Q: Can you give me some tips on becoming more resilient?
A: All of us experience difficulties in life, it’s simply unavoidable. Everyone’s experience of challenging or even traumatic events will be different how people are affected, cope, and recover varies greatly. We all know people who have faced great challenges and have recovered and coped well, while others fall apart. What makes the difference? It’s the key to resisting stress, rebounding from it, and being your best self. Our bodies have a natural tendency to return to homeostasis.
Resilience is looking at difficulty as a challenge, not doom and gloom. Challenges present themselves as opportunities for growth, and people do just that when rising to resilience. They are also able to view these challenges as solvable, not a reflection on their own self-esteem. They make commitments and stick to them in all areas of their lives; personal relationships, family, work, friendships, outside interests, and various causes they are involved in. Resilience is taking control of a situation rather than feeling out of control. This helps them to feel empowered rather than powerless and paralyzed.
Some tips on becoming more resilient include:
- Keep a positive outlook and envision brighter days ahead.
- Develop some solid goals and intentions and have a desire to achieve these goals.
- Have empathy and compassion. Yet don’t spend time worrying about what others think of you.
- Have internal strength and coping mechanisms that will help you triumph over adversity.
- Maintain a rational thought process, good self-esteem, confidence, humor, adaptability, faith/spirituality in life, balance, good health habits, and self-love.
Notice that resilience is a flexible, relative concept. It does not occur in an all-or-nothing fashion but exists on a continuum.