Building Resilience Leads to Empowerment
Written by: Nancy Hovde, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Have you ever admired someone that has the ability to sustain their energy level under pressure? You know, that person who always seems to cope and adapt well to disruptive changes? If so, then you may have thought of this person as a natural born leader. Someone with this type of mindset has resilience. Those who have resilience are able to bounce back from setbacks and overcome major difficulties without engaging in dysfunctional behavior or harming others. This is why we often look up to them as a leader, for guidance or mentorship. Maybe this describes you or who you would like to become next time you are under massive pressure.
Do you feel that you don’t have enough, maybe even zero, resilience? It should be noted that, most people are not just born with resilience, but they have had life experiences that have helped them learn to become more resilient. Through awareness, resilience can be learned and by developing thoughts, behaviors, and actions that allow you to manage stressful situations, as well as overcoming traumatic events. Follow these helpful tips to begin to build resilience:
● Prioritize Self Care for Stress Management. The most important thing you can do to begin building resilience, is to always take the best care of YOU! This isn’t selfish. This is self-care. Have you ever noticed that leaders who are resilient maintain positive habits? View your self-care as Quality Wellness. How? By ensuring to integrate quality wellness into your daily regimen. Get quality sleep. Eat quality, nutritious foods. Discover what quality workouts/exercise allows you to feel optimal, physically and mentally. Think quality, positive thoughts as often as possible. Quality service/work happens when we feel our best physically and mentally, we can provide optimal performance. Quality time is using your time wisely, so that you can allow quality time for all that you value. When we take the best care of ourselves, we feel our best, and we build higher resilience levels within; this empowers us to operate and perform at optimum levels. When we feel our best, we tend to think our best which helps us make better decisions and use creative problem-solving techniques.
● Train Your Mindset. Our mindset can be trained to become resilient. Have you ever tried to reframe your perspective of a difficult situation? It can be helpful to think of reframing as a brainstorming session where you think of as many different perspectives of a situation or problem as possible. What are all the possible alternatives to perceiving the situation? This step helps us become more flexible with our thinking and become more optimistic, instead of the alternative, which is getting caught up in our emotional reaction to a situation.
● Focusing on the Positive. By focusing on the positive, this helps to foster creative solutions on moving forward and getting from where we are in this moment to where we
would like to be. Dwelling on the past or current problem can lead to overthinking, which tends to block our creativity for problem-solving. Try asking yourself how you might find meaningful purpose out of the troubling circumstance or event. How might you benefit from the challenge? Are there new skills you might be able to develop?
● Hold Yourself Accountable. Regular check-ins to reflect on what is working and positively supporting you, your wellness, your business, and in some cases, your team or organization. Alternatively, it can be helpful during your accountability check-ins to review what is not working and could be negatively affecting performance. When you observe any behaviors, negative thought patterns, unhealthy habits, address these immediately by creating action steps for those positive habits you want to see more of.
Try integrating these helpful tips into your daily life, so that the next time you are faced with an unexpected and challenging situation, you will feel more empowered that you can not only face, but effectively overcome anything life throws your way.
If learning to build more resilience is a positive change you would like to make and you would like guidance, support and accountability, please contact me to get started.
Nancy Hovde, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Nancy is a leading Life Empowerment Coach who has combined her professional background, credentials, personal experience, knowledge, and insight to inspire and motivate those who wish to create positive change. For over 15 years, she has empowered clients who desire positive change with career/life purpose, personal growth, or wellness goals. Nancy will help you discover how true change can happen when we use our time and resources to develop our minds and spirits, examine our values, and let go of issues that hold us back. She inspires and guides clients to live their optimal life through her books, blog posts, articles, and coaching services. Nancy is the author of Uber Empowerment and Uber Empowerment Quotes: 500 Inspirational Quotes for Knowledge, Insight & Wisdom. Her credentials include Certified Life Coach, B.A. Interpersonal Communication, Stress Management Specialist, Behavior Change Specialist, and Certified Personal Trainer.
