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Resilience: Build skills to endure hardship
Tips to improve your resilience
Working on your mental well-being is just as important as working on your physical health. If you want to strengthen your resilience, try these tips:
- Get connected. Build strong, positive relationships with family and friends, who provide support and acceptance. Volunteer, get involved in your community, or join a faith or spiritual community.
- Find meaning. Develop a sense of purpose for your life. Having something meaningful to focus on can help you share emotions, feel gratitude and experience an enhanced sense of well-being.
- Start laughing. Finding humor in stressful situations doesn't mean you're in denial. Humor is a helpful coping mechanism. If you can't find any humor in a situation, turn to other sources for a laugh, such as a funny book or movie.
- Learn from experience. Think back on how you've coped with hardships in the past. Build on skills and strategies that helped you through the rough times, and don't repeat those that didn't help.
- Remain hopeful. You can't change what's happened in the past, but you can always look toward the future. Find something in each day that signals a change for the better. Expect good results.
- Take care of yourself. Tend to your own needs and feelings, both physically and emotionally. This includes participating in activities and hobbies you enjoy, exercising regularly, getting plenty of sleep and eating well.
- Keep a journal. Write about your experiences, thoughts and feelings. Journaling can help you experience strong emotions you may otherwise be afraid to unleash. It also can help you see situations in a new way and help you identify patterns in your behavior and reactions.
- Accept and anticipate change. Expecting changes to occur makes it easier to adapt to them, tolerate them and even welcome them. With practice, you can learn to be more flexible and not view change with as much anxiety.
- Work toward a goal. Do something every day that gives you a sense of accomplishment. Even small, everyday goals are important. Having goals helps you look toward the future.
- Take action. Don't just wish your problems would go away or try to ignore them. Instead, figure out what needs to be done, make a plan and take action.
- Maintain perspective. Look at your situation in the larger context of your own life and of the world. Keep a long-term perspective and know that your situation can improve if you actively work at it.
- Practice stress management and relaxation techniques. Restore an inner sense of peace and calm by practicing such stress-management and relaxation techniques as yoga, meditation, deep breathing, visualization, imagery, prayer or muscle relaxation.
When to seek professional advice
Becoming more resilient takes time and practice. If you don't feel you're making progress — or you just don't know where to start — consider talking to a mental health professional. With their guidance, you can improve your resiliency and mental well-being.
Resilience helps you thrive
Resilience can help you endure loss, chronic stress, traumatic events and other challenges. It'll enable you to develop a reservoir of internal resources that you can draw on, and it may protect you against developing some mental illnesses or help you cope better with an existing mental illness. Resilience will help you survive challenges and even thrive in the midst of hardship.
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- Karren KJ, et al. Mind, Body, Health: The Effects of Attitudes, Emotions and Relationships. 4th ed. San Francisco, Calif.: Pearson Education Inc.; 2010:543.
- The road to resilience. American Psychological Association. http://www.apahelpcenter.org/featuredtopics/feature.php?id=6 . Accessed May 4, 2009.
- Mental health: A report of the Surgeon General. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/home.html. Accessed May 28, 2009.
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- Norris FH, et al. Looking for resilience: Understanding the longitudinal trajectories of responses to stress. Social Science and Medicine. 2009. In press. Accessed May 29, 2009.
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