Resilience: An important quality in the age of pandemic

In the era of pandemics and lockdowns, resilience is the key to coping with the changing demands of business and the office.

The Workforce Institute recommends that employees cultivate resilience by learning certain skills.

1. Regulate emotion. Facing difficult customers and coping with customer satisfaction demand that employees learn to stay calm.

2. Control your impulses. Learn to moderate behavior when you face challenges. Don’t press ‘send’ impulsively. Learn not to burn bridges with inappropriately emotional reactions.

3. Learn to look carefully for the root causes of problems. Work out what you can change or control and what you can’t. Put your energy into the things you can control.

4. Believe in yourself. Address setbacks–or major work changes–by seeing yourself as competent to succeed.

5. Practice balanced optimism–the ability to realistically assess what can go wrong or deter success while remaining optimistic.

6. Understand what others think and feel.

7. Adaptability. Willingness to change in the face of adversity or circumstance.

From a psychological perspective, resilience also means adopting positive emotions, according to Psychology Today. That may mean you have to seek out the things and situations that have made you feel positive, happy, engaged, or grateful. Even old movies or sitcoms might put you in that mood. Exercising or dancing could help you feel joy. Completing a home project might help stir a sense of competence.