The Importance of Resilience

Resilience is “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress…bouncing back from difficult experiences”. We all have our forms of resiliency from our coping styles and various reactions to stress. Though it is easy to say to just “bounce back up” from a challenge, not everyone can, and it depends on the experiences and strategies we have learned while dealing with stressful situations.

Attending Illuminate x Hirenn’s resiliency workshop was my greatest pleasure and learning various personal resilience strategies. This interactive workshop led by Hiren Khemlani walked through personal resilience, negative bias, negative thinking patterns and strategies to build resilience and talked about our strategies and thoughts on topics. The importance of mental health has become more apparent past the pandemic and knowing how to combat tough times is very important.

“Ninety-one percent of the most resilient Americans believe mental health is as important as physical health. Yet only 33 percent of Americans are likely to ask for help or counselling when faced with a negative situation that is emotionally taxing.”

Resiliency is an essential topic in the workplace. A study done by Rising Resilient research found that “only 30% of employees are resilient”. Workplaces need to provide sessions such as these to build these healthy strategies to cope with workplace and/or personal stresses. “The research found that 88% of resilient employees felt their employer enables them to take care of their personal needs,” and that can start with addressing it through sessions like these.

Some strategies to build resilience:

• Practice mindfulness

• Serial mono-tasking

• Reframe unhelpful thinking

• Practice self-compassion

• Ask for help

Thank you, Hiren and Illuminate, for the fantastic session on such an important topic.