The 4 Ways to Create a More Resilient Mindset
Are you a leader feeling stretched out like a tired rubber band? When you feel like this, it can be difficult to bring back your energy and focus.
Resiliency is the force that helps to bring us back after we’ve been stretched.
As leaders, we often take on a lot of stress during critical moments of challenge and crisis. If we do this too often without managing that stress, we can feel like we are losing our ability to snap back.
Like a rubber band, we can snap back and we have the ability to use times of challenge and stress as opportunities to develop resiliency.
To develop resilient leadership, we need to learn how to shift our mindset during and after stressful moments. To do this, you must notice what types of thought patterns contribute to stress, and how you can shift your thoughts to contribute to more positive outcomes.
Leaders are often faced with high-stress, critical, or challenging moments and if they don’t have a resilient mindset, it can be hard to lead a team and move forward during or after stressful situations.
A resilient mindset can help us manage what we can do during a crisis, let go of things we can’t control, and help us recover and return to a healthy baseline faster.
I’m going to tell you five mindset shifts that will allow you to be more resilient and a stronger leader.
Cultivating Mindful Communication with Yourself and Your Team
As resilient leaders, communication is our primary tool to interact with our team.
Our teams need to believe that they are capable of working through this crisis and finding solutions on their own and we can help them, and ourselves, believe that, by cultivating mindful communication.
Whenever we are leading through challenges, we can set the tone with our communication. Not only can we speak about the problems that need to be addressed, but we can also create an empowering atmosphere that helps to inspire our team.
Mindful communication also refers to how we talk to ourselves. Notice your thoughts and intentionally talk to yourself in a way that is empowering and encouraging. This will help reduce the stress and strain that oppose our resilience.
Make Positivity a Priority in Leadership
As resilient leadership in times of crisis, it can feel like we are just putting out one fire after the other. If we are constantly focused on what is going wrong, we can quickly take on negative thought patterns.
Tony Robbins offers: “Leaders produce certainty within themselves,” and I couldn’t agree more.
Under stress, we can think that we are surrounded by only problems.
If we can shift our mindset to see that in our challenges, we are also receiving opportunities, then we are able to magnifying positivity, As leaders, we need to be able to find the silver linings, especially when problems create opportunities to shift the status quo and apply innovative and creative solutions.
Finding the upside doesn’t mean we ignore issues, it means we see them and focus on what potential benefits they present.
Expand your Perspective to Reach Your Goals
As leaders, our attention is often getting pulled all over the place.
It can be very easy to lose ourselves in a list of to-do’s and lose sight of the bigger picture. When we get bogged down in the details we can start to feel like our focus is strained and scattered, which contributes to chronic stress and fatigue.
We have to find ways to recenter, to get a bird’s eye view, and return to a sense of perspective so that we and our team can navigate challenges and reach our goals.
We all have different ways that we recenter ourselves. it’s important to know what works for you.
For me, a good long-distance run is a great way to shake off the stress, get the blood and energy flowing. After a good run, I find I can often come back feeling fresh and ready to readdress the issues with more focus and clarity.’
Recenter, Realign, and Recharge
Stress can actually be a good thing. It’s also inevitable if we are pursuing our passion and stepping up into the responsibilities of leadership.
What is not a good thing, is chronic stress left unaddressed over longer periods of time. The best way to combat stress is to create a distinct balance between work life and personal life.
We do this by creating clear boundaries. We need to know when we can turn off the phone, leave the emails for the morning, or take time to do what we love. We need to know that proper care for our mental and emotional wellbeing must come first.
Schedule time for yourself and treat that time with the same importance you would your work appointments.
Taking time to care for ourselves allows us to relieve built-up stress, tend to our nervous system, and relax our mind and body so that when we do come back to our work tasks, we come back rested, reset, and ready to focus with clarity and vitality.
Regenerate with Resiliency
As leaders, resilience is essential to take on the challenges presented to us without getting worn down and burnt out. Our mindset is our most important tool in addressing stress and developing our natural ability to recover.
Resilient leadership in business is about remembering the principle of resilience and practicing it.
The Institute for Management Development says, “Resilience is the human capacity to meet adversity, setbacks, and trauma, and then recover from them in order to live life fully.”
Times of crisis are the most important times for this practice because it will rewire our mind to come out of negative thought spirals and focus on what needs to be done and how it can be achieved.
The next time you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, notice if your thoughts are spiraling into negativity. Take that as a cue to practice the 4 M’s of resiliency. The more you practice, the more natural it will become, and the easier it will be for you to rebound, recover, and recenter.
If you’d like me to teach you how to become a more resilient leader, then reach out, and let’s connect.
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