Can one learn to be resilient?

Continuing to celebrate the arrival of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere and a couple of business birthdays, this week’s blog post is by my good friend, Ms. Kishwar Rahman. Kishwar is an entrepreneur and consultant specialising in government digital policy, procurement and governance. I am delighted she agreed to write for Humanosity in the last guest post for the month.

Kishwar writes a personal account of her resilience-building journey and shares thoughts and tools that have helped her in the hope that they might be helpful to other entrepreneurs and leaders. I hope you will enjoy her insights as much as I did.

As always, if you invest in yourself, the rewards will be unfathomable.

Until next time.

Hala

Guest Blog Author: Kishwar Rahman

A few years ago, I found myself dealing with the dual combination of a non-amicable ending of a long-term relationship and concurrently having to find a new job after deciding the new boss was not my cup of tea. The following 16 months required me to dig very deep into my resilience toolbox.    With the benefit of hindsight, I want to revisit my toolbox and find out whether one can learn to be resilient. 

So, what is resilience? Is it an innate skill, or can we learn to be resilient? A Google search will provide you with a multitude of definitions from both professional and pop psychologists. However, there are two features common to all the definitions: 

1. There must be adversity (which can cause sadness, trauma, grief, etc.); and
2. There must be successful adaption to the new circumstances.

Ongoing research on resilience suggests that genes, an optimistic personality, strong relationships and networks, meditation, physical activity, gender and age are some of the things that impact resilience.

So, having come out the other side, here are my reflections on resilience and how I applied it to deal with a wobbly period in my professional and personal life.

Mindful meditation

During this wobbly period, I found the mornings the toughest parts of the day. I would wake up and then remember all the things causing me severe grief and discomfort.   I had practised meditation for a long time. However, during this period, I started to meditate every morning to soothe, comfort and centre myself. Sometimes, I meditated as much as four times a day, ½ an hour at a time which was facilitated by the fact that we were working from home due to the COVID lockdown. I also took myself to two meditation retreats during this period. 

Research has shown that mindfulness-based practices such as meditation can lead to greater levels of resilience. Mindfulness means being fully present in the moment. Meditation is not an innate skill, but it can be learned. There are now many free apps available online to help develop a meditation practice. Even starting to meditate for 5 minutes a day can help develop mindfulness skills.

Sleep and exercise

Exercise has always been one of the tools in my toolbox for managing stress. I went for a run at least five out of the seven days a week during this period.    This got me outdoors and into nature. It also helped me get fresh air, vitamin D and sunlight, especially during the cold winter months. Running, in turn, helped me sleep better. So, rather weirdly, I was also the fittest and looked svelte during my wobbly period, which in turn had a positive impact on my self-esteem. Research has shown that stretching our physical muscles increases our ability to cope with stress and makes us more resilient. While running might not be to everyone’s taste, an active walk around the block is within everyone’s reach.

Professional help

I did not want to burden my friends with all the messy emotions around my wobbles and also recognised I might need to reassess whether my toolkit had all the tools I needed to get through this period.  

So firstly, I got myself a counsellor. The first psychologist I saw was good for stop-gap emergency counselling. My GP had recommended her. However, it was the second psychologist that I did the deep work and healing with over the course of the following 16 months.   Finding someone who I trusted, who was empowering and had the right skills, and who understood what I was going through was key to the success of this relationship.

As strange as it sounds, it was during this period that I also decided to set up my own business.   I had heard about business coaches, so I started asking around my professional networks. I found one located in another city, which worked out fine due to travel restrictions imposed by COVID. Consequently, between meditating and running, I worked with my business coach to develop my business plan and set goals and targets that aligned my work with my values. I am now the owner of a small business that is doing well.

The internet has made it very easy to look for and identify professional help.   Making sure they are fit for your situation is also important to the success of this relationship. And use your personal networks for recommendations.

Journaling

Over two decades ago, I read a book that described journaling as a way of “brain dumping” and thereby emptying the brain of repeated thoughts.   Ever since then, when I find myself stuck on the same thought, I journal. At some point, the brain gets bored with writing about the same topic and switches over to a new thought (for me, it takes a maximum of three days).   Therefore, after meditating every morning, I journaled for ½ an hour. 

During this wobbly period, I also started keeping a separate gratitude journal. Every day, I noted three things I was grateful for and recorded the role I had played in achieving the source of my gratitude. 

Research has also demonstrated that writing can be an important tool in building resilience as it provides another platform for reflecting on thoughts and ideas and helps provide different perspectives and move forward. Gratitude journaling reminds one of all the good things in one’s life.

Network of supporters

I was conscious of ensuring that the people I surrounded myself with needed to be 100% on my side, especially during my most vulnerable period. It was not a time for feedback except if I was really stuck and needed a small nudge.

I set up coffee dates with old bosses and colleagues from past professional roles with whom I had gone on to forge friendships outside the workplace. They were also people with whom I shared similar values and mutual respect.    

On a personal front, I will be eternally grateful to my friends for their generous support. Their support manifested in lending me a listening ear, going for walks and buying me small gifts such as essential oils. Reaching out and asking for help was a new skill I learned during this period.

Research shows that resilience is not purely an individual characteristic but is also heavily enabled by strong, authentic relationships and networks and actual qualitative interactions with other people. These relationships manifest in conversations that validate one’s views, reframe perspectives on a situation, and ideally provide encouragement to go back out there, as that is how we become resilient.   Connection with people from all walks of life, sports, volunteer work, religion and clubs have also been shown to help by providing critical “dimensionality” and perspectives on how one looks at a situation. 

Self-care vs. Self-compassion

I booked myself in for massages as often as I could during this period, but COVID did not help. Having long soaking baths or spending time at the gym sauna were some of my other physical self-care tools. 

Looking back, one area I could have done more of was learning to be more self-compassionate. Sometimes, we are the harshest judges of ourselves.   Research has also shown that building self-compassion increases resilience and well-being because it shifts us from self-admonition, feeling ashamed and being scared, to a more positive mindset, which in turn helps us move forward and adapt to new circumstances. Having said all that, good luck remembering that in the middle of a super wobbly crisis. So now I practice self-compassion in microdoses should I need it in the future.

How long will it take to reach the adaptation stage?

Sadly, when you are in the midst of a big life wobble, there is no magic time frame for healing and recovery and coming out at the other end. And life does not stop either.   Nor is there any guidance for whether one form of activity or a particular quantity of that activity is better than another for developing one’s resilience muscles. Research does suggest individual variations in strengths and preferences will also impact decisions about which tools are the best fit for one in an adverse situation.   So, if writing is your thing, journal away. Meditating and running were tools I fell back on regularly. 

In summary, regardless of genes, age, gender and my own experience, the research indicates that one can learn and practice to be more resilient. Some key things to keep in mind in order to develop resilience are:

1. Know your strengths;
2. Find out about the diversity of mindfulness practices and try a few to see what works best for you;
3. Review and continue to build and maintain your networks across different cross-sections of your life;
4. If you don’t know already, explore what works best for you to manage your stress levels and  
5. Discover and practice using some new tools in micro doses to determine their suitability for your resilience toolbox, as you never know when they might come in handy.