Myth 6: Resilience is enhanced by rigorously thinking about your problems and difficulties.

It is commonly believed that in order to solve a problem or deal with an unhappy situation, we need to thoroughly understand all aspects of it. The better we understand it the better we are able to deal with it.

Whilst this is certainly generally true in most situations, a specific myth about resilience has developed from it. The myth and misunderstanding is the belief and practice that frequent rehashing and rethinking about the circumstances and events of things that made you unhappy and lacking in resilience, will enable you to become happy and resilient. The problem is that very often this kind of thinking simply leads to reliving the problem in your mind, and bringing up the emotions associated with the problem, which results in experiencing the negative emotions and helplessness all over again.

This type of thinking pattern is called rumination. Rumination is the constant reliving of unhappy events and conversations and feeling the associated negative emotions. In rumination, one dwells on the problem and feelings rather than the solution. This approach can actually lead to increasing negative emotions and leads to downward spiralling of the thoughts and emotions.

Resilient people are able to quickly break out of negative spirals of thinking. This can be achieved by reframing the negative experience and then going on to what can be done to cope and deal with the adversity.

This is the last of the six myths of resilience. I hoped that you enjoyed reading about them!
 

Posted in Blog, Blogroll, Building Resilience, Resilience at work, Training resilience, resilience training | No Comments »

 Myth 5: Understanding your character weaknesses is key to being resilient.

The central idea of this myth is that if you can understand what’s wrong with yourself, you can then work on those defects and make them strengths in order to become “balanced” and an "all-rounder".

This myth has its origins at school and extends to business and almost all walks of life. The idea is that everyone, and in particular leaders in business, must be "well balanced". The problem is that very few people start off life as an all-rounder in terms of skills and personality strengths.

Therefore to be an all rounder with balanced strengths and a balanced leadership style, deficit areas or weaknesses need to be developed to the level of our strengths.

This belief is deeply flawed. Firstly, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop all one’s skills and character strengths to an equally high level. Secondly, when confronting and dealing with adversity, dramatic change and generally tough times, it’s a lot easier to use your natural character strengths to cope than it is trying to use your weaknesses.

In addition, in order to fulfil your life purpose, you must have been provided with the wherewithal in order to do so. The provisioning for this journey is in the form of your particular character strengths — not your weaknesses.

When we use our strengths we feel effortless, our work is easy and enjoyable, and time seems to stand still while we have fun. When we rely on using our weaknesses on the other hand, it’s difficult. Work is experienced as heavy and we are left feeling tired and depleted.

Resilient people cope with the adversity by using their natural character strengths. This enables them to cope quicker and better than less resilient people. This enables them to recover, heal and move on with their lives, focusing on growth and self-fulfilment.

Posted in Blog, Blogroll, Building Resilience, Resilience at work, resilience training | No Comments »

 Myth 4: Resilient people stay resilient over the normal passage of time.

Some people think that if you are resilient you should be able to remain resilient over long periods of time.

This is not the case however. Even resilient people experience down periods in their lives – they experience hardships, difficulties, betrayals and bereavements just like anyone else. At difficult times like these, their resilience slips and they too experience negative feelings of fear, disappointment, frustration and anger as everyone else.

Resilience is not a magic potion that makes you immune to the problems of life. What sets resilient people apart and makes them resilient, is the way they react to and cope with challenge and adversity. They will tell you that bad times don’t last forever. Resilient people will say that one needs to persevere through the tough times, not give up hope that things will get better. They intuitively know and believe with great conviction that there are ups as well as downs in life and that the downs don’t last forever.

Resilient people experience the same bad things and tough times as people who are less resilient. The difference is the way resilient people cope with the tough times enables them to experience less negative effects and to recover quicker.

Posted in Blog, Blogroll, Building Resilience, Principles of resilience, Resilience at work, Training resilience, resilience training | No Comments »

Myth 3: Resilient people are normally more pessimistic as they have a far better grasp of reality than optimists.

Some people say that to be resilient you should be pessimistic. In that way you won’t be disappointed by what happens in your life.

The truth is that resilient people are more optimistic than pessimistic. They explain tough times and failures to themselves as things that happen to everyone and not just to them. In addition, they are better able to compartmentalise their experience of the adversity so that the bad things that happen to them have a limited effect and don’t negatively taint all of their life.

Having false optimism or being over-optimistic is of course dangerous and sets you up to be disappointed. Resilient people are realistically optimistic. Either influenced somewhat by luck of genes at birth or more probably by their own choice, they find hope and look for positive aspects in key situations they face. An important aspect of their optimism is that they have their feet on the ground and their positive outlook is grounded in reality — it’s not” pie in the sky” type of optimism that sets them up for later disappointment.

Now if you are by nature more pessimistic than optimistic, you may feel disheartened. The good news is optimism can be developed, and you can train yourself to be more optimistic than you are at the moment.

Posted in Blog, Blogroll, Building Resilience, Resilience at work, resilience training | No Comments »