Exercising Your Resilience
Everyone knows the old adage “if life gives you lemons, than make lemonade.” There are times in our life when we’ve given that advice to others, and there are times when you stood there in anger and frustration as your life seemingly came down around you and someone told you to make lemonade. Typically this saying is associated with the Pollyanna in your life who always knows the right angle to turn bad news into something not so bad, or even good. But this saying isn’t a trait of an optimist. It’s a trait of someone who is resilient and will weather the storms of life with grace.
While much consideration is given to the power of being optimistic, we rarely talk about the power of being resilient and how to strengthen our resilience. We all know that change is hard, but by cultivating the right mindset, we are able to be overcome the inevitable adversity that life with throw at us. Studies have shown that resilience is a personality trait that comes naturally to some, but that you can strengthen your innate resilience.
Top 5 Ways to Encourage Resilience
Practice Positive Mental Attitude
Instead of dwelling on the negative or blindly accepting all aspects of your situation, learn to embrace and act with a positive mental attitude. This will allow you to be proactive in areas that you can influence and shift perspectives on difficulties that you can’t change.
Connect with Your Safety Net
Be sure to keep in touch with your friends, family and other people who make up your social safety net. These are the people who will support you, encourage you and give you comfort. It’s also good to have a trusted person to turn to who is able to give you an honest, yet loving assessment of what you can do to influence your difficult situation.
Take Time for You
While connecting with others is important, you also need to remember to take time to care for yourself. If you’re short on time, and aren’t we all, develop comforting and caring routines that allow you to accomplish what needs to be done in a peaceful way. Even if the only time you find is five minutes alone in the morning for your first cup of coffee, it is vital for your health that you find ways to refresh and rejuvenate yourself during the day.
Check Your Perspective
It can be hard to find a balanced perspective on your problems. It’s easy to dismiss them and say, “there are children starving in Africa”, just as it’s too easy to wallow in the negativity of your hardship. Neither perspective is healthy as neither perspective respects your emotions.
Serve Others with Compassion
Whether you volunteer for your favorite charity on a regular basis, or engage in random acts of kindness, helping others will go a long way in helping you build up your stores of resilience. As you start to help others and perform acts of kindness, you will build up the serotonin in your system. Serotonin is what gives you that happy feeling and if you engage in acts that build up the serotonin in your body, you will have those stores to draw upon when you face adversity.
Strengthening your resilience will help you face adversity and overcome the challenges in your life. It’s not about burying your head in the sand or only seeing the good in people and events, it’s about developing the mental flexibility to thrive in changing circumstances.
