You have a huge dream, and you’ve made the decision to go for it! You’ve converted the dream into a powerful vision and taken the first step in the pursuit. Everything is in place.
Congratulations! Stepping out on your own path is the most amazing, frightening, exciting, exhilarating, fearful experience.
There is one thing you need to draw on, nurture and develop during your quest for success. And that is resilience.
What is resilience? I define it as the capacity to bounce back, overcome setbacks or difficulties, work through challenges and keep going.
Why do we need it? The larger your dream or vision, the more you will need all your resilience to succeed. There will be setbacks. You will experience failure. Obstacles will appear. You will procrastinate. There will be days when it all seems too hard and overwhelming, and it will feel more natural to stay in your comfort zone.
The good news is we are all born with a certain amount of resilience. The great news is there are ways we can build our resilience to an ever-higher level.
Start to practice these following techniques, and you’ll be sailing through towards your vision in no time!
Positivity
Life loves throwing us little unexpected surprises. Technology will fail. Clients will leave you. You will leave clients. Weather will impede events or training. You’ll get stuck in traffic at the worst possible time. When a challenge arises, acknowledge the bad, but seek out the good. Practice saying things like; 'yes, the system may have crashed, but I’m so happy the membership database remained intact.'
Live to Learn
As the famous saying goes 'sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn'. When a challenge arises, look for the opportunity to grow and evolve. Seek a solution rather than obsessing over the problem. Get curious about what this situation may be able to teach you.
Open Your Heart
When we practise acts of kindness and do things for others, it creates a feeling of wellbeing inside us. When we feel well, we feel secure, happy and healthy and thus more resilient.
Practise Gratitude
What are you grateful for when it comes to your personal and professional life? There are many ways you can remind yourself of what you are thankful for each day – a vision board, a journal, a daily email to a friend, a daily gratitude routine.
Physical and Emotional Health
This is so important to all of us, but particularly if you are spending time and energy bringing your vision into your reality. The last thing you want is to fall ill. Create a daily routine that includes a good night’s sleep, excellent nutrition, some exercise, and being still. When we are ‘doing nothing’ our brain takes the time to process data and file it away – in other words it cleans up! How fantastic! You can take time-out in a structured way such as meditation, but chilling in the back yard works just as well.
Humour
Laughing in the face of adversity is healing to your mind and your body. This can be a toughie at times, but if you can manage it, you’ll reap the benefits.
Flexibility and Adaptability
Unless you are very lucky or very savvy, when you start moving towards something new or different, you don’t know what you don’t know. Businesses change and fluctuate as they grow. Sportspeople suffer injuries they did not anticipate. Those on a quest for love find themselves in the position of dumper and dumpee. You realise the new incredible role you landed was actually the wrong move for you. Things will go awry. Be ready to roll with the changes. Remember to learn, grow and evolve too.
Optimism
The most successful people are those who are optimistic about the future. They keep going because they are certain it will all work out in the end. They understand setbacks are just temporary, and obstacles are learning opportunities.
Decisiveness
As human-evolvings, feeling ‘stuck' makes us feel very uncomfortable. We are designed to keep moving forward. Making clear and strong decisions helps us feel more confident and in control. If you realise the decision was the wrong one, learn from it and change course.
Knowing Your Values
We all have the most amazing internal compass inside us, and it is called your values. Sit down and work out what your top five values are today. What is most important to right now? Honour these values by living aligned with them and it will be a little harder for life’s circumstances to knock you off course.
Breathe!
You realise the report you’ve procrastinated over is due in an hour. If you don’t hand this in on time, your boss will not be happy and it may jeopardise your upcoming promotion. You put your head down and butt up and bang out some mediocre work. You feel disappointed in your efforts but send it to print and race to the machine. From one metre away, you can see the red light blinking. Someone has jammed the machine and walked away. You see red!
When small glitches happen in seemingly rapid succession, it has the power to bring the entire day down on top of us. We can yell or stamp our feet, or we can take two minutes to stop and breathe. Any yogi will tell you the power of breathing is wholly underestimated.
Move away from the situation (even five steps will help) and take some deep breathes in and out. You will be amazed by how much more resilient you will feel in just a few minutes.
Develop Your Communication Skills
It is highly likely that you will need to communicate with others in the pursuit of your vision. Your relationships with others can work with you or against you, affecting your resilience. Hone your written, verbal and non-verbal communication skills to a level where you can communicate your needs, while nurturing and honouring these relationships.
Call on Your Support System
Working towards a professional or personal goal can be the loneliest quest in the world. When things are tough, it’s easy to feel isolated and defeated. It is important you spend regular time with your cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are those people in your life who think you can do anything you set your mind to and are excited and willing to cheer you on. Nurturing and tending to quality relationships with loved ones helps lower our stress levels and makes us feel us more confident, optimistic and supported. When it comes to your professional goals, seek assistance and support from mentors, partners, coaches, advisors and peers. These people will help lift you to your higher potential and, if you choose carefully, will make it their mission that you succeed.
Mindful Media
Be mindful of what you are viewing, reading and listening to. When your resilience feels low, pick yourself up with a book, some music or a film about overcoming diversity.
Celebrate the Successes
As you step into your vision, you will experience some small or large successes along the way. Acknowledge and embrace them. Consider them an indication that you are moving in the right direction and that you can do this!
Determination
Never give up.
What can you do to build on your resilience TODAY?
Hi and thanks for reading! My name is Janelle Ryan and I am a Global Personal Coach, Speaker, Author, Presenter and Amateur Video Maker who helps high performers expand their minds to new ways of thinking...so they can create whatever they wish in their lives...then lead and inspire others.
If you would like to feel more resilient as you move into the pursuit of your vision, with me as your coach, limited places are currently available in the following:
THE SALON (Group Coaching Program). A welcoming, safe, nurturing space where you come together with like-minded souls and leave completely transformed. You exit the doors of the Salon feeling like a new, more empowered, more confident person. A person who has expanded and grown and feels inspired to create - again and again and again. You feel whole. CLICK HERE to learn more.
LEVEL-UP YOUR LEADERSHIP LOUNGE (Group Coaching Program). Come together with existing, new and emerging leaders to expand into a more inspiring, more confident, more effective leader - the leader you KNOW is craving to emerge from you. CLICK HERE to learn more.
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