The New Science of Resilience

Peter Baines was Australia forensic detective who led the recovery efforts after the 2004 Thailand tsunami disaster. His role was to identify the victims and help lay them to rest. The tragedy left a horrible psychological scar on Peter and was further compounded by the increasing number of children crying for help – those left orphaned by the event.

Learning to be resilient is a powerful thing. Instead of falling down and failing to cope; we can put things in place that will allow us to stand tall; becoming stronger in the process.

Peter came home to his family only to realise this that terrible event had given purpose to his life. He said this was a wake-up call and it flipped the switch. Peter went back to Thailand and started a charity “Hands Across the Water” to help those affected by this tragedy and others. Peter with his team have built homes, and schools to assist those children. Peter realised strengths and talents he never knew existed. He has become a great fundraiser and organiser, creating charity events, skills needed to aid his cause.

Peter Baines has transcended this adversity and built some very powerful resilience. Day in and day out he still sees extraordinary amounts of hardship and suffering, but he has a purpose, allowing him to stay strong while helping those in need.

What is resilience?

There are many definitions, but at it’s simplest Resilience is “the ability to withstand and rebound from disruptive life challenges” (Marsh, 2003).

When we lack resilience, we are prone to physical illness, depression, anxiety, and in the younger age bracket, it can lead to increased high-risk behaviours (such as drugs, alcohol, etc). All of which negatively impacts our work and personal life.

In the workplace resilience is essential to withstand:

Generational Differences - the ability to communicate and understand the different generations within the workforce. Presently, we have five generations in the one workplace, a feat unheard of in the past.

For example, Baby Boomers have a different attitude and communication style compared to Generation Y & Z.

Baby Boomers can be abrupt but with reason – they were brought up in an era of firm discipline, and with retirement fast approaching they are grappling with the need to acquire assets to maintain their current lifestyle. Then they have probably lost one or more of their parents. But on top of this is their jealousy of Gen Y and Z: for example, for them, a simple trip overseas was a significant undertaking, but today, most of Gen Y and Z have had an overseas trip before their twentieth birthday. Plus, Baby Boomers were brought up in an era of firm discipline.

Fast forward - to Gen Y and Z who are fast to learn, tech-savvy, but fragile. Fragile because of their parents. When Gen Y and Z was growing up, global media was taking off; their parents witnessed killings, abductions, and all sorts of horrible things. As such, Gen Y and Z no longer walked to school and were wrapped in cotton wool. Failure wasn’t an option, so learning how to fail and pick up the pieces didn’t form part of the repertoire.

The myriad of choices available – making decisions about our life and career has become harder. For example, Gen Z has one foot in the door and one foot ready to move onto their next career. The older generations are at a loss on how to nurture and mentor them so they become a valuable asset within the organisation.

Technology – has created the ability for us always to be “on”. We are expected to be contactable at any time of the day and work when needed. As such, Senior Execs think it acceptable to dump half a days work on their assistants at 5.25 pm expecting completion before they leave for the night.

Then there are our stacked roles – We are partners, parents, or children to others, and have roles and obligations that we must meet. We do not have social support from our parents or partners, like those of the past.

All which causes stress and some stress can be useful when it helps us to perform better. However, when we lack resilience our mechanisms to prevent stress from building soon impacts our health.

Symptoms of high stress include:

• Attitude

• Breathing loss when under pressure

• Negativity

• Overwhelmed

• Racing thoughts

• Memory problems

• Anguish

• Loss of appetite

Are you experiencing any ABNORMAL symptoms?

The good news is the brain has this amazing ability to recover. By increasing resilience, we can reverse this damage.

History is full of people that have embraced the challenge of adversity and used it to their advantage. Like Peter, people who have gone on to be more successful than they have ever been!

Overcoming adversity or the challenges you are experiencing in the workplace can be the chisel needed to free your authentic self to become the person you are meant to be.

Just like Peter and those who have overcome disruptive life challenges, each has gone through the following stages.

Firstly, there is a wake-up call

      →that flips a switch to make changes
            →then creating the plan to make it happen
                  →lastly, the implementation of that plan.

Going through this process has increased resilience. Resilience built by defining their purpose and developing a plan to achieve it.

Now we know how these people built their resilience, what do you need to do to start making changes to your life? After all, many of us with dreams struggle to articulate or work towards those dreams –to build resilience we need to act now.

Once we have defined our purpose, we then can set goals to achieve our ambitions. Articulating and planning them out for say the next three to five years, then no matter what happens in front of you; and no matter what obstacles you confront, you will have the guiding principles to keep you on track, to build your resilience in the process.

Three elements underpin your planning and will help you to achieve greater resilience.

1. Effectiveness – are you committed to your strategy to reach your goals. Have you taken time out to decide where you want to go and plan?

Are you looking at the information in front of you without emotion? What are the facts? How good are you today technically, how do you look at the world in terms of understanding where you are? How mentally tough are you? Every single thing we do starts somewhere in our mind, either helping or hindering our wellbeing. What stepping stones do you need to build to get you to where you need to be? Have you got contingencies in place in case things go wrong? You need to be ego-free; you might need to gain knowledge from others because no one knows it all.

What do you need to change? Without a plan are at our lowest resilience. Helpless!

To see how effective your goals are, go click here and complete the online diagnostic. Here is your discount code EA2019

2. Focus internally and externally – your own clarity and understanding of those around you.

Focus In - Are you thinking big and pushing the boundaries of your potential, so your dreams scare you a little. When you are passionate about what you do, and it means something to us, being scared is a normal reaction, and that is when we will perform at our best.

Focussing Out - caring and understanding about those around us. As the saying goes “take a walk in their shoes.”

Fine-tuning your focus will increase emotional intelligence and help to establish clear
above or below the line behaviours.

Below the line behaviour is when we create plans but never implement, leaving you feeling unchallenged and unfulfilled; often believing those stories we make up about how we can’t do things. Above the line behaviour acting with grit and determination? Grit is built by delaying gratification, so next time your phone plan is up, I challenge you to wait 6 months before you go and purchase a new phone. Do you have perseverance to experience failure as a positive and keep chasing your dreams, or do you easily quit? Lastly, do you have the courage and audacity to take those hard steps?

Influence – Your values, what you stand for and what motivates you to stay on track.

It is essential that what we do means something to us. Is it aligned with your values? Do you have the courage to hold to them, or are you easily led by others?

We need to make sure the voice inside our head does what we want it to do, allowing us to see opportunities.

We don’t need to be the world-beaters or the champions of a grand cause, we just need to know where we are headed in life. This will give us the ability to influence our own world and our happiness.

Now you know how to others have created success from adversity – ask yourself what plans do you need to create to have the life you want? Then you need to get started on implementing them. This is the new science about Resilience

Joanne Love
PsychScB(Psy) GradDipPsychAdv.

Back To The Assistant