Top tips for resilience: Knowing and using your strengths

Introduction In these top tips, Cornelia Lucey, psychologist and leadership consultant presents some possible approaches to building resilience for teachers and educationalists and shares ways they can be applied to build resilience. It is important to note that these are only some tips to help you cope with everyday challenges at work and beyond. It is advisable to seek out professional help if you need support with your mental health. Education Support, a charity dedicated to supporting the mental health and well-being of education staff, also provides many helpful resources. What's the idea?  Our strengths are the things we are good at, care about and that make us feel good when we apply them. Essentially, our key strengths are those that energise us, engage us and that feel effortless (Biswas-Diener, Kashdan and Minhas, 2011). This doesn’t imply that there aren’t other things that we’re good at and that we’ve learnt to be good at, there are just