How to Develop Emotional Resilience to Manage Stress

Emotional intelligence forms an important part of how we manage ourselves in the world and in our interactions with other people. This course is part of a series of similar courses to give a more in-depth understanding of what emotional intelligence is and how it can be applied.

To start the course, here is a practical activity that encourages you to think about what moods, situations and environments that impact upon your performance, why you are taking the course and what you want to get from it.

Not all stress is bad. Some stress is useful to us to give us motivation and focus. This is called eustress. This lecture looks at the importance of eustress to us and how working with eustress can benefit us.

Managing stress is individual to you.  How you cope with stress will be different to how I cope with stress.  What coping strategies do you use?

This lecture looks at strategies to help with stress management with some hints and tips.

Feedback can be a gift if it is delivered in the right manner and with the right intention.  This lesson looks at why giving constructive feedback is important rather than just being critical. 

This practical activity will give you some insights into how you manage stress and how your view compares with how other people see how you work with stress.

It will help you to put a plan of action in place that you can assess and review with how you are working to manage stress over a period of six months.

If you are going to get the most out of this course, it is important that you complete this exercise! 

(I know that it is very easy to ignore this but you will not develop your self-awareness from just watching the video lectures!)

This part of the course investigates emotions in detail - what they are, their role and why it is important to manage them.

This video covers the learning outcomes of this module.

This lecture looks at the difference between an emotional state, an emotional trait and an emotional style.

This lecture looks at at the biological function of emotions and why they have been valuable to us as a species.

Watch this one minute observation test to get an insight into emotional responses.

A brief overview of the workings of the human brain and where emotions are processed.

This lecture describes the seven basic human emotions that are universally expressed and recognised by all cultures.

As a downloadable resource are the seven basic human emotions looking at how they are expressed on the face as described by Paul Ekman - a clinical and emotional psychologist.

Our understanding of emotion is increasing all the time. Researchers are debating the extent of basic emotions and how they are expressed.

Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions helps us to understand how the basic emotions blend and work together to form more complex emotions.

Emotions are viewed differently today compared with how they have been in the past.

People often talk about positive and negative emotions. This is not that helpful as emotions cannot really be labelled in that way. This lesson looks at why labelling emotions as positive or negative can be unhelpful.

There are many factors that influence the expression of emotion and how you can determine the emotional state of someone else.  This lecture covers a number of these influences.

This lecture looks at how you can notice how you are feeling.

This lecture explores ways to navigate emotions to gain a better understanding of how to work effectively with them.

This lecture looks at how you can master your emotions.

This video reviews the learning objectives for this section on emotion.

This introductory lecture covers the overall objectives of this module of the course looking at why it is important to look at resilience and ways to develop it.

This lesson looks at working with work and helps you to understand some of the challenges that you face.

Resilience is often defined as recovering or bouncing back from adversity and is a definition taken from Material Science. This definition is rather limited and doesn't really explain the complexity of resilience in human behaviour. This lecture looks at what resilience is in more detail and gives a definition of resilience that truly works.

This lecture reviews what emotional intelligence is and why it is important. It summarises how resilience fits into emotional intelligence.

This lecture looks at why and when resilience is useful. It summarises the benefits of emotional resilience as a competence.

Mindfulness is a technique that is being increasingly recognised as having value in developing emotional resilience and managing stress.

This section investigates the emotions that are experienced during any kind of change so that they can be understood in context and managed more effectively.

This lecture covers the learning outcomes covered in this module.

Change is the only constant!

This is a phrase that is often repeated so let's look at what it means and the emotions that we all go through as we work with change.

There is copy of the Personal Transition through Change diagram for you to download.  This change curve was devised by John M. Fisher and originally presented at the Tenth International Personal Construct Congress, Berlin, 1999. This is the most recent version, updated in 2012.

The first phase of a transition through change is anxiety. Why does anxiety occur and how can you help people anxious about change?

People experience happiness about change in the initial stages. Why is this and what does it mean?

People often go into denial during change. How does this occur and what can be done about it?

Anger is expressed in change in a variety of ways. This lecture looks at the types of anger and how to work with anger.

This lecture looks at when disillusionment occurs in change and what can be done about it.

Depression or despair can be the longest and deepest emotional stage of the change process. This lecture looks at depression and despair and how to work with this emotion.

People may become quite hostile during change. When does this occur and how can you help others stuck in this phase?

Gradual acceptance means that emotionally the change is being accepted and adjustments are being made.

Moving forward means that more control is being exerted around the changes and things are happening in a positive sense.

This lecture looks at ways that you can move forward from a setback to make a positive comeback.

This lecture explores how your acceptance and adaptability to change can impact upon how resilient you are.

The final part reviews the learning outcomes covered within this module on personal transition through change.

This lecture gives an overview of the Developing Resilience course to give details about the course structure and how this links to the course goals and learning objectives.

This section looks at a key competency of emotional resilience and stress management - flexibility. This video gives an overview of this section on flexibility and covers the learning outcomes.

This lecture looks at how your personal preferences influence your attitude to flexibility and impacts upon your behaviour.

This lecture looks at the behavioural differences between Planning and Spontaneous Types and what these differences mean.

This lecture explores ways that you can be more flexible irrespective of your preferences.

Change requires flexibility. This lecture looks at how to work with and adapt to change more effectively.

This lecture reviews this section on flexibility and adaptability and introduces the accompanying exercise.

This practical activity gets you to assess and focus on how you use your time preference. This will help you to understand your adaptability under pressure.

If you are going to learn about how flexible you are when working under pressure, it is important that you complete this practical activity!

(I know that it is very easy to ignore this but you will not develop your awareness of your flexibility from just watching the video lectures!)

This section of the course covers another competency of emotional resilience - stress tolerance.   This video covers the learning outcomes.

Some stress is necessary to you to operate and work efficiently and effectively. This lecture explains why and how this works.

The way that we react to stressful situations helps to define our resilience. This lecture looks at what happens with increasing stress.

Emotions contain information.  Understanding this information will help you to understand what you are being told about circumstances and events.

Some emotions will drain your resilience, whilst some will facilitate the development of your resilience.

This lecture looks how emotional informational can help and explores a range of emotions with examples of thoughts to identify the meaning behind these emotions.

How you think about your environment or situation affects your behaviour and this impacts upon your resilience. This is explained within this lecture.

This lecture looks at how you can work to develop your stress tolerance and how to put it to good use.

This lecture reviews the learning objectives and the exercise that accompanies this section on stress tolerance.

This practical activity will give you some insights into how stress affects you personally. It will help you to explore ways that you can manage a currently stressful situation.

It is important that you complete this practical activity to learn about how to work with stress in a situation that you find stressful and to identify how stress impacts upon you. 

(I know that it is very easy to ignore this but you will not develop your awareness of your stress tolerance from just watching the video lectures!)

This series of lectures looks when resilience is useful and eight ways to develop personal resilience.

This lecture covers the learning outcomes of this part of the course.

This lecture looks at the strategy of feeling in control. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate feeling in control and includes some hints and tips.

This lecture looks at the strategy of creating a personal vision. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate creating a personal vision and includes some hints and tips.

This lecture looks at the strategy of being flexible and adaptable. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate being flexible and being adaptable and includes some hints and tips.

This lecture looks at the strategy of getting organised. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate getting organised and includes some hints and tips.

This lecture looks at the strategy of solving problems. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate problem solving and being adaptable and includes some hints and tips.

This lecture looks at the strategy of getting connected. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate getting connected and includes some hints and tips.

This lecture looks at the strategy of being socially competent. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate being socially competent and includes some hints and tips.

This lecture looks at the strategy of being proactive. It covers the emotions that drain and the emotions that facilitate being proactive and includes some hints and tips.

This video gives an overview of this section on optimism and covers the learning outcomes.

This lecture explores the differences between optimism and pessimism and how they affect your outlook on life.

This lecture looks at the health benefits attributed to appropriate levels of optimism.

Here are some hints and tips that will help you to develop your optimism.

Negativity can destroy optimism. However, there are ways to demonstrate optimism and work with negativity to overcome it.

This lecture reviews the learning outcomes and the activity that accompanies this section on optimism.

This practical activity helps you to explore how you view experiences and how you explain good and bad experiences to yourself.

If you are going to learn about how you view experiences, it is important that you complete this practical activity! 

(I know that it is very easy to ignore this but you will not develop your self-awareness around your optimism from just watching the video lectures!)

This is the final series of lectures and looks more specifically at working with other's resilience on an individual level, in teams and in organisations.

This first lecture covers the learning outcomes.

This lecture looks at how to develop resilience in teams focusing on how the team thinks (mapping minds) and how it feels (mapping hearts).

There are a number of commonly used phrases that you probably use often that do not help with the development of resilience but, actually, drain resilience.

This lecture investigates the four things that all resilient teams do.

This lecture looks at some ideas and strategies for strengthening resilience in other people - family members, team members, friends, colleagues, direct reports, etc.

This lecture reviews the learning outcomes for this section on developing resilience in others.

This video investigates some methods for managing stress in the workplace and so improve your mental health.

This practical activity concludes the course How to Develop Emotional Resilience to Manage Stress.

The activity encourages you to consider your reasons for taking the course and to list three learning points.  More importantly, it encourages you to consider how you are going to apply your learning.