Bouncing back: The keys to resilience

Look at that, it’s already March and session is well into swing. With the year already flying by following a crazy two-year blip in our personal timelines, change has already proven to be the key theme of 2022.

We are already seeing the effects of the great resignation as well as major shifts in the way that the career world operates; however, things don’t always go to plan or fall into place. When this happens, we need to fall back on our built-up resilience to ensure that we can keep working toward any personal goals without being deterred by setbacks.

Acknowledging that this is easier said than done, today’s blog is here to help make you the locksmith of the resilience world so that setbacks are like water off a duck’s back.

Setting SMART goals

The best way to ensure you never fall of track and remain focused is to have clear goals set out. These can consist of larger milestones that are divided into smaller, more achievable goals that can be attained during your journey.

Regardless of how you decide to plan your goals, definitely ensure that you assess how SMART they are so that you can build and maintain confidence, resilience and stay in that grindset mindset. For more on SMART goals, take a look at another of our recent blog posts.

Create and leverage your support network

A support network is of utmost importance in any given situation. In a career sense, a support network can be utilised to assist you in identifying those key skills you may need to develop in order to land that dream role as well as help analyse your current position and identify other potential options.

Your support network can consist of friends you meet at uni, colleagues you have previously worked alongside and even teachers, lecturers or mentors that you come across during your day-to-day life.

Whenever you feel as though you have reached a crossroads and don’t have the answers, turning to your network and asking key questions can assist you in skipping the development of feelings of hopelessness. This is important to avoid any loss of confidence or desire to potentially abandon losing all of the progress you have already worked so hard to achieve.

If you aren’t the extrovert you believe others are, you can always stop by the UTS Professional Mentoring Platform to find alumni, UTS staff or people already working in your industry of choice to ask important questions as well as meet some new potential lifelong friends along the way.

Understand your motivations and values

Self-reflection and meditation have been a major talking point of the past few years. Whilst times have been tough and life has not been as single-dimensional as it once was, knowing what you value and what motivates you has become so important.

Without understanding what our motivations and values are, it can be difficult to align ourselves with a particular cause, group or job opportunity without wondering to yourself “is this me?” or “am I making the right choice?”

For this reason, knowing what you stand by and the types of people or organisations that you would like to work for really helps in developing resilience in the event things go wrong or that you are able to identify that something is not a great fit for you (even if there are some great financial incentives or a parking spot on offer).

With this said, it can be difficult to identify each as we grow and experience new things. To assist in learning more about yourself, UTS Abintegro features aptitude and career related assessments that provide feedback on areas such as temperament, motivation at work, personal resilience and personality insight.

Take the leap of faith

Sometimes, the best way to build resilience is to open yourself up to new experiences, situations and feelings. This is why taking the career leap of faith and applying for that role you think you may have no chances at can be a good thing.

 We all ultimately fear failure and rejection, however learning to understand the recruitment process can help you to build an understanding around why you were unsuccessful or how to respond in difficult situations.

In the long term, putting yourself out there in any situation can be difficult until you get into the habit of being open to try as well as the prospect of not coming out on top.

Conclusion

Resilience can be very hard to build, however there are ways that we can work toward building confidence and learning to push through failure and rejection in order to keep striving towards achieving our dream goals.

Definitely work through this at your own pace but remember to keep pushing through! Now, go forth and achieve all the success and your 2022 goals.

Featured image courtesy of Unsplash