5 Steps to Emotional Resilience

Ever wondered how some people always bounce back from misfortune and adversity, while others fall apart? Emotional resilience is an ability to adapt to a crisis or stressful situations. Your level of resilience can go a long way towards determining whether you’re able to face adversity without lasting difficulties, or whether you’ll be battered and shoved by life’s changes and challenges.

Smart people work to increase their mental toughness and build their emotional resilience. It’s an invaluable asset that plays a significant role in your life. In today’s Mentalizer post, we look at 5 steps you can take to build your emotional resilience, from the ground up.

1.      Boost your Positivity

Studies suggest that different people were born with more resilience than others. But everyone has the opportunity to work on enhancing their resilience. Resilient people have the capability to experience both positive and negative emotions even in painful situations. They mourn their losses, endure their frustrations and find redeeming value or potential in most challenges.

When people who aren’t that resilient face challenges, they encounter a barrage of negative emotions. If things are good, they feel good. But if things aren’t going well, they feel horrid. By increasing their positivity, this group can be able to increase their resilience. For every negative, heart-wrenching emotion that you experience, you have to experience at least 3 positive experiences that you can use to uplift you. This 3-to-1 ratio of positive to negative experiences has been proved scientifically. It’s important so you build your resilience, increase your productivity and optimally survive.

2.      We Live to Learn

The more you can leverage your challenges to grow, the more resilient you’ll be. Resilient people, when they come across a problem, tend to think along the lines of ‘what’s the solution for that?’ What is this situation trying to teach me? They look at pain as an opportunity to learn, solve problems and build confidence. They form a habit of moving toward the pain rather than running from it. This goes a long way towards increasing emotional resilience.

3.      Care for Yourself

A regular routine of healthy habits – and good health – are necessary so you can master both mental and emotional resilience. Daily habits are instrumental. If you’re doing great with sleep, keeping stress levels down and eating well, you’ll be less fragile, and less likely to plunge into unhealthy patterns after a serious tragedy or setback. Surrounding yourself with people you enjoy, as well as spending time outdoors also helps increase resilience. For instance, significant social connections can help boost resilience while facing an illness.

4.      Practice Patience

Be mindful and use self-talk whenever you’re in a pressing situation. Rather than dwelling on the losses, notice what’s happening as you wait for something. Mindfully choose what you can learn from the situation, rather than escaping from it. Perceive yourself as brave and courageous, rather than seeing yourself as a victim of circumstance. Try to notice anything good about the wait. This way, you’ll have a foundation to draw on the next time a similar difficulty manifests.

5.      Create Capacity

Rather than trying to find temporary solutions to ease the discomfort, think about the root cause of the problem. Maybe it’s a chronic condition or an unresolved hurt. There might not be an immediate solution, but you, all the same, can experience peace even in times of pressure. Have it in mind that superficial solutions are usually dangerous. Choose to become emotionally resilience.

There’s no understating the importance of both mental and emotional resilience in your everyday life. We live in an uncertain world. It’s very important that you’re able to steer yourself to safety once adversity strikes.