Dear The Anguillian readers,
It´s a pleasure to be back! Many things have happened lately: our island has closed its borders, our government bravely faced a cluster and we had a lockdown experience. Fortunately, step-by-step things are getting back to normal: hotels are receiving guests again and we can feel the tourism and hospitality industry gears up and running again. My topic for today is actually a question: how do you handle challenging times? Whether you are facing a global pandemic, professional uncertainty or personal crisis, how can we manage stress levels, effectively overcome adversity, and be able visualise better days ahead? We can do that by building up or nurturing resilience. A single and yet so powerful word! Let´s understand what resilience really means.
We can define resilience as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back from challenging situations or events. Most successful people demonstrate a high level of resilience on their journey to prosperity. It is an essential skill for people that want to succeed in personal or professional life. Developing resilience is crucial as it gives people the strength and focus necessary to face and overcome adversity. Resilient people make good use of their strengths and support systems to outlive difficult situations, objectively analyse problems and identify potential lessons to be learnt.
How do we do that? How do we build or nurture resilience within ourselves so that we can fiercely experience adversity keeping positivity and a growth mindset? Even though there is no magic master plan, there are strategies that we can apply in order to boost resilience. Let´s look at them.
1. Practise Acceptance: denying that you are in the middle of a crisis is not helpful. It is better to accept the truth of the challenging situation, accept that there are things that you just cannot control. Staying in denial will prevent you from adapting to new circumstances, block you from creating solutions or taking action and delay the healing process. Accept the situation, focus on things you can control, acknowledge your feelings and regret your losses. When you do that, you are ready to take action.
2. Reach out to others: in challenging times, connecting with people you love and respect will definitely help you to release stress, lift your spirits and clear your mind to understand all the change and disruption. Most of the time, the people you reach out to will not offer you a magic solution to your problem. They just need to be willing to listen without judgement. That will make you feel you´re not alone facing adversity so you can build up resilience from knowing that you have others to lean on. Just remember to avoid negative people. Run away from people who magnifies your problems, criticises or make you feel judged.
3. Invest in self-care: difficult times tend to be mentally and physically draining. High levels of stress can bring health issues and lead to burn out – a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion. Take care of yourself: exercise your body, start practising relaxation techniques like mindful breathing or yoga, improve your sleep and adopt healthier eating habits. Since body, mind and soul are intimately related – investing in self-care is an essential part of building resilience and properly managing great levels of stress. When your body feels strong and healthy, your mind and soul will feel it too.
4. Look for meaning and purpose: you are not the crisis you are experiencing. No difficult and unexpected circumstances have the power to define who you are. Look for activities that bring you purpose and meaning in life – that will help you keep your problems in perspective, make things look less overwhelming and keep your true self glowing. Think about what makes sense to you: help to others, go after your hobbies and interests… Just find something that is important for you to focus on. It will boost your ability to cope with stress and frustration.
5. Keep motivated: remember that after every storm comes a rainbow. Difficult times do not last forever. You should visualise a better future ahead to motivate you to cope with any momentary adversity. Do not let pessimism get to you! Deal with your problems one-step at a time, celebrate small wins, keep a hopeful outlook, be kind to yourself and above all, express gratitude.
If you are wondering why Hospitality & Career is talking about such a deep topic as building up resilience to cope with challenging times, remember that the Hospitality industry is resilient by nature. We have already overcome a wide range of crises such as natural disasters, acts of terrorism and deep economic crises that have severely affected our business. This too shall pass.
On a personal note, I am very grateful for being in Anguilla during such tough times. I wrote this article about resilience to celebrate everything I have learned with your community during the past year. Anguilla is strong. Anguilla is resilient. Anguilla can overcome anything. The tips shared today might help some to improve resilience because that is a perfect world to describe this paradise!
