Building resilience

(bright music) - [Jim] Everyone faces disappointments and adversity now and then, but not everyone bounces back at that same speed. - [Dorie] It's inevitable in life and in business that we'll face actual setbacks, of course those are going to hurt. But the key when it comes to building mental agility is learning to bounce back. - [Jim] It's all about resilience, and that's a quality you can work to improve. - [Todd] Good news, anyone who wants to can build their resilience. It starts everyday with the choice to view whatever happens from a positive perspective. - [Jim] And enhancing your resilience not only makes it easier to recover from setbacks, it also improves your overall performance. - [Jemma] Research shows developing resilience helps to improve wellbeing, innovation and performance. - [Jim] Enhancing your resilience, that's the subject of this LinkedIn Learning Highlight, your collection of insights from LinkedIn Learning courses. Hi, everybody, Jim Hyde here from LinkedIn Learning. Let's face it, bad things happen all the time. They might be work related, a mistake in a big report or a piece of harsh feedback from a manager. Or they might be personal, the end of a relationship or the loss of a loved one. Whether they're big or small, professional or personal, setbacks like these cause stress and can affect everything from your job to your relationships to your health. - [Jemma] It's pretty well-known that building resilience helps you to cope with challenges, overcome adversity, and deal with tough situations. Boosting resilience can also help you to thrive, enhance your performance and create a growth mindset. - [Jim] That's Jemma Leigh Roberts. She's a psychologist, author, and executive and career coach and the instructor of numerous LinkedIn Learning courses, including one called, "Enhancing Resilience". - [Jemma] There are six key pillars of resilience. And mastering each of these will give you the tools you need to develop your psychological resilience. This is the resilience edge framework. Firstly, you want to build your confidence. In particular, thinking about your self-belief which is all about believing you have the ability to deal with challenges effectively. It's also important to consider how often you feel in control of a situation and how you use your natural strengths. Second, consider your adaptability. Can you be flexible about the way you think about challenges, turning these into opportunities and learning experiences to get the most out of a situation? The third area we focus on when building resilience is boosting positivity. This is all about getting to grips with the way you process information and avoiding typical traps that can throw all of us off course. It's important to develop realistic optimism skills, rather than relying on blind hope which is not a useful strategy. The fourth pillar deals with developing a perspective that provides you with an advantage when it comes to boosting resilience. This includes learning how to challenge your thoughts, getting clear on how to detect what's really going on in challenging situations, and learning when you need to accept what you have no control over. - [Jim] Focusing on these four pillars, Jemma says, will set you up for focusing on the last two. - [Jemma] Over time, you'll want to focus on the fifth pillar of mastery, which is all about mastering the skills required to continue to enhance your resilience levels. Developing a growth mindset will help you to turn challenges into opportunities. And setting goals will help you to stay on track. Finally, a critical part of enhancing resilience comes into play when you think about building your long-term stamina. This is all about keeping you on-track and focused on enhancing or maintaining your resilience levels. Do you have a resilience-boosting strategy? What's your support system like? And have you created a structure that can support your development? All of these factors are essential parts of enhancing your resilience. - [Jim] Jemma's course, again, it's called, "Enhancing Resilience", explores each of these six pillars in detail. For now though, let's get a different perspective on resilience. - [Todd] Your next strategy involves embracing multiple identities. - [Jim] That's Todd Dewett, a leadership consultant and trainer, and the instructor behind many LinkedIn Learning courses. In his course called, "Embracing Unexpected Change", he talks about resilience as an important trait for dealing with change. And he points out that one key to building resilience is to diversify. - [Todd] To maximize your mental health and build resiliency, you must be bigger than only your professional identity, even if you love what you do. Don't think of yourself so narrowly. Healthy people with strong mental resilience have two or more positive identities in addition to their professional identity. This might include parent, volunteer, or maybe basketball coach, who knows? Just know that when you have multiple identities, a threat to any one of them hurts you less overall. - [Jim] Todd also stresses the importance of working to maintain a positive outlook. Often not easy to do, but always important to try. - [Todd] In the face of difficulties, you must make the choice to be better, not bitter. My advice is to make this choice part of your early morning routine every single time you wake up. Choosing to be positive has real mental benefits. It aids decision-making and wards off unproductive, negative perspectives. It might be impossible to be positive 100% of time, but when you make it a daily choice, your odds definitely improve. - [Jim] So expand your horizons beyond your professional life and stay positive, or at least try. And when something does go wrong, one tool that can help is a routine. Here's Dorie Clark, a popular LinkedIn Learning instructor from her course called, "Cultivating Mental Agility". - [Dorie] When you're in the midst of changes or uncertainty, it can sometimes feel like everything's changing. You can't count on anything. To combat that and maintain a sense of control, it can be extremely useful to start, or keep up if you already have one, a routine of some kind in the midst of the disruption. Maybe it's going to the gym after work everyday, or doing a few minutes of gratitude journaling in the morning, right after you wake up, or going for a short walk after lunch. Whatever it is, if you can maintain a healthy ritual that helps you connect with your goals and remind you that somethings, many things even, are within your control, that provides a useful counterpoint to help keep you resilient. - [Jim] To wrap up this brief look at resilience, a few takeaways. Number one, as Todd Dewett says. - [Todd] To maximize your mental health and build resiliency, you must be bigger than only your professional identity. - [Jim] Having a lot of interests gives you a larger support system that can help when bad things happen. Number two. - [Jemma] It's important to develop realistic optimism skills rather than relying on blind hope which is not a useful strategy. - [Jim] As Jemma Leigh Roberts points out, thinking things like, "Bad things always happen to me," isn't going to help you cope when a bad thing does happen. But by the same token, you can't simply hope that things will work out. It's better to have a plan for getting through a rough patch. And number three is more of a homework assignment and it comes from Dorie Clark. - [Dorie] Our vision gets tunneled and we forget there's a world outside the problem we're facing. So right now, write down a list of the people, books, music, or other resources you can turn to when times are difficult. - [Jim] We've heard highlights from three LinkedIn Learning courses here, "Enhancing Resilience", "Embracing Unexpected Change", and "Cultivating Mental Agility". You'll find more courses dealing with resilience, mental agility, and related topics in the LinkedIn Learning Library.