I’ve just recently delivered a workshop for a major UK bank on the subject of resilience. I thought I’d share some of it with you.
Resilience is basically the capacity to bounce back – so you can withstand the tough stuff life throws at you, and get back up on your feet in a psychologically healthy manner.
We’re more resilient that we think we are. We may fear challenges, but actually, we’re pretty good at them. In corporate life, our experience is that, generally speaking, we’re not damaged by tough stuff. It may be really tough when you’re in the middle of it, but you do come out of it without long-term damage.
The great thing is, you can learn resilience. There are things you can do to build your resilience muscle, to help you be better at meeting pressures and challenges.
I’d like to offer you a model to help you do a “health check” of your life. Not just your personal life, but your whole life. It’s called “The Wheel of Life”.
Each segment of the wheel has a title to it. If those titles are meaningful to you, by all means, use them. If they’re not, do your own. And what it represents is not the amount of time you spend, it’s how nourished you are by this segment.
If this were my Wheel of Life, it would suggest that I’m loving my work, and my volunteering in community work. I might just be doing two hours a week, but that’s enough. That’s making me feel good about it. So it’s not the amount of time, it’s how nourished I am by it.
What is important here is that it gives you a visual picture of where things may be, potentially, changeable. So in the example, Learning is low. I might be going to loads of courses, but maybe I’m learning nothing. Perhaps I need to do more challenging courses, or try learning some brand new skills.
This is a really powerful exercise. Click on this link to download a blank PDF of this Wheel of Life, and try it yourself. Maybe you can stick it on a wall somewhere.
Simply doing this exercise and expressing the lack of balance in your life in this physical form is a great way to encourage you to make some changes to redress the balance. Chip away one segment at a time to make it more achievable. Some segments you’ll just have to accept that things aren’t what you want them to be, but they are as good as they’re going to be for now. They might need a longer term strategy.
To get you going, go for a quick win. Choose something very small and simple. For example my colleague did this exercise and admitted he was unhappy with his social life. One trip to the cinema per month – sneaking off work early on a Friday afternoon with some friends – was enough to make him feel like he had a renewed social life.
Those small things will add up, you will be seizing back control of your life, and in turn you’ll be building your resilience!
David Solomon
Managing Director, Sun and Moon Training
@SunMoonDavid