Developing Resilience

What is Resilience?

 

 

Resilience is the ability to "bounce back" after a time of crisis or stress.  It does not mean that you have not been affected or impacted by a situation or crisis, it just means that you have managed the situation and that you have not become overwhelmed or incapacitated on a longterm basis by it; in other words that we have learned to adapt to whatever this lifechanging event has been.

 

Why do we need resilience?

 

We need resilience because living and life continue to provide us with situations that we have to adapt to.  Life is full of ups and downs and resilience is about learning to manage these ups and downs, and understand how we let these impact on our quality of life.

 

How do I develop resilience?

 

People react differently to stressful situations, resilience is something that we can learn to develop. Resilient people tend to have certain traits such as; good self-awareness, good sense of boundaries, an ability to be creative, good self-motivation, an ability to learn and make the most out of any situation and a good sense of humour.

So to answer the question of How do I develop resilience? I believe we can develop resilience by allowing ourselves  to concentrate on developing these traits within ourselves and that is how we start.

According to different research on this topic there are several different valuable things that resilient people seem to develop and persist with even in the face of adversity:

• they will have a plan and even in the face of adversity they can stick with the structure of that plan and allow for flexibility
• they have a certain amount of confidence in themselves that does not become unhinged even when they are facing difficulties
• they have a good level of self-awareness and can address and understand their emotional reactions
•  they have the ability to be creative and explore many different options to whatever situation they are faced with.
• Good communciation skills
• Strong, caring relationships with family & friends
• They are aware of how they can increase their motivation even when times are difficult
• Good boundaries
•  Learn from past mistakes
• Take responsibility for themselves

The above list describes many key factors in how we might look at developing resilience, if we look at the list and see areas that we need to address, we can learn to develop these parts of ourselves.

In the meantime the way we can learn to look after ourselves is important and we can learn to incorporate things into our life that will help us cope along the way that will ultimately help towards developing resilience in ourselves:

•  Make sure to plan time out with family & friends or people that you enjoy being with
•  Eat well & exercise
•  Rest
•  Have some compassion for yourself
•  Don't be afraid to look for help and ways of managing your stress
•  Learn to appreciate the good things that you have right now in your life
•  Make sure to acknowledge what you have achieved in any given day no matter how small it might appear
•  Follow your passion
•  Sometimes it helps to de-clutter in order to help you focus & clarify what is important to you
•  Look for support & don't be afraid to get professional help

There are some great websites that you might be interested in having a look at to find out more about resilience:

http://www.mentalhelp.net/
http://www.mentalhealth.asn.au/search.html?searchword=resilience&ordering=&searchphrase=all
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx

That's all for this blog hope you find it useful, next blog I am going to look at motivation skills.