Having had your fair share of struggles and adversity in life, you may feel your ability to manage a crisis needs improvement. Sometimes, you face your struggles head-on and emerge victorious. Other times, you’re desperately hanging on for dear life.
Then there’s your colleague who, despite going through many traumas and adversity enough to bring a strong person to their knees, manages to come through unscathed. They don’t just survive; they thrive despite the overwhelming difficulty. Every single time!
Because they do not look like what they’ve been through, it’s easy to assume that life has been lenient on them. But you know better. You’ve seen them lose loved ones, suffer a job loss, experience financial instability, and have serious illness. However, they always bounce back from every difficulty and figure out a way to forge ahead.
Their inner strength is an admirable quality that you would give anything to have.
Fortunately, resilience is a quality that can be learned. Research shows that while some people naturally possess resilience due to favorable personality traits, anyone can build resilience through resilience training. That’s where we come in.
This article explains resilience training and its benefits, signs that you need it, and tips for building resilience. With time and effort, you can bounce back from every difficulty and live a fulfilled life despite hardships and traumas.
What Does Resilience Mean?
Resilience means facing adversity in different areas of your life and thriving despite the circumstances. When you’re resilient, you remain undaunted despite massive stress and challenges. When life knocks you down, you get back up every time.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re having personal problems like the loss of a loved one, career challenges like the loss of your job, or even global tragic events like a pandemic or mass shooting; you always bounce back.
The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.”
Resilience can be grouped into emotional resilience (positively related to emotional intelligence), physical resilience, mental resilience, cognitive resilience, and spiritual resilience. Addressing all these key areas ensures that you possess all the necessary life skills to handle any setback that comes your way.
Consider resilience a holistic approach to helping you cope with life's ups and downs!
There is also some research that supports the idea that certain personality traits are connected to how resilient a person is by nature. For example, people who score high on the Big 5 traits of extraversion, agreeableness, or emotional stability reported high levels of resilience.
What Is Resilience Training?
Resilience training is a structured activity that equips people with crucial resilience skills to face and overcome setbacks, adversity, stress, challenges, and difficulties in their daily lives.
Undergoing training to build resilience can provide you with the following benefits.
- It builds self-awareness.
- It improves your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being.
- It aids personal and professional development.
- It builds your confidence.
- It helps you maintain a positive outlook on life.
- It strengthens your relationships.
- It improves work productivity.
- It helps you adapt to changing environments.
- It aids in effective behavioral self-regulation.
- It improves your problem-solving ability.
- It equips you with the resilience skills to deal with stressful situations.
Training yourself to be more resilient can be done through formal courses and activities, but you can also work on your own and implement positive habits into your daily life. We will cover 13 things you can do to get started building resilience shortly, but for now, let’s see whether you could use help in this area.
7 Signs You Need Resilience Training
You can never accurately predict the number of setbacks, stress, or challenges coming your way. Hence, you must constantly build your resilience to prepare for the unexpected.
But how do you know when your resilience is low, and you need an immediate recharge?
Here are some key signs you need to build up your resilience.
1. You Adopt Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms When Under Pressure
What is your coping mechanism when going through stress? Do you adopt unhealthy coping strategies like drugs, alcohol, isolating yourself from others, binge eating, and other risky behaviors to take your mind off the pain? If any of these sound familiar (or you have other destructive habits), you need to undergo resilience training.
Note that introverts naturally favor solitude to reenergize, so the point about isolation above applies when it is an unusual behavior triggered by adversity.
2. You Feel Overwhelmed When Handling Daily Tasks
It’s natural if a massive setback holds you down for a while. Even the most resilient people feel pain and grief over the loss of a loved one. However, you need resilience training if the normal daily stressors like going to work, interacting with people, etc., overwhelm you to the point that you feel helpless.
3. You Let Negative Thoughts Discourage You From Trying
When your resilience is low, you are more likely to focus on negative outcomes. You view every new challenge negatively and refuse to try. When you do make a mistake, you take the failure personally. You need resilience training to foster positive thinking and turn challenges into opportunities.
4. You Become Frustrated When Challenges Occur
If you become easily frustrated when challenges arise, or plans change, it may be a sign your resilience has run low. Those who experience self-doubt, such as with imposter syndrome, may feel extra pressure to get things right, making setbacks feel even more overwhelming. In these moments, resilience training can help you recharge and better adapt to unexpected situations.
5. You’re Currently Going Through a Lot of Change
Are you experiencing several life-altering changes at the moment? Resilience training can prepare you for the unexpected and help you adapt to your changing environment. This point is also applicable to someone who just experienced a significant setback.
6. You Never Take Responsibility for Your Failures
You need resilience training if you’ve created a fantasy world where you’re always the victim and nothing is your fault. While it is easier to blame others for their failures and wallow in self-pity, resilient people always hold themselves accountable and refuse to wallow in self-pity.
7. You Lack Confidence When The Going Gets Tough
Building your resilience doesn’t mean you will always succeed at every try; it just means failure will never stop you from trying. When you’re low on resilience, you find it easy to avoid risks, bulk under pressure, and stay in your comfort zone. Resilient people remain confident even in adversity and are never afraid to fail.
13 Ways of Building Resilience in Your Daily Life
Although some people are naturally more optimistic, your resilient friends who always overcome their struggles didn’t just wake up one day with that redeeming quality. They’ve spent time and effort to enhance their resilience and prepare themselves for unforeseen problems.
That could be you.
Here are 13 tips to help you become more resilient and handle the stressors in your life without breaking down.
1. Build Strong and Healthy Relationships
Maintain a strong and healthy relationship with your friends and family because they are invaluable during times of crisis. When adversity occurs, utilize their support and avoid withdrawing from people.
2. Join a Support Group
Having a support group during a crisis is crucial because your loved ones may be unable to relate completely to what you’re going through. Being around people who understand what you’re going through from personal experience is therapeutic. Your support group can offer practical solutions while they listen to your concerns.
3. Find a Sense of Purpose
Some setbacks are so massive that they greatly affect your will to live. Finding a sense of purpose during a crisis is crucial to your recovery. Your purpose should be something that gets you out of bed every day with a new lease of life. You could join a social movement, champion a noble cause, serve others in your community, or volunteer at a local charity. The act of simply spreading kindness goes a long way, too!
4. Learn from the Past, but Don’t Dwell on It
While it is encouraged to always look toward the future, experience is invaluable when dealing with adversity. How did you deal with adversity in the past? Your past success in similar situations should guide you on the way forward, while your failures should teach you what you shouldn’t repeat.
5. Strike While The Iron is Hot
Ignoring or running away from your problems does not make them go away. A crucial part of problem-solving is critically assessing the situation, brainstorming solutions, and taking decisive action. Otherwise, you risk the problem escalating into something bigger than you can control.
6. Believe in Yourself
We’ve all experienced misfortune that shattered our self-confidence and introduced self-doubt into our minds. We sometimes struggle to believe that we can move on from this setback. However, self-belief is key to bouncing back from our struggles. When you believe that nothing can hold you down, nothing will.
7. Practice Self-Care
Stress and adversity greatly affect your general well-being. Self-care habits like healthy eating, regular exercise, adequate sleep, and recreational activities can improve physical and mental resilience. Additionally, mindfulness meditation and yoga can promote spiritual and emotional well-being.
8. Remain Optimistic
It may feel like the walls are closing in on you, and there is no way to escape, but you must remain hopeful that things will turn out for the best. Optimism frees your mind from anxiety and constant worry, allowing you to address your problems with a clear head devoid of negativity.
9. Embrace Change
Once you accept that things will not always remain the same, you will not be shocked once change occurs in your personal and professional life. Some changes are unavoidable. Avoid fixating on them and focus on the things you can control.
10. Set Attainable Goals
When dealing with setbacks, you need every win you can get. Assess your current situation and think of how you can overcome your problem. Then, set realistic goals that you can accomplish without overexerting yourself.
11. Use Each Situation as a Learning Opportunity
Every misfortune, setback, challenge, and adversity is an opportunity to learn, gain valuable experience, and develop resilience skills. Your experience will be valuable as you navigate future challenges.
12. Take on Challenging Tasks Outside Your Comfort Zone
By taking on challenging tasks outside your comfort zone, you get used to facing stress and pressure. Preparation is key to building resilience in your daily life.
13. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
Always focus on your goals and expect life’s curveballs so that they don’t take you by surprise when they occur. There will always be distractions and obstacles along the way, but as long as you remain focused, you can overcome any setback.
Related: The Let Them Theory: 5 Ways to Protect Your Peace
Who Is Structured Resilience Training For?
Resilience is something we all need, but some people can benefit from more structured formal training.
Structured resilience courses have been designed for people of all age groups all around the world. Resilience training is usually facilitated by resilience trainers, coaches, instructors, mental health professionals, consulting firms, etc. The training can take the form of online courses or offline programs.
Organizations consider resilience a critical skill, so they create or provide resilience courses for their management teams and employees to improve leadership skills, aid stress management, and facilitate professional development.
Communities that have experienced tragic events will benefit from resilience training to enhance stress management, foster optimism, improve adaptability to tough conditions, and improve the lives of most people in the community.
Resilience training is especially important in high-stress careers like the U.S. Army, where trauma and mental health issues like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal tendencies are more common.
The Director of Penn Positive Psychology Center, Martin Seligman, authored an article in the Harvard Business Review explaining that while it is common to link trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder with the members of the military, thousands of soldiers have been able to experience post-traumatic growth due to resilience and stress management training.
The goal is that if resilience training can work for those who suffer severe forms of trauma and adversity, it can work for everyone else. So whether you’re dealing with relationship problems, financial difficulty, severe illness, or a minor setback, resilience training can help you adapt and recover in healthy ways.
Are Online Resilience Training Programs Effective?
Resilience training can be in-person, online, hybrid, or self-paced, depending on the resources available and the availability, accessibility, and preferences of the trainer and trainee.
Online resilience training programs are as effective as any other format if you have good internet access and digital literacy. Many resilience online training programs have been structured to help you develop resilience, mental toughness, and emotional intelligence in a safe space.
There are reliable websites that offer resilience training online free of charge. However, it is more likely that taking a paid resilience course online provides more value.
Develop Your Strategy for Building Personal Resilience
While all the tips in the article are effective for building resilience and mental toughness, your resilience journey can move faster if you identify tips that resonate more with you.
Some resilience skills come naturally to you due to your personality type, and you may have to work harder to build others.
Someone open to experience will find it easier to adapt to new situations, while a conscientious individual won’t have a problem setting goals. The key to developing an effective personal strategy for building resilience lies in identifying what works for you.
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