10 Steps Toward Choosing Mental Resilience
Resilience can help you bounce back from misfortune or unexpected change
People can and should learn to be resilient. It allows them to gain perspective on experiences that might otherwise be seen as soul sucking and in the process, have a positive impact on not only themselves, but others as well.
Among the top skills we can develop as children and hone as adults is our ability to be resilient.
If you look up the definition of resilience, you’ll find descriptions that include the ability to become strong, healthy, successful again after something bad happens; and an ability to recover and adjust after misfortune or change. Resilience includes both physical and mental resilience, and it can be difficult to have one without the other.
There are times when finding resilience is more of a struggle and times when it comes easier. How much resilience you’re born with may not be under your control and how often your resilience is put to the test over time may not be under your control. But what is under your control is the effort you make to pursue resilience on an ongoing basis.
Walls on the Path of Mental Strength
Resilience can be more of a struggle when you’re alone, unhealthy, mentally ill and lack resources to support your resilience. The basic steps of building your resilience involve working on being physically and mentally healthy and not facing your challenges alone. When you understand these basic principles, you can begin to take steps to building your resilience. With very few exceptions, the vast majority of people can take steps to be more resilient starting today.
10 Building Blocks for Mental Resilience
Being mentally strong requires ongoing and active efforts. Here are a few building blocks to resilience:
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Understand your own power to be mentally resilient
We all have our ups and our downs. Although it’s not always easy, virtually all of us have the ability to learn to control our emotions and emotional reactions so we can increase our resolve to bounce back.
Learning to recognize the signs both physically and mentally that you’re losing resilience and becoming overwhelmed can provide you with triggers to change what you’re doing. Learn to pay conscious attention to how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. Physical techniques such as deep breathing, relaxing, exercising and controlling your breathing can be developed over time. Pairing these with learning to be mindful, improve focus and minimize negative self-talk will be excellent building blocks for controlling your emotions and not letting overwhelming feelings get the best of you.
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Being resilient means owning what you can and cannot control
Being mentally strong means recognizing problems but not letting them get to you. Mentally strong people don’t spend much time complaining, but they can point out a problem. Mentally strong people focus on solutions to problems over the problems themselves.
Learning to avoid getting stuck includes tackling the problems you can and learning to let go of the ones not worthy of an investment of time and energy. This doesn’t mean resilience cannot fight the good fight even in a losing battle. Resilience isn’t about the results of winning or losing; it’s about knowing when the fight is worth the investment and when it’s not.
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Resilience includes choosing not to dwell in the past
Resilience involves learning from the past but not dwelling or getting bogged down in past mistakes. Recognizing that life isn’t always fair is important.
Learning to bounce back involves taking responsibility for past actions but not letting past mistakes suck the life out of moving forward. Accepting failure isn’t accepting defeat. Accepting that a failure occurred provides an opportunity to learn and move forward. Resilience includes learning to say, it’s time to move on.
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Being resilient involves seeking to embrace change for the future
Looking forward to a changing future is an important element in resilience. If you’re afraid of taking risks for the future, you miss the very opportunity to act with resilience.
Learning to avoid complacency or stagnation is an important step in resilience. Embracing uncertainty and change can generate energy that can be translated into more resilience and momentum. Resilience means saying, Let’s see what comes next.
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Resilience Involves forgiving and treating others with respect
A resilient person doesn’t want to bring negativity into the picture. A mentally strong person strives to be kind and fair and to please others where appropriate but isn’t afraid to turn people down and say no or disagree. Learning to be comfortable that someone else might get upset and how to navigate negative encounters helps build resilience. Letting go of other people’s reactions doesn’t mean discounting what they may have to say; it just means not letting disagreement bring you down.
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To build resilience you must look inward
Ongoing self-reflection helps with ongoing course corrections, which is often the core of resilience. A mentally strong person seeks to avoid falling into the same traps or making the same mistakes repeatedly.
Learning to examine oneself, choices, actions, motives, needs and perceptions enables opportunity for change and forward momentum
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Mentally resilient people benefit from other people’s success
Personal resilience doesn’t come at the expense of others but enjoys and feels joy or excitement at the resilience and success of others. Mental strength doesn’t become jealous at the success of others. Resilient people can learn to ride the wave of energy and momentum gained by observing and enjoying the success and resilience of others.
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Resilient people do not fear repeated failures
Resilience by definition does not give up. That doesn’t mean you have to bang your head against the same wall over and over again. Resilience includes looking for new and alternate solutions.
Learning when to fail and when to try again will help build a foundation for ongoing resilience. Resilient people learn to learn from their experiences of failure and often take risks based on what they’ve learned, knowing they can bounce back from their next failure.
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Resilience has patience and stamina but can act quickly
Balancing the short term and the long term is a skill of resilience. Acting quickly and having patience aren’t mutually exclusive and, in fact, often exist in tandem.
Learning that patience is often required will help resilient people to be ready to act when the opportunity to act is required and wait when waiting is the better choice. Mental resilience understands that sometimes resilience means being in it for the long haul.
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Being resilient includes celebrating milestones and incremental achievements
Resilience takes and gives energy. Celebrating but not dwelling on small achievement along the journey helps balance hunger with satisfaction. Resilient people remain hungry for their next challenge and success but enjoy and appreciate what they’ve achieved along the way.
Learn that you have the power to become mentally stronger and increase your resilience. Surround yourself with people and opportunities to observe, develop and exercise your resilience. Do one more thing each day then you think you can; forgive one more person; do one more rep during your workout; cook something new; enjoy one more moment; pat yourself on the back one more time.
Remember that resilience is built or destroyed brick at a time. Use these building blocks each day to fortify your own mental strength as you build resilience.
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