How to be more resilient

For many of us, 2020 has been a difficult year, and one we’ll be glad to see the back of. Whether or not we realised it at the time, how we coped with those difficulties, and what we did (or didn’t do) to recover from them, is largely due to how resilient we are.

How does resilience feel?

Being resilient is having the ability to respond well to, and learn from, stressful situations and traumatic events when they occur. It isn’t something we’re born with; resilience develops and changes over time in response to our environment and to our individual experiences. Using challenging situations as an opportunity to exercise our resilience muscles is how most of us learn to cope with set-backs and adversity, but that doesn’t mean that resilient people don’t struggle, make mistakes, or need to ask for help sometimes.

Developing resilience as a child

The single most important ‘resilience building’ factor in a child’s life is for them to have at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult. As well as providing personal care and protection, these relationships enable the child to develop adaptive skills (daily living and domestic tasks), a sense of self-efficacy, and tolerance of ‘positive stress’ activities, all of which, over time, increase the child’s ability to cope with life’s obstacles and hardships.

Can adults improve their resilience?

Although our brain and other biological systems are most adaptable in early life, the capabilities that underpin resilience can be strengthened at any age, so it’s never too late to build on them. Regular physical exercise, stress-reduction practices, and programmes that actively develop executive function and self-regulation skills, can improve the abilities of adults to cope with, adapt to, and even prevent adversity in their lives.

Do you need to develop your resilience?

The signs of having low resilience are broadly similar to those we might experience if we're affected by stress, anxiety, or depression, and can include:
• frequent minor illnesses
• becoming isolated, or dependent on others
• being easily angered or irritated
• overreacting to everyday stressors
• being forgetful
• engaging in risky behaviour

If you recognise some, or all of these behaviours in yourself, the New Year is the perfect time for you to try some of the suggestions below to help increase your resilience:

YOUR PERSONAL RESILIENCE TOOLKIT

Do it now: Take action on problems straight away rather than just hoping they’ll resolve themselves. Finding small, manageable ways to challenge yourself, such as making that phone call, or sending that email you’ve been putting off, will increase your confidence, and you’ll be surprised by how good it makes you feel.

Embrace challenges: Many of us would rather step back from a challenging situation, than risk making a fool of ourselves by failing. However, resilience is all about accepting life’s challenges. Identifying something as a challenge helps us to mobilize our resources and bring our ‘A game’ to the situation, whereas seeing it as a threat has a tendency to make us feel stressed and overwhelmed.

Reframe the situation: Resilient people find a way to see their situations in a more positive light, while still accepting reality. A shift in perspective can help us find new solutions, and possibly even a previously unseen benefit.

Self-care: It’s important to look after yourself. Eating healthily, taking regular exercise, and getting plenty of sleep, all help us to handle stress and increase our resilience.

Keep busy: Work, volunteering, or taking up a hobby are time-honoured ways of keeping ourselves busy so that we don’t have time to dwell on our problems.

Maintain good relations: Knowing that there’s someone who cares about us is invaluable when facing hardship. So, looking after our relationships with family and friends when times are good, builds the trust and intimacy that will help those relationships stay strong when problems arise.

Celebrate your successes: Give yourself credit for getting through tough experiences, and remember to say thanks to those who have helped you along the way. Resilience is about more than recovering from challenges - it's about thriving in the face of those challenges. 

Learn to love change: The word ‘change’ has a negative connotation for a lot of people. Obstinacy, ego, fixed beliefs, expectations, and old habits are some of the reasons we resist change. But when the partner you thought you’d be with forever has gone, or the job you’d trained five years for has been automated, what do you do? In these situations, it’s wiser to practice acceptance and acknowledge that the situation has changed. The only way forward now is to think flexibly, and seeing it as a challenge rather than a threat will help us cope.

When to get help: Be sure to seek professional help if you're struggling to deal with an adverse experience that’s affecting your mental health and your ability to carry out normal daily living tasks.

Words to live by: We can’t always control the situation, but we can control how we respond to it.

I hope you’ve found this article useful. If you have any thoughts to share, or ideas for future posts, please do let me know. I would love to hear from you.