Building resilience to move through challenges
Life is going to get hard once-in-awhile, even in the best of times. You’ll face something you haven’t yet faced before: a new baby, job change, financial changes, a diagnosis, marriage woes – whatever, it’s out there. But, these challenges are nothing to be afraid of.
Start with the belief right now, that you are enough to cope with whatever comes your way. You may not like it. May not ask for it, but you can certainly manage it. With this belief, then any experience you have will be an opportunity for growth and expansion.
This approach won’t strip away your pain, but it will help you ease through it. Simply the belief that you are resilient makes you more so.
What is resilience?
Resilience is a cluster of characteristics that includes optimism and acceptance, a flexible mindset, a willingness to take inspired action, a desire to find meaning, and an openness to foster connection with others. Some of these qualities we come loaded with. Others we must nurture and develop. But, good news is you can. Bigwig psychologists now know that resilience can be developed and increased. Work on it now, before the trouble comes, and then when the challenge appears you’ll have the skills to ease through it gracefully.
Three ways to boost your resilience:
Cultivate optimism. What the Bigwigs like Martin Seligman now believe is that optimism can be developed – whether you think yourself to be optimistic or not. The best way to become optimistic is to behave optimistically. Grounded optimism isn’t the belief that everything in peachy even when the walls are falling down around you. It’s recognizing the challenge, but working like a dog to create some positive change or outcome. Optimistic behavior, leads to optimistic feelings. So next time trouble hits, challenge yourself to do something positive to improve the situation and work to create it. That is resilience building.
Practice a flexible mindset. Life is rarely a black and white proposition. It is often messy, convoluted and mixed with a variety of emotions and experiences, so allow yourself to think of the situations you encounter in a variety of ways. At times rigid thinking is required – like when you need to decide whether to have the surgery or not. A decision like that may require analysis, study – a more rigid approach. But, an abstract problem solving attitude can be helpful when considering careers or colleges or even relationships. Life requires us to draw from both of these types of thinking. A flexible mindset then, allows you to do all of this – to bend and move. To think concretely when the situation requires and abstractly when that form would be beneficial.
Tip: Play with this. Next time you have a small decision to make, like what to order off the menu, practice functioning from both these mindset. Rigid, fixed, “I only like beef so I can only eat something with beef in it.” Then, flip to the more abstract approach and ponder all the selections and notice what it feels like to when these strategies are working in your body.
Reframe the situation. When you reframe you change your perspective. And this is a difference maker. Life shows up in different ways and often there are both positive and negative factors in every situation. Reframing calls on you to consider all angles of the circumstance and then work from the one that is most positive or helpful. It’s an active approach and an important aspect of resilience.
Try it today. Pick something that feels bad or negative and reframe it. Instead of focusing on the lack of money while paying the bills, for example, you could be grateful for the money you do have. While you are annoyed that you aren’t losing weight, you can also be happy that you have become aware of your body and health. A job loss can be scary, devastating, unsettling AND it can also be a gateway to greater possibility.
Reframing doesn’t mean that you move into denial or that you ignore the negative feelings or experiences. It simply allows you to look at the situation from a different perspectives and in that way you turn adversity into opportunity.
Optimism, flexible thinking, and reframing are all cornerstones of resilience and they are all linked together. The act of reframing, is often an optimistic behavior, for example. When your commit to one of these practices the others become a by-product and while it won’t eliminate the pain or challenge of life, it will help you get through it by reminding you that you are enough to handle whatever comes.
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Portions of this post ran previously on this site
