Build Resilience In A Crisis With The Right Mindset
In the last few weeks, we have invited you to tell us how we can help you through this time - performance and career advice, remote working, or even just someone to listen to. This invitation still stands. Just contact us on how we can help.
As many companies and individuals will be doing, we are looking at ways to collaborate and adapt to the needs of our clients in this ever-challenging time.
As you probably know, we do a great deal of work with executives in the field of resilience - maintaining performance in challenging times and bouncing back from setbacks. This would seem a relevant time to share some insight from our model - see below.
The mindset dimension of our model deals with how you might mentally prepare and engage with dealing with difficult conditions.
Preoccupied with threats.
Human brains are predisposed to look for threats, so it is only natural that this is what is preoccupying our thoughts at the present time. Unfortunately, if we do too much of this, we can drop into catastrophising (thinking the world will end or seeing the negative in everything).
Get a sense of perspective.
When working with people who have a tendency to do this, we try and get them to see a sense of perspective. For instance, we might ask them how bad life really is? Or how bad are things for them compared to others (e.g. people in Italy at the moment or Syrian refugees or people with high-risk relatives who actually have caught the virus?).
Find the positives.
We also help people to see the positives of the situation they find themselves in. For example, from September to December last year, I was on the plane every week and hardly saw my wife, kids and dog - I had no social life and was jet-lagged most of the time. In the current situation, I will be able to spend months with my wife, kids, and dog (with little interruption!), catch up with friends (we have a Zoom and wine night scheduled for this week already!), catch up on my sleep and get really fit. It is not all bad!
Reflect and reset.
Hopefully this gives you ideas on how, by pausing to reflect, recognising your mental 'dialogue' and by resetting or balancing the tape that is playing in your head, you can find a way to survive and, perhaps even thrive, in the current maelstrom we find ourselves in.
We have had such a wonderful journey with our clients, colleagues, partners, and friends over the past seven years, that we wanted to reach out and extend the hand of friendship, mutual support, and community to you all and to let you know we are here to support you in whatever ways we can.
If you’d like support for your organisation or executive leader to help them increase their resilience and mental toughness during this unprecedented and difficult time, contact us.
