As the new COVID reality sets in and we plan for a long period of personal hardship, finding healthy practices to adopt during this overwhelming time becomes more and more important. Resilience (“ an ability to recover or adjust easily to misfortune or change”) provides clues on realistic practices we can adopt to bounce back from hardship. In a chapter of the upcoming book, The Age of Agility: Building Learning Agile Leaders and Organizations, researchers provide keystone practices that improve resilience and make a difference. Below are the habits we can adopt to help us get back a little mental and physical well-being during this challenging time:

It turns out that there has been A LOT of research on the topic of resilience, so much that the number of things that people are told to do becomes overwhelming. Quite honestly, the list was so long it decreased my resilience. So, the three of us set about identifying a short list. More specifically, we looked for “keystone” practices that would be catalysts for even more resilience. I thought it might be helpful for me to share them with all of you.

Get it down on paper and out of your head

Make a list of all of the challenges and opportunities you have (throw them down on paper and out of your brain so you quit ruminating on them). You don’t have to do them, you just need to get them out there where your brain doesn’t think it has to remember all of them.

Build a fence

Choose a short list of tasks– maybe the 1-3 things that are most critical for you to do today. Focus on the very few items that are most urgent and/or will free up other resources. Give yourself a gold star for completing those items. It would be really good if one of the things was creative and fun – something that will bring life to the day. For you overachievers out there (you and I both know who you are), add more items if you must, but they are “extra credit” if you accomplish them. Your goal is to finish the day with the short list because it will spur higher efficacy than when you started. Don’t put so much on your “must do” list that you finish the day with the same or lower efficacy.

Exercise a little

It doesn’t take much. Just go for a walk or exercise for 20 minutes sometime during the day.

Connect

Social support is critical to resilience. So, call a friend. Email someone and tell them how grateful you are for them. Find people who give you energy. Play a game with housemates. You want real perspective? Call a small child in your network and ask what they are doing while they are stuck at home?

Be mindful

Meditate. Pray. Journal. What emotions are kicking around? “I feel angry that… sad that… afraid that.. guilty that.. grateful that.. happy that… secure that… proud that…”

Connect spiritually

Begin with a short prayer – “Today is your day God.” Then watch to see what happens. What purposes are trying to find you today? Who can you secretly beam a prayer to? (Don’t tell them, just make their day wonderful without them even knowing why.)

By Paul Yost, CodieAnn Dehaas, and Mackenzie Allison

Paul Yost Ph.D. Is an Associate Professor at Seattle Pacific University. His research and practice focuses the strategies that leaders and organizations can enhance their agility and leadership capacity. He is currently exploring the behaviors and practices that distinguish catalytic leadership; that is, leaders who develop people in a way that in turn increase the potential and capacity of others. He is the co-author of two books: Real Time Leadership Development and Experience-Driven Leader Development and several articles and book chapters on leadership development. Before teaching, Paul served as Senior Research Specialist at Microsoft with responsibilities in talent management, leadership development, and executive assessment; and Manager of Leadership research with The Boeing Company where his work focused on leadership development, how leaders can capture the lessons of experience, and employee surveys. Previous positions include GEICO Insurance and Battelle Research with experience in selection, managerial training, employee engagement, and team development. Paul received his Ph.D. in I-O Psychology from the University of Maryland. 

Mackenzie M. Allison M.A. is a Doctoral Candidate in the Industrial Organizational Psychology department at Seattle Pacific University. Her research interests include: leaders who catalyze those around them to also lead in a way that is teaching others to be catalysts, leaders (who do not identify themselves as leaders) whose language effects behavior of those around them, and looking at how leadership operates in complex adaptive systems. Additionally, she is passionate about studying those who are resilient and how to become more resilient on the individual, team, organizational, and societal level. Her research has been presented and discussed in panels at multiple Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology conferences.

CodieAnn DeHaas M.A. is a Research Scientist at the Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking at the University of Washington. Her work focuses on leadership development research, with an emphasis on program assessment and evaluation. This includes supporting the programs administered for leaders in a wide variety of industries and levels, while also managing the Undergraduate Research Assistant program. CodieAnn is also a doctoral candidate in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology program at Seattle Pacific University. Her research includes resilience interventions in the workplace, at multiple lengths and time points. Additionally, she has supported research regarding catalytic leadership and leadership coaching.