Welcome to your developing resilience session. My name’s Hilary Clarke, and I’m an organisational developer at the University of Liverpool, and I’m really pleased to have been invited to do this session for you.

The session is going to talk about how we can develop our resilience, and one of the things that I’m going to start with is, is a quote from Abraham Lincoln, which says, we are about, we’re about as happy as we make our minds up to be. So what I mean by that is that we can actually choose as we wake up in the morning and swing our legs out of bed, we can make the choice about how we are going to engage with the day. Is it going to be a great day for us, or is it going to be a rubbish day for us? And it’s very much about what we decide and how we want to shape the day.

So a lot of our resilience, from my perspective, is really about our mindset and how we approach resilience, and also all the things that we put into our toolkit to enable us to be more resilient. And we are human beings: we have good days and we have bad days, but we can choose to frame a not so good day in a different way. So it makes it more bearable.

The learning outcomes for this particular session are: we’re going to be looking at the Robertson Cooper model, and this looks at four different areas that will, if we look at those four different areas, it will help us to develop our resilience. And I’ll go into some more detail as we go through the session. I’m also going to be taking you through some strategies for resilience and some things to think about and some things you’ll go, yep, that’s a great tool and I’m going to use that and other things you’ll think that’s not for me. And that’s absolutely fine. We all have different tools and techniques that help us to become more resilient, but hopefully you’ll find some new things that will be able, you’ll be able to put in your toolkit that will help you with your resilience journey.

So what is resilience? Resilience is the process of managing and adapting positively to significant sources of stress and challenge. We all have stress and challenge in our day to day. We, you know, we’re mothers, daughters, sisters, brothers, partners. We all have lots of things going on for us, and it’s very much about, um, we need some, what I call positive pressure to get us out of bed, to motivate us, to make us feel sparkly. But it’s when that positive pressure starts to tip into what I call the negative stress. And that’s when we need to tap into our resilience. And sometimes it can be as easy as just reframing, what’s happening for you. and it’s at this point where I would ask the question, how many of you have actually decided upfront that something’s going to be stressful? But then actually when you get to it, it’s not as stressful as you think it’s going to, as you thought it was going to be. So often we front load what’s going to be stressful. So by being resilient, we can actually think about things upfront. We can compare with, with an issue that we might be going with. How did we cope with it last time? What were the strategies we put in place? So, so it’s very much about thinking, okay, so how am I going to bounce back from this adversity? And actually, how am I going to grow as a person?

So I use the fridge magnet speak, as I call it, and what I say is: there is no failure, only feedback. So something’s not gone well. If you learn something from it and you do something differently next time, then actually it’s a learning. So it, even after difficult or traumatic experience, if you get the help and support that you need, be that professional, um, or from other areas. And then you actually think about, okay, so how am I going to build on that support that I’ve got so that if I come up to another difficult situation, I’ve got lots of things in my toolkit to enable me to be more resilient.

So it’s about bounce back ability. Now, often we get to the point, and I’m going to use, um, a rubber band if you can see this. Okay, we get to the point where when we’re starting to, to really sort of lack resilience is that we’re like a rubber band, so we’ll start to stretch and stretch. And what we don’t want to do is get to this point where we’re likely to break, or if I ping this rubber band off, and I’ll be misshapen, what we want to start to do is to have strategies in place at this point so we can be resilient and we know we can put these things in place so we don’t even get to the point where we’re so stretched like a rubber band that we’re going to break, and we’re not going to have that opportunity to bounce back so we can build on our bounce back ability. And that’s by learning from what’s happened, putting strategies in place so that the next time something like that happens again, we know how to frame that, we know how to think about it, we have a different mindset to it, and that then enables us to bounce back. But I, I really want to stress that, you know, no man is an island, no person is an island. So often it’s really important that we get some help and support. Uh, and when people say, well, I have family and I have friends, and I go, and that’s lovely, but sometimes we need that professional help. And getting professional help to enable you to be more resilient is one of the most, uh, proactive, positive and brave things that you will do. And there’s lots of help and support out there to get that professional support. So it’s just to say, if you’re at a point with your resilience where you need the help and support, then do reach out for it. There’s lots of, um, places that you can go to get that support, um, often through your employer.Um, and, uh, please make sure that, that you do reach out.

One of the big tools and techniques that I use as an accredited coach, and a supporter is the Stephen Cowley’s circle of concern and circle of influence. Now, this is from his book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it’s a model that’s a really simple and easy model to use. What I often find is when people are struggling with their resilience, it’s because they’ve gone into overwhelm. They can’t see the wood from the trees, they feel out of control. This is a really simple model that will enable people to start to take back more control, to start to understand where, where they can actually have some influence and where they can put quick wins and strategies in place to move forward. So what we would do, and this is a great exercise for you to do, um, either after this, um, you’ve watched this recording or as part it while, while I’m talking to you, is to draw a big circle and then a smaller circle inside. So it looks like a donut. And what we do is we plot all the things in the outer circle that are, are our circle of concern, all the things that concern us, all the things that might be stopping us from being as resilient and might be stopping us from moving forward. And then what we do is we start to look at, okay, so what are the things that I can do? What are the things I can move into my circle of influence or I know someone I can talk to who can help me with that? And then what happens is as we start to be proactive rather than reactive, so we use that positive energy and we think, okay, I’m going to take control here and I’m going to do something about it, then obviously what happens is our circle of influence will get bigger. And as our circle of influence gets bigger, we actually feel more in control, we feel more confident. What it also does is it identified areas in your circle of concern that actually are out of your sphere. They’re out of your gift, and they may be some, some you need to talk to somebody else about getting that help and support to work through that, that particular concern. And what I would say to you all, and this is something that somebody said to me when I was going through a difficult time, is don’t try and eat the whole elephant because you’ll choke chunk it down into bite-size pieces, okay? And, and work on small pieces of things that you can do and things that you can be proactive about. And that will then enable you to put strategies in place and to move forward. And it’s okay to recognize when something hasn’t gone the way you want it to go. As I said earlier, it’s very much about saying, okay, so how can I learn from this? What can I do differently? Who do I need to help me with this particular thing that I need to support me to move forward? Um, and what happens is it kind of, you, you kind of get to the understanding that actually that little bit in my circle of concern isn’t something that I can actually take control of. So I’m going to either, you know, ask someone else to help me with it, or I’m going to put it to one side and almost give it a, you know, on a scale of one to 10, 10 being really important, one being not as important, you know, where does this rank in terms of concerns? And sometimes that can be a system that you’re having to work with in your, in your, uh, job role. And actually that system, it is what it is, and that’s the system we have to use. And it may be that what’s stopping you from being resilient is it may be that you’re not, you know, technology minded. So you need some help and support and some development to be able to use that technology. So it’s very much, it, it really enables you to kind of hone in on the small with quick wins that you can do and reward yourself when you’ve done a quick win. And when you’ve achieved it, acknowledge that we are very good at sort of acknowledging and recognizing other people’s good stuff. But what, what we’re not always good at is actually self-knowledge. Um, acknowledging when we’ve done a good job. And this for me is where journaling comes into play. That’s a, that’s a technique where in a morning you can journal what you want to achieve in the day at night, you can journal what are the three things that you’re grateful for, what are the three things that have gone well? Or you can actually just, if you’ve had a difficult day and you want to have a rant, but you don’t particularly want to take it out on your nearest and dearest, then I find journaling is a really good tool, really to actually just ha write it all down, have a good, you know, um, it enables you to kind of order your thoughts. It enables you to think about how things have gone for you. And also it, it’s an opportunity really to understand, um,what you’re grateful for. Um, so on the back of this, as a technique, journaling for a lot of people can be quite a supportive technique.

Okay, now I’m going to take you through the Robertson Cooper model. And this is a model that, uh, I’ve worked with over a large number of years. And it really gives you focus on the four different areas. And if you look at these four different areas and you pay attention to these four different areas, then it will really enable you to be more resilient. So one of the things are, it’s really about your confidence. It’s about having those feelings of con competence. And sometimes we need to ask other people for that feedback. And I always say there is no failure, only feedback. Because as long as you learn from it and do something differently. But I don’t think we’re very good as human beings in actually, um, sort of giving ourselves a pat on the back. So it’s very much about saying, oh, okay, what are the things that give you confidence? Where are you getting your feedback from? Because having that confidence around what you are doing, how what you’ve achieved, and really kind of pausing, pausing, um, life and thinking about all the fantastic things that you’ve achieved. Because I think as human beings, we tend to go to the negative and we tend to go to the things that we haven’t done, rather than the fantastic things that we have. So we can take a moment, and this is where your journaling may come into play, and take a moment to just think about all the fantastic things that you’ve achieved, because often we don’t, we just go, yeah, okay. And then we go, oh, but I haven’t done, okay. One of the big things for me is, is, is our sense of purposefulness, but having that clear sense of purpose, our clear values and directions as human beings about what we want to achieve, knowing our what, what’s our why? And I’m going to talk about that in more detail in a moment. Social support is really important about building those good relationships with others, seeking support, um, from in, in and helping individuals to overcome those adverse situations. So it’s, you know, taking time to do a kind of, almost like a network, a mind map, a um, a list of all your support network that that’s out there. Um, and I think in the world of hybrid working as well, I think having this social support and building these good relationships and networks is really important because if we work from home a lot and we are not in, in the office, or we’re not on campus or whatever, we can start to feel quite isolated and feeling, uh, that feeling of isolation can actually impact on our ability to be resilient. So do recognize where all your social support and your networking is, and also realize that you’re a support to other people as well. And I think giving back in terms of that support will really help you to feel more resilient, but also it will give you Confidence to know that you are helping others. So it’s a two-way street in terms of that social support. And then it’s about adaptability. It’s about how do we cope with change? Are we someone who’s open to change? Are we someone who rolls with change? Or are we someone who finds change quite difficult, um, depending on what that change is. And if we think about the, the fisher curve, the change curve where we go into shock, anger, denial, frustration, acceptance, we all move through the change curve in a very different way. There’s also a chap called William Bridges, and he talks about the bridges transition model. And often if we, if we need to adapt to change, some of us will stay very much in the letting go phase where we have to accept that we need to do things differently and we have to let go of how it was before. Then we’ll go into what we call the neutral stage, where we look at, okay, so we’ve now got to accept that the, the changes and we have to do things differently before we can then go into the sort of acceptance and moving forward. So having that flexibility and adapting to changing situations, particularly if they’re beyond our control, are actually essential for maintaining our resilience. And again, sometimes we might need some help with that. Okay?

So the big one for me is always about purpose. If I plot my life and my career and my choices over the last 59 years, they will always hone back to what’s my why. So my why is helping people, what gets me out of bed in the morning is that I want to help people to be the best they can be. So that’s my why, that’s my purpose. So if I’m then working in an environment or I’m in another environment where I don’t feel like I’m able to do that, then that will be where I will start to feel less resilient and I’ll want to seek out those opportunities to be able to help people. So one of the big things, if, if you are in a situation where you’re feeling less resilient, you can’t see the wood from the trees, you’re feeling out of control, one of the big sort of benchmarks to go back to is what’s my why? What’s my purpose? What gets me out of bed in the morning? What are the things that that really excite me? Are positive things are things I look forward to? And really spending some time in this area and just checking out that you are in a position where you are, you are serving your purpose or nursing, and your why will then enable you to choose how you move forward. So I would invite you to, to do an exercise beyond this or during this, to really think about what’s your why, write it down, draw it however you want to do that. And then also, you know, think about and who can help you to be able to, to serve and develop your purposefulness.

So I want you to give you some, um, real, um, sort of steps to take to deal with stress and to build your own resilience and wellbeing. And we’re going to look at these areas. So it’s about physical activities, it’s about keeping active. One of the, one of the things, if ever you listen to anyone talking about stress and wellbeing, they’ll always say about exercise, but exercise can be something as simple as having a little walk in fresh air, round the corner, round the block. So we don’t have to be gym bunnies who get up at five o’clock in the morning and go and do a big workout before we come into work. Great if that’s what helps you with your stress and wellbeing and resilience. But keeping active for people has a, has a lot of different ways. So it’s whatever works for you. And I know myself, when I stop being active, I can feel my mood, mood lessening, my wellbeing is affected. And it’s very much about taking control. And obviously if we have lots of things that we are responsible for other people, we have childcare and all of that stuff, we just need to think, okay, so I need to, I need to take a moment for me, I need, you know, I need to be a little bit not selfish, it’s about self-care. And that’s when I talk about the analogy of putting your own oxygen mask on first. We’re all very good at looking after everybody else. And it’s a little bit like the analogy when you go onto a plane and they do the safety checks and they talk about when the cabin loses, loses pressure and the oxygen and down come the oxygen mass. And I make no apology. I’m the mum of two lads, and the first thing I will do is put those oxygen masks on the boys without even thinking about myself and what happens to me, then I’m losing oxygen. So it’s really about saying to enable you to be the best you can be is about what is it for you that helps you in terms of keeping active? And it can be things like yoga, Pilates, having a walk in the woods, whatever it is for you. So don’t feel you’ve got to keep up with other people who may do more strenuous physical activities. If that’s not your thing, just get out and about in the fresh air and that hopefully, um, we can do that. So it’s also about relaxing, about repairing activities: listening to music, music is a massive anchor in terms of it can take you to a memory. So what I would say is if you’ve got pieces of music that take you to nice memories, then they may be the pieces of music, or if they’re, if you have pieces of music who actually that just, uh, enables you to be calm and to relax and just take a moment for yourself, then they’re really good. I do meditation, and meditation really works for me. Sometimes you need some help with meditation in terms of having some guided meditation. Um, so if you’ve never done meditation before, you might want to use an app or you might want to go to a class where a trained person will take you through meditation. Just sometimes just sitting outside, you know, get your garden chair outside. Some people like to have saunas, some people like to read, um, sometimes like self-care, like having your hair done or having a facial or your nails painted, whatever it is, that’s a repairing activity for you that enables you to just switch off from all the stuff that’s coming in and out of your mind. Then that’s the right thing for you. Sleep’s a big one for me. And again, this is where meditation and breathing can help you to get off sleep, but also it can help you if you’re somebody who wakes up in the night and your mind starts to work overload. And we all get lots of stuff coming in our mind or in a chitty chatter that can start to ask us questions at three o’clock in the morning. So I’d very much say, if sleep is something that is not your thing, then think about some of the strategies that you can put in place to get you to sleep. But also if you’re waking up in the night, and we talk about eating well, avoiding unhealthy habits, and, and I know when I’m less resilient, that’s when I turn to the chocolate and the crisps and the biscuits. So that’s a kind of a good indicator for me that I need to pay attention to myself because it’s at that point where I’m thinking, right, if I’m starting to comfort eat as I call it, then I need to be really careful with that emotional activity. It’s about being positive and staying hopeful. It’s about looking for the diamond in a difficult situation. Sense of humour for me is one of the things that keeps me going. And if I can find some, some sort of humour, even if it’s dark humour in a difficult situation or look back at it and think, okay, um, that, that helps me, but everybody’s different. Okay? Don’t keep things to yourself. You know, when I talked about that, the kind of social network or talking to professionals, tell someone about it. We don’t, I always say to people when they come and talk to me is, we don’t know what we don’t know. Everyone has lots of stuff going on in them, in their mind. And if there’s things that are really bothering you, then tell someone about it. Because until you tell somebody, they can’t help you. And what we don’t want people to do is to become isolated or withdraw because they don’t want to tell someone. And you know, if you have this thing about, well, you know, it’s a weakness if I’m not coping. No, it’s not. We all have situations where we need to get some help and support. So actually telling people what’s going on for you and getting some help and support, it’s one of the best and most positive things you can do. So connect with people. What I’d say is when you’re connecting with family and friends, please remember that your subconscious will always hold back and you won’t know that because you, you’ll be thinking, Ooh, hmm, can I say that because I don’t want to upset somebody. And this is where the professionals come into play because you can just go blur, let it all out, you know, and they will help you because they’re professionally trained to, to help you. So just be mindful, yes, connect with people, but if it’s something that you really need some professional, help, support and seek that out. Try and work out what causes you stress, and then think about, you know, is this something that my mind is, is kind of awfulizing? Or actually, is there something there that I need to do? Um, and take positive steps to move forward. And even if it’s just baby steps in terms of moving forward, it will still help you to feel more confident, to feel like you’re taking control. Making a plan for things that you can change is really important. What I always say is don’t just think it, ink it, write it down. And this is where your journal may come into play. Try and make a plan for the things that you can change. And as you identify all the things you can change, then actually what you can, what you’ll do is you’ll feel like, again, you’re taking control, you are moving forward in a positive way and you will feel better. And then also accept the things that you can’t change. There’s lots of things in our lives that actually are out of our con control that, you know, we can’t influence them and sometimes we just have to accept them and move forward. And all of that adds up to a healthy mind and a healthy body.

Okay, so let’s have a look at some strategies for developing and building resilience. Okay, so these are some things to kind of just to talk about. So developing these strategies to deal with it. So these are some questions to ask yourself, what are the things I’m anxious about today? Write them down if you want to. What one thing can I do to prevent or prepare for it? And then, and then do that. What’s one reason that’s probably not going to be as bad as I fear. Like I said earlier, we decide upfront if something is going to be stressful, but actually when we do it, it’s often not as bad as we think it’s going to be. What’s one reason that, that I can handle this? And, and this is sometimes about self-talk about your inner chitter chatter. What’s it saying to you as you swing your legs out of bed in the morning? Is it saying, I can’t do this? Or is it saying I can do this, I can handle this and, and whichever, what, what, whichever way you’re saying it is probably how it will play out. So if you swing your legs out of bed in the morning and go and acknowledge that it, I think it’s going to be a difficult day, but actually I can do this. I can handle this. Just by having that mindset, you will feel more confident to be able to handle it. What’s one upside of that situation? Always look for the positive in a situation. Can I see things differently? Is there another way to look at this? You know, acknowledge at the end of the day, if you’ve had a difficult day, okay, today was a thinker, it’s not the end of the world. Tomorrow will be a better day. And maybe that’s where your journaling can come into play. Where you can write down how did it make you feel? What are the things you’re going to do differently? How are you going to reframe that? So instead of worrying in an unfocused and unhelpful way about things you’ve done, ask yourself these questions. What went well? What have I learned? And what will I do differently next time? And if you ask yourself those three questions, it will enable you to reframe how you’re feeling about situations. It will give you things to think about that you, you know, what learned from it, even if it’s, well, I won’t do that again. And then what will I do differently next time? So always put strategies in place to say, okay, what am I going to do? Do differently next time. Okay.

And then I’m going to use some topics to help reduce your stress and build your resilience. Um, are we all taking a lunch break and getting some fresh air? I’m not going to ask you, but I want you to think about that. Um, often when we are busy, we can overlook a lunch break, we can work through our lunch breaks and we, you know, particularly if we’re working from home, we might not have got any fresh air that day. Um, if you do this long term, it’s not going to help you to feel resilient. It’s going to add to, you know, uh, your stress and burnout. Blocking out time for planning and defining your work. So, you know, use your Outlook calendar or whatever calendar you use to block out time. Protect some time so that other people aren’t, you know, emailing you or they’re not, um, asking you for meetings. When you know you’ve got specific pieces of work to do, ask yourself, are you able to delegate? If you’re able to delegate, then that’s great, some people aren’t. And it’s about saying, okay, but I, you know, shall I just order my world in terms of what I need to do straight away? What’s important? What’s urgent? What’s both, what’s something that actually that can wait? So sometimes just reprioritizing your work and your to-do list and then refresh your to-do list at the end of that day so you’re very conscious of what you’ve got, um, ready for the next day. Because sometimes if we don’t do that, I think we can. That’s what might make wake us up in the middle of the night and we think, Ooh, I’ve forgot on tomorrow what we’ve forgot to get ready, what things have got to think about. And that’s when your, your brain and your inner chitter chat starts to kick in. And then, uh, we find that we can’t concentrate. Uh, what it also say is, if you do wake up in the night, have a little notebook at the side of you and just write a little squiggle. So if you’re thinking, oh, PE kit for your children, just, just squiggle on, on the pad, on the notepad, and then in the morning when you wake up, you’ll see that and you’ll go, oh, that’s PE kit. But it’ll enable you to go back to sleep, process your inbox to a manageable, manageable amount each day. You know, go back and negotiate if there’s something there that you are not sure whether it’s urgent or not. Some, sometimes other people’s urgent list becomes yours. Keeping a success log of your achievements. If you don’t do this, um, actually you forget, I think, how well you’re doing. So what I do is if someone sends me an email that says, you know, thank you very much, that was a great session, or whatever, I’ll, I’ll take a copy of that email and I’ll put it into an electronic folder so that when I’m having a day where I’m feeling not as confident, I’ll think, I’m just going to go into my success log and have a look at all the lovely things that people have sent me and that makes me feel better. So that’s a really good strategy. Make sure you are maintaining a life outside of work. It’s really easy when you’ve got a lot of work to just focus on work and not focus on the important things like you, your family, your, your friends, your social network. So, you know, just, just make sure work will always be there. Avoid getting lost in vague fears, honestly and realistically, what is the worst that could happen? Because when we’re feeling less resilient, we’re more likely to sort of go into that dark hole of those fears. So, you know, pull yourself up and go, you know, on a scale of one to 10, 10 being that, what’s the worst that can happen? And often it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be. Let your worries out into the light. Talk about them vent. This is where journaling can come into play. If you don’t want to vent to other people, then you can write it down in your journal. And then what I say, sing the frozen song. Let it go. Let it go. Try and think, you know, be in the moment. Be here now. Don’t worry about the past, you’ve, you’ve learned from it. Don’t worry about the future because you don’t know what’s in front of you. Enjoy the present. And if you’ve got any fears or any, you know, regret, let them go. One of the things I always say to people is, no one sets out to make a wrong decision. So if you’ve made a decision about something and it hasn’t played out at the time that you’ve made it, it was the right one for you, otherwise you wouldn’t have made it. And I want you to have that because often we ruminate on things that haven’t gone, played out as well as we expected them to. But at the moment, at, at the time that you actually made that decision of what you are going to do, it was the right one, otherwise you wouldn’t have made it. So spend more time in the present moment, reliving the past in your mind. It’s easy to start feeding your worries about the future. So try, uh, there’s three words I’m going to give you: ‘Be here now’. And if you always have those in mind, then that will help you to pay attention to what’s happening at that moment. It’ll help you to pay attention if you’re having a communication with somebody else. And overall it will just enable you to be more resilient.

And then I’m going to give you the stop acronym. Stop. Take a pause, whatever you are doing, just pause momentarily, stop the clock and take a breath. Often when we’re feeling less resilient or breathing, we start to feel anxious. And it’s just about breathing normally and naturally and flowing. You know, feeling the flow of your breath coming in and coming out. Okay? And while you’re doing that and you’re having that moment, observe your thoughts, your feelings and emotions, acknowledge them. Don’t push them away, acknowledge them and think about, you know, what’s happening for me right now. And then pull back and put those things into perspective and then move forward, continue doing what you were doing, talk to a friend, you know, rub your shoulders, have a cup of tea, go and stand outside in the fresh air and, and smile. And just remember that you’re doing a good job.

Thank you.