I want to talk about resilience, its power, and how to increase it; because as we learn what it is and how to increase it, our chances of success will go up greatly.

Basically, resilience is “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.”  It also means “toughness.” Things are not always going to go the way we have planned.  That’s life.  You may have a perfectly laid out plan but soon you’ll realize that it won’t necessarily go according to plan.

One of the keys to really having a solid plan in place it’s to develop toughness and an understanding that things are going to change. 

As we work on our plan, and our vision, we need to be willing to shift gears here and there.

One of the essential aspects of resilience is being “self-aware.”  It’s knowing where you are, who you are, your own personality, your strengths, your emotions, and being aware of your weaknesses.

You don’t want to focus on your weaknesses, but you do want to be aware of them.  Everybody has weaknesses, but being aware of them allows us to recognize them and work around them. 

When we recognize where our weaknesses are, then we can reach out to somebody for coaching, support, and mentoring. The awareness of your weaknesses might send you in the direction of “outsourcing” which means having somebody to do that which you are not fully capable of. 

You are being efficient when you learn how to get around your weaknesses and use resources that help you to accomplish your goal.  A great way to overcome your weaknesses is:

    • Identify your weakness 
    • Formulate a plan to get around that, by working on making it a strength. 
      How do you do that?  
    • Inundate your brain with positive materials and philosophies; read courses, go through training, and all kinds of things like that. 

Being self-aware is incredibly important to building resilience and toughness, to raise the ability to bounce back quickly.

It’s very common in the Marketing career to be faced with challenges.  Don’t allow yourself to become so frustrated with a challenge, whether technical or of another nature, that you throw the towel.

It is an absolute fact that we will have disappointments.  But whenever that happens we don’t have to grovel about that.  It's totally fine and normal to recognize the frustration, and want to complain about it. 

There's nothing wrong with voicing frustration, as long as you don't stay there.  There are two ways in which to deal with the frustration of disappointment:

    1. You talk about it.  Get it out of your system.
    2. From that point on, decide to move forward.

Some people adopt a “toxic positivity” which means they are “so positive” that they ignore the problem in front of their faces. 

That is not how you become resilient.

You become resilient by learning to deal with the issue with a positive outcome mindset.  You have a positive outlook to reach.  How you apply positivity is what makes the difference.

Another aspect of building resilience is that you have to “Self Care.”  In other words: “me time” or “taking care of yourself.” That looks different for everyone.

Some people become so obsessed with getting a result that they literally stay up all night and hardly sleep. And it burns them out to the point where they end up quitting anyway.

In that sense, they are not serving themselves or their families.  Self-care is important. A good night's sleep is so crucial to your success. 

This whole idea of no sleep and constant hustle is absolutely detrimental to your health, your outcome, and your productivity. 

I know from experience that a bad amount of sleep at night equals bad productivity during the day.

Also what you eat is very important.  To build the resilience you have got to have good energy.  Make sure you address any health issues you may have. 

If you don’t sleep well at night–for example, if you snore–you may want to get a sleep apnea test and use a CPAP machine if you need it.  Those are some aspects of taking care of yourself.  Make sure when you are at your desk every morning, you are ready to go.

Love the business, work the business.  But for me–since I’m full-time with this–I make sure that the weekends are off limits because it's family time for me.

I have got to take care of myself too. On weekends I separate, and I do very little work. It’s all about self-care.

Also, building positive relationships with people, and becoming part of a community; it’s very important for building resilience.  Find people in your space that you can connect with, people that you can trust.  You need a community of people that are there to support you.

You want to dive deeper and really find your core two or three people that you can bounce ideas off of regularly.  You need somebody to consistently touch bases with, to pray for each other, to encourage each other, to give to and take good advice from.  You need a good friend that's going to help lift you up when you're not feeling it. 

Since the internet could be very lonely, you need to have a positive relationship with people.  This is why being a part of a community is so important, not only for your business but also plays into your self-care. It plays into your weaknesses and your strengths.

It's just one of those core aspects that are crucially important for the success of the individual and the individual is YOU!

To summarize, there are 3 main aspects to building resilience:

    1. Work on self-awareness.  Be aware of where you are weak, where you are strong, be aware of your emotions, and where you're at. 
    2. Make sure you're taking care of yourself. 
    3. Make sure that you're building some positive relationships with people so that when you're feeling down and you need some “buddy” to pick you up, you have those friends.  Find those people.  

All that will make a huge difference and you would have built resilience.

Does this help you?

If so leave me a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

You rock,

PS: Want to work directly with me? Click Here

    2 replies to "How To Build Up Your Entrepreneurial Resilience"

    • Baxter Cribbs

      Awesome advice! – Mark.
      sleep should be approached as if you are going into the weight room to attack the weights. Make a winning game to get not 7-9 reps but 7-9 hours. That is the base for all the other virtues.

      • Mark Harbert

        YES< 100% agree.

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