7 ways you can promote resilience in yourself and others
Values
It’s important that you identify what is most valuable, important, or desirable in life to you — both what you currently have and what you wish to achieve.
A person with a ‘why’ to live can deal with any ‘how.’ — Nietzsche
Ask yourself where you want to be, in relation to this value, in one year, ten years or over your entire life. Then set realistic goals around these values that include daily and weekly tasks, no matter how small.
Surround yourself — your room, house, work place, etc. with things and people that link in some way to these values.
Keep in mind that change is normal. So, allow your values to change shape or lose/gain priority for you over time, as you experience and learn more through life’s changes. If/when this happens, re-clarify your values by thinking about them again from scratch, or identifying and making new ones.
Physical health
Health and fitness will mitigate against the potential harm of high or prolonged stress. Healthiness has also been found to promote a more positive/optimistic mindset and a better ability to cope.
Encourage yourself to increase the activity in your lifestyle. Get at least 30 hours of exercise a day (in which your heart rate increases). Try to eat foods that are as unprocessed as possible, like fresh vegetables and whole grains. Minimise your intake of caffeine, alcohol and nicotine. Get regular, sound rest (quiet time and sleep). Engage in hobbies that are creative and use both your brain and hands.
All of these habits have been connected to increased resilience.
Have personal heroes
Identify a handful of significant people or ‘personal heroes.’ They can be people you look up to and or admire. Try to think of someone who has an attitude you admire, or are living their life in ways that you want to learn from and model yourself after in some way. These people can be friends or family, famous people, historical icons, fact or fiction. Whether you can talk to them or not you can still learn from them.
Identify what it is about them that you look up to, what values do they have that you connect with? Then ask yourself things like, ‘What would they do in this situation?’ ‘What would they think about what I am doing?’ ‘What might they do to achieve this goal?’ ‘What might be most important to them and why?’
Regulate your emotions
Another important factor in promoting resilience, within yourself and others, is developing the ability, skills, and discipline to manage intense negative emotions in the moments they occur. It’s important to remember that it’s normal and okay to feel the whole range of emotions (positive and negative), whether you’re male or female. It’s more about engaging in appropriate behaviours, emotional expression, and cognitive strategies. You could also find sustainable ways of ‘letting off steam’ regularly during the week.
Be social
Social support has consistently been found to be a huge protective factor for a range of stressors, mental health and even physical well-being. Set aside time to socialise, especially with people who fit those values you identified in point one above.
Live in the moment
Enjoy the ‘little things’ in life – whatever these may be for you. Notice and acknowledge them in yourself, the world around you and in others. Create personal or social rituals where these little things happen.
If you’ve never given it a try before, look into mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is being present in this moment, now, and giving it your full attention.
Value your challenges
Research into what makes one person more resilient and another less resilient found that:
the person who demonstrates more resilience over time is the person who is regularly (though not constantly) exposed to and overcomes small to medium level personal life challenges.
It’s thought that each personal challenge provides you with practice and experience in utilising your resources and problem solving skills. These are lessons learnt that really help when big personal challenges come along later. This is called the ‘inoculation effect’, as it works in the same way a vaccine does, by giving you a small dose of ‘the bad thing’ so that your body learns to handle it.
This makes the challenges we encounter a bit more meaningful, and thus a bit more bearable. But it also means that you could actually increase your level of resilience by setting for yourself small to medium personal challenges to work through and overcome. If you make the challenges link with the things you identify in point one above – all the better!