Why Resilience is Important and How to Build It
In life, you will have setbacks, experience traumatizing events, face tragedies of all sorts. It’s inevitable.
From the loss of a job, to business failures to health and marital problems. In all these, one quality that will keep you going and help you face the challenges head-on and come out tops is resilience.
What Is Resilience?
Resilience is the ability to persist, adapt, and bounce back from significant emotional experiences and challenges. It is the mental toughness displayed in the face of adversity necessary to overcome it.
Many people crumble in times of difficulties and tragedies, but not people with resilience. Resilient people look adversity in the eye and have it blinking first.
Why Is Resilience Important?
Resilience is a prerequisite to success, and it’s applicable in all areas of life. It empowers you to protect yourself against devastating circumstances and prevent mental health breakdown. Several studies have even linked resilience with happiness and longevity.
Below are more benefits of developing resilience:
- Resilience helps you to cope with stress.
- Resilience prevents you from using illicit substances and alcohol to cope with life’s difficulties.
- Resilience gives you the presence of mind to deal with the challenges you are facing.
- Resilience helps you to be more involved with a friend and family who will offer emotional support to help you get back on your feet faster.
- Resilience helps you to exercise more control over events happening around you.
11 Ways to Build Resilience at Work
Reframe the situation to your advantage. Nothing is what it seems. Our realities are what we interpret situations to be. Choose to reframe seemingly negative events in ways that serve and empower you, instead of focusing on the negatives that disempower and demoralise you. For example, if a project you launched failed woefully, you can choose to focus on the lessons you learned and things to avoid in the future.
See difficulties as part of personal development. Smooth seas don’t make good sailors. Similarly, you won’t be a champion if everything is smooth in your life. As the German philosopher, Nietzsche famously said, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
Treat challenges as a learning process. If you look back at your life, you’ll discover that the most important lessons you learned were learned the hard way. Viewing every problem as a learning process will help you develop the resilience you need to keep fighting and pushing until you overcome your problems.
Resist the urge to dramatise. Many people “lose it” and throw a fit when things don’t go their way. Reacting in such ways won’t help you develop the resilience you need. Instead, keep your cool, pull yourself together, and reflect.
Lean on friends and family. In bad times, the good relationships you have forged with friends and family can serve as a strong shoulder to lean on. They will provide the all-important emotional support you need.
Seek professional help. You don’t have to build resilience all by yourself. Speak to a mental health professional. These days, you don’t have to leave your work to do that, some insurance companies have developed a system that enables you to consult a GP at your own schedule.
Take a positive outlook. There is some good in every situation. Choose to look for it and focus on it. By so doing, you’ll build the resilience to overcome your troubles.
Set goals. Goals give us something to aim for. Goals capture the essence of our existence. By setting goals, you have something to live for that will uplift your spirit.
Take action. Work on your goal every day, not just to achieve its end but to use as a coping mechanism instead of resorting to drugs and alcohol.
Be optimistic. Expecting good to happen from the actions you take helps you to see opportunities and solutions when they present themselves.
Celebrate your progress. Pat yourself on the back and celebrate the little progress you make towards the accomplishment of your goals.