By Elle Ryan, BS, Mental Health Counseling Intern
We’ve all heard the phrase, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but what exactly does resilience look like? Resilience is the process of overcoming the challenging experiences we face in life. We express resilience through our mental, emotional and behavioral flexibility necessary for making adjustments to our external and internal demands. However, people are not always innately born to be resilient and instead learn it over time.
So, how do we learn to become more resilient?
• Self-Care: An important part of cultivating resilience is the practice of self-care, whether it’s taking a daily walk, developing a good sleep routine or having some down time to relax. When we take care of ourselves consistently, we build trust and respect for ourselves, and in turn, we become better equipped to cope effectively with the adversity in our lives. Self-care acts as a healthy foundation for us to build upon our resilience.
We all have bad days and experience crises; how we choose to react is up to us.
• Setting Goals: Resilient people often set goals for themselves that help them learn from their experiences and maintain a positive perspective. Our mistakes and experiences have the potential to teach us valuable lessons. We can create positive change in our lives when we allow ourselves to look at our mistakes with compassion and reframe failures as a normal part of the process of learning and growing. As humans, we are not perfect. Giving ourselves grace when we make mistakes is important in building our resilience.
• Accepting Change: Lastly, remember to be flexible. Although many of us would rather have things remain the same in our lives, change is inevitable. Understanding that things change and accepting that we might need to scrap our carefully-made plans or develop a new routine strengthens our resilience.
Practicing self-care, taking new perspectives and being flexible all builds our resilience over time and teaches us that we have the power to become the person we want to be.
To learn more about being resilient or to have some extra help please contact me at Counseling Connect! Together we can be resilient!