Resilience insights, perspectives and stories

As the holiday season approaches, it's the perfect time to reflect on the practice of being present. et’s explore the benefits of presence, understand the risks that challenge it, and discover practical ways to cultivate this vital skill.

In its broadest sense, culture is a web of shared values, beliefs, practices, and artifacts that define a group, be it a society, organization, or biological ecosystem. This concept is a mirror reflecting who we are, what is important, and how we interact with each other and the world.

Discover the compelling financial and human advantages of resilience training. Boost your bottom line while nurturing a thriving, resilient workforce.

Opes Partners, a property investment firm in New Zealand, collaborated with the Resilience Institute to improve the well-being and resilience of their employees. Opes Partners aimed to empower its workforce with practical tools and skills to address challenges and achieve better performance, ultimately leading to a 38% increase in resilience scores as a result of the customized resilience training program.

Embracing mental fitness can not only combat the symptoms of poor mental health but also enhance our daily experiences, making us more adept at handling stressors, forging meaningful relationships, and savoring life's pleasures. This article highlights some of mental fitness strategies you can include in your daily life.

This article reveals the symbiotic relationship between human well-being and Earth's health and makes a compelling case for business leaders to take action.

In this article, we explore the quest for a fulfilling career and how it has become open to almost everyone today. Understanding the connection between purpose, flow, and fulfillment, we delve into practical ways to build a satisfying and meaningful professional journey.

Resilience is a critical component in both technology and human resources. Think of a resilient technology system. It can handle a network error or power outage without shutting down. Can we apply this concept of resilience to human teams? The answer is a resounding "yes".

This article by Dr Sven Hansen analyses how Ai can affect the well-being industry, what value can be added by human beings and what could be the risks.

At Resilience Institute, we are committed to helping humanity achieve a more resilient, more sustainable planet.

Workplace culture is one of those things that you can immediately sense, feel, and perceive, yet it remains challenging to articulate. Culture has a significant impact on the effectiveness of an organization and its individuals.

Understanding how calorie counting works, the role food plays in our well-being and how we can all eat a little bit more mindfully.

This article will guide you, the modern HR leader, through the process of planning, running, and evaluating a resilience workshop.

This article aims to help leaders, executives, and professionals understand and improve their presence.

In recent years, the concept of environmental stewardship has gained popularity as more and more people worldwide commit to protecting our planet. It is the idea that humans can play a positive and active role in the environment around us by minimising harm and improving the health of our surrounding ecosystems.

An exploration of wearables that can positively impact mental health

Empower Yourself and Your Team with Redesigned Tools and Improved Functionality.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) dedicates April 28th as World Day for Safety and Health at Work to honor and prevent work-related accidents and illnesses. With the 2023 theme being a Safe and Healthy Working Environment as a Fundamental Principle and Right at Work, organizations can create a cultural revolution by integrating health and safety into their functioning, developing risk management indicators, challenging the attachment of the function, and questioning the profile of their health and safety professionals.

The rise of evidence-based medicine and, specifically, the well-being trend is a wonder. The aim is to increase the quality and quantity of life. Despite all this knowledge, we still show remarkable gullibility.

Resilience is a topic being discussed more and more today. For a good reason, the recent global landscape has exemplified the importance of resilience and highlighted the pitfalls associated with a lack of it. Resilience gives you the strength and courage to continue your journey, despite setbacks or expectations not being met. 

The term emotional intelligence is perhaps one of the trendiest buzzwords in modern organizational psychology. Since author Daniel Goleman first published the book by the same name in 1995, the term ‘emotional intelligence’ has seen exponential growth in terms of how many times it has been referenced in the printed English corpus.

Resilience is the learned ability to bounce forward from adversity and overcome obstacles, and it's a quality that all successful athletes possess. In the world of sports, setbacks and challenges are inevitable.

An article exploring the importance of sleep and the steps we can take every day to improve our sleep quality.

Resilience is defined as the psychological ability to adapt and cope with stress and “bounce back” (or forward) from negative occurrences. When taken to extremes, even adaptive skills take a maladaptive turn. Here are some ways that excessive resilience might become a problem. 

What is a high performing team? This article explores the cultures and habits supporting high-performing teams. We also examine the dynamics of low-performing teams

Loving yourself is the stepping stone to any successful relationship. However, self-love can be a real challenge for some of us. We encourage you to take a little time out of your day to practice self-love. Are you wondering how? Read our latest article.

The Resilience Institute proudly announces the fifth generation of our Resilience Diagnostic and Development Model. This evolution of our framework and toolkit ensures that we will continue to deliver the world’s leading evidence-based and practical resilience assessments, benchmarking and training for our global clients and partners.

Beans come in various shapes and textures (over 20 000 species), and they are packed with more nutrients than any other food. They are inexpensive sources of protein and fiber and provide the majority of vitamins and minerals our bodies need.

Many of us feel we need to be ‘always on’ or we might lose a customer, a friend or critical information. In this article, we shares strategies to help you regain control over your phone.

If the last few years have taught us anything, it's that the workforce is increasingly looking for a healthy and fulfilling work-life balance. Employees are now considering factors beyond just their annual salary package when deciding on a job. Well-being in life and the workplace is an essential component of a fulfilling lifestyle.

If you are feeling low after your holiday, you are not alone. Holiday Blues are well-recognised and common. Here are ten practical lessons to make sure they resolve and never return.

What do we mean by resilience? Right now, for you, humanity, and the planet, resilience is vital to survival and essential for a good life. We must understand and master it. In this article we share our definition or resilience.

It's that time of the year when we are reminded of the beauty of giving, receiving, and practicing gratitude for what we have. However, for many people, the holidays are also one of the most stressful times of the year. n this article, we have created a list of gifts that will make someone you care about happy while also boosting their resilience.

The holiday season is a time to recover, relax, connect with loved ones and celebrate. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the past year so that you can gain some perspective on what went well, what was difficult, and how you can improve.

People leading mental health and well-being can suffer from a lack of it. Read more to find out all about how we can build a more mentally fit workforce, especially in critical environments such a healthcare.

Antifragile is the ability to improve function or capability in the face of adversity—stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks or failures. For example, we found that resilience ratios increased rapidly just after Covid-19. Post-traumatic growth is expected as a normal response to adversity.

As we advance into the third decade of the 21st century, workplaces and leaders realize that they cannot expect individuals to work beyond their capacity without sufficient time for rest and recovery. We call this performance with care.

Rhythm is an ancient foundation of the cosmos, our planet and life. Planetary cycles create seasons, daylight, moonlight, and darkness. We feel the seasons, rain, sunlight, winds and waves on earth. In this article we the importance of rhythms in our daily life.

We sometimes overlook nature’s miracles, as we are so taken by our modern existence. Preoccupied with our agenda, train schedules, telephone, computer, and sales targets, we tend to forget how extraordinary planet Earth is.Excerpt from: “Resilience Quotient" by Alexia Michiels.

Being able to express ourselves clearly and understandably to the diversity of our audience while creating trusting relationships is critical. Especially in the professional field when many of us are geographically scattered and cannot share a common space, sitting next to each other. Read the insights by Pauline Soares how we can do that better.

We are more aware of mental health. Yet, when one of your team is affected, what exactly do you do? How do you talk to someone diagnosed with mental illness? How do you engage with them whilst away or in distress? How do you help them recover? How do you reintegrate them with productive and fulfilling work?

Micro-habits are the antidote to a chaotic world, offering a pathway to sustainable change. We live in a time of hyperconnectivity, complexity and fragmented attention. How can we deliberately reassemble the building blocks of our lives into a formation that is coherent, stable, resilient to external stressors, and maybe even anti-fragile, relishing life's intrinsic volatility?

Successful parenting is a long, challenging journey filled with joy and despair. Our children grow into a storm of chaos, deceit and temptation. Unfortunately, evolution did not prepare our genes for this. Take your time to reflect on the following five tensions and see what improvements you can make in your parenting journey.

In this article, we address current challenges to our sense of connection and what we can do to restore the connection. Many of us feel disoriented post Covid. We are spending far more time connected to screens rather than people.

What I found in France was much different from this kind of survival resilience to which I was accustomed. Instead, the “art de vivre” or the “art of living” that the French embody creates resilience by instilling a sense of purpose, cultivating resourcefulness and adaptability. 

From tribal groups of 150 members or less, we now connect to our global community via tiny glass screens in our pockets. Is increased connectivity causing increasing anxiety? Are we buckling under pressures we have not yet adapted to?

Empathy has been touted as a key leadership skill for many years. When mastered, it is the path to effective influence. Low empathy is a risk for failed leadership. Empathic distress can derail our leadership and can compromise our own wellbeing. The purpose of this article is to clarify the language and skills required for effective leadership.

The name The Miracle Morning comes originally from the book by the same name written by Hal Elrod. Hal has taken the 'best practices'—developed over centuries of human consciousness development—and condensed the 'best of the best' into a daily morning ritual. A ritual that is now part of my day and thousands of others.

A lively debate in a workshop raged over whether being self-critical could be helpful. Some leaders thought one must be demanding and tough on our own performance. They believe this is the only way to achieve results and avoid complacency. Other leaders think that self-critical chatter interrupts work flow. Worse, it can demotivate, depress and even bring a team down.

Most people think that resilience is simply the capacity to endure tough times, however it’s much more complex and powerful than that. Traditionally, workplaces attempt to address complex issues with isolated solutions, resulting in an ineffective, fragmented approach.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia triggers a feeling of ominous threat. This conflict follows a global pandemic, mass migration and a financial crisis. The four horsemen of war, disease, migration, and state failure ride again – this time under the clouds of climate change.

In times of threat and confusion, leadership is urgent. Yet, those leaders who could step up to the challenge are anxious, frustrated, and exhausted. What we need is courage, love, and enthusiasm for a hopeful and realistic vision.

We search for ways to recover, renew, bounce, reset or even pivot into 2022. The past two years have been quite a ride. We in a prolonged pandemic. We have endured unprecedented lockdowns, prolonged isolation, and a raft of unpredicted business pressures.

Rhythm marks wellbeing – physical, emotional, and mental. Without rhythm, we become sick. Could rhythm be the key to mental fitness, health, happiness, and performance? Can you feel your rhythm today?

Every one of us wants more peace, more love, and more joy. Evolution designed us to seek these three markers of a good life. We do everything we can to move towards them. Increasing our experience of peace, love, and joy is the purpose of every religion, philosophy, and science.

A study in Nature Human Behaviour published this week shows promise for mindfulness and positive psychology to improve mental states of wellbeing. As humans confront the changing environments we have created, we are failing to adapt. Despite massive investments, preventable physical, emotion and mental conditions continue to accelerate. We are not solving the challenge of wellbeing.

In New Zealand, we have been lucky. Enjoying summer with total freedom to travel locally, we watched the world suffer through winter with second and third peaks. Perhaps we were even a little smug. We were ranked as the country with the best Covid response by Lowy Institute[1].

There are eight great lessons to help you face the challenges of leadership, parenting, politics, teams, and the hustle of making progress in a testing world. There is no one right way. This is a creative journey of building the presence you want to be in the world. Test the lessons for your own needs. Adapt and refine.

Acknowledging fully the suffering and insecurity many of us face right now, there are lessons and deliberate actions available to help us bounce.

Imagine your team in a meeting with a consultant is pitching a wellbeing solution. The consultant may be a doctor, nurse, psychologist, neuroscientist or lay person. They will present what they think is “wellbeing”, “resilience”, “psychological safety”, “mental health” or many other labels. Seldom do they define what they mean.

A resilient mindset appears as a simple, compelling concept. If we could just acquire such a thing – perhaps with a pill or an app – life would magically become better. A resilient mindset could solve all sorts of problems.

If you are feeling a little uncertain, uneasy, anxious or worried, you are in good company. We will remember 2020 for fires, Covid-19, floods, hurricanes, moral outrage, and massive job losses. There is little to indicate that we are ‘going back to normal.’ A clear understanding of how anxiety works and practical steps to counter it will guide you back to calm and curious playfulness.

In this testing time, we are all concerned about the negative effects of the Covid-19 health, economic and social effects. We ask whether this is true. In a select sample of 1,600 people the crisis has not affected resilience, wellbeing and mental health negatively. In fact, most measures improved.

According to a Forbes article published at the onset of the COVID pandemic, people leaders across all industries are facing similar challenges for their teams and themselves. Using the Resilience Institute’s combination of Bounce, Grow, Connect and Flow, leaders and employees alike can learn the essential skills required to thrive in an uncertain and changing environment.

A search of “burn-out” delivers 485 million results. The term has little clinical or biological substance but it has become increasingly popular. A year ago, the World Health Organisation included “burn-out” as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress. They agree that it is not a clinical diagnosis.

Covid-19 has catapulted us into a strange new world of work. Many of your people are working from home. The initial novelty is wearing off. Business and team leaders wrestle with how to lead and motivate. People leaders wonder how to support people, manage risk and continue learning and development.

One day last week, like many of you, I spent fifteen hours on a computer. This included four group webinars (one of which was a hundred faceless people), six Zoom meetings, and the normal transactional activity of small business. Closing my screen at 7pm, I felt strangely discombobulated. It felt tired (mental fatigue), listless, unsatisfied and dissociated. I call it “LIMBO”. I think you have experienced it.

From the perspective of ecosystems, biodiversity, and resilience, Covid-19 is a gift that no one expected. We have once in a century opportunity for creative leadership.

This webinar features simple solutions to help re-establish effectiveness and wellbeing while working from home. On the call we had Tania Clifton-Smith, Dr Sven Hansen and Brad Hook.

Brad Hook and Manish Arneja from the Resilience Institute are joined by Stuart Taylor from Springfox.com to chat about keeping well and staying productive while working from home. 

Sleep is important - act like it. Focus, mood, energy, metabolism, gut health, recovery, immune function, hormone regulation, memory retention, waste removal, problem solving... Sleep is absolutely necessary for all of these critical functions. Without good sleep, you are compromised. See below for simple steps to improve your sleep.

Make time to discover and savour joy. Every day. Especially now.

Today, “resilience” along with a bewildering list of synonyms is a core topic in parenting, education, business, NGOs, governments, infrastructure, ecosystems and sport. Billions are being invested in new ventures. It is a celebrity feeding frenzy dosed with gurus, placebos, and scams amidst true experts.

Imagine you are surprised by an unexpected reward at your end-of-year function. You are asked to step up to the stage. With a trained vagus nerve, you notice surprise and weakness in your limbs but within milliseconds you become calm, control the anxiety and connect to the occasion with pleasure and gratitude. Your acceptance speech resonates.

Are you often exhausted when you get home after work? If your answer is yes, you may need a reframe.

Vitality is both an output and an input. Those who wait for vitality to come from doctors, public services and luck will suffer. Those who fail to invest in the foundations or take the decision to be vital fall to fatigue, illness and suffering.

The human mind is Velcro for the negative. Based on a high threat environment, a negative and threatening explanation might have been advantageous. Today, pessimism disables you.

The statement “I am contented, joyous and fulfilled” separates the most successful people from the least successful. Nine out ten of the top performers say they are fulfilled 'very often' or 'nearly always'.*

Of the most successful 10% of people in a sample of 21,000, 96% scored “my purpose in life is clear and meaningful” with ‘very often’ or ‘nearly always’.

Part 1 explored what Spirit in Action is and Part 2 scoped out why this is important at individual, community and planetary levels of function. In Part 3 the question to address is: “What exactly should, could or will I do?”

Of the most successful 10% of people in a sample of 21,000, 94% scored “my mind is clear and focused” with ‘very often’ or ‘nearly always’.

We are waking up to the suffering and cost of mental illness. The World Health Organisation estimates that 1 in 4 of us will suffer from mental illness at some point in our lives. Affecting 450 million people today it is the leading cause of illness. The cost to business is USD $1 trillion.

We recognise and acknowledge different spiritual narratives – or religions. Many (see Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy) believe that they share a core wisdom. The core wisdom seeks truth and goodness. Humans, as story-tellers, are free to express the stories that help us make sense of, and apply, wisdom.

Our Resilience Diagnostic and Development model puts “spirit in action” right at the top of our spiral. In a dynamic world of multiple spiritual pathways and secular alternatives, we owe our participant a considered response. We welcome your participation in the dialogue.

In the physical sense, agility is the ability to move quickly and freely, with co-ordination. But this term can also apply to cognitive processing. Mental agility is the ability to think and understand new concepts quickly. Agility is an advantage in both athletic and intellectual pursuits.

So, why isn’t everybody meditating? Even, philosopher of our time, Noah Yuval Harari [ii], recommends meditation. He believes it generates the mental and emotional resilience required in our future of artificial intelligence and increasing human redundancy.

Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) is how strategists describe the modern workplace. Everything is also moving faster. Many work processes that used to take weeks – letters, reporting, travel – are now instantaneous.