DEVELOPING RESILIENT BEHAVIOURS DURING CHALLENGING TIMES
Bad news for the majority of us-we are all facing
another three weeks (minimum) of lockdown. How does that make you feel? Do we
need to remember the former British quote of ‘Keep calm and carry on’? For our safety, the safety of our loved ones,
and the safety of others, we are all having to dramatically change the way we carry
on. As is so often the case during challenging times, the key to keeping calm
and carrying on, is building resilience.
The good news is that we can all develop resilient
behaviours, just like we can improve at almost anything if we apply the
required effort and adopt a positive ‘can-do’ attitude. A lot of my work with
people in business, education, and sport involves helping individuals and teams
develop resilience and a ‘growth-mindset’ as a means of achieving sustained and
meaningful success. At present, my online coaching work with the same clients is
focussing on the need to establish new routines and habits in order for them to
feel more in control, to not just survive but thrive with the current enforced changes.
Reducing stress and establishing positive wellbeing habits that ultimately
develop resilience, and our ability to ‘bounce-back’ from adversity is also a
common theme in my current coaching.
Essentially, resilience is a continuous process of
overcoming obstacles that we face in our daily lives. I certainly had to
learn to develop resilient behaviours as a former Premier League and
International referee (with 50,000 people screaming abuse at me every Saturday,
analysing every decision that I ever made[U1] -you
may have been one of them!), as a Headteacher (diffusing conflict in the
playground was very similar to my experiences in the Premier League), and now
as a Dad to two teenage boys at home 24/7 (my home life certainly now has the
potential to be more stressful than work).
If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with your ‘new
normal’ you might want to consider incorporating some of the following
wellbeing and resilience-building strategies that I use with my clients into
your weekly activities.
FOCUS ON FOUR
1/ DEVELOP A POSITIVE MINDSET. It’s important to set
yourself up for success and this starts with developing a growth-mindset. The
current crisis and the need to ‘pull-together’ as a nation has been compared in
some small part to the challenges faced during wartime Britain. I love this
quote from Winston Churchill at the time, which provides us with an insight
into his positive mindset:
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity: an
optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty”
2/ STICK TO A STRUCTURE: Successful people stick to
structure. This is vital for all of us right now if we want to combat rising
anxiety levels and we therefore need to separate work and play. Whether we have
children at home 24/7; are struggling to adapt to working from home; are
wondering how we are going to make ends meet; or questioning how we can
continue to support elderly relatives, we all need a routine. Planning ahead
and diarising work and play can help us feel in control.
3/ CONTROL THE CONTROLLABLES. Elite athletes and successful
business leaders are exceptional when it comes to differentiating between
things that they cannot do anything about and the things that they can
affect-they then focus on the latter! For example, we can control the amount of
time we spend reading about Coronavirus on social media and watching the news;
we can control the amount of exercise that we do (in our homes alongside the
allotted 1 hour); we can control the amount of food that we eat. Recognising
that we do have control over many things in our lives can help us change our
perspective in ways that improve our emotional lives.
4/ BUILD RELATIONSHIPS TO BUILD RESILIENCE. A good friend of
mine once told me that the minute you stop learning, is the minute you stop
earning! We can all learn to get better every day by learning from others and
if you are finding the current crisis draining, then you can be sure that
someone else is feeling exactly the same way. Keeping in touch with friends via
phone, social media, and other means can be a huge relief and release. Reaching
out to mend broken relationships or looking out for others (as so many are
doing right now) can have a massively positive impact on our mental health and
wellbeing.
We are wired to focus on the negative and constantly
focussing on bad news can massively reduce our resilience. Actively turning our
attention to the many positives that are happening around us today can help
turn this around. Focussing on the good news events around us can build our
tendency to see the good things in our lives and this way of thinking is
contagious-so lets share the good news.
Matt Messias
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