Don’t “harden up”

Success is great, because of how it feels and how it enables you to pursue more of the same. But almost every market, business, team and individual goes through a rough patch. Missed expectations, low results and pressure to perform can land you in a rut. Most of the time, a downturn is temporary, and how you deal with the tough times determines how quickly you bounce back when your surroundings change for the better.

Learning to take the knocks, endure the tough times and then bounce back again is one form of resilience, which had become a bit of a buzz word for good reasons.

You probably notice people around you who seem to take the knocks better than others. The old advice of “harden up” or “tough it out” are sometimes offered as advice for tough times. But maybe there’s a better way.

Resilience is not the same as hardening up. Hardening up implies you’re not going to let it change you, and you’re going to keep doing the same thing inspire of the changes around you. Resilience on the other hand, is a deliberate choice you make to recognise the change happening, the choices you have to respond. Some tips I’ve picked up on resilience include:

• Start with being well – taking active steps to protect & increase your own wellbeing
• Awareness of what you are in control of (and what you can’t control) – lamenting the things you can’t control is wasted energy and potentially damaging. It also takes away from your capacity to respond to the things you can control.
• Recognise short versus long term – are your current circumstances permanent or is there potential to bounce back? Being aware of passing storms and look forward to the sunshine that should follow.
• Make conscious choices about how you respond to circumstances. This doesn’t mean being full of BS and pretending it’s all good when it’s not. You might not be able to control the situation, but you can control your response to it.
• Know where to find support, and use it. This might mean reaching out to people, or seeking information. We have never had more resources closer at hand than we do today. Think about Google, Kindle books, Audible and Blinkist.

What if you were a ball that was to be dropped from a height. Would you rather harden up like glass or pottery and hope you don’t break, or would it be better to act like a rubber bouncing ball? The rubber ball does get distorted upon impact, but it’s resilience means it bounces back, fast and high.