Resilience. Do you have it?
Maybe you don’t even know what resilience is. Even though it’s been a hot topic recently, not everyone talks about resilience and people may have different definitions.
Here’s the definition I found online:
Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness; the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.
What’s this got to do with anything? You need resilience, a way to bounce back when things don’t go the way you want or life “happens.”
Describe Your Best Self
In the high-performance work I do with my clients, we discuss triggers and how to use language to step into your best self or the person you want to become. I ask my clients to choose words to describe their best self. These words describe how they would like to be known or described. Additionally, they choose words to describe how they want to be when in relationship with others and adjectives that would describe what makes them successful.
Several times per day, they remind themselves of these words and ask themselves if they are living into them. They become the person they know they can and want to be by embodying the descriptors. They choose to “be” the person the words describe.
Trigger Yourself to Snap Back
Those same words can be used to develop resilience. I remind my clients: When you find yourself in a stressful situation, having a difficult conversation, or looking for a way to achieve a goal, ask yourself, “Am I being…,” and fill in the blank with the words you chose to describe yourself.
For example, let’s say your “success” words were daring, passionate, and visionary. You find yourself needing to lead your team through a tough project. Or you want to launch a book successfully. You can ask yourself as you take on related tasks, “Am I being daring, passionate, and visionary?” If not, you can redirect your energy and focus toward demonstrating those qualities that you know make you more successful.
Your words remind you who you need to be in any given situation or at any specific time. And you can then “become” those words.
Stephen Curry Demonstrates Resilience
Not long ago, Kaiser Permanente ran an ad that featured Stephen Curry, point guard of the Golden State Warriors and two-time NBA Most Valuable Player. The video showed how Curry handles the stress of driving toward another championship—and it included his recitation of three words. He used them in the same manner I’ve described here—to be resilient and step into his best self.
I suggest you watch the short video ad. It’s a powerful example of how to use words to trigger behavior and mindset…and resilience.
Step Into Your Best Self
Resilience is about continually stepping into your best self—no matter what life throws your way. It means remembering who you want to be and who you can be…even when people judge you, you fail, or chaos erupts in your life.
Today, choose three words that describe your most successful self–even if you are not yet successful or as successful as you’d like to be. Also, choose three words that describe your best self—the person you aspire to become. Use those words to help you develop resilience and as reminders to embody those words every day.
How do you develop resilience? Tell me in a comment below.
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Photo courtesy of Free-P Supawat Kaydeesud/123RF.com
