Being resilient and building mental toughness is really important in all areas in our lives and especially when we relate it to work things such as job hunting, career development and/or starting your own business.
In today’s blog I’m going to share with you how you can arm yourself with the right tools and mindset to handle setbacks and challenges to keep motivated and carry on!
It’s really important for personal development to be able to adapt, flex and to see opportunities even when you’re faced with a setback. ‘As one door closes, a new one open’s’ is a great quote to use here for motivation.
Don’t worry, I won’t be asking you to reinvent the wheel when it comes to mindset work, in fact the opposite: carry on doing what you’re doing, just do a few tweaks!
When it comes to mindset shifts, well, with any shift it all begins with remaining calm. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? However, the chances are like me, you’ll recognise a shift is needed when you’re in the middle of or following a challenging situation.
Now, let’s be real here, calmness may be the last thing on your mind, especially if you’ve been rejected for a dream job or promotion when emotions are likely to be high or you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Achieving a calm state will require you to detach from the emotions, nothing good ever comes from making emotional decisions! If you find yourself in an emotional state, ask ‘What am I in control of?’, there is no point losing sleep, wasting energy, or creating negative energy for those around you if you can’t do anything about it.
I’ve REALLY tried to take this on board lately and it is starting to work – so we went to some Greek islands for a break recently and on the way back, the ferry had been cancelled from our island to get to Skiathos, where the airport was and we were flying later that day. I could have panicked and got really stressed (pretty much like my partner did), but I thought to myself – can I control this? – Answer: no. Will I get home? Answer: yes – it may be a pain etc etc but we’ll get back, even if it’s later than expected so there’s no point stressing. And we did. It was a bit of a journey, we ended up getting a ferry to a different island, then a taxi came to take us to the other side of the island, then we got a water taxi to Skiathos – but we got there… and just in time for our flight! I surprised myself with just how calm I was!
Top Tip: Stop and take stock of what you can control or change about the situation you’re in and focus your energy there!
Thinking back to when I was completing my NLP training, my biggest learning was around focusing on your end goal. For example, you want to be in your dream job in 12 months’ time. I find this a really useful way to approach goals you want to aim for. Think about what you need to do to get there and then work back from there, breaking the goal into smaller chunks. By focusing on smaller chunks at a time you’ll see more movement towards the goal.
Let’s look at that practically. To be in your dream job, ask for feedback from interviews, peers, look at education, skills, knowledge gaps and work your goals from there. Start with feedback and you can develop on improvement areas suggested.
Prepare, prepare, prepare – Being proactive and using positive energy will move the needle so much more – “I will be working in my dream job in 12 months’ time, taking one goal at a time” is far more productive than “I didn’t get the job, that’s it, I give up”.
Top Tip: There will always be opportunity to grow, you just have to look for them
Building resilience is also about how you respond to things that happen. If you’re fresh from a challenge give yourself time to step back and assess the situation before responding. This helps you to take the emotion out and allows you to respond in a pragmatic way.
If something doesn’t go your way (and let’s be honest, we’ve all been there – no one achieves success all the time and actually, we grow the most through our failures most often), pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. That’s what build resilience, and some say character, it’s about how many times you can fail and then get back up and try again.
Trying things like meditation can really help with being calm and there are lots of fantastic apps and online videos you can use to get started. Controlling your breathing and remaining calm in the moment really help to centre your mind and thoughts leaving your head clear to start removing emotional responses.
Other things to consider are writing things down, reading personal development books, follow inspirational or professional people in the areas you’re looking to improve. Taking positive action and steps to improve our mental wellbeing will really help you shift the needle when it comes to personal development and achieving goals.
With over 20 years of working with people, I’ve seen the challenges people face – heck, I’ve worked through many of them myself!
Having a good coach or mentor is also such a useful thing to have. It enables you to see things you can’t always see yourself – sometimes you’re just too close to it all. Having a coach allows you to hold a mirror up to yourself and see (in a safe and encouraging way), what you can do to heal, progress, achieve – whatever that means to you. It’s also great to have someone to bounce things off, to vent to and to listen to you from a non-judgemental place.
If a coach or mentor sounds appealing, why not drop me a message for a chat?