Professional Resilience

When you think about resilience you tend to think about the ability to cope with situations and life’s ups and downs and the capacity to “bounce back” or recover from challenges or difficulties.

Challenges and situations commonly arise in all workplaces. Dealing with and thriving during these moments requires professional resilience.

Resilience supports a proactive approach to daily life.

While we can all agree that working within the Early Childhood sector can be rewarding, we can just as easily concur that it has its challenges and can be gruelling.

Resilience is more than coping. It enables a positive approach to work and outlook on life, which in turn enables better problem-solving and helps to maintain motivation.

People who have developed resilience skills are more adaptable, flexible, optimistic and use the opportunity to learn from experiences and is not to afraid to ask for guidance and help when needed.

Workplace resilience simply put, but without diminishing the importance of it, can be applied to our individual capacity and ability to handle situations, which can range from a tough workload or demanding work environment to frustrating colleagues, children, or families.

Placing a focus on wellbeing and mental health is important in many aspects and in relation to resilience it can influence your interactions and relationships and impact the ability to respond.

Professional resilience is a skill that anyone at any point in their career can benefit from.

Resilience isn’t just about learning ways to cope with unfavourable situations, it also requires the identifying of strategies to providing ways to more forward.

But what does professional resilience look like at the ground level?

It is an individual’s ability and capacity to deal with demanding and often stressful situations.

It is the choices we make in how we face, adapt, and respond to situations and challenges.

Resilience is generally considered to be either:

Restored: This is developed out of learning and engaging deliberate techniques to strengthen your skills.

Natural: Which is something you’re born with. It is more the personality type you are and often relates to an enthusiasm for life and a tendency to try new things.

Adaptive: You adapt and grow, leaving you stronger than before the difficult circumstance.

• Utilising thinking and coping strategies like mindfulness.
• Exercise, eat well and take care of yourself.
• Think positively.
• Laugh. Don’t take everything so seriously and acknowledge or have fun in the moment.
• Capitalize on your strengths.
• Use professional development opportunities to build and develop competency on areas that you identify are needing growth.
• Build or be a part of a supportive, collaborative network within the workplace.
• Reflect on the type of work you are doing. Do what you enjoy, something that is not just a pay check.
• Have a good outside of the work environment support network.
• Don’t be so hard on yourself.
• Remember tomorrow is a new day- a chance to start a fresh and learn from previous moments.