Volume 6: March 2023

As we enter March we can see the signs of Spring and we notice that daylight stays with us for a little longer. For many of us this brings a shift in energy and perhaps a feeling of hopefulness.

Last month Jamie talked about resilience and slowing down and I’d like to continue that thread of resilience. In particular, I want to share the concept of the resilience bucket and how we might intentionally and actively build our resilience reserves.

Resilience is about we cope when things don't go according to plan. Lots of things will drain your resilience bucket on a daily and weekly basis. And I guess it's stating the obvious, but if you don't replenish the bucket often enough and well enough then you start to run on empty. A feeling I'm sure you can relate to in some way.

All sorts of things will drain your bucket, they don't need to be major events. Daily things like a change in plans, IT challenges, not handling something in the way you would have liked to, missing a deadline or the anticipation of what might happen will all drain your bucket. I've heard these sort of things described as 'micro stressors', in themselves they might no t be overwhelming but they can have an accumulative effect which can be overwhelming.

Resilience Reserves

There really is no straight line to success, knowing and understanding the elements of resilience means that you can be intentional and active in building your own personal capacity for resilience.

Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis (2022) share these 6 helpful skills that can help you to understand how you're doing and where you might be able to build or nurture your reserves:

• asking for help
• optimism
• celebrating success
• access to support
• your world outside of work

Rate Your Resilience

Give yourself an honest rating on a scale from one to ten for each of the six skills. With ten being ‘I’m absolutely nailing it’ and one being the opposite. This quick exercise will help you to identify the areas you can be more intentional about.

1. Help: how good are you at recognising you need help and asking for it?
2. Optimism: how optimistic are you when things don’t go according to plan?
3. Success: how often do you reflect on and celebrate your success, however small they may seem?
4. Support: how confident are you that you have a range of people supporting you - people who will lift you when you need lifting or offer practical support when you need that?
5. Rest: how good are you at rest and recovery during and after difficult times?
6. World Outside of Work: how much do you invest in areas outside of work that make you feel positive and give you perspective?

Now what?

Once you've rated each element, choose one or two that you want to focus on. What would you need to do to increase your rating by just one point?

What's the single smallest thing you could do today (or this week) to take you closer to that?

Want to learn more?

• Saundra Dalton-Smith: The real reason why we are tired and what to do about it | TED Talk
• Changing Conversations with Clare Lavelle
• The 3Ps of gratitude by Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Until next time...

Sarah (and the Stepping Stones team)