Let’s Be More Resilient

Resilience gives folks the mental or psychological strength to positively deal with stress and hardship – to cope without falling apart. Resilient people are better able to handle adversity, deal with change, and come back or rebuild after experiencing a challenge. Everyone experiences challenges in their lives, from the minor (missing a train or not getting into a class that you want) to the major (death of an immediate family member, loss of home due to natural disaster, terrorist attacks). How we deal with these challenges affects their outcome and the long-term psychological consequences for us. Basically, resilience is important.

Some people are more resilient than others. They get knocked down, but they get up again, as the 1998 Chumbawanda song goes, and they learn from that challenge to move forward. Others have less resilience. The good news is that we can all learn to be more resilient by exercising our mental muscles and social connections.

Why is it important to learn resilience? On the most basic level, these skills will make you a more successful human being. On the psychological level, you will reduce your trauma, the mental and psychological burden that you carry. On an inter-personal level, by learning these skills, you will become a more likeable person and develop more meaningful social connections and friendships.

That Internal Locus Of Control

People who are more resilient tend to have an “internal locus of control” – you believe that you control your own fate. It’s not up to someone else, it’s not the fault of anyone else, it’s within your control. Don’t mistake that to mean that everything is your fault. Let’s look through the lens of positive psychology and explanatory styles. You want to move from the internal (self-blame) to the external (recognizing that you are not to blame), from the global (this challenge is the end of the world and means that everything is wrong with your life) to the specific (this is a narrow challenge), from the permanent (change is impossible and there’s nothing you can do) to the impermanent (you can change the situation).

Taking these steps helps you to reframe how you see and react to challenges and adversity. These skills make you more “psychologically successful,” less stressed, more likely to get back up again, and less likely to get depressed.

Those are outcomes we all want. So how can you build those skills?

Reframe Your Mind’s Reactions (Labels Matter), Or, Be Aware Of How You Think About Things

Here’s something we can all do a little more of in our lives: reframe adversity in positive terms. To do this, we have to be aware of what we are thinking, how we are reacting to what is happening to us each day. How is our brain reacting? Like training any muscle, retraining your brain takes time, patience, and repetition. You won’t get it right all the time. That’s not the point. The point is that you keep trying, keep reframing those hard moments as challenges that you can meet. Doing this promotes mental flexibility, a key characteristic of folks who are more resilient.

Doing the opposite – framing adversity as a threat – has the immediate opposite effect and damages your ability to successfully cope in the long-term. As Professor George Bonnano has termed it in his research on resilience, if you take a “potentially traumatic event” (a challenge) and frame it as trauma, it is trauma. It mentally harms you right then and there, and makes you more inflexible and more negatively affected by adversity in the future.

If you instead frame that same event as having some meaning, it is not trauma. Your mind, your body, and your entire being will react differently to that same event based on how your mind names it. That’s why it is so important that we do the constant (and hard) work of positively framing what happens to us in our daily lives. (And that we are kind to ourselves when we don’t meet that goal all the time.)

Part of this training is being realistic about the challenges you are facing, not pessimistic (glass half empty) or nihilistic (it’s the end of the world (no matter how much you love REM), and not all sunshine and rainbows (only seeing positive). Realistic. And then break things down. A challenge is an opportunity to grow (positive thinking and reframing), and a big challenge can be broken into smaller pieces so that we can identify how we will rise to meet that challenge.

A few other aspects of the mental training to increase our resilience are important. Avoid the blame game, including pointing the finger at yourself. Avoid brooding over what you can’t change. View yourself as a fighter, never a victim. Remember always to be kind and positive towards yourself – positive viewpoints of yourself and your own abilities will pay dividends!

Build Social Supports, Or, A Confidante Is Important

Humans are social creatures. Everyone needs someone to talk to; someone to confide in; someone to trust. Cultivate at least one person who meets those criteria: Can you talk to her about what’s bothering you? Can you trust that he won’t disparage you or make fun of how you are looking at what’s happening? Can you confide in them about what’s really bothering you and how you are coping or dealing with those concerns and challenges? Do you feel safe talking to this person?

The simple act of telling another human about your challenges and how you are coping opens up possibilities. That act, performed with that safe person, makes you more flexible. That person can offer insights to your situation. She can help you to reframe the adversity you are facing as a challenge. He can help brainstorm new ideas to tackle that challenge. They can help you focus on what aspects of the adversity or challenge you can control. They can help you make a realistic plan that you can stick to and achieve.

Part of building strong social supports is learning how to effectively communicate. Folks who communicate effectively are often more resilient because they know how to ask for help when they need it. Be considerate of your confidante’s time, energy, and needs.  

Let’s do this, people! Let’s build our resilience!