Building Resilience: How to Bounce Back from Difficult Times
Life can be unpredictable and everyone faces tough times at some point in their lives. Whether it’s losing a job, going through a breakup, or facing a health issue, difficult times can take a toll on our mental and emotional well-being. However, building resilience can help us bounce back from tough times and emerge stronger than ever.
What is resilience?
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficult situations and adapt to change. It’s the ability to stay strong and positive in the face of difficulties. Resilient people are not immune to stress, it’s all about how these individuals handle their stress. They are also more likely to recover from setbacks and turn challenges into opportunities. Without resilience, individuals may ruminate on their problems, adopt a victim mentality, feel overwhelmed, and/or resort to harmful coping mechanisms, such as substance use, eating challenges, or other risky behaviors. Practicing resilience can help protect you from various mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety.
How to build resilience
- Build and maintain your support network: Your support network are the people who you feel you can turn to and be vulnerable with. This can consist of your friends, maybe some of your family members, or colleagues. Having strong and positive relationships can provide the support and guidance you need during challenging times.
- Develop a positive mindset: Having a positive mindset is a powerful tool for building resilience and coping with challenging times. Rather than fixating on negative aspects of a situation, nurturing an optimistic attitude can help you to identify the silver lining and view the glass as half full. This can further foster greater emotional stability and strengthen problem-solving abilities.
- Learn from setbacks: Setbacks are natural and happen to everyone. However, if you have that positive mindset, you can see how these setbacks can be an opportunity to grow. Instead of dwelling on your mistakes and failures, try to learn from them. Ask yourself these questions: “What can I learn from this?” – “How can I grow from this experience?” – “What can I do differently next time?”
- Be Proactive: Rather than avoiding your problems, it’s crucial to identify the necessary steps, devise a plan, and act on it. Even if recovering from a significant loss, trauma, or setback takes awhile, remain aware that your circumstances can get better with consistent effort.
- Remain Hopeful: While we are not able to change the past, we are able to change the present and the future. Pay attention to the impact of your previous actions, and do better now and in the future. Accepting change will make it easier to adopt and produce less anxiety. ––
- Practice Daily Healthy Habits: It is also important to make sure you maintain your daily health habits while working through building resilience as well. This includes maintaining your self-care, setting time aside for meditation and mindfulness, and giving yourself patience. These challenges are not fixed overnight. It will take time to heal and be the best version of yourself.
Review
Building resilience is a lifelong process, but it’s worth the effort. By developing resilience, you can bounce back from difficult times and emerge stronger and more confident than ever. Everyone faces these challenges at some point in their lives, but with resilience, you will be able to navigate through those challenges and come out stronger, more capable, and as a better version of yourself.
About Therapist Bethany Winter, MA, LPC Barnum Counseling
(2022, July 14). How to build resiliency. Mayo Clinic. Retrieved April 6, 2023, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311
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