Who’s Got Resilience Mojo & Why??? Resilience Building – Part 1
By Jessica Dixon-Neal
RESILIENCE – it’s a word we hear describing a person or a person’s specific ability, right? Webster’s dictionary defines resilience as “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. A capability to recover one’s size and shape after deformation caused by extreme or compressive stress.”
PHEW....extreme or compressive stress. Does that sound painful and awfully familiar? It certainly does to me.
As we each begin to work on recovering our own size, shape, misfortune and change brought about by the world’s events and the two-year pandemic, our human spirit is being tested.
Many have bounced back, powered through and adapted; while many others have struggled and wondered if they will make it. What is the difference for those who seem to adapt well and remain positive? What gives them this super-human ability to endure even life’s toughest, scariest or saddest curveballs?
Research shows a common thread that exists among highly resilient people is the ability to be flexible in how they think and respond to stress. Sounds simple, right? For some, stress can trigger a subconscious safety response (think fight, flight, freeze), making it downright difficult to be resilient.
Hang on, there is some GOOD NEWS – resilience is not a personality trait. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO INCREASE YOUR RESILIENCE!
So, how can you increase your resilience mojo? According to an article written by NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), there are a few daily strategies to help build your overall resilience:
- Practice Radical Acceptance – accepting the current situation for what it is and accepting the uncertainties we cannot control. You may not be able to avoid or change the source of pain
or discomfort, but you can learn to slowly change the way you feel about it internally (see #3).
- Embrace Realistic Optimism – identify challenges and overcome them by focusing on the things you can help solve (rather than the things that are out of our control). Believe in your own
ability to make a difference through your own efforts.
- Practice Positivity and Mindfulness – joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, humor, inspiration, love,
etc. can occur in even the most adverse circumstances. Intentionally practicing mindfulness
techniques and broadening your positivity awareness will help build your mental skills for
resilience.
- Reach Out to Others – connection with others is a key part of resilience. Seek out and offer support to friends, family, neighbors in need, and, when you need support – learn to ask for it. Knowing when you need help is not weakness. It is self-awareness, and this builds resilience!
Stay tuned for “Resilience Building – Parts, 2, 3, & 4,” where we will deep dive into each of these resilience-building, mojo-making strategies to better understand our own capacity for increasing our abilities to be flexible in how we think and respond to stress.
Jessica Dixon-Neal is a licensed professional counselor candidate at Transforming Life Counseling Center.
