How to build resilience

Resilience is the ability to recover from challenging situations and avoid falling into a state of helplessness. Becoming resilient will help you manage stress, lower the risk of depression, and has been proven to increase life expectancy. You may feel like you're facing endless bad luck, making it hard to be strong, but this is not the end. Once you learn to take control of your life and prepare for the unexpected, you’ll be on the path to becoming more resilient – and living a more joyful, purposeful life. You can build resilience by coping in a healthy way with emotions and tough situations, taking actions that show strength, thinking flexibly, and maintaining perseverance over time.

Managing stress. Although it can be difficult to remain calm in tough and anxious times, stress will hinder your ability to stay resilient. Managing stress will help you approach problems with a calm mind and focused thinking, instead of burying yourself and trying to avoid them. You should prioritize stress management, no matter how busy you are.

• If you're overwhelmed and sleep-deprived, consider whether you can reduce some of your tasks.
• Pursue activities that allow you to completely relax. Make time for yourself to enjoy peace and quiet regularly, which will give resilience the chance to develop.
• Engage in active activities to reduce stress and boost positive emotions.
• View stress as a challenge or opportunity. If you're feeling stressed, it means you're too focused on something you're doing. You're worrying about it. Use stress as a signal to remind yourself of your priorities and responsibilities. Change your stressed mindset from "I don’t have time" to "I know I can do this. I just need to organize my responsibilities."

Meditation. Meditation helps clear your mind, reduce stress, and prepare you to face the day and any challenges ahead. Many studies have shown that meditating for just 10 minutes daily can provide rest similar to an extra hour of sleep, helping you relax and handle problems more effectively. If you're feeling overwhelmed or drained, meditation can help you slow down and regain a sense of control over the situation.

• Simply find a comfortable place to sit, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. Relax each part of your body. Eliminate any noise or distractions.

Yoga. A study by Harvard Medical School revealed that people who practice yoga, more so than other forms of exercise, tend to be less angry and better at coping with challenges. In yoga, you perform challenging poses and build strength and endurance to hold them even when your body wants to quit; this approach helps form the ability to 'stick with' a challenging situation and find sources of calm and determination to persist.

Fostering a sense of humor. In difficult times, it’s essential to focus on the positive. Humor helps you gain a more objective perspective when facing problems. It also enhances your well-being by boosting dopamine levels in your brain and may even improve your overall health.

• You can watch comedy movies, read funny books, and spend time with genuinely humorous people. When facing difficulties, remember to balance the sad movies, books, and thoughts with humorous elements to prevent yourself from sinking into despair.
• Learn to laugh at yourself. Not being too hard on yourself will allow you to face challenges with a smile on your face.

Seeking help. A lack of social support can reduce your resilience. While it’s easy to overlook relationships in our busy lives, they are crucial. Strong relationships are the foundation of resilience and provide assistance during difficult times. Maintain connections with family and friends, and you'll always have a reliable support system wherever you go.

• A study involving 3,000 breast cancer patients showed that those with more than 10 close friends had four times the survival rate compared to those without.

Finding a mentor. A lack of social support can diminish your resilience. Seeking a mentor can help you navigate life’s challenges. You may feel like your life is in despair, and everything is falling apart beneath you. In such moments, a wise and older individual who has experienced similar struggles can make you feel like you're not alone, and that you are equipped to face life's challenges.

• Your mentor could be someone successful in your field, a grandparent, an older friend, or anyone who helps you achieve goals and face adversity with calmness.
• If you're still in school (from elementary to college), a school counselor or a teacher can serve as a helpful mentor and guide you through challenges.

Focus on your health. You should discuss your concerns with someone who can guide you in making the right decisions regarding treatment methods, medication, and seeking the support you need. While it's possible to face challenges on your own, consulting with a doctor ensures you're doing so in the best way possible.

• Visiting a doctor is not a sign of weakness; in fact, it takes great strength to admit that you need help.

Be a person of action. Laziness diminishes resilience, but being active and addressing issues directly strengthens your ability to handle difficult situations. Avoid dwelling on negative thoughts or ideas. Instead, focus on taking action to improve the situation.

• For example, if no one wants to publish the novel you’ve written, this doesn’t mean you should let others’ opinions determine your worth. Be proud of completing the task, keep looking for a publisher, or try something new.
• If you lose your job, stay positive and look for another one—or consider pursuing a job that brings more value and happiness, even if it means changing your career path. You may not love this, but getting fired might be the best thing that ever happened to you. Focus on the positive aspect and work towards a solution.

Seek goals in life. Having goals and dreams enhances resilience. A lack of purpose and goals can weaken your strength and make you more susceptible to being manipulated, controlled, and making poor life choices; this reduces your ability to control your life and can lead to depression and anxiety.

• Consider goals, whether big or small. They provide a sense of purpose and help you stay focused. List everything you want to achieve in life. Store this list in a safe place and regularly review your progress.
• Learn to recognize what gives you a sense of purpose in life and what detracts from it. You need to live a life that aligns with your values and beliefs.

Work towards achieving your goals. If you want to become more resilient, you not only need to set goals but also put in the effort to achieve them. Planning to accomplish goals—whether it's earning a higher degree, becoming leaner, or overcoming a breakup—helps you feel more focused, motivated, and clear about your direction.

• Create a list of all the goals you want to achieve in the next month, 6 months, and 1 year. Ensure they are realistic and achievable. A realistic goal might be to lose 5kg in 3 months, while an unrealistic (and unhealthy) goal would be losing 10kg in 1 month.
• Set weekly or monthly plans to achieve your desired outcomes. While you can’t predict life and can’t plan everything, creating a plan gives you a sense of control over the situation and increases your chances of success.
• Tell others about the goals you want to achieve. Simply discussing them and talking about the actions you’ll take will help push you to accomplish them.

Enhance Your Knowledge. Resilient people tend to be curious, excited about life, and eager to learn more. They embrace the unknown and seek to understand the world around them. They are enthusiastic about different cultures and have a deep interest in exploring them. Confident in their own perspectives, they remain open to learning more when they don’t know something. A strong desire to expand your knowledge will make life more exciting and inspire you to live fully, no matter the challenges you face. The more you know, the better equipped you will be to deal with obstacles and difficulties.

• Learn a new language, read books and articles, and watch engaging films.
• Resilient individuals ask questions when they encounter unfamiliar situations. You should keep asking questions until you feel confident in your understanding rather than remaining passive or unable to cope.

Develop a Positive Attitude. Maintaining a positive mindset will lead to positive emotions, ultimately increasing your overall resilience. Of course, staying positive isn't easy when you've broken your arm in a car accident that wasn't your fault, or when you're rejected by all five people you dated. These are difficult situations, but they are not impossible to overcome. The ability to stay optimistic and view setbacks as isolated incidents rather than signs that future success is out of reach is what sets resilient individuals apart. Remind yourself that a positive attitude will help you seize opportunities, think creatively to improve your life, and generally feel more fulfilled.

• Find ways to interrupt negative thinking at its onset. Whenever you notice yourself thinking negatively, try to think of three positive things to counteract the negativity.
• Do you know what can help you become more positive? Surrounding yourself with positive people. Just as negativity can be contagious, so can positivity. Spend more time with those who can find opportunities everywhere instead of complaining, and you'll quickly notice the change in yourself.
• Avoid making problems seem worse than they are. Even if something bad has happened, it's not the end of the world. Try to think about alternative solutions or more positive outcomes.
• Focus on past successes. What work have you done well? What achievements have you made? List all the positive things you’ve accomplished in life, and you may begin to realize just how resilient and talented you are.

Accept Change. An essential aspect of becoming more resilient is learning to cope with and accept change. Numerous studies show that if you view change as a challenge instead of a threat, you'll be more willing to face it head-on. Whether it's moving to a new place or becoming a parent, adapting to new situations is a vital survival skill that allows you to find creative solutions to problems and face adversity with calmness and comfort.

• Try to adopt a more open mindset. Avoid judging others' appearance, work, or beliefs. This approach not only helps you learn new things, but exposing yourself to diverse perspectives will help you see the world differently when faced with unfamiliar situations.
• A great method for better accepting change is by regularly trying new things, whether it's making new friends, attending a painting class, or reading a new genre of books. Keeping things fresh will make you less hesitant to embrace change.
• View change as an opportunity for growth, adaptation, and transformation. Change is necessary and beneficial. Remind yourself, "I accept this change. It will help me grow and become stronger and more resilient."
• If you're religious, prayer or other traditional methods can help you accept change. Believe that everything will be okay, even if the outcome isn't exactly what you expected. Ask your higher power for help in accepting change.

Problem Solving. One reason people struggle with building resilience is that they don't know how to confront problems. If you develop a feasible method to face challenges, you’ll be better equipped to tackle them without feeling overwhelmed. Here are a few useful strategies for problem-solving:

• First, you need to fully understand the problem. You may be unhappy with your job because of low pay, but if you dig deeper, you might realize the issue is that you're not pursuing your passion; this new insight will help you see the situation from a fresh perspective rather than simply focusing on the difficulty you initially thought you were facing.
• Consider more than one solution. You need to think creatively and identify multiple options. If you believe there’s only one solution to your problem (for example, quitting your job or dedicating all your time to your band), you might face challenges because your approach might not be practical, feasible, or could leave you less fulfilled in the long run. Make a list of possible solutions and pick two or three that seem best.
• Implement the solution. Evaluate it and determine how successful it might be. Don’t hesitate to seek feedback. If the solution doesn’t work, don’t see it as a failure, but as a learning experience.

Learn from Your Mistakes. Focus on what you can control – yourself. Another trait of resilient people is the ability to learn from their mistakes and see them as opportunities for growth, rather than failure. Resilient individuals take time to reflect on what went wrong so they can avoid making the same mistake in the future.

• If you notice yourself feeling discouraged or anxious after facing rejection or failure, think about how it can help you grow stronger. You can adopt the mindset: “What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.”
• An old saying goes, "A clever person learns from their mistakes. A wise person knows how to avoid them." While you can’t prevent your first mistake, you gain understanding that can help you avoid encountering similar situations in the future.
• Look for patterns in your behavior. Perhaps your last three relationships didn’t fail due to bad luck, but because you didn’t dedicate enough time to them or because you were only dating the same type of person who wasn’t a good match for you. Identifying recurring patterns can help you prevent them from happening again.

Focus on What You Can Control. Those who can control the outcomes in their lives are better able to stay resilient when faced with adversity. People who lack resilience tend to believe that failure happens because they aren’t worthy, that the world is unfair, and that things always go wrong.

• Instead of thinking you have no control, face failure and remind yourself that it happened due to unfortunate circumstances, not because you’re completely at fault or because the world is a terrible place. Focus on options that don't usually make you think this way.
• Let go of things you can’t control and focus on adapting instead.

Take Care of Yourself Every Day. You might get so caught up in dealing with a major breakup, losing your job, or another significant life event that you don’t have time for basic self-care, like taking a shower or getting a good night's sleep. However, if you want to become stronger mentally, your body needs to be physically able to handle it. If your body feels scared or simply rundown, it will be harder for you to face challenges. No matter how bad you feel, try to shower, brush your teeth, sleep, and maintain your regular routine so you can feel as “normal” as possible.

• Remember to also give your mind a break while taking care of yourself. Research has shown that giving your mind some rest, whether through daydreaming or closing your eyes and listening to your favorite song, can reduce stress hormones and help prevent you from feeling overwhelmed.

Maintain self-respect. Amid countless other factors, self-respect hinges on how you value yourself. You must develop a positive view of both yourself and life in general to build resilience. By actively engaging in life and taking responsibility, you nurture your self-respect, so don't withdraw or feel threatened. If you see yourself as worthless, you won't be able to face challenges.

• Boost your self-esteem by focusing on your positive qualities while minimizing negativity. Start by listing things you admire about yourself.
• Find value by fully utilizing your talents and abilities, whether in work, volunteering, business, family life, or other roles.
• Learn new skills as often as possible. This helps reinforce self-respect and removes fear. For example, if you fear your child might get injured, taking a first-aid course will ease your anxiety and increase your confidence in handling emergencies.
• Workshops, conferences, and courses are great for expanding your knowledge and meeting people who may offer help when needed.

Foster creativity. Creativity is an expression of who you are and how you live. It enables you to convey things that words or conversations can't fully capture or even comprehend. Nurturing creativity also enhances your ability to find solutions to problems, allowing you to see the world from multiple perspectives.

• Consider taking photography, poetry, oil painting, or interior design classes, or even sewing your own clothes to express your creativity.

Keep your body in balance. While you don't need to have a six-pack to face major crises, maintaining physical health will support you. Since the body and mind are interconnected, a healthy body helps build the strength and endurance needed for a resilient mindset, which certainly benefits you in tough times. Achieving physical balance boosts self-respect, positive thinking, and a sense of personal strength, all of which contribute to resilience.

• Start with simple actions like walking under the sun for 20 minutes each day; studies have shown that it clears the mind and prepares you to tackle challenges.

Make peace with your past. It's essential to clarify the motivations from your past that influence how you approach life today. If you don't reconcile with past obstacles, they will continue to affect and even dictate your current reactions. You should view past failures and issues as opportunities to learn. Don't expect to resolve everything overnight, but remember that facing these challenges will make you stronger. Writing about past events and the lessons learned helps you accept them. If you can't overcome these struggles on your own, consider seeking therapy or professional counseling.

• Reflect on past failures that made you feel life was over. Look back on how you overcame them—and grew stronger in the process.
• If you feel an unresolved issue from the past is holding you back, find a way to move forward, such as confronting the person involved or revisiting a place that holds significance. You may not fully resolve it, but you can shift your perspective and feel stronger when facing future challenges.

• Always remember to consult with a healthcare professional if you struggle with negative feelings or emotional instability. Mental health issues and other disorders may require expert support.