How Are You Dealing With Stress? | Resilience Series
Resilience is not innate, nor genetically fixed. Resilience is also not reactive — resilience touches on the question of how we actively deal with challenges, changes and stress factors. Stress factors can be setbacks, emotional challenges and unforeseen events — things that can happen to us all. Most importantly, resilience can be built up — a skill that can be trained.
Studies show that the way we deal with stress factors has a decisive effect on how we will feel about stress. The decisive factor is how we classify the stress factors for ourselves personally. This has further implications: Do we reject challenges or take them as opportunities? How do we deal with change? Depending on how we decide, this has a direct impact on our mental and physical health.
Dr. Suzanne Kobasa, a psychologist at New York University, has been investigating exactly this for years. She has identified three key factors that determine whether a person is particularly “resilient” or not. They are control, commitment and challenge.
Control
People who are particularly good at dealing with stress still find themselves in the position of having control over their life circumstances despite great challenges. One point that we at Search Inside Yourself consciously consider is the question of whether we view events as life events or whether we are able to identify them (singularly) in their context. For example, does a setback, a negative feedback, a rejection I experience have the power to make a statement about my whole person (I am the mistake) or can I locate this event in its context and view it in that context (I potentially made a mistake)?
Commitment
Resilient people are clear and “committed” with regard to their orientation, values and life plans — and draw strength and motivation from this. This is a core aspect of our SIY seminars in which we bring our value base and our actions into harmony — which in turn leads to healthy, sustainable and intrinsic motivation.
Challenge
The ability to see change as an opportunity, to maintain a constructive attitude {Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset} is a crucial foundation for resilience.
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Written by Klaus Motoki Tonn for Lumen Partners
