Develop Your Resilience

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from tough situations and to avoid becoming a victim of helplessness. Being resilient can help you manage stress, lower your chances of depression, and has even been proven to make people live longer. You may feel like you've had so much bad luck that it's impossible to come out strong on the other end, but that stops here. Once you learn to seize your life by the reins and prepare for the unexpected, you'll be on your way to being a more resilient person -- and to living a happier, more purpose-filled life. Increasing your resilience can be attained by coping healthfully with difficult emotions and situations, engaging in resilient actions, thinking resiliently, and maintaining your resilience in the long-term.

Steps

Coping with Difficult Situations

1. Manage your stress. While it can be difficult to stay calm during times of hardship and worry, the stress impedes your ability to remain resilient. Managing stress will allow you to tackle the difficulties with greater serenity and focused thinking instead of burying yourself down deeper and trying to hide. Make stress management a priority, no matter how busy you are.
   • If you are overbooked and under slept, see if there are any commitments you can cut back on.
   • Indulge in activities that let you completely unwind. Give yourself that space and peace to relax regularly, thereby giving your resilience a chance to increase.
   • Engage in positive activities to reduce stress and increase your positive mood.
   • Think of stress as a challenge or opportunity. If you are stressed, this means you care deeply about something that you are doing. You are worried about it. Use your stress as a way to inform you about your priorities and obligations. Change your thinking from stress-related thoughts such as, "I don't have enough time," to, "I know that I can do this. I just have to organize my responsibilities."
2. Meditate. Meditating can help you clear your mind, lower stress, and feel more ready to face the day and any challenges ahead of you. Studies also show that just 10 minutes of meditation can make you feel as rested as getting another hour of sleep, as well as making you feel more relaxed and able to cope with your problems. If you feel overwhelmed or burnt out, meditating can help you slow down and feel in control of your situation.
   • Just find a comfortable seat and close your eyes, focusing on the breath rising in and out of your body. Work on relaxing your body one part at a time. Block out any noise or distractions.
3. Do yoga. A study from Harvard Medical School showed that people who do yoga as opposed to other forms of physical fitness were less prone to angry outbursts and more capable of dealing with challenges. When you do yoga, you will strike challenging poses and will learn to build strength and endurance in holding the poses even when your body is begging you to stop; this builds up your ability to "stick with" challenging situations and to find the resources to stay calm and determined.
4. Cultivate your sense of humor. Hard times call for looking at the lighter side. Humor helps you to gain perspective during hard times. It also improves your sense of well-being through an increase in dopamine levels in your brain, and can ultimately increase your overall health.
   • Watch a comedy, read a funny book, and spend time around people who are genuinely funny. When going through hardships, be sure to balance your sorrowful movies, books, and thoughts, with funny, humorous ones, to prevent you from hitting the bottom of the pit of despair.
   • Learn to laugh at yourself. The ability to not take yourself so seriously will make it much easier to face challenges with a smile on your face.
5. Reach out for support. Lack of social support can lead to decreased resilience. While it's easy to let go of important relationships in our frenetic lives, it is important to make room for them. Good relationships are a pillar of rock for resilience and are a source of support when the times get tough. Maintain your family and friend relationships and you'll have an instant, trustworthy and reliable support network around you at all times.
   • One study of 3,000 nurses with breast cancer showed that the nurses with 10 or more close friends were four times more likely to survive than those without.
6. Find a mentor. Since lack of social support can lead to less resilience, finding a mentor can help you deal with life when it gets tough. You may feel that your life is hopeless and that life is caving in all around you, and having an older and wiser person who has been there can help you feel like you're not alone and like you're equipped to deal with life's challenges.
   • This can be a person who is succeeding in your field, a grandparent, an older friend, or really anyone who can help you achieve your goals and face adversity with a level head.
   • If you are school-aged (elementary through college), a school counselor or coach can serve as a useful mentor and support for you.
7. Focus on your health. It might be important to talk through the problems you're facing with someone who is in a position to help you make sound decisions about seeking therapy, using medicinal options, and finding any other sources of support that you may need. While you can face difficulties yourself, it's important to talk to a doctor to make sure you're doing so the best way possible.
   • Seeing a doctor is not a sign of weakness; admitting that you may need some help actually takes a lot of strength.

Taking Action to Promote Resilience

1. Be a person of action. Being idle can lead to less resilience, but being active and tackling your problems head-on can promote your ability to deal with tough situations. Try to avoid ruminating over negative thoughts or ideas. Instead, do something about the situation.
   • For example, if nobody wants to publish the novel you wrote, that doesn't mean you have to let your worth lie in what other people think about your work. Be proud of yourself for a job well done, keep trying to get published, or try something new.
   • If you got fired, pick yourself up and look for another job -- or even consider finding a job that gives you more value and makes you happier, even if you take your career down a new path. Though it may not feel like it, getting fired may be the best thing that ever happened to you. Try to think about the positives and move toward a solution.
2. Find your purpose in life. Having goals and dreams increases resilience. A lack of purpose and goals reduces resilience and may leave you open to being taken advantage of, manipulation, and poor life choices; it reduces your sense of control over your life, which can easily lead to depression and anxiety.
   • Consider what goals you have, whether little or large. These goals give a sense of purpose to your life and keep you focused. Write down a list of things you want to accomplish in life. Keep this list in a safe place and evaluate your progress regularly.
   • Learn to recognize what gives you a sense of purpose in life and what detracts from that. Live your life in accordance with your values and convictions.
3. Work toward your goals. If you want to be a more resilient person, then you have to not only set goals, but you have to work to achieve them. Making a plan to achieve your goals -- whether you're getting an advanced degree, getting more physically fit, or trying to get over a break up – can help you feel directed, focused, and driven.
   • Make a goals list of everything you want to achieve in the next month, 6 months, and year. Make sure each goal is realistic and achievable. An example of an achievable goal would be to lose 10 lbs in 3 months. An unrealistic (and unhealthy) goal would be to lose 20 lbs in 1 month.
   • Make a week-by-week, or month-by-month plan for getting what you want. Though life is unpredictable and you can't plan everything, setting out some sort of a plan can help you feel more in control of the situation, and more likely to succeed.
   • Tell other people about the goals you want to achieve. Just talking about your goals and discussing what you're going to do may help you feel more obligated to achieve them.
4. Seek knowledge. People who are resilient tend to be more curious, excited about life, and want to know more. They embrace the unknown and want to feel more knowledgeable about the world. They are excited about other cultures and want to learn about them, and they are well-informed and confident in their views while being able to admit when they want to know more about something. It's this thirst for knowledge that will keep you excited about life, and may make you want to live on in spite of adversity. The more you know, the more equipped you may feel to deal with a major setback or challenge.
   • Learning a foreign language, read books and the papers, and watch exciting films.
   • Resilient people are always asking questions when they are faced with a new situation. Ask questions until you feel like you have a firm grasp of a situation instead of feeling immobile and unable to deal with it.

Changing Your Thoughts toward Resilience

1. Develop a positive attitude. Having positive thoughts leads to positive emotions, which can increase your overall resilience. Sure, it's not easy to have a positive attitude when you broke your arm in a car accident that wasn't your fault, or when you've been rejected by the last five girls you've dated. It's a tough situation-- but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Your ability to be optimistic and to see your setbacks as isolated incidents instead of indicators of your future success is precisely what will make you succeed in the future. Tell yourself that just your positive attitude alone has the ability to help you seize more opportunities, be creative about ways to improve your life, and to feel more fulfilled overall.
   • Find a way to nip your negative thoughts in the bud. Any time you notice that you think or feel something negative, try to think of three positive thoughts to fight those negative ones.
   • You know what will go a long way in helping you be more positive? Hanging out with positive people. Positive attitudes, just like negative attitudes, are infectious, so spend more time with people who see opportunity at every turn instead of whiners and complainers, and pretty soon, you'll be noticing the change within yourself.
   • Avoid catastrophizing. Though something truly awful may have happened to you, chances are it's not the end of the world. Try to think of an alternative or more positive outcome.
   • Focus on your past successes. What have you done well? What have you achieved? Make a list of all of the positive things you have done in your life. You may begin to see just how resilient and accomplished you already are.
2. Embrace change. One major aspect of being more resilient is learning to deal with and accept change. Studies show that if you view the changes in your life as challenges instead of threats, you will be much more equipped to deal with them. Learning to adapt to new situations, whether it's moving to a new place or becoming a new parent, is a survival skill that will help you find creative solutions to new problems and to face adversity with relative calm and ease.
   • Work on being open-minded. Avoid judging people for how they look, what they do, or what they believe. Not only will this help you learn something new, but being aware of a variety of perspectives can help you see the world in a new way if you're forced into an unfamiliar situation.
   • A way to get better at embracing change is to always be trying new things, whether you're making new friends, picking up a new painting class, or reading a new genre of books. Keeping things fresh can make you less resistant to change.
   • View change as an opportunity to grow, adapt, and transform. Change is necessary and good. Tell yourself, "I accept this change. It can help me grow and become a stronger, more resilient, person."
   • If you are spiritual or religious, prayer or other traditional practices can help you accept change. Have faith that things will work out the way they are supposed to, even if they aren't exactly how you imagined them. Ask your higher power for help in accepting change.
3. Problem-Solve. Part of the reason some people struggle with being resilient is because they don't know how to face their problems. If you develop a workable method of dealing with challenges, you'll be more likely to feel capable of solving them and of not feeling hopeless. Here is a helpful approach for dealing with a problem in front of you:
   • Understand the problem first. You may feel that you're unhappy with your job because you're not being paid enough, but if you dig deep, you may see that it's really because you feel that you aren't following your passion; this presents an entirely new set of problems than the one you thought you were faced with originally.
   • Find more than one solution. Be creative and identify multiple solutions; if you think there's only one solution to the problem (i.e. quitting your job and trying to play in a band full-time) then you'll run into issues because your approach may not be practical, doable, or may not be able to make you happy in the long run. Make a list of all of the solutions and pick your top 2-3 candidates.
   • Put it into action. Evaluate your solution and see how much it was able to help you succeed. Don't be afraid to get some feedback. If it didn't work out, don't look at it as a failure, but as a learning experience.
4. Learn from your mistakes. Focus on what you can control - yourself. Another quality of resilient people is their ability to learn from their mistakes and to see them not as setbacks but as opportunities to grow. People who are resilient take the time to think about what didn't work so they can avoid running into the same kind of trouble in the future.
   • If you find yourself feeling depressed or anxious after rejection or failure think about how it can help you grow stronger instead. You can think something like, “What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.”
   • As the saying goes, "A clever man learns from his mistakes. A wise man knows how to avoid them." Though you can't always avoid your first mistakes, you can gain the wisdom that will help you not to make the same ones in the future. Focus on solutions or ways to avoid the same situation in the future.
   • Look for patterns of behavior. Maybe your last three relationships haven't failed just because of bad luck, but because you've failed to invest the necessary time into them, or because you keep trying to date the same type of person, who just may not be compatible with you in the end. Identify patterns that may be occurring so that you can begin to prevent them from re-occurring.
5. Focus on what you can control. Individuals who feel in control of the outcome of their lives are more resilient in the face of challenges. A person who is not resilient faces a setback and tends to think that it happened because he is somehow unworthy, that the world is unfair, and that things will always be that way.
   • Instead of thinking you do not have control, look at setbacks and think that they happened because of an unfortunate situation, not because it was 100% your fault or because the world is a terrible place. Focus on the option that it won't always pan out this way.
   • Let go of things you cannot control and try to adapt.

Maintaining Your Resilience

1. Take care of yourself daily. You may be so busy dealing with a serious break-up, a job loss, or another significant event in your life that you don't have time to shower or get more than a few hours of sleep a night. However, if you want to be mentally strong, then you have to be physically able, too. If your body is in a funk or you're just feeling unkempt, then you'll be even less equipped to deal with the challenges. No matter how awful you're feeling, you need to make an effort to shower, brush your teeth, sleep, and get into a normal routine, so that you can start feeling as "normal" as you can.
   • Make sure to make time for mental breaks when you're caring for yourself, too. Studies show that taking mental breaks, whether you're just daydreaming or closing your eyes and listening to a song that you love, can help ward off those stress chemicals and will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed.
2. Sustain your self-esteem. Your self-esteem depends on, among other things, how you value yourself. It's important to form a positive perspective about yourself and about life in general to ensure resilience. In acquiring competencies and responsibilities, you nourish your self-esteem, so it is important to get involved in life and not withdraw into yourself and feel threatened. If you feel that you are worthless, then you will feel incapable of tackling challenges.
   • Use self-enhancement by paying close attention to your positive qualities, while minimizing your negative ones. You can begin by making a list of everything you like about yourself.
   • Seek value through using your talents and abilities to their fullest, be it in a professional, volunteer, business, home front, or other capacity.
   • Learn new abilities and skills as often as you can. This will strengthen your self-esteem and can also ward off fears. For example, if you're afraid your children might be hurt some day, take a basic first aid course to reduce your sense of fear and to increase your confidence in being able to cope should something happen.
   • Workshops, seminars, courses, etc., are all good ways to improve your knowledge and to expand your network of acquaintances on whom you can draw support if needed.
3. Nourish your creativity. Creativity is an expression of yourself and the way in which you live. Creativity lets you unleash what words or conversation cannot express or even understand. Nourishing your creativity can also help you be more creative when finding more solutions to problems, and will show you that you can look at the world in more than one way.
   • Take a photography class, write a poem, take up watercolor painting, redecorate your room in an original way, or consider sewing your own clothes.
4. Stay physically fit. Though you don't need to have six pack abs to deal with a major crisis, being physically strong certainly helps. Due to the mind-body connection, if your body is stronger, then you have built up the strength and endurance to have a stronger mind, and it will indeed help you in moments of crisis. Being physically fit may improve your self-esteem, positive thinking, and ability to feel empowered, all of which will help you be more resilient.
   • Try starting with something simple like taking a walk in the sunshine for twenty minutes a day; this activity has been proven to help people be more open-minded and ready to face challenges.
5. Make peace with your past. It's important to unravel past motivations that feed into current approaches to life. Until you make peace with the hardships of the past, they may continue to influence and even direct your current responses. See setbacks and past issues as a chance to learn. Don't expect this to happen overnight but do tackle it; the end result will be a far more resilient self. Journaling about what happened and what you learned from it can help you come to terms with the past. See a therapist, a counselor, or your doctor if you cannot work through past issues alone.
   • Think about past setbacks that made you feel like your life was over. See how you were able to work through them -- and to come out stronger on the other side.
   • If you feel like you're missing closure on an event from your past, try to figure out what it will take to move on, such as confronting someone or visiting a place where you used to live. It isn't always possible to get closure, but there may be a way to change your thinking about the past so you can feel stronger when addressing future challenges.

Warnings

• Always speak to a health professional if you cannot cope with negative and crippling emotions. Mental illnesses and disorders may require professional assistance.

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