By Dr. Priya Pandit, PsyD
The American Psychological Association (2104) defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress.” Simply put, when hard times hit, resilience is the capacity for people to “bounce back” and overcome challenges.
To be resilient doesn’t imply a person doesn’t suffer distress. In reality, building resilience is often a by-product of undergoing hardships and struggles and coming out the other side. Though some experiences/factors can make some people more resilient than others, resilience isn’t solely inherited or a personality trait only some people possess; it can be learned and built upon. Like strengthening a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and deliberate practice.
Resilience can reduce overall mental and physical health issues. You can build your resilience with the following strategies:
- Positive Affirmations: Having confidence in your ability to manage a crisis helps to build resilience. Reflect on your strengths and accomplishments, building a positive sense of self.
- Meaning Making: Having a sense of meaning and purpose in your life can help with healing through crisis.
- Helping Others. Research suggests that altruism helps protect us by cultivating connection, empowering us, and fostering positive self-worth.
- SMART Goals. Creating meaningful and realistic goals gives us a direction in our life to work toward. Building a sense of accomplishment helps improve our confidence and belief in ourselves.
- Look for Opportunities. As the old adage goes, “what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” Crisis can be a time for opportunity and growth. Hard moments can help us reflect on what we are grateful for and appreciate our lives. Tragedies can often improve our relationships, bringing people closer together, putting what is important to us back in perspective.
| S | M | A | R | T |
| Specific | Measurable | Achievable | Relevant | Time-Bound |
| Break it down into more manageable steps. What are the specific actions you want to accomplish? | How will you measure your progress? How will you know when you have achieved it? | Is this goal reasonable or realistic? Do you have the skills/resources/ capability to complete it? | Prioritize. How is this goal important or necessary? | What is your target deadline? A time-frame can help guide your progress toward completion of the goal. |
- Cultivate Connections: Having a strong and positive support system can protect us from the negative outcomes of distress.
- Adaptation and Acceptance: The most resilient people tend to accept change as a natural part of life, and adapt accordingly. Flexibility is necessary to resilience. Sometimes you do not have control over changing a given situation, approaching it with an “it is what it is” attitude can be helpful in moving forward.
The Serenity Prayer:
“Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The Courage to change the things I can,
And the Wisdom to know the difference.”
- Positive Mindset: Maintaining a positive outlook during hardships can be difficult, nonetheless it is a crucial aspect of resilience. Optimism and hopefulness isn’t burying one’s head in the sand, but rather recognizing this too shall pass and focusing on the skills you possess to work through the challenges.
- Maintain Perspective. In hard times it is easy for our heads to go toward the negative. It is an adaptive function of being aware of threats. What is much harder is reflecting on the positive. Imagine this: you may have a great day, filled with many successes, but somewhere along the way you encounter one criticism. What are you likely to remember from that day? If you are like most, you are likely to obsess over that one negative. However, resilient individuals reflect on the whole picture, keeping the positive and negative in perspective.
- Gratitude. Research on positive psychology suggests that gratitude can help fight against depression and anxiety, improving our positive feelings. Gratitude helps us be in the moment and savor our the present.
- Hindsight is 20/20. It is easy to get down on ourselves for whatever our past choices after the fact, but remember, we can’t know what we didn’t know. However, we can build resilience by learning from our past and making new, more effective choices.
- Thought Stopping. When our negative thoughts get the better of us, we can begin to experience “cognitive distortions”—various negative thought patterns. These negative thoughts can influence our behaviors, which in turn can impact our emotions and mood.
- Self-Care: When we are stressed, often times the first thing put on the back burner is our own self-care. But, by taking care of our needs, we can build our resilience by increasing our threshold for stress.
- Daily Self-Care Questions:
- Have I spoken to or spent time with a loved one to deepen my sense of connection to others?
- Was I active today? –How did I move my body? (take a walk, exercise, play a sport, dance)
- How did I care for myself today? (maintain healthy boundaries, put your needs first, practice daily hygiene, consume nourishing meals, stay hydrated, get enough rest)
- How did I experience pleasure/joy/relaxation today? (read a book, listen to music, spend time with friends/family, cook/bake, play a game, watch a show/movie, go on a date, take a vacation, etc.)
- What is something, regardless of how small, I was grateful for today?
- Daily Self-Care Questions:
