By Rose Marie Quintos
A series of coronavirus outbreaks, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, COVID-19, and now Omicron, have caused unimaginable adversity to people around the world.
People have been subjected to situations beyond their control, such as worsening unemployment rates. Furthermore, lockdowns have driven numerous small businesses, hotels, restaurants, and travel services out of business. And most everyone has had to deal with the stresses of quarantines, social isolation, financial difficulties, and psychological distress.
In these times of uncertainty, resilience is essential for overcoming challenges and rapidly adapting to the current situation.
WHAT IS RESILIENCE?
Resilience is the process and result of overcoming tough or demanding life situations, particularly through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to internal and external challenges.
According to the book Personal Resilience: Survival Strategies for Pandemic Times by Peter Tarlow and Séverine Obertelli, the act of learning from mistakes and applying the knowledge to create a better future is what we called RESILIENCE. Nevertheless, we are also humans who make mistakes. Turning these mistakes into wisdom and creating opportunities from past life lessons transform people to be resilient.
Being resilient helps people to adapt to the difficulties successfully and challenges that people face, especially during the crisis. Resilience, however, is not something we possess from birth, it is built over time as a result of our experiences interacting with our unique, particular genetic makeup. Therefore, every person copes differently to distress and challenges.
THE KEY STRATEGIES TO BUILD RESILIENCE
- Learn to invest in yourself. Take care of yourself physically, such as focusing on your physical wellness. Building resilience is achieved by focusing on yourself.
- Build your connections. Not just in crisis, everyone needs support in life. In times of need, having a network of sympathetic and caring individuals may make you feel less alone. Carefully select people around you who support you in your endeavors, learnings and achievements.
- Learn to take calculated risks. Ensure that you take calculated risks, putting your financial safety first.
- Develop your emotional intelligence. When the future seems so hazy, it can be challenging to stay optimistic, but positive thinking can help you concentrate on hope and picture better times ahead. Own your bad thoughts when they start to overwhelm you. These negative thoughts lose their power when you say your thoughts out loud and talk through them.
Although you cannot control the inevitable changes and difficulties that will come, you do have the power to control your response to these situations. Now that a new normal has been established, we will certainly face new problems and make new mistakes. These strategies will guide us on how to face these obstacles in life by staying resilient and optimistic that everything will pass.
You will not get out of your situation if you carry on repeating
the actions you have always been doing before
– Personal Resilience by Peter Tarlow and Séverine Obertelli,
Being resilient is good, but being excessively resilient may cause some people to become overly tolerant of adversity. Hence, while being resilient, ensure that you are constantly improving and growing rather than settling for continual difficulties. Be prepared, aware and informed.
Learn more about strengthening your resilience in the face of the pandemic in our book Personal Resilience: Survival Strategies for Pandemic Times by Peter Tarlow and Séverine Obertelli.
Rose Marie Quintos is a Publishing Assistant and the Marketing Director for Quest Publishing,a division of the Inquesta Corporation. (She can be reached at rquintos@inquesta.com.)
