How to Build Resilience and Why it is Crucial for Executive Assistants

How to Build Resilience and Why it is Crucial for Executive Assistants 

Building resilience is not only vital for executive assistants, it’s a critical trait to have as a human being as well. Many professionals encourage leaving home at home and working at work. Yet, given the monumental paradigm shift from in-office work settings to remote work settings, it can be extremely difficult to separate one from the other. This makes it imperative for executive assistants to understand how to build resilience.

Merriam-Webster defines the essential meaning of resilience as: “the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.” It’s plain to see how this trait is a crucial one to have in life. As an executive assistant, resilience is crucial given your workload and the number of tasks you must juggle daily. So, let’s uncover how you can build more resilience.

Focus on Your Mindset for Building Resilience

The mind is a powerful thing. Understanding how your mindset changes and varies depending on the situation can serve you well as you take on tasks and duties at work. Having the right mindset can ultimately determine whether you will approach your tasks with resolve and excitement or dread and fear. Ensuring that your mind is in the right place at all times is paramount to your success.

Understanding Your Thoughts

It can be extremely challenging to make sure that your mind is always in the right place. With so many factors of our daily lives influencing our decisions on a daily basis, our mindset can often shift drastically. 

The first and most crucial step toward maintaining the right mindset is by recognizing your thoughts. By recognizing your thoughts, you unknowingly pave the way to your second step. The second step is to decide whether or not to give power to the thoughts running through your mind. Lingering on negative thoughts encourages negativity and can be detrimental to your success.

Deriving Motivation From Good and Bad

With this in mind, there is a way to transform your negative thoughts into positivity. The third and final step in bolstering a positive mindset is focusing the energy derived from positive or negative thoughts on something useful. Whether you’re looking forward to a night out or your child has been sick, you can use either feeling or positivity or negativity regarding these thoughts to create motivation. Understanding where your mind goes, how those thoughts affect you, and how to harness the power and energy of those thoughts are integral to building resilience. After all, what is resilience in the workplace other than a mindset?

Build Resilience by Understanding Your Tendencies 

Your mindset is also greatly affected by your tendencies. With so many people, including executive assistants, now working in a remote environment, daily routines can become tedious and repetitive. Sometimes, waking up, logging on, logging out, and going to sleep can feel like Groundhog Day. If this is getting to you, it’s time for a change. The same goes for anything occurring in the workplace for those who still work in the office. 

If you’re feeling burnt out, anxious, tired, etc., it’s time to figure out what is making you feel that way. Introduce new activities to your routine, or do something as simple as taking a day off. You will be amazed at how much you can change your mindset by understanding and adjusting your tendencies. 

Create a Welcoming Work Environment

Maybe you need to work on the feng shui of your workplace, be it at home or in the office. Maybe you should take short breaks here and there or even log out and go for a walk. Whatever the case, creating a welcoming work environment that gets you excited to work is another key way to build resilience. After all, those who love what they do never work a day in their life! 

Be sure to create a workspace that you love and surround yourself with people you want to be around. If someone at work or at home is bothering you for whatever reason, communicate with them. Or, if you work better in solitude, be sure to voice that to those around you. This will allow for a more tranquil workspace. Ultimately, you deserve a work environment that will get you excited to sit down and get to work!  

Want to Learn More? 

Check out ASAP’s Eight Essential Soft Skills for Career Success. This article features amazing tips and tricks that you can work on at home or in the office to build resilience. Whatever you do, be sure to focus on your mindset!