The Momentum Club

Resilience, Noun – the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.

The term resilience can be interpreted in many different ways but ultimately it is the ability to bounce back from tough situations. We all go through tough times, sadly it is a fact of life, this is where we need to dig deep and get through the other side.

Resilience doesn’t necessarily come naturally but it is a skill that can be built up over time. There are many ways that we can build resilience:

• Develop a solid network – By having a good group people around you, they will be able to listen to you and try to understand what’s going on and will be able support you in ways that others may not.
• Embrace fear and change – When I was going through a really rough time of it, I had to face my fears in life head on. As mentioned above, life is going to throw all sorts of curveballs at you and to become a resilient person you require to hit all these curveballs for a home run this means having to embrace change and face your fears head on.
• Find purpose – This may sound like a really big thing but once you break it down it can be easier to find than you think. A real issue I have faced is not knowing what my direction in life is (as a lot of people do). Now I’m not saying you need map out your life to find your purpose but focus on an important aspect of your life, for example your work and a hobby you like and really focus on where you see yourself in 5 years. This all comes back to goal setting (see my blog on goal setting to find out more), that 5 year goal is your purpose so every time you are struggling or down think about the position you want to be in. I really rely on visualisation to accomplish this. As a football referee as you can imagine there has been tough times but whenever I have bad game and say “I can’t do this anymore”, I visualise me officiating in the premiership which is my ultimate goal.

Resilience Planning

So we now know some of tips to build resilience (by no means an exhaustive list) but now we are going to focus on how to plan for tough times.

Since we know that a problem or set of problems will arise, we are able to plan what we can do combat these by using a technique called resilience plan which I have previous learned and used myself. The aim of planning is to help mitigate the impact that rough patches you have in your life by pushing you to focus on things that will help relieve stress. This could be really basic things such as reducing screen time, spending time with family etc.

To do this, block out 15/30 minutes to allow you to really focus on coming up with 3 to 4 activities that you really enjoy and would really help when your feeling down. Write these down on a piece of paper and either keep in a safe place or on you so it can be easily accessed if you know your feeling down and want to remind yourself of the plan.

This forward planning will hopefully allow you to be a more resilient person overall and keep you positive and motivated more often than not.

I’m always looking for more ideas of blog’s you want to see. If you have any ideas let me know via my the comments below or via social media or email.