No one is immune to experiencing adversity, and we all will experience stressful situations throughout our lives. Some people tend to thrive and survive during difficult times. While others tend to regress, stumble, and fall. Finding ways to be stronger than those challenges is critical to developing coping skills and thought processes that allow you to live your best life.
How can you develop the skills and behaviors that allow you to prosper, flourish, and ultimately make it out of the setback better off than when you started? Let’s explore the importance of building mental resilience and discuss how you can develop and sharpen these skills and techniques to use to your best advantage.
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What is Mental Resilience?
So what is mental resilience, and why is it important? Mental resilience is how you manage and rebound in the face of adversity, difficult moments, or traumatic events. Being mentally resilient gives you the mental strength to get through tough times. By finding ways to expand your coping abilities, you can become unstoppable even when things do not seem to be going your way.
Perseverance, determination, and attitude are all core components to building mental resilience, allowing you to move forward with strength, confidence, and a more positive outlook. Some people naturally default to positive thinking, but some people may have low resilience due to significant sources of chronic stress in their everyday lives.
But here’s the good news: resilience is a skill that can be developed and strengthened, even in the face of adversity. This is what personal growth and self-improvement is all about. By learning and implementing these skills, you can increase your chances of success and having what you want and deserve. To build mental resilience, try a resilience training subliminal program.
Building Mental Resilience
The American Psychological Association states that increasing emotional resilience through practice is possible. Here are some tips for building your personal resilience.
1. Expect and Embrace Change
A crucial part of being mentally resilient is flexibility and adaptability. By learning to adapt to different circumstances and letting go of things you cannot control, you will be better prepared to manage challenges and difficult situations in your life.
Resilient thinking encourages you to think about new possibilities and opportunities. You might pursue an entirely new direction that you would never have thought about without the challenge. Instead of being knocked off your feet by an unexpected change, mental toughness can help you survive and move on to thrive and flourish.
2. Be Proactive and Take Control
In certain circumstances, ignoring specific problems or waiting to see how an issue will work out is unwise and can prolong your problem. As a result, conditions worsen, and you have more problems than when you initially started.
A typical example of this is ignoring a physical health issue, such as high blood pressure or blood sugar, that eventually leads to serious health problems. Another example is knowing that your company is cutting back but choosing to see what happens when you do not have a financial buffer of emergency funds to sustain a job loss.
In both of these scenarios, there are proactive actions that you can take to be prepared, lessen your risk, or avoid the risk entirely. A resilient person would begin working on how to resolve issues right away, which increases the chances of more positive outcomes. Feeling ready to develop your mental resilience?
Try Mindvalley, a leading personal growth platform that offers courses, interactive exercises, and community engagement to help you develop new skills. Embrace personal development and strive to become the best version of yourself.
3. Face Your Fears
Building mental resilience means overcoming the fear of change and doing things even when you are scared. This can be hard, but moving out of your comfort zone is where true personal growth occurs.
The more you do this, the easier it will get. Sometimes, the scariest thing is the fear itself. In fact, commonly, the best way to overcome fear is by doing the thing you fear. So, take small steps consistently towards doing the things that scare you. Over time, you learn that you can face whatever curve balls life throws you, looking at fear in the face and approaching adverse events head-on with confidence and strength.
4. Nurture a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is necessary for mental resilience. A growth mentality means you believe that you can increase your intelligence, talents, and abilities through hard work, diligence, and perseverance. If you want something, you work for it. When you want to increase your knowledge, you read and take courses.
And if you desire to be better at something, you practice more. When facing challenges, being confident in your abilities and focusing on solutions rather than your problem is vital in becoming more resilient. Embrace your greatest challenges as chances to build your inner strength and mental toughness. This greatly enhances your ability to cope, deal with, and respond during times of hardship.
5. Develop a Strong Support System
Reach out to family members and friends during tough times; their presence can be a significant source of social support and help alleviate emotional pain. Furthermore, seek professional help if necessary. With supportive, caring people surrounding you, you can talk about your thoughts and feelings, obtain constructive feedback, and focus on solutions instead of the problem.
This, in turn, helps you to overcome the setback and keep moving forward. Talking about your issues with loved ones and friends does not prevent bad things from happening. But knowing that you have people in your life that you can turn to in times of need reduces anxiety, stress, and depression.
Try Mindvalley, a leading personal growth platform that offers courses, interactive exercises, and community engagement to help you develop new skills. Embrace personal development and strive to become the best version of yourself.
6. Recognize Your Strengths
Building mental resilience requires acknowledging that you are unique, capable, and strong.
You do not need compliments or recognition from others to confirm you are wonderful.
While those are nice to have, you do need this from yourself.
If you need help with this, start small by saying “good job” every time you do something you are proud of.
Even if it feels awkward, keep going.
Start paying attention to your contributions to projects at work, your diligence at school, or your effectiveness at balancing work and family. There are so many things in your life that could not happen without your participation.
Remembering helps support a positive self-image where you feel strong and capable. As a result, during hard times, it is much easier to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going.
7. Practice Self-Care
Take care of your mental well-being by practicing self-care on a regular basis. When you feel overwhelmed and stressed, it’s easy to forget to take care of yourself. As a result, you will naturally have less energy, focus, and motivation, making rebounding from challenges harder.
Self-care supports mental toughness so you are at your best when facing adversity. Take care of your body, as physical resilience plays a crucial role in mental resilience, too. Engage in regular physical activity, follow a healthy diet, and ensure you get enough sleep to rejuvenate your mind and body.
8. Banish Negative Self-Talk
Building mental resilience requires recognizing negative self-talk and harsh self-criticism and kicking that inner critic to the curb. Negative self-talk causes self-doubt and increases the risk of experiencing mental health issues.
All of which lower resilience and your ability to recover quickly from hardships and setbacks. Recognizing and acknowledging negative self-talk will improve all areas of your life. Furthermore, negative self-talk will decrease your self-esteem and confidence in your abilities. Ready to build your mental toughness?
Try Mindvalley, a leading personal growth platform that offers courses, interactive exercises, and community engagement to help you develop new skills. Embrace personal development and strive to become the best version of yourself.
9. Embrace Positive Thinking
Maintaining a positive outlook and approach to life can be challenging in the face of extreme difficulty, but remember you can fully manage your own resilience. In order to live a resilient life, harness the power of positive thoughts. Challenge negative thoughts and focus on the positive aspects of your life to maintain a more positive outlook.
10. Practice Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence plays a significant role in navigating daily stresses in a healthy way. It plays a pivotal role in the development of mental resilience, as it encompasses the ability to understand, manage, and harness emotions effectively. When faced with difficult events or challenges, people with high emotional intelligence are better equipped to navigate through them with resilience.
They possess the capacity to recognize and acknowledge their emotions, allowing them to process negative emotions in a healthy way rather than suppressing them. Moreover, they also excel in cultivating strong relationships, which can serve as crucial support systems during tough times.
Summary: Building Mental Resilience
Imagine yourself as the fictional character Wonder Woman. She can protect herself from attacks by using bands on her wrists to deflect the attacks. The attacks do not stop coming, but she has a superpower to help her manage them. Think of mental resilience as similar to this because it is your superpower.
You can control your thoughts, behaviors, and actions only. While you can influence the external world, you will never have 100% control over it. Building mental resilience allows you to face those difficult experiences head-on and continue progressing and succeeding in your goals.
Now you understand what mental resilience is and how you can leverage it to thrive despite the hardships of life that come your way. So start now with building your mental resilience, and you will be well on your way to achieving your full potential.
