Resilience in stressful times

Well, it been a while since I did one of these. As everyone, I’ve been busy being busy, but I’ve got some space, so here goes.

Stating the obvious, things are tough. Customer expectations, commercial pressure, employee engagement to name a few of the things seeming to be under stress at the moment.

I’m sure you’ve got your methods, your ways of supporting others, but just in case, here’s something to consider.

When we are faced with adversity, a challenge or change, we tend to rely on adrenaline to get us through. That burst of energy, that nervous excitement, that enables us to cope and come through relatively unscathed, if no that bit stronger and wiser.

But as that same provocation appears again & again, our minds have seen it before, and so the rush of adrenaline is less. Then less. And then it just stops. We’ve seen it all before.

So, if your method of support is rally round, ask for that bit more, then initially, we’ll give it willingly. There’s plenty of that excitement to go around!

But the 2nd time? Not so much. And the 3rd? Even less. Why?

Because it’s boring. We’ve seen it, heard it, dealt with it. Here we go again. Same old, same old.

You need a different method. It’s called 2nd wave resilience.

When we’ve experienced the same challenges over and over, we don’t need energy. We need endurance, we need stamina.

Support us with that. Help us to build our skills around staying positive, looking for opportunities, challenging norms, not accepting the obvious.

We need new ways to deal with old problems.