This isn’t the only path to personal resilience, but these five practices provide a common-sense approach that is easy to understand and realistic to apply.

Link to presentation at prezi.com and the handout (one page word doc) that goes with the presentation.

Know Yourself

Get clear about your strengths, develop your emotional intelligence, live your values and confront your self-limiting beliefs.

• Know your Strengths
• Understand your Emotional intelligence
• The Gremlin-Taming® Institute

Set Clear Goals

We need really clear goals. This isn’t news: “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind”. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4BC – 65AD). We need short term goals so that we can measure progress and we need long term goals so that we know which direction to head in.

What’s your long-term BHAG? What are your short-term SMART goals? And what’s on your stop doing list, to make space for the good stuff?

• Big Hairy Audacious Goal
• SMART goals
• The Stop-Doing List

Lighten Up

Most of the truly successful people I have met seem to be having fun. They have a sense of humour, they don’t take themselves very seriously and they laugh a lot. It’s often difficult for us to find humour in the world around us, but we need to find it, and share it with others whenever we can.

Give yourself a break. Take time to connect with friends and family. Find ways to have fun at work. How can you maintain a positive attitude?

• Fun Works

Persevere

Viktor Frankl makes it sound so easy – “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

We need to stick at it. We need to work on these practices continually, until they become a habit. Changing habits takes time and there is no instant fix. This is a lifelong exploration. We need to deliberately and consistently put effort into building resilience. This means scheduling time for ourselves to do the reflective work we need to do.

Embrace Paradox and Uncertainty

Uncertainty is one of the biggest stressors for some people. The clever folks who study complexity say increases as the pace of change increases and the level of interconnectivity increases. Our work and our society are destined to become ever more complex and unpredictable.

• Polarity Management
• Cynefin
• Relax It’s Only Uncertainty

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Today’s blog is based on the 4 of diamonds, a communications teamwork tip from our Teamwork Explorer.