Build personal resilience

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-personal-resilience

Introduction

**Course Review: Build Personal Resilience on Coursera** **Overview** In today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving work environment, the need for personal resilience has never been more crucial. The course, **Build Personal Resilience**, offered on Coursera, precisely addresses this need amidst the challenges that globalization and advancing technology pose to our work lives. It delves deeply into understanding stress—an inherent part of managerial roles—and equips participants with the tools and insights required to boost their resilience effectively. This course is tailored for managers, team leaders, or anyone looking to enhance their coping strategies in high-pressure situations. Throughout its various modules, participants will explore the nature of stress, its sources, and practical strategies to cultivate resilience, ultimately fostering both personal and professional growth. **Detailed Review** 1. **Module 1: The Nature of Stress and Resilience** The first week establishes a foundational understanding of the impact of stress in the workplace. The engaging activities, like the *Habit Corner*, help participants identify personal stressors and reactions to them. This module is an eye-opener, showing the pervasive nature of stress and the necessity to build resilience not just for oneself, but for the team as a whole. 2. **Module 2: The Sources of Stress** Building on the foundations laid in the first week, this module invites participants to reflect on their own work experiences and consider the four types of stressors that may affect them. This phase encourages self-awareness and introspection, vital for understanding how to mitigate stress in the future. 3. **Module 3: Approaches to Deal with Stress** Perhaps one of the most insightful sections, this module challenges the belief that stress is entirely unavoidable. It emphasizes the importance of creating a structured work environment and offers perceptual strategies that individuals can employ to manage stress effectively. With practical tips, this module empowers participants to approach stress with actionable strategies rather than fear. 4. **Module 4: Building Resilience** This week touches on integral aspects such as psychological hardiness and the importance of health in maintaining resilience. The exploration of social connectedness is particularly enlightening, stressing how relationships can serve as a buffer against stress. This module invites participants to assess their own support networks, enhancing their understanding of resilience from a holistic perspective. 5. **Module 5: Managing Oneself Effectively: Values and Goals** This module dives deep into time management and personal organization. By reflecting on one's values and goals, participants learn to align their actions with their aspirations, fostering a greater sense of purpose and thereby enhancing resilience. 6. **Module 6: Managing Oneself Efficiently: Time and Personal Organisation** The final module builds on the previous one by offering strategies to manage time more efficiently. The entertaining anecdotes, like the 'live frog' advice from Mark Twain, alongside practical techniques for overcoming procrastination and perfectionism, make this segment both enjoyable and practical. **Recommendation** I highly recommend the **Build Personal Resilience** course. It is not only well-structured but also empowers participants with practical skills to handle the stressors of modern work-life. Each module is designed to build upon the previous one, ensuring a logical progression through the course material. The balance of theory and practical application provides a comprehensive understanding of stress management and resilience-building, making it valuable for both personal growth and managerial effectiveness. Whether you are a seasoned manager or just starting in your career, this course offers insights that are applicable across various contexts. By the end of the course, you will not only possess a greater understanding of your stressors but will also have a toolkit to enhance your resilience and well-being. Don’t let stress hinder your potential—sign up for this course and start building your resilience today!

Syllabus

The nature of stress and resilience

As you know stress is a major problem in today’s dynamic work environment. No doubt you have experienced stress in your working life. However, you may be surprised about the extent of stress and the scale of the problems that it represents to society, organisations, and to their workforces. Stress is a problem for everyone but you will focus on stress as it applies to managers, whether they work in large or small organisations or run their own business. Today, to enhance and prosper at work, you need to develop your capacity to deal with stress and its causes, in other words to build your resilience. In Week 1 you will begin to explore the nature of stress and resilience, a big picture view of the impact of stress, and the role of contemporary forces in society on the growing problem of stress for you and for those you will work with. The guided activities, including the Habit Corner, will help you to determine your stressors, how you respond to them, and compare your approach toa model of stress and resilience.

From last week you will recognise that stress arises from the challenges you face in your work (and in your lives). This week, in relation to the framework of stress you will reflect on and analyse your personal work experiences to evaluate your own sources of stress. Four types of stressors will be introduced and discussed in detail. Understanding the nature of sources of stress will help you generate insights for building resilience both for you and for those you manage and work with in the future.

Having so far examined the sources of stressors that you are likely to have encountered and the impact or reactions to stress you'll now turn your attention to becoming more resilient to stress through the adoption of approaches to manage stress. First, you will explore whether you can eliminate stress from your life. While you may think it is impossible to eliminate stress, it is important to realise that for many people the way you structure your work environments can have a profound impact on the level of stress encountered. Why suffer if you don’t have to? Given the important insight that people can react very differently to stressful situations, you will explore how your perceptions play a role in the impact of stress you experience. You will look at a number of these perceptual aspects and consider insights that you may employ to manage your stress. Finally, you will examine how improving your skills to deal more appropriately with the demands placed upon you can have a significant impact on the experience of stress.

This week you will continue to explore how to build resilience by looking at a number of features of resilient people. First, you'll explore the psychological aspects of resilience – in particular, the concept of hardiness and how your emotions play a role in how well you deal with stress. In addition, you will investigate the relationship between resilience and health. You know that when you are tired or have low energy or are feeling unwell you are more likely to react poorly to stressful situations. Finally, you will examine resilience from the perspective of social connectedness. While your interactions with others can often be a source of stress, you also seek out people to share and talk to about your stress. Resilient people are typically part of social networks, family and friendship groups, that can support us in times of stress. By considering these various aspects of resilient you are able to reflect on your own resilience profile.

Given the pressures and demands on time, a critical skill for managers relates to how well you manage your time and personal organisation. Indeed, your ability in managing your time plays an important role in your overall level of resilience. This week you will examine your time management from the perspective of how effectively you manage yourself. Effectiveness refers to the extent that your actions link to your values and important goals. You will reflect on your work goals and values and the extent that they link with your current behaviour at work and explore ways to develop the effectiveness of your time and personal organisation.

Last week’s you were introduced to the idea that you can can enhance resilience through improving your time and personal organisation skills. These skills were highlighted by ensuring that your behaviour reflects what you value and cared about. This week, you will look at time and personal organisation skills by exploring how you go about your work to ensure that it is done in the most efficient way possible. The famous American author Mark Twain once said that you should eat a live frog in the morning and then you won’t have to do anything so unpleasant for the rest of the day. Of course Mark Twain was not literally referring to eating a frog but emphasising the view that doing things you find difficult is easler first thing in the morning. This advice and many other tactics have been discussed in the time management literature as ways to enhance your behaviour in managing your time and personal organisation. This week you will explore strategies to enhance your skills in managing your time – how to do what you have to do more efficiently. You will also examine two common problems facing many people in dealing with demands on their time: the tendency to put off doing what you should be doing (i.e. procrastination) and the desire to do things perfectly (i.e. perfectionism). Finally, you will recap the course and apply the lessons to make changes to your behaviour to help build resilience.