This is how you train your resilience at work

Dusseldorf Corona lockdowns, the Ukraine war, being overwhelmed at work and privately: everyday life could recently be very stressful – and it can still be. Crucial to people getting through crises in an emotionally stable manner is one quality that is sought after more than ever: personal resilience. But what exactly does this term mean? Do you have resilience or don’t you have it? Can one’s own resilience be strengthened and trained? At work, privately, in life in general? Researchers and resilience experts provide the key answers.

Definition and meaning: what is resilience?

The term “resilience” comes from the Latin word “resilire” (rebound) or the English term “resilience” (resistance, durability). It originally comes from physics and materials science. In the recent past, however, “resilience” has found its way into a wide variety of scientific disciplines: from economics to sociology and education.

Interdisciplinary, resilience means the ability of a system to tolerate disruptions. Psychology understands resilience in the broadest sense as the resistance of individuals in the face of stressful life events. Denis Mourlane, author of the book “Resilience – the undiscovered ability of the truly successful”, defines resilience as “the ability of a system, including one’s own self, to successfully deal with disruptions that threaten its ability to function or even its very existence”.

Definition and meaning: what characterizes resilience?

Denis Mourlane explains that people show resilience on three levels. First of all, resilient people face challenges and crises with a lot of optimism. Secondly, resilient people remain emotionally stable and calm even in crisis situations. Thirdly, they remain very goal- and solution-oriented – even if the external circumstances are still very adverse. “In summary: If you have a high degree of realistic optimism, a lot of composure, a high degree of goal orientation and a lot of discipline, you are often also very resilient.”

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What forms of resilience are there?

Depending on how a person deals with stressors, there are three different variants of resilience in the psychological research literature. However, they are mostly used synonymously. A popular, easy-to-understand explanatory model for this is the analogy of a tree that is exposed to a storm. It goes back to an essay by American psychologists Stephen Lepore and Tracey Revenson published in 2006. In it, the authors describe three ways in which a tree could successfully weather such a storm:

• Resilience as (stress) resistance: The trunk and branches of the tree can be so massive that the storm cannot damage them, they simply remain motionless. Transferred to a person’s psyche: the adversities around him leave him completely unaffected and cannot harm his mental stability. This form of resilience is what is most often meant when the term is used.
• Resilience as regeneration: The trunk and branches of the tree are not strong enough to withstand the storm, but will return to their original shape after the storm has passed. So they will be shaken and bent for a short time, but not in the long term. Transferred to the psyche of a person: A stress factor puts a strain on the resilient person for a short time, but after a while they find their way back to their usual everyday life and are mentally stable.
• Resilience as reconfiguration: The trunk and branches of the tree are not strong enough to withstand the storm. After the storm subsided, however, they took on a new shape that reduces the surface area for future gusts of wind to attack. Transferred to the psyche of a person: People who have a form of resilience understood in this way adapt during or after a stressful experience, change their behavior or thought structures in order to be able to cope with comparable experiences in the future without greater psychological stress.

Is resilience innate in humans?

“At least what we call ‘high emotional stability’ in everyday language is actually very strongly genetic,” says resilience expert Denis Mourlane. However, current research agrees that resilience is not an inborn condition, but a process. The scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research in Mainz, for example, assume that resilience is an active process that can be learned and trained. “Resilience is not destiny,” writes the Mainz researcher Raffael Kalisch in his book “The Resilient Man”. Everyone can take their own “process of staying healthy” into their own hands.

What does resilience research do?

The aim of resilience research is to identify factors that simplify the “process of staying healthy” that researcher Raffael Kalisch writes about and make it easier to learn. It is important to “identify protective factors, create models for the interaction of these factors and, based on this, develop intervention and prevention approaches to strengthen protective factors,” write Jürgen Bengel and Lisa Lyssenenko.

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What are the seven pillars of resilience?

The seven pillars of resilience are one of the most popular models for understanding resilience, psychological protective factors and possible resilience training. The author of the model is the qualified psychologist Ursula Nuber. Your model consists of the following seven pillars:

1. optimism is the attitude underlying resilience. Only those who assume that crises are temporary and can be overcome can face them resiliently. Optimism also includes the assumption that everyone can influence their own lives, take an active role and direct their own destiny.
2. acceptance of what is happening around you is the second pillar of resilience according to Nuber. Only those who accept a crisis can take specific steps to overcome it.
3. solution orientation describes the search for specific steps to overcome the crisis, to regain control of his life against all external adversities.
4. the victim role to leaving, is the only way out of passivity into action. It is important to regain one’s own ability to act, to reflect on one’s own skills and abilities.
5. responsibility to take, does not necessarily mean blaming yourself for a crisis. However, it is just as ineffective to categorically shift the blame onto others. Responsibility is the logical step that follows leaving the victim role.
6. network orientation means building and actively maintaining social contacts – even in times of crisis.
7. future planning Finally, look ahead. What conclusions can be drawn from this crisis for future crises in order to be able to overcome them even better?

There is also a slightly modified model of the seven pillars of resilience. It comes from the psychologist Franziska Wiebe and makes an important subdivision within the seven pillars into four basic attitudes and three practices. The four resilient basic attitudes are acceptance, commitment, solution orientation and healthy optimism. The four core practices for translating these attitudes into a more resilient self are self-awareness, self-reflection and self-efficacy.

What other resilience factors are there?

A third variant of the seven pillars of resilience comes from the American research project “Project Resilience”. This names the following seven resilience factors:

1. insight: the will to confront yourself with uncomfortable questions and to answer them honestly with yourself
2. Independence: the ability to defy social pressures, to make decisions independently of external factors, to distance oneself from what causes problems in one’s life
3. Relationships: the ability to relate to others, to network, to make friends
4. initiative: the ability to actively tackle problems
5. Creativity: the ability to mentally turn bad situations into good ones
6. humor: the ability to find humor even in bad situations, to discover the comic in tragedy
7. Morality: the ability to behave in accordance with the moral norms of society

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Resilience training: Can resilience be learned?

Resilience training is possible. Most researchers agree that resilience can be learned. Admittedly, “not everyone can become Nelson Mandela,” says expert Denis Mourlane. But: “Anyone can make great progress in this area with training.” But how exactly can resilience be strengthened?

“We humans have a basic need for direction and for control,” says Mourlane. “We want to have our lives under control.” In crisis situations, this need is severely affected, and a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness sets in. It is therefore important first of all to take note of “that all of this is normal,” advises Mourlane.

Promoting resilience: Identifying causes of stress

You shouldn’t say to yourself: “How bad that I have such feelings, I’m stressed, overwhelmed.” Instead, the attitude should be: “It’s completely normal for me to react like this.” this feeling of powerlessness and helplessness is actually coming”.

It helps to focus on things that are really in your own power. “Of course there are things that we as humans cannot influence. At least not as a normal citizen.” That has to be accepted. Precisely that, accepting what cannot be influenced and at the same time recognizing what can be influenced, says Mourlane, is “one of the most important resilience strategies of all”.

Train resilience: actively solve problems that can be influenced

“Regardless of whether I’m in a pandemic, stuck in an exceptional professional situation or experiencing a private breakup: First of all, I should always ask myself what I can really influence in this situation,” says Mourlane. The decisive question is: “Where can I start and become active myself?”

In this context, the expert advises, one must be aware of what the term resilience actually means. “It’s sort of the ability to solve problems. So I should ask myself: How can I learn to solve a certain problem better? Where do I start? Should I try to leave the situation, should I adapt or should I try to change something about the situation?”

As a first step, it might help to work on your own optimism or to use simple breathing techniques that help you calm down better in crisis situations, says Mourlane. After that, it is important to reflect on one’s own strengths and abilities and to use them to solve problems.

Resilience: when should I seek help?

“Not all emotional problems can be solved alone,” says Denis Mourlane. If a crisis becomes a permanent burden for one’s own psyche, professional help and psychological care are necessary. “Resilience also means: If I realize that I can’t handle a situation on my own, then I recognize that I need help,” says the expert. Ultimately, this is also an important problem-solving strategy and part of a resilient way of thinking.

More: More than a third of all people emerge stronger from crises – this is how you succeed in your job