BLT: Resilience – How do you keep picking yourself up when life keeps knocking you down?

Resilience. What is it? Have we all got it? Can we improve it? 

Failure is not falling over – it’s not getting up again.

Resilience – noun

1. the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
2. the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

In a work capacity, resilience was defined by those in the BLT group as the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and to keep going in the face of adversity.

The resilience of the self-employed 

The rapid growth of self-employment has been a pronounced feature of the UK labour market in recent years. The number of self-employed increased from 3.3 million people (12.0% of the labour force) in 2001 to 4.8 million (15.1% of the labour force) in 2017.

Source: Office for National Statistics

Following the 2008/09 recession, there was a significant spike in the number of self-employed as many people were laid off and ‘forced to find a way to survive’. This factor, plus the growth in the ‘gig economy’ has fuelled the steady increase in self-employment, with the vast majority of self-employed working on their own; i.e. not employing anybody else.

Combine this fact with the observation that the average self-employed income was around £240 a week compared to around £400 a week for those in employment, and it is no wonder that being self-employed requires higher levels of resilience; i.e. the ability to cope with lower earnings, greater uncertainty, and more stress.

This might be fine if you are a natural entrepreneur or risk-taker, but what if you’re not…how do you cope?

Develop an ‘Olympic mindset’

Researchers discovered that many Olympic gold medallists believed that resilience played a key role in their success [source: Daily Telegraph]

I’ve paraphrased the 4 main reasons below:

1. View decisions as active choices, not sacrifices

The brain craves control over any given situation. If you view your decisions as sacrifices, you will always be focusing on what you have given up. However, if you view them as active choices, you will focus on what you need to do and what you stand to gain by doing it.

See setbacks as opportunities for growth.

2. Develop a positive personality

Failure and disappointments are inevitable. The challenge is not in never failing, but in learning how to fail better.

Ask yourself:

• What you could do differently next time?
• What have you have learned from this setback?
• What do others think (and do not get defensive when receiving their feedback)?

3. Use the support available to you

“No man is an island, entire of itself” – John Donne

The more we isolate ourselves, the more we brood over bad decisions.

Asking for help is the hallmark of a resilient performer; it has been found to act as a stress buffer and to improve coping, as well as improving mood.

4. Identify your motivation

Ask yourself what is your motivation for succeeding – this will help to boost your motivation and determination when you encounter a setback.

Olympic champions mentioned factors such as making their family proud, achieving something that nobody had ever accomplished before, or succeeding in their quest to be world number one.

Resilience coping techniques from around the BLT table

The first (and over-arching) piece of advice was to know yourself – what energises you and gets you going?

The reason for this is that we are all different, so what works for an introverted personality will probably not work for an extroverted one.

• Minimise the cons: don’t ‘catastrophise’ (I love that word!) setbacks – look to  change your mindset [see point 2 above]

• Write down or verbalise your experience: again what works for one person might not work for another.

I personally find that taking a piece of paper, and drawing a line down the middle with POSITIVES on the left and NEGATIVES on the right, helps me to set any setbacks in context. I can then rationalise the negatives and focus on the positives going forwards. However, others around the table used a similar process, but preferred to verbalise this. 

• Lean upon your experience: this is where delicate balance between   perseverance v flexibility needs to be struck.

Sometimes you do need to push on in the face of adversity (think of Churchill’s mindset: “If you are going through hell, keep on going”) but other times, you need to know when to call it a day…your gut or your experience is often your best guide. 

• Don’t take everything too personally: easier said than done when your business is often an extension of yourself; e.g. if you happen suffer bad debts as a result of a company going into administration then it can feel like a personal attack rather than a hard-nosed business act.

• Think how success will make you feel: again, focus on the positives; e.g. there are a million different reasons not to cold call for business if you’re at a low point, but this is where self-motivation is so important – you need to take that important first step in order to allow some good fortune into your life.

It’ll be alright in the end…and if it’s not alright, then it’s not the end