From Adversity to Strength: How to become more resilient

Some may seem naturally resilient to every hardship they encounter in life. To someone who is overwhelmed by every obstacle, this resilience may seem like a superpower.

“How can this person keep going like nothing can bring them down?”

Rather than focusing solely on others, prioritize working on aspects of yourself that are most readily fixable. It might be useful to a certain degree to analyze other people and adjust your own actions accordingly. But at the end of the day, you might never get to know the most important factors that make another person more resilient. Did they have more positive experiences during childhood? Did they get more positive feedback, so now they are more self-conscious? Maybe they weren’t being traumatized like you were. Maybe it’s just genetics. While these thoughts are understandable, they are only useful to some extent.

At the end of the day, the strongest lever you have is working on correcting your own actions.

From Thought to Action

Slowly start to do things that you are afraid of but feel like you should do with more ease. The thought always comes first. Right now, think of something that you would find scary, like maybe talking to a stranger. How would it feel for you to do such a thing? Do you have experience doing something like that? If yes, then think of a situation where it led to a positive outcome. Maybe it would be a nice thing to have such a positive experience again.

If you didn’t do something before, try to come up with potential positive outcomes and reasons you should do said things. The thought is always the first step of action. If we can come up with good reasons for doing something, it already gets much easier. If we can associate it with something positive even, it feels like we can be rewarded—and we are definitely craving rewards. It’s what makes us take things on.

Time to take action. Start with a small step.

In the case of talking to strangers, start out by just asking for a piece of information if you really mean it. Be kind (to yourself as well) and move on. If you do those tiny little actions that don’t take too much effort, then over time it will feel like a breeze. Then you can move on to something more challenging. This is the way to improve in almost everything, really. It’s like working a muscle. You strain it to encourage it to grow, being careful not to overdo it, and then you rest and let it sink in.

Resting is something that I can’t emphasize enough. Only face as much as you can handle at any given time. Then recover. Aside from improving a single skill, like being able to talk to people, this growth process improves your overall resilience in that it makes you more self-conscious by showing you what you are capable of.

A Shift in Mindset

Another, if not the most useful thing to work on, is changing your mindset about challenges. It doesn’t do you any good to become desperate if something bad occurs.

Having a negative mindset only reinforces having a negative mindset.

You want to start having a positive mindset to reinforce that and break the cycle, shifting toward a better habit of mind, so to speak. First of all, it’s useful to find the positive aspects of challenges and setbacks. This doesn’t mean that you have to be an incorrigible optimist. Of course, you should be realistic and also consider negative aspects. But if you struggle with being resilient, then chances are that you are already focusing too much on the downsides. So, don’t worry in that regard.

“Why should I see the positives in something bothersome?”

The simplest reason is that you will be better able to handle it. We people are happier when positive things happen to us. So now you will already have more peace of mind and maybe even look forward to what you would normally hate. Secondly, the shift in perspective will let you see things that you wouldn’t have considered before, letting you see more opportunities and a better way forward. Not just should you see challenges and setbacks as something more positive. You should start seeing it as a chance for you to grow.

Confronting challenges enhances the skills necessary to overcome them.

Facing hardship grows your resilience towards it. Facing setbacks grows your ability to recover faster the next time you face one. Knowing this and keeping it in mind will again give you further calmness facing whatever you’re dealing with. This, in turn, helps you keep a clear head.

As you can see, we are creating a positive feedback loop here, where one positive attitude might lead to the reinforcement of another—an upward spiral toward living a better life.

Lastly, let me mention the appreciation of success

If you finally overcame a hurdle, you should at the very least acknowledge it. Think about the effort that you have invested, how it positively impacted your capabilities, and about how much easier it will be the next time you deal with a similar thing.

Appreciating your success will also further reinforce you associating challenges with something positive, therefore improving your resilience even further. If you don’t feel like you succeeded, still think of all the positive things it led to. Also, compare yourself now with yourself from before. Write down three aspects that you feel have improved. It’s not so useful to compare your own performance with that of others at this point because we are talking about what you yourself perceived as a hurdle, not about what others perceive.

Standing on Stable Ground

This goes for both mental and physical health, if one can even separate the two. Being healthy gives you stability. Stability gives you composure. And composure is key to being resilient. Think of yourself as a martial artist. You can be sure that you can only make a move when standing on stable ground. Without stability, you will always be in the defense, not establishing a proper stance. First of all, let’s talk mental health. What I mean is to think in a way that is considered to be normal. Of course, you might say that there is no normal or that nowadays being normal is being mentally unhealthy, but that’s another topic. When in doubt, refer to what state of mind you would find beneficial to be in.

As there are many tipps out there, let me just briefly mention the most important ones regarding building resilience.

The most important factor in most cases is having social support.

A lack of social support can have negative impacts on your mental health pretty fast. It is in and of itself a foundation you need to feel stable. If you find yourself being easily panicked and become desperate, then it might be that you feel unsupported. One thing that will help you is finding people who are in a similar situation as you are.

On the outside, we always like to portray ourselves as adamant, but no one really is on the inside. People have fears and problems that you might never think of. Finding support groups with people that deal with similar issues like you makes you have that realization. You can also look up testimonies of people on the internet, like in videos or blogs, telling you about what problems they faced and maybe even how they dealt with them. It goes a long way of feeling supported if you realize that there are other people like you out there.

Don’t be afraid to reach out.

Other people tend to be sympathetic toward those who are upfront about what's going on in their minds. If you are more open about what's moving you, most people will appreciate the gesture and might even share their own feelings in turn. You might be surprised to know that they feel the same. In this case, it would help a great deal in feeling supported. Support, by definition, adds stability, making you more resilient.

The second aspect regarding mental health is managing your energy and focus. Always consider whether something really has an impact on your life or whether you’re overthinking. Is the current news really relevant to you? Set yourself a deadline for how long you scroll through social media. Hide news that you consider irrelevant. You only have mental energy for that much info. Everything beyond that is an unnecessary burden on your mind. Take a break every few minutes and evaluate. If you feel overwhelmed, then stop and only come back in a few hours, if at all. Not taking breaks, as I mentioned before, is a killer of resilience. If you don’t recover, you will be hurt.

A shield will break when smashed with too much force. You have to temper it slowly to make it harder.

Taking breaks is always important for health, which brings us to the physical aspects. Especially if you are doing things for hours at a time, it might burden you immensely without you noticing. If you are sitting for half an hour, take a few minutes to wander around, look out the window, or have something to drink. If you know you won’t, set an alarm. You will be more productive when coming back, so consider your breaks themselves to be a means to a better outcome in either your work or your ability to enjoy your free time.

I’ll assume that you know enough about living a healthy live, so I won’t dive into that topic much deeper. Just know that it is essential to feeling more composed and, therefore, more resilient.

Building Resilience: The Path Forward

These things are only a starting point in developing more resilience. Hardship will always occur. The key is to see it as opportunities for growth, developing a positive mindset toward them, and taking things slowly. Being rash and constantly bumping your head against a wall will get you nowhere. Take breaks. Eventually, your head will become hard enough to smash through.

Evaluate your progress based on how you performed in the past.

You will see results sooner or later and draw from your success, leading to even more success in the future. Resilience is built over time, but you also have to take that time. Don’t expect immediate results, as you will only get disappointed. Now that you hopefully have a more positive attitude toward the things about to come, don’t fret about facing them; take it one step at a time.