12 days of Christmas tips: 7 ways to improve your resilience - immediately

02 January 2018 -

Day Nine: Some fatigue and worry are commonplace in the workplace. But more extreme forms of stress will require you and your team to change behaviours. Here are seven ways to start that process, today

Guest blogger Nicola Richardson

Resilience is about aptitude to bounce back from problems and remain determined in the throes of hardship. It’s essential to build your resilience to help recover quickly from difficulties.

Stress and fatigue issues are down to the increasing fast pace in the workplace. In 2014 a survey covering 100,000 employees (including Europe) showed employee depression, stress and worry amounted to 82.6% of emotional health cases in Employee Assistance cases. Increasing levels of workplace stress are an alarm because they contribute to sickness and productivity dips.

Here are seven tips to help build resilience at any time:

1. Understand your strengths. Know you can resolve your problems. Congratulate yourself for learning from past problems. Acknowledge you’ve the skills to get through them and don’t avoid challenges. Celebrating your successes helps create a positive air, stopping you thinking about things that haven’t gone well.

2. Appreciate social interaction. Family and friends can provide the encouragement needed. In the workplace, find a mentor who listens and suggests options to give you choices and make you feel there are alternatives. Create a work friends network who give support. As a business, network to build a supportive team and discover people who have the skillsets you haven’t.

3. Have work and personal goals to give you a sense of where you’re going. Each day, take one small action to move forward. Remember bite-size chunks; then it won’t overpower you.

4. Be flexible, so if you need to deviate from the business route planned, accommodate it. Who knows what it will open up for you? Work on remaining optimistic with support of people around you. Things never stay the same, so accept there will be changes and understand your reaction.

5. Stress affects everyone, at some point. If you’re getting stressed find someone to talk to and take time to relax. Take a break, you come back with fresh eyes seeing things differently, often finding a better solution to problems. Remember plan your meals and exercise, otherwise you may not cope.

6. Think differently. Be optimistic, think positively. When something goes wrong, don’t blame yourself and stop thoughts such as “I can’t do this”. If other people are involved, they can have other matters on their mind affecting their behaviour. It’s usually nothing to do with you.

7. Does it really matter? What’s the worst that can happen? Put the issue into proportion, in a few weeks there will be something else and it won’t be so important.

Nicola Richardson is “the people mentor”, find out more about her work at www.thepeoplementor.co.uk