Monthly Archives: April 2013

Bouncibility – Staying strong in challenging times

imagesLife is an imperfect journey and crisis is guaranteed. There will always be setbacks and misfortunes. Resilience is the ability to adapt to the challenges of life. It’s about bouncing back rather than falling apart. If you are strong in resilience you have this ‘bouncibility’ and can harness your inner strengths and coping mechanisms. Resilience is crucial! It’s an essential life skill! However, it often in short supply. Some people are very fortunate and have high levels of resilience. Others need to learn the skills at the heart of resiliency. If life is full of challenges then we need to know how to not only withstand the pressure but to thrive in adversity. Through ongoing cutbacks and a deepening recession the intensity of ever increasing challenges is very real. More challenges may lie ahead.

If you are low in resilience, you will focus too much on your problems and deficits and be overwhelmed during challenges. You will be drawn towards unhealthy conclusions and become more vulnerable instead of stronger. Becoming more resilient will not mean that problems disappear. It does not mean that you have to become ‘as hard as nails’. Resilience is more about learning how to cope – tapping into our own resources and fostering more strengths in order to stay ‘standing’ during and after crisis. It’s about coping better with stress and keeping health and challenge in the same room as each other. You can learn to be more resilient. Science has uncovered specific traits/factors that can be utilised at work and in our lives in general.

Resilience is not about ‘digging deep’ and burying your feelings! It’s not about ‘weathering the storm’! It’s not about ‘keeping it all in’! Resilience is about experiencing natural emotions like anger, grief and pain but being able to go along with daily tasks and getting on with your life. It’s about being your own best coach in crisis rather than your own worst enemy!!

Over the coming weeks this blog will focus its attention on resilience by introducing latest scientific findings and making suggestions regarding strategies for improving our resilience levels.

“More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and its true in the boardroom.”
Dean Becker, Harvard Business Review