Know What Resilience Is
How do people deal with difficult situations? What is it that allows us to adapt to traumatic situations such as the loss of a loved one, a job, or even when they announce that we have a serious illness? The answer to why we adapt is called resilience.
WHAT IS RESILIENCE?
Resilience is the ability to face adversity and adapt to tragedies, trauma, threats, or severe stress. That we are resilient does not mean that we do not experience difficulties or anguish, since at some point in our lives we all feel sadness, uncertainty, discomfort or pain, whether physical or emotional, but rather that despite all the obstacles that arise and the great impact that situations have on us, even so, we are able to overcome and adapt well over time.
We have all been resilient to some extent at some point in our lives, but especially today, due to the critical economic moment that affects us, we can say that there are many resilient people.
In addition, resilience is not something that we can have or not, but rather a set of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that can be learned and developed by anyone.
WHAT HELPS US BE MORE RESILIENT?
Many studies show that emotional support is one of the most important factors involved in building resilience. Having close people who provide us with love, support and trust can make us much more resilient.
Other associated factors are:
– A positive view of ourselves, trusting in our strengths and weaknesses.
– Skills in communication and problem solving. See problems as challenges to overcome and not as possible threats.
– Ability to make realistic plans, as well as good dexterity handling of strong feelings and impulses. (Capacity for self-control).
WHAT ARE PEOPLE RESILIENT?
The fundamental characteristics of resilient people are:
– Accept reality as it is.
– Believe that life has meaning.
– Ability to improve.
In addition, they can present other skills such as knowing how to control their emotions, being empathetic, knowing how to accurately identify the causes of problems, and considering themselves competent and confident in themselves. But one of the most important characteristics is your way of thinking, your style of thinking. A resilient person has a realistic and flexible thinking.
WHAT TO DO TO DEVELOP RESILIENCE?
As we have said before, resilience is not something that some of us have and others do not, but it is a series of skills and attitudes that we can develop. How? Here are some tips for this:
– Establish relationships. We have already mentioned that emotional support is one of the most important factors that will help us to be more resilient. Having good relationships with others, accepting the help and support they offer us as well as helping others in need, strengthens our resilience.
– Realistic thinking, constructive thinking. We cannot prevent threatening or stressful events from occurring, but we can change the way we interpret and react to them. See problems as challenges to overcome, from a broad perspective, thinking that we have enough capacity to face them and find possible solutions.
– Accept reality, accept that change is part of life.
– Trust yourself. We cannot know what we can do until we try, we will even be surprised at times, by all that we can achieve ourselves.
– Develop goals and objectives, and take action.
-Look for opportunities to discover yourself. Many times after overcoming a stressful event or adversity, you experience personal growth. We learn something new about ourselves.
There are many other ways to develop our resilience capacity, we only have to identify those activities that allow us to build our personal strategy to develop it.
Finally a phrase to reflect:
” The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.”
