Seven Factors To Help You Build Resilience

The Covid pandemic has brought about more change than many of us have experienced in either our personal or professional lives. As such, it has underlined the crucial importance resilience can play in helping us to adapt to the changing nature of the world around us.

While the pandemic has undoubtedly been largely beyond any of our control, our response to the pandemic is very much within our control. Indeed, as the Roman philosopher, Seneca famously remarked, “we are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

As such, there is much that we can do to ensure that our response to adversity is a constructive one. In Futureproof Your Career, HEC Paris’ Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj outlines seven key factors that help us to develop resilience in our lives and in our careers. They each provide us with a degree of focus to help us to come out the other side of the pandemic in as good a shape as possible.

1. Purpose - The pandemic has provided many of us with either a personal or an organizational reset point that has allowed us to think afresh about precisely what it is we want from life. Janjuha-Jivraj argues that when we have a purpose in our life it helps us to be more resilient because we have a clear sense of both what we want to do and how we want to do it. She suggests a good starting point is to ponder precisely what we want our legacy to be.
2. Challenge - The second factor then pertains to how we perceive situations, and especially challenging situations. We’re living in an age in which change and uncertainty are a fundamental part of our lives. Do we respond well to unexpected changes? Indeed, do we actively seek out changes in our lives or do we try and shy away from them?
3. Emotional control - In times of stress we can often resort to an emotional rather than rational response. While this can have merit, it can also often result in a less than desirable outcome. As such, Janjuha-Jivraj argues that a key to resilience is the ability to control our emotions and to maintain that control even under stressful circumstances.
4. Balance - A common discussion during a pandemic that has seen unheralded levels of remote working is how can we maintain our work-life balance in a world in which we no longer have a commute to provide natural breathing space between the two worlds. While there is undoubtedly much to be said for treating our life as a single entity rather than dividing it into a work-life and personal life, perhaps the key to developing resilience is to ensure that our priorities, wherever they may lie, are given the attention they deserve.
5. Self-determination - Grit has been another characteristic that has grown in popularity in recent years, and its importance has never been more important than during a pandemic in which more than a fair share of obstacles have been thrown in our path. Janjuha-Jivraj believes that our ability to both maintain our motivation and enthusiasm through challenging times is a key factor in developing this grit.
6. Self-awareness - It can often be difficult to know precisely where our strengths lie, but without that basic self-awareness it can be difficult to develop the kind of resilience required to survive challenging circumstances. Janjuha-Jivraj suggests that a good approach would be to ask ourselves how friends or colleagues might describe us, and explore whether their description matches that we’ve formed in our own minds.
7. Interpersonal confidence - While there is undoubtedly a degree of stoic pride in developing individual resilience, we are often far more resilient when part of a wider network of people. As such, developing an awareness of others and an understanding of how we interact with them can be key. Janjuha-Jivraj believes that a key facet of this trait is to ponder how frequently we solicit feedback from others or actively motivate those around us.

“Some of your responses may surprise you and depending on how honest you have been, maybe quite uncomfortable too,” she writes. “Every time we review these questions, there are always a few responses where we know we need to pay more attention. The good news is that each of these areas can be improved, and in doing so, this strengthens the foundations of our resilience.”

Hopefully, by looking at these seven areas on a periodic basis, we can work to develop our personal resilience and ensure that when the next challenge comes our way we’ll be well placed to face it.