The development of resilience at work and in your personal life
In this article, I share with you 11 effective tips regarding the development of resilience at work and in your personal life.
Before we move to the tips, I propose two definitions of resilience as well as some distinctions between resilience and coping.
Definitions of resilience
To begin, I provide two definitions of resilience.
Resilience is the ability to face and overcome significant challenges and still function effectively in basic life tasks, such as continuing to work, interacting and maintaining relationships with friends and relatives, and staying interested and involved in leisure activities (Rice & Liu, 2016).
Psychological resilience is defined as the role of mental processes and behavior in promoting personal resources and protecting an individual from the potential negative effect of stressors (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2011).
In summary, these two definitions show that resilience is a dynamic process of adaptation that should allow each person to cope as best as possible with life’s challenges while continuing to have a normal life and if possible an even better existence than the one they had before experiencing significant difficulties.
Differences between resilience and coping strategies
According to (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2011), resilience is a different concept than coping because resilience influences how an event is interpreted while coping refers to the strategies employed after the evaluation of a stressful experience. Resilience allows for a positive response to a potentially stressful situation (e.g., experiencing positive emotions), whereas the nature of coping strategies can be positive (e.g., encouraging self-talk) or negative (e.g., substance abuse).
Contrary to what some people may think, everyone can develop resilience because, according to Egeland & al. (1993), resilience is a capacity that develops over time in the context of person-environment interactions
In this article, I will present some tips on how to develop resilience based on my experience and a summary of the scientific research on the topic of resilience. Before moving on to the tips, I remind you that if you feel the need to take advantage of personalized support, you can benefit from the expertise of a life coach or a business coach.
Now, I invite you to take a look at my first tip.
1 – Practice mindfulness and prefer the cognitive-behavioral approach
Several psychological approaches have attempted to offer tailored support to help people build resilience in the face of various professional and personal life events.
A meta-analysis conducted by Joice & al. (2018) shows that interventions that combine the cognitive-behavioral approach and mindfulness are effective in increasing individual resilience.
With this approach, the goal is to act on what the person believes in order to promote awareness of a given situation and modify a behavior that is problematic for the individual.
In the case of mindfulness, the goal is still to facilitate awareness by helping the person become a better observer of their thoughts, emotions, and actions.
According to Rees & al. (2015), people who have little awareness of what they experience in a stressful situation are more likely to be overwhelmed by emotions and to experience the risks of burnout, anxiety, and depression. On the contrary, people who are conscious of their emotions are able to detach themselves from what they are feeling and try to find a solution to their problems.
If you are facing a situation of burnout, I recommend you to read the article on how to negotiate your departure after burnout.
In summary, approaches such as coaching that facilitate awareness and act on cognitions and emotions are effective in facilitating behavioral change and developing resilience. This is consistent with Grant’s (2008) study which shows that coaching in companies is effective in developing resilience, facilitating goal achievement, and improving well-being at work.
Now, I suggest we move to the second tip, which is strengthening your self-efficacy.
2 – Strengthen your self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is the belief that an individual has the ability to act appropriately to best change or manage a given situation.
Consistent with Lee & al. (2013) self-efficacy is the most influential factor in resilience, and individuals with good self-efficacy are able to implement effective behavioral strategies to manage a given situation.
Rees & al. (2015) show that developing higher self-efficacy builds resilience in the work context.
In the context of personal coaching or job coaching, it is, therefore, possible to help an individual build self-efficacy by changing their beliefs and helping them make different meanings of past events. This is consistent with Rees & al. (2015) who show that a person’s beliefs and past are factors that influence self-efficacy.
But self-efficacy can be enhanced as well when a person:
- achieves goals that are important to them
- realizes that by developing new skills, they will be able to have more control over their professional or personal life
- realizes that he/she already has the skills to change his/her life for the better
Now, I suggest you move on to the third tip which is to develop your emotional intelligence.
3 – Develop your emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability of a person to perceive, feel and use emotion in order to act appropriately in different situations of professional and personal life.
Developing emotional intelligence requires being able to express how one feels.
Stephens & al (2013) show that resilience in the work context is facilitated by being able to express both positive and negative emotions.
If the individual is unable to express emotions or interacts with negative people and environments, they will have a lower likelihood of developing resilience.
Learning to use emotions effectively is therefore essential to progress effectively in any situation.
Emotional intelligence includes several dimensions and some are more important than others for developing resilience.
Armstrong & al. (2011) show that four characteristics of emotional intelligence which include self-awareness, emotional expression, emotional self-control, and in particular emotional self-management are essential in psychological resilience following multiple negative life events.
The ability to properly manage emotions, therefore, seems to be the most important dimension of becoming more resilient.
Lee & al. (2013) show that experiencing positive emotions has a positive effect on resilience.
Furthermore, in agreement with Ong & al. (2006) experiencing positive emotions helps highly resilient individuals to effectively recover from daily stress.
Thus, expressing positive emotions appears to have a positive effect not only on resilience but also on stress management.
Tugade & al. (2004) show that the granularity of positive emotions (the tendency to represent positive emotional experiences with precision and specificity) has a positive effect on resilience and therefore on the quality and effectiveness of coping strategies implemented to deal with life’s difficulties.
Finally, some authors have crossed the two dimensions of self-efficacy and emotional intelligence.
Kirk, Schutte & Hine (2008) defined emotional self-efficacy as the belief in a person’s ability to transform negative emotions from negative life experiences. Thus, emotion can be a tool to transform the negative impacts of a particular experience to make oneself more resilient in stressful life events.
Aydogdu & al. (2017) show that emotional self-efficacy (the use of emotion to support thoughts and understanding of emotions) has a positive effect on resilience.
In summary, this research shows that:
- people who express their emotions are more resilient than those who do not
- experiencing positive emotions strengthens resilience
- the meaning given to an emotion influences the individual more than the emotion itself
Now, I suggest we move on to the fourth tip, which is to become aware of your potential.
4 – Become aware of your potential
You have already overcome other difficult challenges in your personal and professional life but you forgot them.
Now is the time to remember that you are an extraordinary person and that you have within you all the keys to take control of your life.
Take the time you need to remember your glorious past and recent present.
Now, I suggest you prepare a spreadsheet and:
- in the first column write down the difficult situation of your past or recent present that you have overcome
- in the second column describe the qualities, resources, intuitions, and actions that allowed you to solve the problem
- in the third column, the final result of your actions
- in the last one, what you have learned about yourself, about others, and about life in general
Repeat this exercise for each of the most significant events that occurred in your life.
Then read it aloud and use your experience from the past to start building your resilience further.
Try to identify the actions or advice that have already brought you great results and readjust them to your current situation.
If you are unable to identify positive elements from your past, ask for support from caring people around you to remind you of how you have successfully overcome other challenges in your personal and professional life.
In the alternative, you can take advantage of the expertise of a confidence coach, and read books on personal development or the autobiographies of people who have successfully dealt with a situation similar to yours.
Now, I suggest we move on to the fifth tip, which is using your beliefs to your advantage.
5 – Use the power of your beliefs
Beliefs are ideas that have been reinforced over time through different life experiences and the meanings given to these experiences.
Over time, these ideas become certainties for us and influence our thoughts, emotions, and actions.
Becoming aware of our beliefs is therefore essential if we wish to change our lives for the better.
According to Bandura (1997) to cope with traumatic experiences, individuals must believe that they have the ability to overcome the situation.
What you believe to be true becomes true for you.
Some of your beliefs hold you back while others are able to free you from the difficult situation you are currently experiencing.
Try to identify the beliefs that are holding you back and preventing you from taking action.
It may be something that you have picked up from your culture, your background, your education, your religion, etc. You need to understand what is holding you back.
You should understand what is holding you back in order to find the strength to move on from this difficult time and enjoy the new life that awaits you beyond your fear.
At the same time, you need to strengthen your positive beliefs – those that will help you take action and create a better life.
You can identify these beliefs from the answers you gave to the previous tip.
Among the beliefs, those related to religion can have a beneficial effect on resilience, in this sense Ortiz & al. (2012) show that a healthy spirituality can be linked to an increase in resilience and positive emotions and that resilience and positive emotions can have a reciprocal influence on each other.
If you have difficulty identifying your beliefs, you can take advantage of the expertise of a life coach who will help you use the positive ones to your advantage and free yourself from the negative beliefs.
To go further on the topic of beliefs, I suggest you read the article on how to overcome limiting beliefs.
The sixth tip consists in developing a more optimistic vision of your situation.
6 – Develop a more optimistic perspective
In order to develop your resilience, you need to change the way you look at your current situation.
According to Coutu (2002), the ability to see reality is a building block of resilience and the deep belief and strongly held values of a meaningful life are important characteristics of resilience.
What if your current problem is nothing more than an essential step toward your personal and professional evolution?
If you begin to see your situation as a necessary transition to your new life and therefore as something you can use to your advantage, then you can overcome any difficulty.
Think of this problem as a gift and not as a punishment.
Even if you don’t understand the meaning of the situation, believe that something better is waiting for you on the other side of your pain and despair.
This is a new belief that will help you change your perspective and mobilize the mental and physical resources needed to overcome this challenge and become a new person.
Developing a more positive view of your situation helps build resilience and this is consistent with Polk (1997) stating that the essential cognitive components of resilience are an individual’s optimism, problem-solving ability, perseverance, and resourcefulness.
Changing one’s perspective also has a positive effect on stress because as Johnson & al. (2016) show that the more one reevaluates a given situation the fewer negative emotions one experiences in response to stress, and the fewer negative emotions one experiences on a daily basis, and the higher levels of positive mood one experiences. These results suggest that higher reappraisal may confer resilience to stress.
Mak & al. (2011) show that resilience is significantly related to positive thoughts about the self, the world, and the future. People with higher levels of resilience have significantly more positive thoughts, are more satisfied with their lives, and have lower levels of depression.
In agreement with Booth & Neill (2017) the use of coping strategies such as positive reinterpretation appears to enhance resilience, while passive acceptance and focusing on negative emotions decrease it.
To summarize, the ability to develop a positive view of reality helps to build resilience and improve quality of life.
After you begin to change your perspective, the ultimate level of building resilience is to have fun with your problems.
Instead of bemoaning what you are currently experiencing, find something funny about the situation.
Instead of waiting years to laugh about it, start laughing about it now and you’ll see that by doing so you’ll send a powerful message to your unconscious mind.
That message is, that I am stronger than my problems because I am able to laugh about them. I am much more than what I think I am, I am a resourceful human being who has unlimited potential and I can thrive in the face of any kind of adversity!
By working on your nonconscious mind through unexpected behavior, your subconscious mind will begin to give you the answers and find the strategies you need to get out of this blind spot and build your resilience.
The seventh tip is to build self-esteem and overcome the need for approval.
7 – Build self-esteem and overcome the need for approval
Self-esteem is a subjective evaluation we make of ourselves as individuals.
This evaluation is not based on factual elements but on a perception of our own value.
Self-esteem has a positive effect on a multitude of desirable psychological and behavioral factors.
Johnson & al. (2017) conduct a meta-analysis of the scientific literature on psychological factors that have a positive impact on resilience and among these factors are higher self-esteem, a more positive attribution style, and lower social perfectionism.
Since people with high self-esteem are less vulnerable to the opinions of others, and as Aydogdu & al. (2017) show, people with good resilience are the least influenced by the opinions of others, building self-esteem allows for greater resilience.
In summary, people with good self-esteem, and therefore a good opinion of themselves, tend to take more action because they are less concerned about the opinion and judgment of those around them.
These people are less afraid of making mistakes and therefore they allow themselves to go outside their comfort zone.
As a result, they are better at achieving higher results than people with low self-esteem.
In addition, having a good level of esteem allows these people not to become perfectionists and therefore avoid both stress and procrastination.
The eighth tip is to spend more time outdoors.
8 – Spend time connecting with nature
Spending time outdoors has beneficial effects on well-being and also reduces stress.
But research also shows that it would have a positive effect on resilience.
In this sense, Ingulli & Lindbloom (2013) show that people who have a strong sense of connection with nature have higher values of psychological resilience.
In the difficult times we are experiencing, science shows us the benefits of spending some time outdoors every day to reconnect with ourselves and regain the strength to move forward despite uncertainty and fear.
If you want to take advantage of these benefits, schedule some free time every day to enjoy the advantages of a natural environment.
The ninth tip is to set important goals.
9 – Pursue goals that are important to you
You have all read books or heard stories of individuals who have faced and overcome tremendous difficulties.
When faced with these types of difficulties, we need to draw our energy from something bigger than ourselves, such as an important goal.
Goals that are truly important to us, enable us to surpass ourselves and this is especially true since their achievement helps us to meet our most important values.
Rutten & al. (2013) show that having a meaningful life has a positive effect on resilience.
Having an important goal that allows us to positively impact the lives of others and thus pursue a purpose that makes our existence more important, may be what will make the difference between success and failure.
In summary, having a very strong personal motivation helps to build resilience both professionally and personally.
To go further on the topic of motivation, I suggest you read my article on how to get motivated.
The tenth tip is to cultivate self-compassion.
10 – Develop self-compassion
Self-compassion can be summarized as the tendency to be kind to yourself by accepting both your qualities and weaknesses.
Warren & al. (2016) show that self-compassion has a positive effect on resilience and well-being.
Self-compassion involves treating yourself with kindness and empathy when faced with personal weaknesses, mistakes, failures, and painful life situations. It consists of three interacting elements, each with a positive and negative pole:
- benevolence towards yourself or self-judgment
- a sense of common humanity or isolation
- mindfulness or over-identification
Self-kindness is about being kind and understanding to yourself rather than being judgmental.
Instead of attacking and blaming yourself for your personal weaknesses, you offer yourself warmth and unconditional acceptance.
Humanity involves recognizing that humans are imperfect, that all people fail, make mistakes, and have serious problems in life.
By reminding ourselves that imperfection is a part of life, we feel less isolated when we suffer.
Mindfulness in the context of self-compassion involves being aware of one’s painful experiences in a balanced way that neither ignores nor avoids nor exaggerates painful thoughts and emotions (Neff, 2016).
To summarize, self-compassion not only facilitates awareness of our emotions but also helps us to better manage them by overcoming the risk of self-judgment.
Therefore, it is possible that people who are able to express a good level of self-compassion somehow protect their self-esteem and feel more motivated to be themselves and therefore are more committed to breaking out of their habits and therefore more likely to take action to change their lives for the better.
The eleventh tip is to forgive others.
11 – Forgive others more
Several types of research show that the ability to forgive others produces several desirable effects.
This is probably because the act of forgiving releases physical and mental energies that can be used to change our lives for the better.
Kravchuk (2021) shows that people who have a greater tendency to forgive others are more resilient.
Forgiveness also helps us to remember that we are imperfect beings and that we all have the right to make mistakes.
If we have the opportunity to be wrong, we also have the right to try new things and take new actions beyond our comfort zone.
As a result, we free ourselves from our own and others’ judgment.
This has a protective effect on our self-esteem and consequently also on our self-confidence because we overcome the fear of failure and become aware of our real abilities.
Conclusion on how to develop and increase your own resilience
In this article, I have presented 11 tips on how to develop your resilience in your professional and personal life.
By regularly applying even one of these tips you will be able to become more resilient and change your life for the better.
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Français : Développer sa résilience : 11 conseils issus de la recherche scientifique
Italiano: Sviluppare la resilienza: 11 consigli tratti dalla ricerca scientifica