Understanding Resilience
Whenever you’re faced with a difficult situation in life, what do you do? How do you adapt? Why do some people seem to recover from adversity easier than others? The answer to these questions is resilience.
Everyone has resilience, but the amount of resilience a person has differs. That is why everyone faces, handles, and adapts to tragic events differently. Whether you are faced with a death in the family or a stressful day at work, you will handle the situation differently than someone else in a similar situation.
But what exactly is resilience? How does it affect your life? Better yet, can you increase your resilience? In this article, we will answer those very questions. Let’s get started.
Resilience: What Is It?
According to Psychology Today, resilience is an ineffable ability to come back stronger after you have been knocked down. Instead of becoming overcome by a difficult or disheartening situation, resilience allows you to bounce back stronger than before.
Bouncing Back
In short, bouncing back is when you adapt to adversity, trauma, tragedy, or stress, as opposed to allowing the bad situations to get the better of you.
Whenever we face defeat, disappointment, or failure, we are given two options: giving up and allowing the situation to get the best of us or continuing to live our lives. Most people choose the latter of the two and bounce back, but the bouncing back time period differs from person to person.
How Does Resilience Affect Your Life?
Resilience greatly affects your life because it determines how well you adapt to situations, learn from the past, and grow in the future. If you have good resilience, you are not only more able to live your life, but you are more able to live a high-quality life.
In contrast, people who do not have good resilience tend to feel dragged down by the world and their situations. Instead of learning from their mistakes, their mistakes overtake their lives, causing them to feel defeated and inadequate.
Can You Increase Your Resilience?
Luckily, there are ways to increase your resilience. Many of the resilience-building strategies involve having a strong support system and being kind to yourself. Here are the most important ways to increase your resilience:
- Building a strong support system made of family members and friends
- Having a positive self-image
- Being confident in yourself and your abilities
- Managing your feelings and impulses healthily and effectively
- Having good communication skills
- Having good problem-solving skills
All of these techniques take time and energy to master. It will take more than a week to improve your resilience, but the work will be worth it in the end.
When trying to master these techniques, look online for articles addressing each specific area. For example, if you have a good support system but poor self-image, research ways to improve your self-image specifically.
Reach Out To A Professional
Additionally, consider reaching out to health professionals. These professionals will help you to develop goals and a plan for boosting your resilience. More so, they will assist you in the process, ensuring that you don’t give up.
Final Thoughts
Resilience is one’s ability to bounce back from tough situations. Without resilience, one can quickly feel overcome by life and fail to thrive or adapt properly. Luckily, there are ways to boost your resilience so that way you can adapt to tough situations and take back your life.
When boosting your resilience, remember that change doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, increasing your resilience will take a lot of time, energy, patience, and mistakes. It is important to remind yourself that resilience is a journey, not a destination.