How to develop resilience

Hi everyone, recently I was lucky enough to attend a talk by @davidsjtait (https://twitter.com/DavidSJTait) on how to develop reslience, I started to skethcnote the talk out, it was so insightful that I decided to make a video on the key points on how to develop resilience – let’s take a look at it and then dive into some details.

How to develop resilience step 1: Learn what resilience is really means

So first of all we had a look at the definition of resilience – the definition he gave was to ‘never ever give up!’

What I took from this was that none of these challenges that come your way will be worse than the regret that you’ll face if you don’t do it.

For me that’s what’s always been the driver, your goal maybe far off from your start point – really any worthwhile goal is going to be far away – surely that’s the point of having a goal. When you start out this is what typically will happen.

You’ll have an idea and you’ll get all ‘fired up’ about it – that’ll last for between a few days to a week
You’ll then start to have doubts about it – is this what I really want to accomplish
You’ll snap youself out of it and start to make a plan of how you will achieve it
It’s during this planning stage that you’ll see all the ‘challenges’ in the way
It’s natural to then get disheartened and want to give up – this is where learning how to develop resilience will come to your aid

How to develop resilience starts with the ability to know that there are going to be ‘challenges’ (‘challenges’ is another word for ‘problems’ but with a more positive spin, i.e. something you are meant to overcome) in your path, but these ‘challenges’ are there to test if you really want to accomplish the goal of not.

In life you don’t get ‘what you want’, you ultimately get ‘what you are’.

These challenges are there to test if you are the person who can take what he/she wants – I’m a big believer in everything, all your dreams, goals and ambitions are already there for you, all you have to do is to take action to get the your dream. And learning how to develop resilience is a key part to being one of those people who gets what they want versus being the type of person who only ever talks about all the problems that stopped them getting what they wanted – which type of person do you want to be?

How to develop reslience step 2: It’s okay to fail

There’s a simple four step process on how to develop resilinece and it goes like this.

So many people get hung up on failing, it may be you, perhaps you worry about what will such-and-such person think of me if I fail, and we live our whole lives worrying about what other people are going to think if I fail, that it may stop you from even starting out in the first place.

Repeat after me, it’s okay to fail.

In fact failure is one of the best ways to learn about anything.

Why is failure so important?

Well firstly, fail and you will see that it’s not the end of the world – you failed, you survived, you got through it.

Also when you failed did such-and-such person even notice, did they even care?

Even if they did, so what, did someone else’s comments break you?

No, it didn’t! You’re still here, you’re still breathing.

One of the main lessons that failure teaches you is ‘not to care about what other people think’ – this lesson you only need to learn once, once you’ve got it you can start going after the things that you want.

You’ve heard of ‘fail fast, fail often’, this esssentially means you will take the express route to finding the right way to get to your destination – what this doesn’t mean is start doing random things in the hope that one of them will give you the right answer – what it does mean though is plan out the best way to execute the plan, if it doesn’t work then tweak the plan. This process of contiinuely ammending the execution is what is known as ‘optimisation’ – and optimising the process is what will get you to where you need to be.

How to develop reslience step 3: Start the journey

Often the journey of a thousand miles starts with a broken fan-belt and a flat tyre, I mean starts with a single step. When you look at your goal and all the challenges in the way (remember don’t use the word ‘problems’ anymore), you will feel this experience of wanting to give up before you even start.

Okay just take the first step, don’t worry about all the obstacles that you anticipate in your path, just take that first step. Something quite magical happens when you take that first step. Why is this, the first step is literally the hardest step to take.

Why?

You may see bigger challenges further down the path, but with the first step comes ‘momentum’. The momentum gained by you taking the first step is like an ‘investment’ into your goal, now you’ve invested something into it (could be time, could be money, could be courage to get moving) it’s makes the feeling of quiting to be so much more unpalatable, you’ve now got something to lose and you’ll want to protect that.

Just take that first step and see how likely you are to quit versus wanting to fail fast and fail often to get where you want to get to.

The other thing about taking the first, second and subsequent steps is that if you fall and fail, it’s not as if you have to start back from the beginning!

If you fail after step 5, pick yourself up and carry on from step 5 – you don’t need to go back to the start line. Just carry on from where you left off, you’ll be surprised by how far you can get by just taking that first step – do it now (well after you finish reading this post).

How to develop reslience step 4: Look in the mirror

When accomplishing a goal, it’s not the accomplishment of the goal that is the real success, it’s who you become in that process as you become the person you want to be. This goes two ways, first by being the person you want to be will direclty lead you to accomplishing all the dreams that you have.

It all begins by looking in the mirror – do it now, I’ll wait for you.

Okay so you look in the mirror and you will see two things, first of all you see yourself as you currently are. Now close your eyes and take in a real deep breathe, hold it and then let it out, stand up straight, be that bit taller and look deeply into the reflection of your eyes, see the person who you want to be. See everything about your true self.

Can you see that, that’s the real you, that’s the person you want to be and guess what – it’s not that far away from where you are.

Now you’ve done this, list out the things that you need to change about yourself – you’ll be surprised, there’s actually not that much to change. See it wasn’t that big a shift, doing this, means you can now be very precise and strategic about what you need to change, rather than running around thinking you have to do everything (and ultimately ‘giving up’ or even worse not taking that ‘first step’) you now have this calmness and a list of things to change – you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can change some of these points, some may take a couple of weeks while others can literally take seconds.

How to develop reslience step 5: Find something bigger than yourself

The last point I want ot make is essentially find the ‘why’ you are doing something. Ultimately there is a reason behind all of this, when you look below the surface you will find something bigger than youself.

When you can find the reason that is bigger than yourself then you’ll realise that there is something driving you to it, and that reason boils down to being able to help others. If you are doing something purely for yourself, you will only get so far. But when you are doing something that in some way will make other people’s lives better than there’s no obstacle, no challenge, no distance too far that can stop you!

Find that thing, you probably already know what it is, now verbalise it – say it and let that thing drive you.

5 steps on how to develop #reslience read the whole post here -> https://t.co/k4m6Eh85TW #selfhelp pic.twitter.com/j8QOPt8yO6

— workingParent (@ParentWorking) December 26, 2015

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Farhan