International Stress Awareness Week

Dr Julie Denning, Managing Director, W2W

Resilience – the power to succeed’ is the theme of this years’ international stress awareness week. But what does increasing resilience involve exactly? The charity, Mind, has put together some different techniques to help you boost your resilience.  

These include:

• Making lifestyle changes such as developing your hobbies and being straightforward and assertive
• Looking after your physical health through exercise and good sleep
• Giving yourself a breakthrough self-forgiveness
• Rewarding your achievements
• Building your support networks.  

Find more detail and information here.

I am wondering though, just how much of a shift in behaviour does building resilience require? My question to you is ‘how are you going to make these changes and boost your resilience?’

I wanted to try to help you by providing a structure to get you going. A researcher called Gabriele Oettingen suggests that in order to make a behaviour change happen, we need to think about:
 

• What we want to do (Wish),
• How we will feel doing it (Outcome),
• What stops us getting to that feeling (Obstacle) 
• The (Plan) we need to implement to get there. 

She calls this ‘WOOP‘ 

So let’s get started: 

1. Pick something from the MIND resilience list that you value and would like to achieve
   
2. Imagine how you will feel once you have actioned the change, e.g. you would like to see your friends more often which will make you feel loved, starting up a favourite hobby again will be fun, going for that long walk will energise you.
3. Break your reverie now and come back down to earth. We need action at this point, so start thinking about all the things that will stop you from feeling loved, engaged and energised.
4. Get a plan stan! Revisit SMART goal setting if it helps. But more importantly, say to yourself, ‘If xxx (the obstacle) comes along, Then, I’ll do … YYYY’
5. Review

There is a strong evidence base for this model and lots of lovely psychological theory that backs the approach. But more importantly, from your perspective, it is user-friendly. There is even an App that we can all use. Have a go at using it and see how you get on. 

Increased resilience is just around the corner! Good Luck! 

 

  

If you want to hear more about our approach and the work that we do to help people to recover their function after a diagnosis of a long term condition, then please get in touch at w2w.admin@working2wellbeing.com.

Working To Wellbeing (W2W) provides consultancy and intervention for health and wellbeing at work. We provide wellbeing and rehabilitation services, supporting employees with physical health, mental health and long term conditions, the three key causes of presenteeism and absence. We join the dots between the physical and mental health issues that cause and perpetuate poor health.

Our specialist clinicians are highly trained to provide a truly integrated service that results in health behaviour change and optimum work capability.