Resilience is defined by Merriam-Webster as the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. Building resilience into your business gives it more resources to overcome unexpected complications, more easily clear the hurdles of business progression, and weather fluctuations in the economy. For people, resilience is a trait associated with greater longevity and greater overall life satisfaction. Resilient individuals are generally happier, healthier, and better able to navigate whatever life throws at them.
Mental resilience allows people to absorb and respond to new circumstances more effectively, while physical resilience helps the body recover from injuries and fight off illness more rapidly. In addition, fostering emotional resilience can help to shield individuals from commonly experienced mental health concerns, such as anxiety and depression. Fortunately, we can all take steps to increase our resilience. Developing positive habits, such as getting regular exercise, meditation, and adequate sleep can help encourage resilience. It can also be bolstered by a strong social network and sense of purpose.
Joining a coworking community like Cohere Coworking fosters personal and professional resilience in several ways:
Book a tour of Cohere Coworking today and reinforce your resilience!
The American Psychological Association lists five core suggestions for increasing personal resilience—building connections, fostering wellness, finding purpose, embracing healthy thoughts, and seeking help. Let’s examine how each of these concepts is addressed by becoming a member of an active and open coworking community, and how they can apply to your professional resilience as well.
Building connections
A strong social support system that includes positive relationships has long been known to promote resilience. Studies indicate that strong social connections improve resilience by reducing an individual’s stress response, even in reaction to physical pain.
Businesses also benefit from healthy connections. This includes connections with their employees and contractors as well as connections with other businesses. Coworking communities frequently have members with a wide range of jobs and prior experiences, who are likely more than happy to share their ideas or even collaborate on a project or two.
Friendship-based coworking communities like Cohere Coworking strive to cultivate lasting connections between members. Cohere facilitates connection by hosting member events like Crafternoon and regular potlucks as well as technology-based communications such as an active Slack channel and hybrid work sprints and productivity meetings.
Fostering Wellness
Businesses, careers, and human beings require maintenance. To grow and thrive they must be watched over and tended to. For businesses and careers, fostering wellness is usually comprised of small, repetitive tasks like managing social media, balancing the books, or compiling reports. These types of tasks can easily become tedious, leading to mistakes. For many members, these tasks are easier to manage when in a productive and collaborative environment—like a coworking space.
For people, this type of personal maintenance is referred to as self-care. Many coworking spaces have amenities designed to help nurture their members’ sense of wellness. Cohere not only hosts regular yoga sessions in their large conference room, but we just added a new bookable space for serenity and self-care that we are calling the Oasis for Health room. The Oasis for Health has soft, comfortable seating for up to four individuals, and provides a soothing environment for relaxation or a comfortable spot to take telehealth, counseling, or personal calls. The room sits just off to the side of our Hobbiton work area and will be available for booking starting on March 21st.
Finding Purpose
Finding the purpose that drives you personally and professionally is something that each person needs to do for themselves. That being said, finding your purpose, either personally or professionally, is a lot easier when you have the resources to explore your options. One of the biggest benefits of being part of a coworking community is the wide breadth of knowledge and experience available to its members, through its members.
Embracing Healthy Thoughts
Remote workers and entrepreneurs can be especially susceptible to issues like loneliness, perfectionism, and depression, especially when we work in isolation. Regularly visiting a productive environment like a coworking space can help us stay focused on our tasks, ensuring that it gets done efficiently and effectively.
Members at Cohere often take refreshing walks in Old Town Fort Collins together, share lunch times, or commiserate about the less-than-successful moments, as well. It can be immensely helpful to have a community of like-minded professionals to offer suggestions and provide perspective when plans go awry.
Seeking Help
One of the core values of coworking is openness because, without some degree of openness and collaboration between the members, coworking loses its luster. This is because the biggest draw of a coworking space is not the space, but the people that populate it.
When the APA added “seeking help” to the list, they were referring to contacting a mental health professional, and by all means, if you are in a crisis don’t hesitate to contact a professional. In many cases, however, the help we need is a little tamer. We might need a client referral, a suggestion for a good hotel in the area, or a ride to the doctor. And that is where a large supportive community comes in handy.
Coworking communities, like the one at Cohere Coworking, create an ideal environment in which to develop and reinforce resilience, for both yourself and your career. Coworking fosters a sense of community and belonging that encourages members to develop the social support they need to face life’s challenges and not just survive—but thrive.
Give yourself the space to thrive. Book a tour of Cohere Coworking today!
Penny Leigh Sebring is a Cohere member, experienced freelance writer, neophyte speculative fiction author, and gatherer of information and imaginary friends.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash