Being able to bounce back from life’s blows is a vital skill that we all need. Everyone is bound to face challenges and pain in life.
Resilience is an essential life skill. It helps us go through challenges emerging stronger, wiser, clearer and more compassionate than before.
It may seem as though some people are born with it or without it – but resilience actually is an ever-changing quality that we can cultivate over time.
Factors that affect your resilience
Resilience involves physiological, psychological, and environmental elements among many others which influence how we cope with stressors. The nervous system plays an essential role in this.
The more sensitive our nervous system is to stressors, the more intense is our fight-or-flight response. The more resilient we are, the greater our ability to manage these responses properly so that we maintain our calm during challenges.
Our resilience depends to a great extent on our mindset – even as our nervous system responds to a situation, a strong mindset can help us take action that is helpful and guides us into a resilient response.
How The Perception of Powerlessness Affects Our Resilience
A factor that can substantially reduce resilience levels is perceiving yourself as powerless. Feeling powerless leads us to give up hope easily even when faced with minor challenges in life.
When we think we are powerless, we can easily feel under threat and overwhelmed. Past experiences might have told us that we are powerless – our childhood experiences are deeply embedded in our programming and impact our outlook.
Believing in our ability to navigate challenges helps us be resilient. Self-confidence leads to taking positive actions despite the setbacks encountered. When we feel capable enough, we can take action and even feel invigorated by challenges.
Certain thoughts and behaviors reinforce our sense of powerlessness which further undermines resilience levels.
Here are some of the negative patterns that diminish our sense of empowerment:
- Blaming others or external circumstances – The only thing we can ever do is control how we respond and act. Focusing on blame is always a waste of time. Blame drains our mental and emotional energy, and reinforces our sense of powerlessness. It is a negative thought pattern that exacerbates negative emotions and energy.
- Complaining– This common act makes us focus excessively on what’s going wrong in our lives instead of looking for ways that things can be better for us, reinforcing a victim mentality and position. When we dwell more on the negative, it becomes harder for us to develop anything positive in life. We should assess our situations so as to act appropriately but not concentrate on the negative.
- Worrying excessively – Overthinking about potential bad outcomes drains mental strength needed during challenging times.
Building resiliency requires spotting and breaking patterns that drain us of energy and keep us stuck. Whenever we turn our attention from pointing fingers to taking responsibility for ourselves, from grumbling about circumstances to being thankful, and from worrying to acting – that’s when we restore our true power along with our capacity for dealing with life’s challenges.
How Mindfulness Can Help You Become More Resilient
Mindfulness allows us to work with rather than be consumed by the discomfort created by our nervous system and emotions. Stress reduction, the strengthening of the nervous system, and a greater capacity to cope with difficult feelings are all benefits of mindfulness practices.
Using deep breathing techniques or meditative exercises can soothe fight-or-flight responses and alleviate anxiety. Mindfulness practices train our brains to recover from stress more quickly.
Meditation and other mindfulness practices help us become aware of our patterns and how they affect us.
When we are mindful, we gain deep insight into ourselves and life itself while connecting with our divine essence. This helps us get a higher perspective on our circumstances and access our inner wisdom and creativity, which can help us find solutions for problems previously thought unsolvable.
How To Become More Resilient Emotionally
Another core component of resilience is learning how to manage our emotions. Many of our challenges are mostly difficult because of the emotional impact that they have on us.
Learning to work through our triggers and regulate our emotions helps us become more resilient.
Techniques for Regulating Emotions
Meditation: Meditation teaches us to stay present while observing our thoughts and emotions. It helps us create some space between us and emotions.
Deep Breathing Exercises: Slow deep breaths stimulate the relaxation response thus calming down body systems; this helps mitigate anxiety levels too.
Release Practices: Learning to allow and release your emotions in healthy ways will help you improve your emotional and mental states greatly.
Cognitive Reframing: Replacing pessimistic views with positive ones by challenging negativity bias in thinking patterns.
Developing a Resilient Mindset
How resilient you are even when your emotions are difficult will depend greatly on your mindset. Here is how you can develop a resilient mindset:
Seeing challenges as opportunities for growth: We are each on a hero’s journey, constantly growing and evolving. Each situation will give you an opportunity to grow and learn.
Accepting failure as a stepping stone: We tend to beat ourselves up over mistakes. But we are meant to make mistakes – failure is integral to the learning process. It gives us a chance to identify where we need improvement or to learn something essential.
Stay curious: Keep an open mind and stay in exploratory mode. Your curiosity will guide you to understand more and develop more skills.
Remain hopeful: Having an optimistic attitude towards challenges and expecting good results will help you stay open to possibilities and navigate challenges.
Be adaptable: Be willing to change in response to new situations or conditions. Life is constantly changing and we need to learn to change with it.
Stay persistent: Setbacks and difficulties are part of life – we need to remain persistent while staying flexible enough to change course when we need to.
Believe in yourself: You have what it takes to navigate your life’s challenges.
Steps to Becoming More Resilient
You don’t have to wait for a life challenge to become more resilient. Resilience-building requires continuous effort which involves making deliberate choices coupled with adopting healthy practices aimed at enhancing well-being overall. Here are some practical steps towards becoming more resilient:
**Set achievable goals**: Break each goal into smaller manageable tasks or steps that can be easily accomplished within a short period of time; celebrate every milestone achieved along the way as it serves to keep motivation high throughout the journey.
**Take care of your health**: Regular exercise, balanced nutrition, and enough sleep are fundamental requirements for physical strength needed during tough moments mentally.
**Be kind to yourself**: This applies especially when things get rough because self-compassion helps us bounce back quicker even stronger than before. We learn from every fall.
The Long-Term Benefits of Resilience
Resilience not only helps us navigate through immediate challenges but also has far-reaching effects on our general welfare over extended periods. People with higher resilience tend to enjoy good mental health most times; have better interpersonal connections; and accomplish their goals.
Resilience is multi-dimensional in nature and can be nurtured over time. Look to it as a journey, and work on it step by step with kindness and self-compassion.