What is Resilience? Five Ways to Develop Yours
Life is full of ups and downs. We have all lived through periods of great difficulty, especially in the last few years. While some people seem to overcome and bounce back from these periods of turmoil more easily, others may find it a lot more challenging.
Having strong resilience is key to handling trauma, adversity, and hardship, giving you the emotional strength and positivity you need to keep going. What is resilience, though, and how can you develop it?
What is resilience?
Resilience is defined as the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties. We all face challenges and adversity in life, but those with high resilience are better able to endure and overcome those situations.
Lack of resilience can make one enter a harmful spiral that leads individuals into despair, often running away from challenges and difficulties as well as using unhealthy coping strategies rather than facing these difficulties head-on.
Five tips for building resilience
Resilience is a vital skill for navigating life, overcoming adversity, and reducing stress and anxiety. Research has shown that while resilience is influenced by genetics, it is also a trait that we can nurture and develop ourselves. So, if you’d like to develop or enhance your resilience, here are a few strategies to help you get started:
Believe in yourself
Having confidence in your abilities to handle challenges and difficulties is an important component of resilience. If you experience negative self-talk or self-limiting beliefs, see if you can replace them with positive thoughts and affirmations such as “I can do this” or “I am capable”.
Research has shown that having high self-esteem can help you cope with stress more effectively and overcome difficult situations more easily. Regularly reminding yourself of all you have achieved in life, being kind to yourself, and staying positive are effective ways to improve self-esteem.
Create a strong social network
Having to face adversity alone can be incredibly tough and challenging for anyone. Building a strong support network of people you can rely on and talk to when you feel stressed, anxious, or worried, will help you strengthen your resilience.
Studies have shown that being able to share your feelings and working with others to come up with solutions can make you far more resilient. So, invest in relationships where you can embrace vulnerability and lean on one another.
Take care of yourself
When we go through difficult times it’s easy to fall off the wagon when it comes to our needs, healthy habits, and routines. Not getting sufficient sleep, not exercising, or developing unhealthy eating habits can all be “side effects” of experiencing a challenging and stressful situation.
To help ensure that you have the energy, vitality, as well as mental, emotional, and physical capacity to cope with adversity and difficulty, make sure to nurture yourself even during challenging times. Taking care of yourself will help boost your health and wellbeing, which in turn will help increase your resilience.
Learn from your experiences
Reflect back on your past experiences with hardship, difficulty, and adversity and see what you can learn from them. What strategies and tools did you use in overcoming stressful situations? Which strategies worked best for you? How could you leverage those in challenging situations you may encounter in the future?
You might even write down, journal about, or meditate on your experiences to gain more insight into your thoughts, actions, and behaviors as well as the strategies that served you or didn’t serve you in dealing with and resolving a difficult situation.
Take action
Resilient people are perseverant and respond quickly to adversity. They’re also optimistic and have the ability to take immediate action as well as bounce back swiftly from a stressful situation.
In times of difficulty, start working on ways to resolve the issues you are facing as soon as possible. Leverage your strengths and support network to help you deal with and overcome difficulties.
While there might not always be a fast and simple solution to the challenges you’re dealing with, staying persistent and optimistic as well as focusing on taking steps toward resolving an issue or stressful situation, can help improve your resilience significantly.
Final thoughts
Everyone will face difficulties in their life. Life challenges can be overwhelming at times, from the death of a loved one through changes in relationships to losing a job. Increased resilience, however, can help you better cope with as well as bounce back from difficult and stressful situations. That in turn will make you stronger and lead to improved overall health and wellbeing.