Getting through the difficulties of life requires resilience - Daxa Patel

The fear of missing out is not a new phenomenon and whether we get sucked in by it is a matter of choice. However, certain things in life remain the same such as resilience in business and in our personal lives. Challenges, change and complexities are always going to be part of life but if we harness our resilience and emotional muscle, we can withstand the storm.

In a world of information overload, I want to encourage you to park the distractions if you can and just think why some people flourish when others fold under pressure. I am certain readers will have gone through difficulties in the past, what have made these past difficulties more challenging?

The human mind is great at avoidance. We avoid what is uncomfortable. Or we think we are the only ones in the world facing such a challenge or we do not know who to turn to for guidance. We might doubt ourselves or be ashamed to admit that perhaps we are stuck. All said and done, in a constant world of change when we doubt ourselves or feel stuck it pays to look back on the challenges we have overcome to remind ourselves of our built-in resilience.

I use this as my resilience blueprint having heard about in a talk by Dr Taryn Stejskal, a Resilience Expert. She advocates what to do in challenging situations and how to reframe challenges into resilience stories that add value to our life and business.

Why some people flourish in times of difficulty and some struggle has something to do with our mindset and sense of worth. There are five practices of highly resilient people according to Dr Stejskal that might help us all in creating a more positive outcome when we are amid a challenging storm.

Practice vulnerability, now this is hard especially, if we are used to keeping our mask on to hide ourselves. I remember when some friends suggested the blogs I had been writing after losing my father to make sense of my grief be put into a book to help others, I feared how the world would perceive me as I was showing my vulnerable self if someone read the book.

Writing blogs was easy because it was on the web and frankly there was no hard physical evidence like a book which one could hold in the hands. But a book meant publicity and promotion, and then people buying the book and leaving reviews on Amazon. This was daunting and terrifying, but I was forced to decide that it was okay to be vulnerable. The process allowed my thoughts and feelings and experience of feeling raw internally to match with my outside world. Often there is a mismatch.

Productive perseverance, this is especially relevant when we plough through the rough terrain even when we are scared and do it anyway, such as facing a health crisis, redundancy or loss of a relationship or we pivot. This is where we consciously do the best we can with what we have and try to get as close as we can to a positive outcome. Often, our hardest times when we look back were our deepest periods of growth. In my case, losing my dad, and walking through grief with the benefit of hindsight was the most painful part of my life, yet it forced me to find a new meaning.

Connecting with ourselves is harder these days when we use our mobile devices to distract us but listening to our inner voice and giving ourselves grace is something within our gift. Equally, connecting externally to friends, neighbours and networks that give us light can be a spark that lifts us out even if momentarily from a dark place. I recall a piece of advice I was given after I lost my father was to do long walks if I did nothing else, and I took that advice to heart. On these walks if someone smiled at me, I was forced to smile, the change of the facial muscles took the edge of the broken heart.

Practising gratitude, our shared resilience stories shine brighter when we find gratitude in challenges, as often they come to make us grow and we might find we can help others to learn vicariously through our resilience.

The fifth practice of highly resilient people is seeing the possibility of a given situation. If we are facing a health crisis, or loss of job and we can dare to imagine a new possibility we give ourselves that chance to bounce forward, as opposed to bounce back. I hope these five practices of highly resilient people remind you that you already have what it takes to get through the difficulties in life. Happy Easter.

Daxa Manhar Patel, resilience coach, author and solicitor.