How To Bounce-back During Challenging Times
Business and leadership experts have coined a term for the challenging environments in which we have to operate business and even to live our lives, the acronym of which is VUCA. VUCA means volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Most of us know what it means to operate in this sort of climate, but though we have experienced it, due to our inherent need for security and stability we resist living in this sort of unpredictability. When we do encounter challenging situations it may feel as if we have had to endure a hard blow, and life may seem to knock us down. Yet even when we are knocked down by these challenges, in order to move forward we desire to get back up, charge forward and to overcome these challenges. In this blog, I will share with you some rituals that you can implement that will help you to get your bounce back.
Mindset Shift For challenging times: focus on what you can truly control
In order to endure challenging times we need a mindset shift as well as rituals to support resilient habits. Everyone understands and admires the person who is able to get back up and dominate after major setbacks, but what is the work that is being done behind the scenes or under the hood to have this happen? Having a resilient mindset isn’t accidental, it is something that needs to be worked on intentionally just like athletes have to train for their game day long before the day of the competition, so is the need for us to train before the challenging time comes.
The first training is mindset, a dedication to focus on the things we can control and let go of the rest. Just as the serenity prayer says “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” It makes no sense trying to resist the fact that life will be challenging, and VUCA but what we do have control over is how we respond to the challenge. Steven Covey in the book 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People gives us the secret to this mindset by declaring that our power lies in choosing our response to the events that maybe outside of our control. He says, “In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.” Once we empower ourselves and decide to take our power back by determining what our response will be rather than responding out of pure reaction then we can move on to developing daily practices that will support our empowered mindset.
S.A.V.E.R.S. Miracle Mornings: Resilience Rituals To Sustain Long Term Peak Performance
There are negative images, news, and messages that are bombarding us daily, so if we just go with the flow so to speak we will default towards pessimism as that is the default of our environment. We are being programmed towards negativity/despair. However, we can be proactive in re-programming ourselves to a mindset that is more empowering. We can develop a routine that will give us the stamina to sustain long term peak performance rather than crashing and burning out under crushing stress. These six actions taken from the book Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod will help to get you in the right mindset to attack your days with gusto!
Silence - this is another way of saying meditation. As I stated in the blog, The Most Relaxed Person Is The Most Powerful we are automatically being conditioned to be stressed and reactive but if we build habits such as meditation to practice maintaining our composure we will be confident, focused, problem solving oriented and in control. These are desired qualities of the most effective leaders. The ones who set the tone of the environment rather than being a bystander or byproduct of the environment.
Affirmation - is a powerful way to program our minds for continued success. It is essentially just reaffirming verbally what we are working towards, our desired end state or goal. These affirmations will also help to influence us to follow through by doing the work that it takes or establishing new behaviors that support the results that we desire.
Visualization - It is long known that athletes have used visualization to enhance their performance in sports. Business people and other professions have caught on to this powerful success ritual. Studies have show that one of the reasons visualization is so powerful is because we stimulate the same regions of the brain when we visualize an action as we do when we actually perform the same action.
Exercise - We all know the benefits of exercise as it relates to managing stress, fighting obesity related diseases, etc. Additionally, exercising gives us the energy to go out and attack our goals, projects and responsibilities.
Reading - We can ready for education to help us get a success blue print of whatever it is we are researching or studying on, additionally we can read for inspiration and motivation. When we feel our determination to push through waning, reading a book or article can give us the boost we need to go on.
Scribing: A really fancy way of saying writing. Writing/journaling is a great way to process our thoughts and build self-awareness which is an essential component of emotional intelligence, a fundamental leadership skill. Socrates warned us that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” perhaps because he discovered all the benefits associated with reflection. Creativity and innovation can also be enhanced through writing, and who doesn’t need more innovation to succeed in their endeavors. Perhaps the most impactful practice I have included in my journaling is the daily reflection of what I am grateful of. Read more about the life transforming benefits of a gratitude practice in this blog.
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