Life may not always come with guidelines to face various situations. Life is meant to come with surprises and challenges, that may completely change a person’s life in a positive or negative way. It does not matter how many challenges a person has encountered, but what matters the most, is how a person is able to adapt to the change quickly and not let it affect their normal life.
When facing adverse situations, do you face the challenge with confidence, and, do you recover quickly from the loss? So what exactly, is this quality that we are talking about? Well, it is Resilience. These days, we have been reading a lot about the term Resilience.
What exactly is Resilience?
Resilience can be seen as a mechanism, that aids people to recover from any challenging or difficult situation with confidence. Resilience can be equated to an improved and healthy state of mental well-being in the face of stress. Resilient individuals are often equipped with healthy psychological and physiological stress responses.
Lack of resilience may lead to unwanted problems such as feelings of stress, overwhelm, and thereby leads an individual to follow unhealthy coping mechanisms such as alcohol and substance abuse. In some cases, it may even lead to other mental health-related problems and sometimes even suicide.
Resilience should not be seen as a tool that aids in removing our problems away from our lives, but rather a way to help us cope and move past these problems. Resilience should not be seen as a personality trait that only a few people possess, but rather it involves thoughts and behaviors that anyone can develop. Resilience is often linked to one or more types of psychological states such as positive emotions, active coping, social support, and prosocial behavior. These psychological states can be viewed as techniques to reduce the propensity and duration of stress responses.
How can we say that a person is resilient?
A resilient individual is often optimistic, has a positive self-image and self-esteem, sets realistic goals, avoids the process of self-blame and self-loathing. Mainly, the individual is able to adapt to and approach various new situations with confidence and high self-esteem.
Various researches have been conducted to study the relationship between culture and resilience. Studies were conducted on Afghan families including adolescents and adult caregivers. It was seen that culture has a very important role to play in shaping an individual’s level of resilience. Culture influences what meaning an individual gives to his/her suffering, the level of hope for the future, and the emotional, moral, and physical responses to various aspects of life.
Resilience is mainly focused on promoting positive contextual, social, and individual variables that prevent an individual from behavioral problems, mental distress, and poor health outcomes. These positive variables are called as promotive factors. These factors promote an individual’s positive behavior and help overcome negative responses to an adverse situation.
There are two types of promotive factors: assets and resources. Assets can be thought of as those factors that are within an individual such as self-efficacy and self-esteem. Resources are those variables that are outside individuals, such as parental support, mentors, etc.
How can we develop resilience?
Form the right relationships. It is very imperative to connect with the right people, who are empathetic and understand your problems. Connect with people who are compassionate and someone you can definitely count on! These are the people who should make you feel that you are in this together, and not alone. When facing challenging or traumatic events, we usually try and isolate ourselves from people. But it is very important to note that, by having the right people around, you will be able to quickly recover from the situation, thereby increasing the level of resilience in an individual.
Self-care! We might feel that this word is over popularized in today’s world, but self-care is a direct link for good mental health and for developing resilience. So how is self-care linked to mental health and resilience? Although stress is very much an emotional response, it comes along with a lot of physical responses too, such as aches and pains, nausea, dizziness, etc. So practicing a self-care routine that includes proper nutrition, sleep, hydration, and regular exercise, will definitely help to manage these physical and emotional responses to stress, and strengthen the body to adapt to stressful situations.
Engage in pro-social behavior. Try and help people as much as you can, always try and be there for someone in need. By doing so you can find purpose in your life, develop a sense of self-worth, interact with people, and thereby develop resilience.
Avoid temporary fixes! It might be very easy to mask the negative emotions of a challenging or traumatic event with alcohol, drug, or other substances. However, it is very important to note that these are only temporary fixes! Try to understand your body’s response to stress and see how to manage the stress as a whole, and not just to eliminate the stress responses.
Work towards your goals. Irrespective of whether they are small or big, work towards these goals regularly. Focus on ways to achieve these goals rather than focusing on things that you are not able to achieve. This will assist you to recover from any adverse situation and recognize their value in life.
Learn from past experiences. Look back at your past stressful experiences and see who or what worked for you to recover from that experience. Understand and comprehend what were the strengths that helped you overcome those challenges and, what you have learned from those times. By doing this, it will give you an outlook on how to respond to challenging situations in the future.
Develop an optimistic outlook on life. Yes, it is easier said than done! It is definitely true that is hard to be positive when you are facing challenges in life. But is very crucial to stay positive throughout the challenging times. Believe and hope that good things will happen to you. This positive belief and outlook will help you to face the challenges even better, and become resilient.
Accept the changes in your life. It is possible and true that not all the goals that you want in life, maybe achieved due to those challenging and adverse situations. Accept these changes and circumstances. Focus more on circumstances and goals that you can change and achieve.
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Show comments Hide comments[…] to fail. This failure makes me a human and gives me the power to fight back and draw towards ‘Resilience’. My mental health constitutes my weaknesses that I have transformed into my strengths. I am a […]