In today’s fast-paced world of work it’s increasingly important to be resilient in our careers. Career resilience is about being able to bounce back when things go wrong in our working lives. It’s what helps us to not only survive but thrive as professionals. We’ve gathered together some pointers for helping you build your career resilience by approaching the process holistically.
- Get a Health M.O.T.
Good physical health helps us to be more mentally resilient. Getting a health check will help you understand what areas of your health you need to work on to assure your resilience for the future. Whatever the health check tells you, take a look at your lifestyle to see how you can adjust it to improve your health. Leading a better and healthier life is something that we can all do something about, whether it’s to do with what we eat, how much we exercise, how much sleep we get and so on. If we neglect our wellbeing, we just make it physically harder to be resilient when we need to be.
- Hatch a Plan B
In a world where no job is 100% secure you need a plan B in case the worst happens and you end up out of work. If your career goes up in flames, having a back-up plan for your professional life will enable you to be resilient in the face of job loss.
- Focus on Growth & Learning
Focusing on learning and development within the context of your career helps you to be more efficient and effective at work, making it easier to tough out the tough times. Increase your knowhow of your professional world by experimenting with and exploring different topics within your niche and also different methods of learning, such as courses, workshops, webinars, ebooks or whatever suits the way you best absorb information.
- Take Control of Your Career
Taking control of your own career as early as possible will make it easier to stay in control of your response when something inevitably goes wrong in your career. If we depend on our employer to plan our career path and manage our progression for us, we’re going to be left to crash and burn if at some point down the line that employer runs into problems of its own or simply discards us.
- Live in the Moment
Worrying about the future won’t make your future any easier, it’ll just drain you of the energy you need to deal with whatever the future ends up throwing at you. You have to be present in the present in order to be able to deal with your life. The ability to stay in the moment as opposed to projecting about the future is a fundamental element of your resilience.