When you own a remodeling company, the one characteristic that’s the most important to have — in my opinion — is resilience. 

Resilience is the ability to learn from your setbacks and mistakes. Resilient small-business owners learn how to turn mistakes into opportunities. They learn to look past the immediate setbacks and keep their eyes firmly on their long-term goal. 

Essentially, small-business owners must learn to see the forest for the trees and not get hung up on the minutiae. The details of the setback or the finer points of the mistake don’t matter. What matters is how you deal with those setbacks and keep moving forward.  

I recently read an article from an organization called Hello Driven, which identified six domains that have a significant impact on your resilience. Here’s a synopsis. 

Vision

Hello Driven says vision is the most important of the domains. Vision is about your sense of purpose, goals, and personal vision for yourself. This is the most important domain because all other domains are guided by what you want to achieve. 

Having clear vision allows you to be decisive when facing tough choices, and to maintain perspective when facing challenges. What’s important is being specific and clear. The more clarity you have, the easier it is to make decisions — you know what’s important and what’s not. This helps you stay focused. 

Composure

Composure is about regulating emotions when big and little things happen. It’s the ability to be calm when you’re facing conflict or hearing about a sudden change at work. It’s not wasting energy on stuff like traffic jams or inconveniences. Composure in these instances is important because becoming emotional prevents you from thinking clearly and critically. 

Reasoning

Creativity and innovative problem solving is incredibly useful when facing challenges along the way. This is what the reasoning domain is all about — taking action ahead of time to prevent things from going wrong in the first place. In fact, it’s mostly about proactive action. This is like going to the dentist regularly so you won’t need a root canal later. Think proactively through how things may go wrong and take action ahead of time to prevent or minimize impact.

Plus, a high reasoning ability means you welcome a changing environment because you know that it always brings hidden opportunities. By maintaining your composure and knowing what you want to achieve, change is no longer a threat. You can look for things others might have missed, helping you to succeed.

Tenacity

Persistence is the key. Einstein pointed out the importance of persistence for success when he said that “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” In a small business, success is not a given. You need to be willing to work hard and smart and stay with a problem if you hope to achieve something. You also have to realize that mistakes will crop up regularly,  take them in stride, and learn from them. 

Be realistic about your goals. Research shows that those who are overly optimistic about succeeding are less likely to, since they tend to give up at the first sign of trouble. What’s more useful for success is to have a sense of “realistic optimism.” That means you’re hopeful about your ability to succeed, but realize the road will be tough and full of challenges. 

Collaboration

In a complex world, few of us can achieve anything meaningful alone, so it’s crucial to build support networks. These function as a safety net while creating one for others. This is where Roundtables comes in. Participation in the special Roundtables Community can be a major asset in helping you create and maintain resilience. 

Health

Good health means looking after your body through eating right, making time for regular exercise, and getting quality sleep. A healthy body provides a strong foundation for your own resilience so you can focus on your sense of purpose and goals. Good health is not the ultimate goal, but instead enables you to achieve your larger personal vision.

What’s great about these examples is we absolutely have the capacity to build and improve our own resilience by paying attention to each of these domains. Strengthening one’s resilience is a lifelong and ongoing journey. Your efforts here improve your quality of life while directly contributing to the success that you can achieve in business and in life! Here’s to a fabulous future for all of us.