Resilience: How we can harness what 2020 has given us

2020 has been quite a year, one many of us will be glad to move on from. It has thrown challenge after challenge at us and forced us to deal with unprecedented changes, in quick succession, all at one time. It has required us to be resilient. 

The end of the year won’t mean the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even when that time comes, things won’t go back to exactly how they were - so resilience is something that will continue to be important as we navigate an uncertain future. 

But what exactly does resilience mean, and how can we measure and harness it to tackle challenges going forward? 

Resilience is unique to each person

In my research as a psychologist, I like to use the definition that resilience is the ability to overcome adversity and turn challenging experiences into positive outcomes - opportunities to learn, grow, develop and thrive. Resilience can be different for everyone, as I explain in this IGTV coaching video:

What is needed to grow resilience will be different for everyone. It’s also something dynamic; being resilient doesn’t mean we never find challenges difficult or struggle with big hurdles ever again. Today, I might feel incredibly resilient, whereas tomorrow I might not. Instead, it’s something that is affected by what is happening around us, the specific challenges we are facing, or if we’re overwhelmed by a lot of other things going on at the same time. Therefore, it’s key to figure out what resilience means for us individually, and what we each need to bolster it. 

The sliding scale of resilience

It’s common to think of resilience as pushing through to an end goal: having something we want to achieve or a challenging situation we need to get through and not giving up until we’ve done so. It’s often thought of as synonymous with grit, which is the combination of passion and perseverance. Although this is part of resilience and can sometimes be exactly what we need, other times we might need to slow down and take time to consider our approach, or to accept that a situation is out of our control and that it’s OK to just get through it. 

We can think of resilience as being on a sliding scale. Often we’ll be in the middle - feeling like we can deal with challenges fairly well and learn from the experience. Sometimes we’ll be on the low end of the scale, where we’re just focused on coming out the other side of whatever it is we’re going through. On the high end of the scale is where we thrive, where we manage to take challenging situations and turn them into positive outcomes. Here we are facing a certain amount of challenge, but just enough to stretch us and push our abilities.

Where we feel on the scale will vary at any given time. And in 2020, what we’ve noticed is that people have been sliding up and down the scale much quicker and more frequently than ever before.

The six pillars of resilience

To improve resilience, we first need to understand where we have room to grow. There are six pillars to resilience in the Resilience Edge framework - for each pillar, take some time to reflect over how well you embody it, and ask yourself questions to consider if you could develop it further. This coaching video will help you to measure your resilience:

1. Confidence: Do you feel like you have the ability to tackle difficult situations? Even if you don’t have answers or know what to do, do you usually feel like you can go find them and figure out your next step - maybe by asking someone else’s perspective, doing research, trying something new? Do you know your core strengths, and are you using them to overcome challenges? 
2. Adaptability: How adaptable are you in different situations? Are you able to change the way you think about something in order to get a better result? Can you easily shift the way you look at a challenge to see if there is something you can learn? If a situation changes and requires something different from you, are you able to adapt your behaviour?
3. Positivity: This doesn’t refer to blind hope, which can actually lead you to feel worse about a situation if everything doesn’t work itself out. But do you have a healthy dose of realistic optimism? When challenging situations arise, do you feel like it’s possible to find answers, to come up with new ways of doing things, to change direction, to discover opportunities? The key is to have goals you’re working towards while still having a foot in reality.
4. Perspective: It’s very important to not automatically assume that your perspective is the right perspective, or the only perspective, as this doesn’t leave room to try different things or grow. When you think about a new situation, do you look at it from lots of different angles? Do you think of different ways to tackle whatever challenge is at hand? As much as we all like to feel in control of a situation, sometimes we need to know when to accept that we’ve made a mistake, that an approach has failed, or simply that it’s time to try something new.
5. Mastery: This is all about mastering a mindset for resilience. Do you have what we call a “growth mindset”? When you come across challenges, are you able to think of them as opportunities to test new ideas or ways of doing things, and as an opportunity to develop? Can you view situations - whether positive, negative, or neutral - as experiences you can learn from?
6. Stamina: The last pillar has to do with longer-term resilience, something which is very necessary after almost a year of dealing with a global pandemic. Longer-term resilience comes from facing challenges and learning from those experiences over time. Are you able to reflect on what you’ve done well and where you could improve? Do you have a support system you can turn to for advice, feedback, or just a listening ear? Research has shown that support is one of the biggest factors in enhancing resilience, something I've delved more into in a previous newsletter. 

If we want to improve our performance in anything we do, whether at work or in our personal lives, challenge is par for the course; it pushes us to grow. And when it comes to enhancing resilience, adversity is actually a really good thing; we can’t be resilient without it. If nothing else, this is what 2020 has given us - it has made us stronger. 

Watch the coaching video below for my top three tips for building resilience: practicing gratitude, getting active, and journaling. 

Your resilience

2020 really has been a year like no other, the changes and challenges we've faced have been extreme. As we leave behind the year of a pandemic, and approach 2021, I leave you with a question to ponder: what have you learned about your resilience in 2020?

Join the "10 Days of Resilience" coaching programme to access ten evidence-based resilience boosting strategies.

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Instagram: Gemma Leigh Roberts

Mindset Matters is a series of LinkedIn articles to help you thrive in your career.

Ready to take the next step and build your resilience? Join the "10 Days of Resilience" (launching January 2021) at Resilience Edge.