Building Resilience - What 2020 was all about!

Resilience defined in the dictionary as ‘the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness’ or in other words ‘What 2020 was all about!’.

This year has been one of the strangest on record and throughout we have all had to show incredible resilience. From the youngest not getting to meet new grandparents, to the oldest having to shield in care homes or alone at home, the COVID pandemic has thrown everything at us and I’m sure it will keep doing so for some time to come. 

Recently, we got the team at iMultiply together for a session on building resilience delivered by the awesome team at ‘Sprout’. I personally found the session thought-proving and useful and have started to use some of the takeaways in my daily and weekly routine. In this blog, I’ll share some of those takeaways in the hope they will help others.

1. Find your tribe

Your ‘tribe’ is made up of 4 areas: Critical Friend; Downtime Support; Inspirational; Work. 

Identifying members of your tribe and where they fit into each category can help when times get tough. Finding a balance in these four areas will aid personal growth by offering support and challenge in equal measure.

2. Create Powerful Goals

I’ve always been a goal setter and the ability to break things down to the smallest component and focus on the things you can control is very powerful. It is also important to focus on ‘the order of events’ as we can easily get overwhelmed by important events or big decisions but by focussing on the order in which things happen (don’t think about B until A is sorted) this can help us move forward. 

3. E+R=O

This stands for Event + Response = Outcome. It is a really simple reminder that when something happens (the Event), focus on what you want the outcome to be and then formulate your response. All too often we are quick to react without thinking about the outcome and this can have a detrimental effect. Thinking about your desired outcome and then calmly formulating your response solves a lot of problems!

4. Take time to re-energise 

Our energy is made up of spiritual, mental, emotional and physical elements and we need all four elements in a good place to be feeling energetic and to be able to handle difficult situations. Working from home has definitely taken a toll on a lot of people this year, zapping energy as people struggle to switch off, blurring the lines between work and home and Netflix replacing the gym!

Taking time to look after yourself, mind and body, is essential. I’ve recently taken to ‘fake commuting’, a walk at either end of the working day so clear the mind, get some exercise and re-energise. I’d highly recommend it!

5. Engage your growth mindset

Things won’t always go the way we would like. We will always make mistakes. But engaging a growth mindset and using all our experiences to improve will help us in the future. Reflective questions that Sprout’s session through up to us included…

• What went well?
• This would have been ever better if?
• What is my Win/Lose/Change about this week?

Building resilience isn’t something you can complete or master. There are events we will all face that seem impossible to get past. But working through challenges, big or small, with a mindset that things will improve, that one day ‘this too will pass’, and focusing on our own ability to be resilient will always help.

Thanks to the team at Sprout for leading a great session and for providing me with some more tools to help build resilience.  

To hear about how Kris Flanagan has found his first year as iMultiply’s Managing Director watch our video here.