What makes an individual successful? Intelligence? Networking skills? Since the 2000’s, multiple articles have published studies based upon this timeless question. Many articles, such as this one by Forbes and this one from Harvard Business Review, identify one leading factor: resilience.
What is resilience?
Unfortunate surprises and the resulting hardships are inevitable in both your personal and professional lives. One aspect of resilience is the ability to remain calm in the face of trouble and being able to overcome difficulties and keep going. Resilience is the virtue that enables you to move past hardship and become better for it.
Resilient people are able to incorporate the lessons learned during these difficult experiences into their livesin a way that enables them to grow and become more successful.
What are the components of resilience?
According to multiple studies, linked here, there are three parts of resilience.
– Hardiness: This trait is described as being able to work under duress. This involves staying calm and having the ability to remain focused and think clearly.
– Resourcefulness: There are endless ways to get help and advice; this is the ability to utilize these sources to get help when needed.
– Optimism: Psychologically, an individual who is optimistic is able to remain positive and deal with negative feelings.
How do you develop resilience when facing adversity?
Handling calamity in the moment is also a method of growth, and there are 8 steps this TIME article suggests you can take to better handle these events:
- Perceive and Believe: Recognizing and acknowledging the situation right away is important in order to deal with it more swiftly.
- Manage Your Emotions: This aligns with the hardiness component; try to remain level-headed.
- Recognize the Time to Quit: For example, if a company announces a round of lay-offs and you were not in an area of your expertise or passion, you should start searching for another job aligned with your strengths.
- Believe in Yourself: This is related to optimism and the belief that you can overcome any challenge.
- Prepare: This is related to the resourcefulness aspect of resilience where you are constantly making sure that you think creatively when facing challenges and problems, leveraging all of the resources you have at your disposal.
- Stay Busy: Constantly preparing and moving towards your goals is also another way to stay calm.
- Make it Fun: Making the situation a game with smaller challenges/milestones can improve chances of staying optimistic.
- Get Help and Give Help: Resilient individuals never shy away from asking for assistance when facing adversity and do not hesitate from helping others, giving them a sense of purpose.
Do you consider yourself resilient? Have you observed others in your life who are? What do they have in common?
To read more on these topics, there are additional articles listed below:
http://time.com/3002833/how-to-be-resilient-8-steps-to-success-when-life-gets-hard/
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243910
http://www.universities.academy/?categoryId=42496&itemId=86042