Succeed by Becoming More Resilient

Why do some people remain calm and collected in the face of looming deadlines, sensitive negotiations or impending layoffs? And why are these seemingly unflappable people the ones who consistently advance in their careers and personal lives? The authors of a new book, Resilience at Work: How to Succeed No Matter What Life Throws at You (AMACOM, 2005), believe that these people succeed because they are resilient.

What is resilience? According to the book's authors, Salvatore R. Maddi and Deborah M. Khoshaba, “Resilient people turn disruptive changes and conflicts from potential disasters into growth opportunities. They resolve conflicts, turn disruptive changes into new directions, learn from this process and become more successful and satisfied in the process.”

The good news for people who were not born with the resilience gene is that they can learn to cultivate a group of attitudes and skills to help them build on stressful events rather than becoming undermined by them.

Here are ten tips to help you turn stresses to your advantage, from Resilience at Work:

Resilient Attitudes

• Commitment: view your work as important and worthwhile enough to warrant your full attention, imagination and effort. Stay involved with what's going on, rather than backing off.
  
  
• Control: try to have a positive influence on outcomes. Determine which situations are open to change and gracefully accept those outside your control.
  
  
• Challenge: view change as instrumental in opening up new, fulfilling pathways for living. Be optimistic about the future. Face up to stressful changes and learn from them.

Transformational Coping

• When a stress occurs, don't deny, overreact, avoid or strike out.
  
  
• Put each stress in a broader perspective, so that it's more tolerable.
  
  
• Analyze each stress, so that you can see how best to solve it.
  
  
• Make a decisive action plan to turn each stress to advantage, and carry it out.

Social Support

• Don't act in a way that lets conflicts with those around you drag on, or makes them worse.
  
  
• Put each conflict in a broader perspective; analyze your role and that of the other person in it.
  
  
• Take unilateral actions to resolve each conflict by replacing it with a pattern of giving and receiving assistance and encouragement instead.

Adapted from Reslience at Work: How to Succeed No Matter What Life Throws at You, by Salvatore R. Maddi and Deborah M. Khoshaba (AMACOM Books).

Click here to read a sample chapter from Resilience at Work.

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