‘Be more resilient’ can be a hard thing to be told if you’re already feeling under a lot of pressure at work.

The world resilience can have different meanings for different people so I’d like to talk about putting the emphasis on the individual where resilience is concerned. I’d like to do this by focusing on the characteristics of resilience and not the word itself. Things like optimism, adaptability, emotional regulation and problem solving skills as well as the 3 c’s of resilience. This will then seem more achievable.

Let’s start with optimism

Know what makes you optimistic or lights you up and focus on this.

As we’ve seen from habits, the little things in life built up over the longer term are the things that work. By doing the small things that light you up consistently you will gradually build evidence that you can cope with the bigger things and you can become more resilient.

To help with this, you can make a joy list - a list full of things that range from something that takes up to 2 minutes to do such as a walk around my garden to a whole week away with my family. I schedule them religiously so I always have something in my calendar to look forward to.

We form certain pathways in our brains called neural pathways and they can be changed and developed.

You may have had a habit of seeing the negative in your life so these pathways are strong and smooth within your brain as they have been used often If you change the habit and start to specifically notice more good in your life, your world becomes a better place.

Do more things that make you feel optimistic and these pathways become stronger.

Our brains are amazing in their ability to change and adapt based upon our experience thus creating different pathways. This is called neuroplasticity, a huge passion of mine and it can make us more resilient.

This process and change itself can start with a thought.

When you’re overwhelmed at work or things seem particularly challenging, what are you predominantly telling yourself?

I know for me it was things like ‘this is a nightmare. There’s just too much to do and everyone else seems to have it so much more together.

I’d like for you to start recognising when you do this. You may already know what I’m talking about. You’ll probably have a few thoughts that come up on a consistent basis. When they do, I’d like for you to try and write them down.

Could you change the message you’re telling yourself?

Let’s take the following thought that things seem too much and you can’t cope.

Your thought - I can’t cope. You feel anxious. You therefore procrastinate.

Change the shout to I can cope as I have done before. You feel more prepared. You therefore take action.

This isn’t about being eternally optimistic and only seeing the positive but re-framing your thoughts to allow you to look at your problems in less of a negative way.

This will naturally make you more able to cope as your emotions follow your thoughts and you will be better at regulating them.

To help you to do this let’s look at the 3 c’s of resilience:

Time and time again the factors of control, challenge and commitment have been highlighted as having the most impact on workplace resilience and resilience overall.

Control is about how much control you have over the situations that you find yourself in that feel hard. I want to talk about your internal locus of control here.

Someone with a strong internal locus of control relates to that individual’s belief that their actions can control events affecting them. Their life is a result of their own choices and decisions - these people are more likely to be resilient.

Someone with an external locus of control believes that external forces influence them more. This sounds like: it’s the universe conspiring against me, of course it didn’t work out, nothing ever does. Everyone else has it so much easier than me.

Can you see how these 2 different approaches to challenges that come up can make you feel different.

It’s worthwhile to remember that in many situations we have a choice as to how we respond to something. This is also within our control.

Let me give you an example.

An opportunity comes up to be involved in a new project that needs extensive excel skills which you’re not great at.

Someone with an external locus of control may think. There’s another project that’s passing me by, it’s just my luck that something I can’t do is needed so I can’t apply.

Someone with an internal locus of control would say. Brilliant, I can apply for this as it sounds like a great project and I can start working on my excel skills so I can do this part of the project.

Do you recognise what you would do here?

I’ve talked about thoughts and you can help influence them by changing some of the language you use.

You can change I have no choice’, and, ‘I can’t...’ to ‘I choose not to,’ or, ‘I don’t like my choices, but I will'.

Can you think of a situation that’s happened in the past and how with this knowledge you can change how you reacted to it.

This may be that something happens at work that throws you, where you think ‘I wish I had more resilience’. You can either choose to react in a negative way or you can take a breath and be objective rather than subjective. Look at the facts of the situation rather than how you feel as it enables you to be more logical and reasoned with your response.

We’re more in control of things than we realise. Yes, difficult things happen that we seemingly don’t have any control over. What we do have control over is how we choose to react to them.

The 2nd c of resilience is challenge - seeing problems as challenges is often quoted as something that makes someone more resilient. I think that is often easier said than done.

When failure or challenges happen we often want to shut down and just walk away. Our natural instincts kick in and we want to safely protect ourselves.

So how do we make something not appear like it’s a failure?

Factor in the chances that things might go wrong from the start and build it into the process. A great way to do this is to brainstorm problems that might occur during a project at the beginning and look at it from different angles.

Then ask ‘so what’ questions. Something goes wrong? So what. It encourages you to think through each stage.

Failure in itself then becomes more of a challenge and if things don’t work out, it doesn’t feel like a failure as you’ve planned for it and you know what to do next.

Once you feel you have more control over a situation and you know how to work with challenges, your commitment (the third c) will be higher as you feel more prepared.

There are many other ways that can help you become more resilient but this great exercise covers a few different bases.

At the end of the day, ask yourself 3 questions. It’s great to write these down but if you can’t just run through them in your head.

What went well today? - helps you practise gratitude.

What didn’t go well today?

What could I have done differently? So when you’re faced with similar scenarios in the future you’ll have thought through how you could handle this situation. In the longer term it helps you to know your best move forward which will build towards your resilience.

With all of this, change starts from within so even in the toughest of times, small changes to our thoughts, how we react and our habits will develop our resilience in the longer term.

Struggling with your negative thoughts? Here's how to change them in 3 easy steps.