With many organisations undergoing bruising change journeys to help them survive in tough economic times and get fit for the future, bolstering resilience is of prime importance for HR professionals – not just for their people, but their teams and themselves too.

Ross Anderson, psychologist and human optimisation consultant, is passionate about helping people flourish and reach their fullest potential. He has a background in wellbeing science and four branches of psychology (neuroscience, sleep psychology, positive psychology and psychological disorders). At this year’s SPDS Conference, Anderson offered a range of tips and techniques to help delegates thrive in challenging times.

Here are four simple ways to help your teams, and yourself, boost personal resilience and navigate disruptive time.

1. See sleep as medicine

A good night’s sleep can help “bridge the gap between hope and despair”, yet today too many people view sleep “as a luxury rather than a necessity”, said Anderson. He added that sleep was “the best legal performance enhancing intervention” there is, and was essential to enable the brain to cleanse itself after a busy day. A lack of good quality sleep can lead to brain fog, a lower ability to regulate emotions, feelings of negativity and attention deficits, among other long term cognitive issues.

However, the average person now only sleeps six hours a night when we should all be having at least seven hours. Anderson said that how we sleep has changed more in the last 150 years than in the previous 150,000, due to our changing environment, primarily increases in artificial light.

Luckily, there are some simple interventions that can really help improve sleep quality:

• Turn off half the lights in your home in the evening to create a more soporific environment.
• Have a digital curfew. Even 15 minutes is better than nothing.
• Wear blue light blocking glasses to aid more restorative sleep.

2. Build self-awareness

“Mental training is a must,” according to Anderson, with the top priority being self-awareness. “It’s about developing a deep and intimate understanding of you: what are your unique strengths and weaknesses? What are your values? What excites you? What are your biggest goals? The deeper you go, the more you know. The more you know, the quicker and further you will go and the more fulfilled you will be.”

To build self-awareness, Anderson advised working on articulating personal vision and life purpose. He offered two exercises to explore alone and with your teams:

• Your best possible self: If you hopped in a time machine and saw yourself in three years’ time, where would you be? What would you be doing? How has your career evolved and what have you achieved? This exercise helps create goals to aim for.
• The lifetime achievement award: Nearing the end of your life, you are given a lifetime achievement award for giving your life in service of something greater than yourself. What is it for? This exercise helps identify your purpose.

3. Increase your EQ

“Increasing your EQ helps you become more balanced throughout the day,” said Anderson, advising people to think about what they are expending too much emotional energy on and redirecting this energy in a more positive direction.

He advised using the Stoic mantra: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

“Don’t contribute emotional energy to things you can’t change,” he urged. “You can’t change death, but you can change how you live. You can’t change how other people feel but you can change how you feel about it. Reflect on what you can control and what you can’t.”

4. Use behavioural change tactics

“If you want to help people flourish, you need to come at it from a behavioural change perspective,” said Anderson. For goal setting, he advised creating an actionable statement, such as committing to a specific action for 30 days, which will then help to set a habit. Tell other people about your plans to help keep yourself accountable – as Anderson put it “no one likes to be seen as flaky and unreliable”.

When setting an intention, he advised choosing smaller and therefore more achievable goals. “When it comes to habit formation, the habit is more important than the intensity,” he explained. “Think about whether you can achieve it even on your worst day. Don’t set the bar too high. Keep yourself on the path and build upwards, bit by bit.”

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Blog by Katie Jacobs, an award-winning freelance journalist, writer and editor, who specialises in writing about the world of work.

She was previously Editor of HR Magazine and Senior Stakeholder Lead at the CIPD.