Build on Resilience to Meet Your 2022 Goals

RESILIENCE – A word we heard quite a bit of in 2021, and that we can relate with. Below are key tips to help you strengthen your resiliency muscle to meet your goals for 2022. While going through each of these, consider any or all the facets in your life; family, relationships, career, travel, hobbies, health & wellness, financial goals, ongoing learning/skill-building, etc.

Resilience is Taking Action to Start, Stop, and Continue. You may have had this conversation with your supervisor or direct reports to help strengthen work performance, but this exercise is just as beneficial for self-reflection for building strength and resiliency. It’s about prioritizing what contributes to your goals; mentally, physically, and emotionally – not what everyone else does or recommends, but what feels right for YOU. I started prioritizing health and wellness. I started by eating clean at least 4-5 times a week. I make green juices and protein shakes, along with meal prepping, to ensure that I am getting the proper nutrients and diet. I stopped focusing on my weight on the scale since it was not helping me on my longer-term goal of overall health and since I added on weight training, all of which helped me build another level of strength. With that, I continued physical fitness on another level.

To meet your 2022 goals, what will you start, stop, and continue, when it comes to your health & wellness, career, relationships, etc.? Never aim to be 100% perfect in the areas you choose, but the key is to commit on what YOU need to Start, Stop, and Continue for YOU and to act on it daily or weekly. 

Resilience is Actively Practicing Gratitude. Having experienced so much grief personally and a as a society because of the global pandemic, racial tensions, divisiveness, and other challenges, it is so easy to find ourselves in a place of constant sadness, misunderstandings, and uncertainty, but remaining in that place only sinks us deeper into these feelings. No matter what your challenge is, keep in mind that someone out there has it ten times worse – you didn’t get the promotion, well someone just lost their job; you lost your job, well someone else didn’t receive the severance package you did, etc.  This doesn’t mean to ignore your own emotional state, as it is important to acknowledge and grieve, however, it is critical to pivot to positivity, viewing your challenges as “not as bad as it seems” and to have gratitude for the learning opportunity.

The challenge to keep a business running during the ongoing pandemic was a steep one indeed but staying positive and successfully pivoting quickly helped to ultimately be grateful for the challenge to begin with, and ultimately have a thriving year. 

Just as critical, is to embrace the small things every single day. From the coffee you sip on in the morning to the image of the puppy on your social media feed, to the sunshine, etc... take time to embrace these moments and to be thankful for them.  Use this free assessment to help you.

 To meet your goals in 2022, how quickly can you shift challenges you face to a more positive direction? Practice gratitude to get you there!    

Resilience is Giving Yourself Grace. And most importantly, be kind to yourself by practicing self-grace for the guilt that sometimes comes along when you prioritize YOU and your goals, and the failures that inevitably happen. Meeting goals do not come without sacrifices and tough decisions. The path to meeting goals is not straightforward – there will be bumps and challenges along the way, and it is how we react that makes the difference. Be kind to yourself by acting on things that help you get a step closer to your goal, even if it means saying “no” to opportunities or people that may not contribute to your personal and professional goals. In the book, Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, she defines self-grace as wholeheartedness and as “…cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect,…and worthy of love and belonging”. And when you get off track, have a self-ritual ready to go when you feel that you have failed – we all fail. I first talk to myself and say exactly that, talk to my sister or mentors, go for a run, or have a couple glasses of wine. But then after that “woe is me” process where I allow myself to grieve and complain, I must give myself grace, drop it and keep it moving.  

 To meet your goals in 2022, how will you set boundaries, stay focused and be kind to yourself along the way?

What resiliency building tips and advice do you have? Share in the comments below.

In 2021, there is so much that we have been challenged with, and 2022 is the time to take the resiliency muscles that have been tested and strengthened and put it all into practice to meet your goals for 2022 and beyond!!!!  Wishing you an impactful and meaningful year, the best year yet!

 Check out these free tools:

• Gratitude Assessment by Darren Hardy
• Daring Leadership Assessment by Brené Brown