be able to work out other difficult situations. Just like training in the gym with 5kg dumbbells makes you resilient and increases your strength. Emotional resilience works similarly.

A resilient person employs the following characteristics-

· Have realistic control over choices they make

· Understand their limitations

· See changes as an opportunity

· Have a secure attachment

· Optimistic outlook

· Patience

· Have emotional regulation

The most resilient teams and people aren’t the ones who don’t fail but the ones that fail and bounce back from the failure and thrive.

Resilence is an important survival skill. The ability to cope with stress, adapt, and grow is what we have been doing since the beginning of time.

Resilience in the workplace can help people grow and be more productive. There is a lot of benefit for the organization as well. Employees perform better if they aren’t just trying to keep their heads above the water. It helps organizations to profit even when the market is crashing.

Resilience is a skill that can be learned. But you have to know that resilience doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

The most important thing to be kept in mind is that many factors that help us build resilience are in our hands.

Pay attention to your physical health. People are 3.5 times more likely to be resilient when in good physical health- workout, eat healthily, and stay hydrated.

Relaxation techniques are a good way of training the mind to find peace in the chaos. Mindfulness has so many benefits that we can’t cover it all so here are just a few – improving judgment, insight-oriented problem solving, and cognitive flexibility.

Cognitive appraisal is a way in which we view a situation as its true meaning and what needs to be done to overcome it. Reframe those treats into challenges.

Having a social support system that helps you grow and improve provides a buffer against stressors. We receive 11 billion bits of information every second but your brain only lets you take 40 bits of information.

One hands-on way of looking at this is that the amount of information doesn’t decrease but is rather conceptualized. You should stop context shifting and rather dedicate special time during the day for tasks that are serial monotasking.

During the day pay attention to the peaks and valleys of productivity. Mental focus cycles are typically 90-120 minutes, so take a break after such peaks to regain your energy.

Research has shown that balance between work and detachment from work creates creativity, focus, energy, mental clarity and ultimately creates resilience.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

— Khalil Gibran