When you build your professional resilience, you’re adaptable and focused on getting results. Yet resilience can be depleted. There are methods, however, for amping up your resilience again.
“Think of your resilience as a bucket with water in it. The water represents all your strengths and capabilities,” said author Heidi Dening in her 2024 MDRT Global Conference presentation. “When times are good, our buckets become strong and sturdy. We’re on fire, and our resilience buckets remain strong, allowing us to be productive, confident and capable at work,” she said.
When times are difficult, however, our buckets become fragile. “Little rusty holes soon become big, gaping holes, and all our strengths and capabilities start leaking out. At work, we might feel lethargic and unfocused. We make poor decisions and silly mistakes. We get cranky over nothing,” said Dening, from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
How do we prioritize ourselves, mend our buckets and refill them again when our to-do lists are long?
Rebuilding resilience
Dening suggests her Strong Bucket Formula for repairing rusty bucket holes and rebuilding resilience and success.
Principle No. 1 — Rest your brain and reset it through 10 minutes of daily stillness. To do this, all you have to do is sit down, turn off your tech, rest your eyes and enjoy doing nothing for 10 minutes. That’s it. Gift this to yourself. It is only a tiny part of your day.
Principle No. 2 — Find joy one hour a week. Dening doesn’t mean the incidental joy that hopefully you experience daily. She’s referring to habitual joy that’s scheduled into your calendar. That might be studying a topic that you’re passionate about, volunteering at an animal shelter or mentoring an emerging leader in your organization.
These are a few of the ways to build your resilience.
For more ways to rebuild resilience, visit Heidi Dening’s 2023 MDRT Annual Meeting presentation, “5 steps to boost your resilience.” (MDRT member exclusive)
Daily 10 minutes silence is a real mindfulness.
In Yogic culture it is called “Dhyan” = Meditation.
Now, actually we are ready to refilling the bucket.
Thank you, for such a thought provoking insight on resilience.
Inspiring artical