Resilient is another trait which you need to develop when life can be cruel. Resilience is typically defined as the capacity to recover from difficult life events. Merriam-Webster defines resilience as being “able to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.” Other words you can use for resilience are bouncy, elastic, flexible, rubbery, springy, or stretch. You can bounce back when life gives you trash.
Resilience is what gives people the emotional strength to cope with trauma, adversity, or hardship. It empowers people to accept and adapt to situations and move forward. Resilient people utilize their resources, strengths, and skills to overcome challenges and work through setbacks. Being resilient does not mean that people do not suffer, experience stress, or have emotional upheaval. Not ignoring problems and “push” through them. Unfortunately, people equate resilience with mental toughness. What you need to know is that demonstrating resilience includes working through emotional pain and grief by tapping into your strengths and seek help from support systems so you can overcome challenges and work through problems.
Resilience isn’t a fixed trait. Flexibility, adaptability, and perseverance can help people tap into their resilience by changing certain thoughts and behaviors. Research shows that students who believe that both intellectual abilities and social attributes can be developed show a lower stress response to adversity and improved performance.
Another leading psychologist, Martin Seligman, says the way that you explain setbacks to yourself is vital. He says that there are three main elements: long-lasting, pervasiveness, and personalization. Long-lasting is permanent or temporary. How can people imagine the effects of harmful events? How you frame the event is important. Resilient people will see the event as temporary, even only a small part of it. For instance, they might say “My project is a failure.” Instead, you can say “My project has a concern about this task today.” How you define it, makes it temporary.
The next component is perverseness. How you form the event will determine how much of your life is affected. Resilient people put boundaries around setbacks or damaging events. Otherwise, it will affect other unrelated areas of your life. For instance, you would say “I am a novice at this” rather than “I am bad doing anything.”
Finally, with personalization, you decide that the event is specific and close to you. People who have resilience have Teflon on themselves; blamelessness when bad events occur. Instead, you know other people, or the circumstances, as the cause. For instance, you might say “I allowed myself too little time that I needed to finish that project successfully,” rather than “I messed that project up because I am poor in my job.”
If you make an event temporary, the effects are limited, and with narrow personalization, you will be more resilient and better handle the event and its consequences. Resilience will give you the emotional strength to cope with whatever life gives you.
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