The more you understand yourself and who you are, the more you feel confidence in yourself and your abilities, and the better you understand others.

Resilience comes from understanding your own achievements, successes and where you’ve come unstuck before and learning from the experience

Do others see you as you see yourself?

Write down 5 bullet points about how you think others perceive you?

Write down 5 bullet points on why you are so fabulous!

Do they match? if not:

• why not?
• what do you need to do about it?

Create a “Brand You” – write a resume that tells the world how great you are.

Reflect on it and remind yourself how great you are at times when you are feeling down.

Always think and believe you are a fabulous person.

Determination is essentially self-driven by your core values. The more determined you are, the easier it is to overcome challenges successfully and the more resilient you become.

The core values that you hold as an individual will drive you forward; they will help you when you are faced with dilemmas or ethical decisions; they help generate a determination to see things through. They are central to your personal resilience.

Do you know your core values?

For example, they could be to be knowledgeable and wise, to take responsibility and ownership for anything you do, to be independent – free to follow your dream, to be recognised for what you do, to have power.

Think about your core values. Write down 3 core values that you hold dear.

Think about what good things you would like people to say about you at your retirement party, which make you feel you’ve been properly recognised for who you think you are.

Do the comments you receive link closely to your own values? If not, you have time to do something about it.

Once you know your core values and drivers, use them to guide and steer you through challenges and challenging decisions.

Having a clear idea of what you would like to achieve in your life will make you more resilient in your attitude to the everyday ups and downs in life. The vision itself might be blurred; it should not be time constrained, but it should be feasible to achieve.

It really helps to write this down, and review the vision from time to time, particularly when events seek to divert your effort away from achieving the vision.

Write down 2 things you really, really want to do with your life.

Envisage your life in 5 years’ time and write down the key things that you envisage will be different (apart from being older, of course!).

Always think and believe you can achieve the big things in life because you can and will.

Self-confidence comes from controlling your own anxiety, which can be experienced when encountering something new. Once a new experience has been handled successfully, it is added to your ‘resilience reservoir’ of good stuff. This helps you to be less anxious when the next similar experience comes along.

If you feel confident, you can resiliently tackle anything you wish.

“Rosy Glow”

Write down 3 good moments where you have felt a sense of achievement, having successfully tackled something challenging.

Reflect on them if you are feeling low or under-confident. They will help you tell yourself ‘hey – I can do this!’

Your brain will pick up on it and your confidence will shine through.

Breathe in for 6 seconds, hold for 12 and breathe out over 6 seconds.

Try doing things you struggle with or avoid doing. For example:

• Speak to someone who makes you nervous.
• Give a compliment to someone you don’t know well.

If you keep control of yourself at times of chaos, you’ll get through it. Resilient people know how to manipulate chaos and sort out priorities into a structured day. You will be in control, less stressed and your achievements can be clearly observed.

168 are the hours in a week. There are no more, no less, hours available to us. Scribble down all the things you have to do in the week and all the things you would like to do. Below are some examples.

Work out where your time is going and what you can do to turn your day into a more structured time, enabling you to achieve what you want to achieve and maybe make way for a few new things to do as well.

Last thing at night, make a list of the things you need to do tomorrow. Put the ‘big task’ at the top. In the morning, do the first item on the list – if it’s a large project, do the first bite-sized chunk. Then, give yourself a reward before doing the second item on your list.

Work intensively for 50 minutes in the hour and then do something different to let your brain cool down and recover before starting the next 50 minutes of intensive work.

Learn to enjoy the challenge of unravelling and solving problems! Solving problems becomes an achievement which adds to your resilience reservoir and will help you become more resilient and able to solve anything that’s thrown at you - and enjoy the experience!

ADAPT

ADAPT is an approach to problem solving that is useful in most situations

• A = Attitude that helps you solve problems
• D = Define the problem, and your criteria for successful resolution
• A = Alternative solutions?
• P = Predict the consequences of the solutions against your criteria for success
• T = Try out the preferred solution

Think of a problem you are currently wrestling with and apply this framework to it.

• Get into the habit of doing puzzles – on your ipad or phone, in newspapers or magazines.
• Learn to embrace problems with enthusiasm.

Approach problems with a positive attitude.

Interaction is the process of persuading others to do what you want them to do. The process of persuasion requires you to understand the self-interest of others – if someone feels their self-interest is being served, they tend to reciprocate and serve your self-interest. To get the best from interaction with others, you need to learn how to persuade them to do things they might otherwise not wish to do, without causing distress.

Assertive message

The Assertive Message enables you to talk to anyone, at any time, about anything without causing stress.

• Step 1: Always acknowledge how fabulous the other person is and the situation that they are in.
• Step 2: Tell the other person how you feel.
• Step 3: Tell the person why you feel the way you feel.
• Step 4: Tell the other person what you want.

Think of an interaction you need to have in the near future. Practice applying these steps and write down the words you will use. You will need to practice it a few times so that you are comfortable with the approach.

An example would go like this:

• "I know you’re under a lot of pressure and don’t have much spare time".
• I feel frustrated.
• You dismiss my ideas all the time.
• I would like you to encourage me much more in my work.”

Never ever link Step 1 and 2 with 'but' or 'however' as this negates the power of the compliment or recognition of the other person which is a vital aspect of the assertive message.

Get to know how you appear to others. Practice in the bathroom mirror. How do you look? Are your eyes smiling?

Be attentive to yourself. Talk to yourself positively in the mirror about the day ahead. Say, out loud ‘ Good morning’ to yourself. ‘Today’s going to be a great day, full of interesting experiences’.

• Always be attentive to others. If they feel you are attentive to them, they will reciprocate and be attentive to you.
• Always ask unique questions to demonstrate your attentiveness. Bland questions, such as ‘how are you today?’ will get a response that is unrevealing, whereas ‘How are you today? Is there anything particularly bothering you?’ will, most likely, elicit something closer to the reality.

We need successful relationships to assist us to achieve what we want. In the workplace, we need strong relationships that help us achieve success and happiness.

A great way to build successful relationships is to agree mutual expectations with those at work with whom you have strong and important relationships.

Think of 4 people with whom you have a close working relationship – ask each person what are their expectations of you; in return tell them your expectations of them.

• Build relationships that are important and strong and which will help you achieve success and happiness at work.
• Avoid high maintenance relationships which waste your time and help you achieve absolutely nothing.

Always be attentive to other people.