If we are resilient we are more likely to be able to cope well with life’s challenges. Resilience helps us to grow and step outside of our comfort zones. We are more likely to use healthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress, tragedies and even traumatic events. We are less likely to develop mental health issues including anxiety and depression.

What Is Resilience?

Resilience is a basic psychological tool we use that helps us bounce back after life throws us a curve ball. It empowers us to feel effective and capable of handling uncertainty and to take back control of our lives again.

Two common features of low resilience are overreacting and constant comparisons with others. But if you think you have low resilience then don’t worry you can learn how to become more resilient.

Resilience is a quality and a skill that we can be taught. Unlike other mental health skills which we can be taught when things are going well or badly we actually need challenges in order to learn more resilience. For it is when we are challenged we learn what helps us, not someone else, to cope with life. So what works for someone else may not work for you and vice versa. I’ve listed some self-help tips below to help you.

What Are The Common Features Of Resilient People?

People that have good resilience have a number of common features. These include mentally, emotionally, behaviourally and physically features.

1. These people hold on to their core values and beliefs.
2. They set healthy boundaries with themselves and others and have high self-esteem.
3. They limit their exposure to negative people, the media and social media.
4. People with high resilience have a good support network of positive friends, family, work and professional supports.
5. They are more likely to think positively, take clear and decisive actions, and accept themselves and what they cannot change.
6. These people will set goals, prioritise and take actionable steps towards these goals.
7. They will be flexible in their thinking, keeping an open mind, and expect barriers and setbacks but know they will find a solution and learn from their past mistakes.
8. They celebrate all their successes, no matter how small, and reward themselves appropriately.
9. People with resilience will avoid risky behaviour and know how to reduce their stress. They use relaxation techniques and make sure they do activities to keep fit they enjoy including with friends and family and by themselves.
10. They take time to eat healthily and get a good night’s sleep.
11. These people can identify and monitor their emotions and feelings and express these in a healthy manner.

How Can You Build Resilience?

These are in no particular order. But I’d start with having a good basic self-care routine in place. I feel that gives you a good foundation upon which to build. This includes meditation, journaling, gratitude, plus the usually basics we all need every day. I’ve listed these basics here and have a FBLive (vlog) here also.

Build a support system.

There are multiply reasons why having a positive support system is important for your mental health. These include building your resilience. But also include reduced stress, anxiety and depression. Plus improve mental health. Increased feeling of belonging and security. Improve self-esteem/confidence.

This does involve deleting negative people from your life and replacing them with more positive ones. You can check the details here and here in these two blogs. They list some useful tips on how to build a positive support system, delete negative people and how you can go about that.

Accept that change is inevitable for everyone and everything.

Resisting change will only cause you stress, anxiety, and lead you to catastrophising and procrastination. Yes change can be hard to accept sometimes. But when we realize we can survive it and make a better life for ourselves in the process we find that we can accept it more easily. Understanding how change works will help empower you to make the better decisions as the process unfolds.

Remind yourself you always have a choice in how you respond.

Meditation is a great way to help you see more clearly. It gives us the ability to stop and think before we react. We always have a choice in how we react but we don’t see that at times. So will it be an overreaction or a calm, logical response instead?

Taking the time to respond can be hard at times. We can feel pressurized into an answer. But we can put people off by saying “I’ll have to get back to on that”. You can take some time to practice some responses to different scenarios you know you find hard to deal with.

Take the time to consider a problem and try to work through it as best as you can. Then make the best decision you can and let it go. You have done your best for you in this case. Don’t allow others try and guilt trip you. You will get better and faster at making decisive decisions the more you practice. It really is only a matter of practice.

Learn to accept who you are right now and forgive yourself for any past mistakes.

It’s time to let things go and move forward. As you have seen above one of the common features of people with resilience is that they accept themselves just as they are. There are many benefits to doing this. Not least of which is building your resilience. We also let go of perfectionism and people pleasing. Plus we trust our own gut instinct more and have healthier boundaries to name but a few. My blogs here and here has some useful strategies you can use to build your self-acceptance and trust in yourself again.

Build a positive mindset.

There are a number of ways we can do this. Including deleting negative thinking and building positive thinking. In other words stopping the negative cycles before they begin.

In time we can learn to do this. I find meditation very helpful in teaching ourselves to do just this.  We also have to review our responsibilities. What are we prioritizing in our life? We don’t want to feel so stressed out by doing everything for others we can’t do anything for ourselves.

It also means being mindful of what we watching. What you consume in terms of media, social media, films, music, books and making these more positive. It can also include building your self-confidence. But it also means we learn to cope with our emotions and feelings. Letting go of shame, guilt, manage our anger and forgive ourselves when necessary.

Overcome your fear of failure and success.

Fear isn’t all about the fear of failure, the future or success all these can hold you back. We often have a fear of failure or success because of the high standards we set ourselves. It can often be tied to perfectionism or imposter syndrome, so we can end up avoiding trying altogether.

We are afraid we will be found out or we will be ashamed by our poor performance. When we view things differently then we can change and challenge them. We can start to see that possible failure as a challenge instead. Then we can actually be more willing to try and see that we are in fact quite capable and less likely to fail at them.

Letting go of these fears will help you face your challenges head on and build your resilience along the way.  We can use a number of techniques to help us overcome these fears. These can include visualizing a successful outcome, setting small goals and small actionable steps. Plus don’t forget to celebrate and reward yourself for all those small wins.

Set goals and take small actionable steps towards them every day.

Part of taking charge of your life is to set goals. When we feel down we often resist doing this as we feel what’s the point. Or we set goals that are so big they overwhelm us. We have lost our self-confidence also and this doesn’t help. We think we’ll get started when we feel motivated again. But that doesn’t seem to happen. Set smaller goals to begin with and gain the momentum, self-confidence and motivation to continue from these small wins. Make these goals as small as possible. I talk about how to do this in detail here.

Reduce the stress at the time by remembering that this too shall pass.

A good slogan to remember while faced with a stressful day. If you can stop for a few minutes and take time to breathe (use a 3 minute breather) you can ask yourself: Will all this matter tomorrow, next week, month or year?”

Then imagine what your life will be life in five years from now and ask yourself some questions:

1. In five years, what will you be doing?
2. On what activities -personal or professional- will you be spending your time?
3. How will you feel, think, and behave?
4. Who will you spend time with?
5. What supports will you have in place -professional and personal? (We all need a support team)

If there are specific events you image happening in the future.

1. How will you feel, think and behave around this particular event?
2. Will you even remember it?
3. Who will be there?
4. Are these people important to you?
5. What support will you need?

Sometimes just taking the time to stop and breathe can help us put things in to better perspective. It allows us to see the current challenge as just a temporary setback we can overcome.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.

There are a lot more practical steps included in the video below. So do check it out.