It’s been over a year since the coronavirus pandemic began. This quickly became a global crisis, prompting rapid changes and adjustments. This shows that even the most stable and well thought out plans can be derailed, impacting businesses and jobs. To tackle problems during the most challenging of circumstances, it’s important to adopt ‘Resilience Skills,’ which means being flexible and having the ability to quickly react or recover when facing a problem, crisis, stress, or hardship. Being resilient means planning ahead and rebounding stronger. Here are three steps that can help you build your resilience skills:

Face down reality

The first step in handling any crisis is to focus immediately on overcoming it, especially during unprecedented circumstances such as the pandemic. However, acceptance of the situation doesn’t mean giving up or surrendering. We must understand that problems or a crisis can happen at any time and that we must have hope, optimism and the drive in overcoming them.

Search for Meaning

When continually dealing with difficulties to the point where you feel are hitting rock bottom, it’s important to think of the bigger picture and moving beyond the present circumstance. Dig deep for answers. Think of the numerous challenges you have dealt with in the past, the pros and cons, focus on what’s important and relevant in your life, and figure out a path that will move you beyond the current challenge you face.

Continually Improvise

After thoroughly discovering our strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to look ahead and be ready to ‘fight’ using our full capabilities along with improvisation to discover new, different, or unprecedented solutions. Most importantly, do not forget to continue learning and continuing to maintain ‘resilience readiness.’

Resilience comes from positive thinking and having a clear understanding of the challenges you face, together with your accumulated knowledge and experiences. This comprehensive skillset is needed to be able to tackle any stressful or problematic situation. It’s important to be flexible and always resilient so as to recover the right way when facing insurmountable challenges. If you feel like you’re failing or you’ve failed, do not give up. Pick yourself up and face your situation without fear.

Reference and excerpts from: The Secret Sauce Ep. 239, How Resilience Works from ‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Harvard Business Review