resilience

Emotional resilience

March 30, 2020 By // by Rachel Brushfield

The dictionary defines emotion as ‘any feeling that disturbs or excites the mind.’

Some people are naturally more emotional than others with more highs and lows than people who are more logical and analytical. Likewise, some people are more positive and see the glass as half full, whereas others see the glass as half empty. Life and work can present us with situations and people that we find challenging and sometimes threatening.

The good news is that how we react to these situations is within our control. Nelson Mandela and how he handled his confinement is an example of being in a hugely difficult situation, and coming up trumps. Emotions are often created by thoughts so having self-awareness of your values, motivations and insecurities can help you to have emotional resilience.

Unless we are very lucky, we don’t get taught how to be emotionally resilient, but learn it as we go along and using shopping, alcohol, drugs and busyness can be an easy way to anaesthetise difficult emotions.

We can learn to be more resilient and challenging situations have a lot of gifts, even if we don’t see them at the time, e.g. opportunity to be more creative, assertive etc

What situations test our emotional resilience?

Coping well in one area and struggling in another is normal.

The Coronavirus period
Redundancy and unemployment
Mergers over which we have no choice
No pay rises over a period of time
People pulling rank
Lack of planning by others affecting us
Unreasonable behaviour and bullying
Bosses and employers with values different to our own
Trauma and crisis e.g. end of a relationship, death of someone we are close to
Financial pressure and hardship
Covert undermining behaviour e.g. passive aggressive

5 FREE tips to maximise your emotional resilience

What’s the worse thing that can happen and what is the likelihood of it happening?
Ask yourself ‘What are the positives of my challenging situation?’
Ask yourself what qualities and resources you have to help you to deal with the challenge you face
Focus on what you can influence not what you can’t
Map out vicious circles of the thoughts and emotions and work out how you can create virtuous circles

Self-reflective question

“When have I been most emotionally resilient and what enabled me to do this?”

More

A portfolio career is a resilient career. Why? Because it is made up of different components, so you can change direction or ‘pivot’ as external trends change or your own circumstances change.

Contact us to receive your free report ‘Discover Portfolio Careers’: https://www.inspiringportfoliocareers.com/portfolio/connect/

The unwelcome guest

January 4, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

I had an unwelcome guest over Christmas. In fact they were never invited.

The guest was fear. It visits me every year around this time, the ‘in-between zone’ between the festive season fading and the business world waking from its slumber.

It paralysed me for over 5 minutes; I could feel it camping in my body.

The negative self-talk started: “What if everyone ‘sits on the fence’ until after the general election – that’s over 5 MONTHS?!!” “What if lack of business confidence means no decisions are made?” “How will I deal with the fast pace of increased competition and technology?”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Panic set in.

I noticed myself doing a displacement activity to sooth myself.

Luckily mine is very productive and inexpensive rather than doing drugs or shopping – I started filing business cards A-Z!

That made me chuckle. And then the fear started to shift and the positive thoughts moved the negative ones to one side out of view. I picture cheerleaders carrying pom poms – not sure why!

‘Rachel – you have been self-employed for over 17 years. Most small businesses fail in the first 1-2 years.’

‘Rachel, you are in the 1% of the population who embraces risk and change, imagine how other people feel? Focus on them, you can help them.’

‘Rachel you have a portfolio career, look at trends, have many useful skills and are resilient.’

The unwelcome guest left.

There is no question we live in uncertain and disruptive times. So what is the best way to manage fear?

10 tips to manage fear

1. Observe/sit with the fear until it shifts
2. Adopt/imagine a sense of curiosity about the future
3. Believe that you will work it out and it will be a positive learning and growing experience
4. Create a focused personal career vision, mission, strategy and plan
5. Remind yourself of what you have to offer
6. Understand yourself
7. Keep taking action to move forwards, one action at a time
8. Put aside 10% of your salary for retraining, coaching and/or a financial cushion
9. Invest in your personal & professional development and marketability
10. Define a focused sustainable niche for success

What tips would you add?

Useful resources to manage fear

• You
• Me
• Susan Jeffers books ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ & ‘Embracing uncertainty.’

What next?

Here are 4 actions – why not choose 1:

Download our free report:
http://careerstrategies.co.uk/changingcareersreport/

Put ‘Energise career coaching gift voucher’ on your gift list for this year.

Read our client testimonials:
http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/energise-client-testimonials/

PS If you are ‘sitting on the fence’, here’s a thought. If you start coaching or our career e course now, you will be ready to move forward by the general election result. Ready? What have you got to lose, except 5 months of inaction and a sore arse? Get in touch. E mail me rachel@liberateyourtalent.com

How career resilient are you?

October 22, 2013 By // by DigitalJenIPC

How career resilient are you and how important is it?

I went to an interesting seminar last week about career resilience. I came away feeling confident that I am, which is good to know doing the work I do!

So what creates career resilience? Does it depend on having a laid back disposition, high levels of the ‘happy hormone’ serotonin or something else?

The quick answer is resilience is learnt. What creates career resilience is keeping an eye on trends that may/will affect your job/career, being aware of your strengths, skills and character and what you have to offer – the value of your ‘currency’, making useful connections, both insights and people, listening to and taking note of the needs of your customers/target audience and aligning yourself with what is needed/will be needed.

A lot of this is about marketing – where I started my career in the 1980’s. The definition of marketing can be adapted to your career – “anticipating and satisfying customer needs profitably.” A ‘win win’ for employee and employer or customer/client and supplier.

What also increases resilience is having a clear sense of purpose and support to achieve your potential. ‘Super resilience’ is achieved my managing your thoughts, what some call ‘the monkey mind’, hence the growth in mindfulness plus reframing knockbacks into constructive learnings.

Future blogs will focus on each of these factors.

For now, give yourself a quick career resilience audit:

Resilience audit:

Ask yourself these questions:

How well do I know my skills and strengths and where they are useful?
Who champions me in my career?
What is my purpose?
What would increase my sense of resilience in my career?
How do emerging trends affect my career prospects?
What’s my contingency plan?
What are the positive learnings from my knockbacks at work?
If you had a personal Board, who would you appoint?

Tips

Have a career strategy
Define your purpose
Get a coach or mentor to support you
Invest 10% of your salary/revenue in improving your marketability – up-skill/qualification
Spend 1 hour a week keeping up to date with general and specific trends unique to your role
Spend 1 hour a week supporting and developing your network
Develop your self-awareness

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https://twitter.com/talentliberator