Do You Know What Resilience Is?
Resilience is a set of thoughts and attitudes that we can learn and develop in order to adapt and overcome adverse situations. The people around us will also be fundamental
How do people deal with difficult situations? How do we get over the death of a loved one or the loss of a job? The answer to why we adapt is called resilience.
What is resilience?
If you wonder what resilience is, the answer is simple: it is the ability to face adversity and manage to adapt to tragedies, trauma, threats or severe stress.
Being resilient does not mean that the person does not experience difficulties or anguish. Everyone at some point in our lives feels sadness, uncertainty, discomfort or pain, whether physical or emotional.
Being resilient is, despite all the obstacles that arise and the great impact that situations have on each person, even so, being able to overcome and adapt.
In addition, resilience is not something that we can have or not, but rather encompasses a set of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that can be learned and developed by anyone.
Influences to be resilient
Many studies show that emotional support is one of the most important factors involved in building resilience. Having close people who provide us with love, support and trust can make us much more resilient.
Other associated factors are:
- A positive view of ourselves , trusting in our strengths and weaknesses.
- Communication and problem solving skills. See problems as challenges to overcome and not as possible threats.
- Ability to make realistic plans, as well as good dexterity handling of strong feelings and impulses (capacity for self-control).
How are people resilient?
The fundamental characteristics of resilient people are:
- accept reality as it is
- believe that life has meaning
- ability to improve
In addition, they can present other skills such as:
- know how to control your emotions
- be empathetic
- know how to accurately identify the causes of problems
- consider yourself competent
- be confident in themselves.
The most important characteristic of a resilient person is his way of thinking, his style of thinking. A resilient person has realistic and flexible thinking.
How to build resilience?
Resilience is not something that some of us have and others do not, but it encompasses a series of skills and attitudes that we can develop. How?
Here are some tips for this:
1. Establish relationships
We have already mentioned that emotional support is one of the most important factors that will help us to be more resilient.
Having good relationships with others, accepting the help and support they offer us, as well as helping those who need it, strengthens resilience.
2. Realistic thinking, constructive thinking
We cannot prevent threatening or stressful events from occurring, but we can change the way we interpret and react to them.
Seeing problems as challenges to overcome, from a broad perspective, thinking that we have sufficient capacity to face them and find possible solutions helps us to be resilient.
3. Accept reality
Accepting that change is part of life is essential to adapt. Without that acceptance, the adaptation process would stagnate.
4. Trust yourself
You do not know what you are capable of until you try, you may even be surprised at how much you can achieve.
5. Develop goals and objectives
Take action, don’t stand still. Set goals and targets and fight for them.
6. Look for opportunities to discover yourself
Many times after overcoming a stressful event or adversity, you experience personal growth. You learn something new about yourself.
There are many other ways to develop our resilience capacity, we only have to identify those activities that allow us to build our personal strategy to develop it.
Finally a phrase to reflect:
” The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.”
