Resilient Mindset: What It Is and How to Get It
- Updated: September 2, 2024
As an entrepreneur coach, I help business owners and leaders build stronger, more successful companies. One of the most important skills I teach is how to develop a resilient mindset. Resilience is about the ability to cope mentally and emotionally with uncomfortable events.
I wish resilience were just a matter of saying optimistic thoughts or uplifting affirmations, but it is an issue of understanding oneself, including fears, and perceived limitations.
This article will explain why having a resilient mindset is so crucial for entrepreneurs and leaders, and provide practical steps to build your own resilience.
First, let’s talk about why having a resilient mindset matters for you as a business owner and leader.
Why Resilience Matters for Entrepreneurs and Leaders
Running a business or leading a team is full of challenges. There are ups and downs, successes and failures. To make it through the tough times, you need to be resilient. A resilient mindset helps you:
- Bounce back from setbacks
- Stay motivated when things get hard
- Keep a positive outlook
- Find creative solutions to problems
- Inspire and support your team
Without resilience, it’s easy to give up when obstacles arise. But the most successful entrepreneurs and leaders know how to push through difficulties and keep moving forward.
The Science Behind Resilience
Research shows that resilience is linked to how our brains work. When we face stress or challenges, our brains release chemicals that affect how we feel and act. People with resilient mindsets tend to:
- Have more connections between different parts of their brain
- Produce less of the stress hormone cortisol
- Recover more quickly from negative emotions
Scientists have found that we can actually change our brains to become more resilient. By practicing certain skills and habits, we can build new neural pathways that support a resilient mindset.
Mastering a Resilient Mindset: The Key to Understanding Your Mind
Yes, all of our desires are tied to our mindset. There is no way around this. If you want overcome things, you have to see opportunities everywhere you are. The brief story below exmpifies finding opportunities where everyone sees obstacles and difficulties.
A blind boy paid his way to a master’s degree at Northwestern University by taking notes on class lectures in Braille, typing them, and selling copies to classmates who had stronger eyes but weak ambition.
The key to success and resilience to your obstacles lies in your mindset. If you possess the determination to succeed, you will inevitably discover a path forward, regardless of the obstacles that stand in your way.
A change of heart, not mind.
At the beginning of my coaching career, I believed that my words could persuade clients to better their lives. However, after working with hundreds of people over the years, I have come to realize that you cannot change a heart that is determined to self-destruct. In essence, you have to decide for yourself what you are capable of overcoming.
Moving on, let’s discuss how you perceive your present challenges. Are they actually hindrances or do they present opportunities in disguise?
Nobody convince yourself out from a foul attitude. Real change starts from a desire to improve your mindset.
Unleashing Your Power to Succeed: Overcoming Obstacles with Self-Belief
Question for you:
Do you use all of your assets to achieve your goals, or are you handicapped by your lack of ambition?
As I mentioned earlier, nobody, including me, can instil within you a desire to succeed. Perhaps you don’t believe you have the right genes, cultural, gender, or academic credentials.
To be honest, I thought I had no business building a mental health blog with topics such as addiction and trauma. That belonged to people who had degrees in psychology or medical degrees. But here you are, reading about resilience from a layperson.
What gave me the courage to create a blog about something that I once felt intimidated and scared about? It was the words that I told myself. In the next section, we will talk about the power of your words.
The words we say to ourselves
If you want to be more resilience, that requires being mindful of the language you use when speak to yourself. Words like, “it’s impossible” or “I can’t do it”. All words hold immense power, and we must be mindful not to use them to crush our aspirations.
I understand that this can be particularly challenging for those who have endured a difficult childhood and have been exposed to constant criticism and negativity. To be transparent, most of my family members and friends were suspicious and critical. As a result, it was easy to fall into a pattern of self-sabotaging behavior – like overeating, procrastination, or even resorting to online criticism towards those who disagreed with me.
Are you saying things that are supportive or critical of your words? Remember, your mindset has the ability to guide you towards or away from your dreams; it all depends on you. If you’re ready and eager to improve your mindset, this course will be a valuable resource for you.
In the next section, we discuss how our brain processes words.
Words have immense power over the mind.
The area in red (as shown in the image above) is the frontal lobe, which is the Broca’s area responsible for language and communication.
You can process up to 1,000 words per minute, and it takes you up to 1/10 of a second to think negatively while it takes 10 seconds to think positively. This is called a negativity bias. These words ultimately translate into some form of behavior. Whether to do something or not is a choice that arises from how you interpret your current challenge.
The words you use to talk to yourself, whether positive or negative, will ultimately impact your conscious behavior level. So it doesn’t matter what you say you want; if your internal language is inconsistent with your behavior, it will always result in negativity or inaction.
Three Steps to Becoming More Resilient
Now that you know that your words hold immense power, it’s time for you to regain control. Below are some steps to help you become a more resilient person:
Step 1: Surrender the Victim Card
You cannot straddle the fence of the victim mentality and expect to feel good about yourself and your life. Here’s why:
1. When you play the victim, you assume that you’re powerless while your abuser is all-powerful. It doesn’t matter if the abuse/challenges happened to you as a child or is happening to you now.
2. Viewing yourself as a victim can result in serious emotional and physical health issues, including immune system problems.
3. Playing the victim robs you of your ability to see yourself, your situation, and your past accurately.
To be more resilient, you must give up the victim card and replace it with the victor card. This means taking responsibility and making changes – which can be scary.
It goes against the script that life may have shown you, but it will be worth it if you want to live a happier life.
Next, I will share another tip to being more resilient emotionally.
Step #2: Stop making excuses
This is the part of the article where I get off my high horse and show you that I am an imperfect human too.
The picture above was taken by a neighbor while I was helping to plant some pot plants. During this time, I kept telling myself that I was bloated and that it must be due to my hormones, since my wedding rings didn’t fit and I found myself wearing larger clothes which, as you can see, couldn’t hide my ever-increasing waist size.
My neighbor sent me a thank-you text message and enclosed this picture, which showed my fat behind in all its unholy splendor. It was not hormones. I was fat.
After three months of carefully examining my lifestyle practices, I lost 15 pounds.
Step #3: Ask yourself the better questions
If you want to overcome your challenges and be resilient to the storms of life, it is time to drop the drama and excuses and ask yourself these questions:
- What can I do right now to improve my current situation?
- Where have I been sloppy or lazy?
- How can I improve myself in small yet powerful ways?
- What self-defeating or counterproductive words do I tell myself?
The key to living a satisfying life and overcoming challenges always starts with an honest assessment of yourself and your life. Next, let’s talk about what a resilient mindset looks like as a business owner.
Examples of Resilience in Action
Let’s look at some real-world examples of how a resilient mindset can make a difference:
The Startup That Bounced Back
A tech startup launched a new app, but it didn’t take off as expected. Instead of giving up, the founder used customer feedback to improve the product. She stayed positive and motivated her team to keep working. Six months later, they relaunched with great success.
The Leader Who Adapted
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, a small business owner had to close his store. Instead of panicking, he quickly set up an online shop and delivery service. His resilient mindset helped him find new ways to serve customers and keep his business going.
The Entrepreneur Who Learned from Failure
An entrepreneur’s first business failed after just one year. Instead of quitting, she looked at what went wrong and learned from her mistakes. She used that knowledge to start a new company, which became very successful.
I hope these ideas help cement in your mind that if these business owners overcame their challenges, so can you. Next, I will sharing my final thoughts about building a resilient mindset.
Final thoughts
Being resilient is not an easy task. It requires you to be fully responsible for the words that you tell yourself. Are you seeing things as an opportunity or an obstacle? Are you a victim or a victor? The choice truly belongs to you.
If you need assistance in elevating the quality of your thoughts, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I am here to help you! And if you have an experience of how you overcame a challenge – send me a message. I’d love to hear from you.
Dig deeper by clicking here to listen to an episode from my podcast about courage and resilience, or press the button below to listen to it.
Written by Denise G. Lee
DISCLAIMER: THIS ARTICLE DOES NOT PROVIDE MENTAL HEALTH ADVICE
The information in this article is for informational purposes only. No material in this article or website is to be a substitute for professional medical and/or mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you read from me or anyone else online.
Also, this article is not designed to diagnose or treat you or anyone with a suspected mental health illness. Please, if you need help, seek appropriate help from a lawyer, health care provider or law enforcement officer.
