The Best Coach-Approved Tactics To Build Resilience

2020 has been a year of challenges. Sometimes, it can feel like it’s just one obstacle after another. What’s more, it can be hard to keep bouncing back. With lots of challenges to face, it can become increasingly difficult to keep your cool and feel calm under pressure. This is where resilience comes in. Highly resilient people are not only able to handle stress more effectively but can also maintain a more positive outlook as a whole – regardless of what life throws at them.  

So how can you build resilience? Here are some of the best techniques that coaches and therapists use so that you can lower your stress levels and power up your coping strategies.

What Is Resilience?

Resilience describes how well a person can adapt to events and problems they face. Resilience is something we all have, but everyone can learn to increase this skill. If you want to learn how to deal with issues more quickly than others and find effective coping strategies, it is possible to train your resilience muscle.

It is important to note that resilience doesn’t stop you feeling the intensity of a problem. Instead, it offers you the tools to manage your stress levels, allowing you to think more clearly to choose effective courses of action.

Three Coach-Approved Resilience Strategies

Coaches and therapist practise all of these techniques as effective ways to support clients in developing their resilience. I use many of these strategies regularly as a way to help my clients when they face challenges, hardships or tragedies.

Strategy One: Tell Your Story

Traditional storytelling will typically feature a lead character having to overcome an issue to reach a satisfying outcome. In this approach, you become the lead character and start to map out your storyboard in a narrative.

So, imagine you are telling the story;

• Set the scene – Introduce your lead character (that’s you!) and explain how your story starts
• What’s your calling? – Explain the objectives of your character and what they’re striving for
• Crash! – This is where you hit the obstacle or face the challenge
• Support – What’s available to help you? (For example, friends, processes, strategies)
• The turning point – This is where the story all changes, the unexpected and new strategy that the lead character deploys that the reader (or you) doesn’t expect
• Outcome – Small, achievable steps that help you reach the result you hope for.

This tried and tested approach can really help when you are feeling stuck, or when your story isn’t progressing in the way you’d like. By changing your situation to create a story narrative, you can look at ways you want things to change.

Strategy Two: SSRI Toolkit

Developed by resilience specialist, Chris Johnstone, the SSRI toolkit is a way to find resilience in the tools you have used in the past. SSRI stands for Strategies, Strengths, Resources and Insights. With this, reflect on a difficult situation that you have had to overcome in the past. During this situation, think about the SSRIs that helped. For example;

• Strategies – Did you use meditation, exercise, problem-solving or any other practical things?
• Strengths – What personal strengths have helped you? Courage, humour, determination, etc.?
• Resources – What do you have to boost your wellbeing? For example, self-help books, friends, support groups, coaches, mentors?
• Insights – What ideas or perspectives have been useful? Is there a mindset you can learn from and adopt, e.g. a ‘can-do attitude’?

Strategy Three: The Spider Diagram

In many client cases, the problem usually hasn’t occurred yet. Instead, what is upsetting the individual is their expectation of how an event will occur. When you start to worry about an issue, it can seem natural to expect the worst-case scenario. However, in most cases, there are so many other, and more likely, options to consider.

Drawing a spider diagram can help you to assess all of the outcomes to help reframe your mindset and give you multiple perspectives to consider.

Start by writing down the issue, then draw the spider ‘legs’ with options for;

• What’s the best that can happen?
• What is most likely to happen?
• Are there any worst-case scenarios to consider?

From here, you can then look at the ways to make the best-case scenario be the most likely option. You can also plan how to make the worst-case option the least likely. From reframing your mindset to deploying practical strategies, mapping out how a situation can unfold can be a fantastic way to build your resilience.

What’s more, you can use this strategy for every concern. It not only helps you to prepare but enables you to be proactive in creating the best possible outcomes for yourself.

Hypnosis For Resilience

If you need more support building your resilience, then my blended therapy approach can unlock your personal resilience toolkit to help you thrive, regardless of what life throws at you. To find out more or to book your free initial consultation, email info@hypnosis-in-london.com.