Hi there and welcome to this post on resilience and how to build it. You see life is full of challenges right? Just when we think we are getting somewhere in life, a massive ball of fire appears and we find it hard to be resilient and jump out of the fire.
This leaves us with scars for life and then the thoughts of developing resilience become further and further away.
Some people are great at this straight out of the box but for others learning to be resilient is a key factor to improving their lifestyle.
I have had many challenges in life that have made me have to learn to be resilient otherwise I would have curled up in a ball and just given up. So I have loads of key tips to share on how to be more resilient in your life too.
See even just last week as an example, my mum text me as she always goes for a walk and has done every day for the past 15 years in the same forest.
This day however her dogs had escaped into an open gap in a field with sheep in.
Although the dogs never went near the sheep, the farmer shot them in front of them.
The very next day my wifes mother died in a tragic incident at home with the ambulance service trying to revive her for 2.5 hours before they decided they couldn’t do anymore. You can just imagine the pain this caused as her family updated her on the phone every 15 minutes.
Now the above isn’t about me but it is about how you can support others to become more resilient when everything feels like it is falling apart.
The way you can open their eyes to see that things may never be the same again but if we don’t move forward we will get caught up in anguish so strong that it will stop us from leading a happy life.
It isn’t okay to just say time is a great healer or things will get better because when you go through this type of turmoil it is hard to see the wood from the trees. Now I have also been through 2 divorces, 3 marriages, moved 12 times and been made redundant several times. So resiliency is something I have had to learn and quickly to get through life and these tips I am hoping will also help you to be more resilient too.
My Top Tips On How To Build Resilience In Your Life
- Control – The only thing in life that you have total control over is your thoughts and feelings. Even sometimes with a universal mind, weird and strange thoughts will pop into your mind and make you question everything. However, we have the ability to let these thoughts pass if we know that they are not helpful and will hold us back from being resilient. You see we can all go down the rabbit hole with our thoughts but when we do, the story that unfolds generally will suck us in. Like with my mum above she absolutely adored her dogs and it was the worse thing that could ever happen to her. The recovery for one of the dogs who survived has been a massive journey too. But what are the options, you beat the shit out of the farmer and end up in trouble or you walk away and deal with the onslaught of thoughts. This is the difference in being resilient is the belief that everything does happen for a reason, accepting it and moving forward. Easier said than done however which is why this is a process and not simply a switch you can turn on and off.
- Life sucks – Accepting that life will suck sometimes and being prepared for it will eventually help you build your resilience over time. What I mean by this is that life can be hard but rather than sweating over the small stuff, be prepared for when the giant stuff comes to block your way. We can never do anything about some of these events but if we are not prepared mentally for a hardship then we will go down with the ship when a major event occurs. Now, this doesn’t mean concentrating on what you would or wouldn’t do in the event that something will happen, it is preparing your mind not to react and go down with the ship when it starts leaking water.
- Be prepared to fail – Everything in life gets easier the more that you do something. So learning to fail is a key part of building your resilience overall. Because despite all the failures, you have the grit and determination to keep moving forward and trying then eventually you will get there. You will learn that you have to fail in order to succeed. You have to try in order to fail. To develop yourself to be self-critical and keep the motivation to just go for it at every opportunity.
- Everything is temporary – Nothing lasts forever, so whatever it is that you are going through will pass. Unless of course, you lock the negative story firmly in your mind, then it will come back when it feels like it to haunt you. Sometimes there are no answers to why we go through or feel pain or why it happens to some and not to others. The only thing we can ever do is move forward and keep building that resilience. Yes, we might be scarred but the likelihood of the same event happening again in the future is minimal unless of course, we don’t change our path. What I mean by this is like with divorce, if we then go for the same type of person in the future we will likely get the same outcome again.
- Don’t worry what other people think – If you can stop these thoughts about what other people think of you then your resilience will double in size. Quite often through life, we are all troubled by the expectations of other people, but we are all different and we are all talented in our own ways. Just because someone thinks you are not worthy or doesn’t love you doesn’t mean that the other billion people on the planet won’t think differently. We have to be the judge of our own character, our own jury on our behaviors because only we know what motivates us and what makes us tick. So do not make it a thing in your life to please others, learn to love yourself and the rest will follow naturally. You have heard the rhyme “sticks and stones won’t break our bones and names will never hurt us” well it is true so don’t let people take advantage of you.
- Be yourself at all times – If you want people to like you and you want to be your best, then always be yourself. There is nothing that will harm you more in life if you try to be like somebody else. We are all natural in our own ways, so be open and honest with yourself and attract the people that love you for what you are not what you can or should be. It is really hard to fake being someone else so don’t start out this way just love yourself and commit to being the best you can be in life.
- Be kind to yourself and others – Resiliency means many different things but in order for you to move away from guilt and live a free life you have to be kind to others. You may do things wrong in life, we all do but you must apologize and rectify any mistakes you have. if you are unkind to others do not expect others to be kind to you. There are laws of reciprocity that dictate that what you give out in life is what you will receive. I live this by this law because then I can hold myself responsible for my good and bad actions.
- Educate your mind – Just like when we are children growing up, monsters aren’t real. But what is real is how we are educated to react to things in life. How we interpret the things that go on around us. The events we see others go through and how we react to them. As an example have you ever noticed the difference between a child that falls over and the parents rush over and panic, the event is the child starts screaming. The other parent dusts them off and says you’ll be okay and so the child thinks it will be okay and forfeits the screaming. So our reactions to things emotionally are quite often how we have been trained to receive them. So learning from others on how they have got over and managed life-changing events can help you build your resiliency too.
- The past does not exist anymore – When we live in the past it is a figment of our imagination as the past really does not exist. When e live in the figment of our own imagination then we have the opportunity to change our story for the better. The real issue here is stopping reliving the events by putting the breaks on and letting those thoughts pass transiently. When you get used to doing this the thoughts of that particular subject become less frequent until they pass forever.
- Anxiety – Anxiety pulls people apart and is one of the most frightening things that you can go through. The problem being however is that due to the way have been brought up in society to follow the rules we are actually defying all the natural feelings we would have without a society. The need to find our food, to beat the elements, to survive, to fight for our futures. Anxiety is a natural reaction when your mind feels frightened. The problem is our minds recognize millions of things that we do not even see. So when you are having a conversation with your friend, your mind is looking for things that might attack you or make you unsafe. If it sees something it will pump your adrenaline and hence the panic attack comes on. So you are not even aware of the danger you just feel the emotion and that is why it is hard to deal with in my mind. Once you understand these feelings are there to protect you however you can reach a level of consciousness that makes you prepared rather than scared. If you are struggling with anxiety however please do seek help from the Doctor or someone to help you get through this.
- Do more of it – If something scares you, challenges you, makes you work harder. Then do more of it. The more you do it the better resilience you will get because you will be used to defying all these challenges. I saw a documentary the other day about a guy who jogs in minus 20 naked and he says anyone could do it. That is true if you train your mind not to think about the cold you could do it too. Your body obviously might get problems in the future so you shouldn’t do it. But the mind is a powerful thing and it will do whatever you tell it to. if you tell it to be scared of something it will be scared of it, if you tell it you love something, it will love it. Our brains are just like computers so if you want to build resiliency into your life then learn how to talk to yourself in a positive way and train your brain to be resilient.
- Don’t be scared – When I was a child my dad brought me up to not be scared of anything. Whilst we travel through life we do get scared by things but running away from them just holds additional anguish that can hold us back. At the end of the day, the only thing that truly matters in life is your happiness and mental health. It doesn’t matter if people don’t like you, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to do something, it doesn’t matter if something scares you, it doesn’t matter if you lose your job. Everything will and does happen when it is supposed to so don’t get scared just live life and worry about what happens when it happens.
- Stand up for yourself – No one deserves to be told in life that they are useless. If this is happening to you then get away from the person that is saying it as quickly as you possibly can. Our job on this planet from my perspective is to help people grow, find their talent and live a happy life. Anyone that does not support you is wrong. There are always ways to motivate people but bullying and putting people down is no way to treat others. So do not put up with it.
Frequently Asked Questions About Building Resilience
- How to build resilience at work? Work can be a tricky thing sometimes depending on who and what traits your boss has and how this affects you. I have been bullied at work on numerous occasions but because I am used to being resilient, I am also used to standing up to people too. There is no way that I would ever let anyone put me down unless I had done something really wrong and knew that I had that is. I have found at work, if you don’t know something have the courage to ask, if you are not sure whether you have done a good job ask, if you need more work ask, if someone is bullying you then stand up to them in the right way. Work is something that takes up most of our working day and it is important to be happy there. So walk away if you are not happy and find a place that requires your skills and personality and will reward you for it.
- Building resilience in students? Being a student is pretty hard when you think about it. It is a massive jump from school and A levels to University and a whole load of life skills that probably don’t get taught along the way. So being open with students that they can talk to you at a professional and personal level and that you want to help will also help them grow too. They really should teach students more about life skills, collaboration and other essential items to help them.
- How to get children to build resilience? Encouragement builds resilience in children, supporting them when they fail, rewarding them when they have achieved something great. Use the 3 P’s like on my training course that everything we feel is brought on by our own thoughts. It is our thoughts that can destroy us, so nurturing them to understand that there will be failure, horrible people, good people, good times and bad times will allow them to see that most of these things occur to everyone through life.
- What 3 ways to build resilience? Confidence, courage, belief.
- Is resilience a life skill? Yes almost definitely. When I was in the army we would be shouted at night and day. Sargeants in your face screaming at you. When you can endure this sort of thing it allows you to train your brain to switch off. There are times in life when you will have to let thoughts just be transient, accept what has happened, move forwards quickly, learn from the past. So yes absolutely if you want to avoid real downtimes in life you have to be able to get back on the horse as quickly as possible. Because going up is much easier than having to deal with going down.
- How do you build emotional resilience? Everything we think and feel we have been educated to feel that way. There are basic human things that make us cry and feel sadness towards things. But when you look for instance at a football game and the team that loses, some of the guys will group together and cry, others will just shrug their shoulders and think well we will get it next time. So sometimes we join in with others because that’s what we think we should do and other times we are overthrown with emotion. Learning to deal with these emotions is paramount to your survival. I had to learn this a lot through life and you can find out how did it in my transformation course.
So there you have it everyting I know about resilience and how to build it into your life. If you want to know more and need support and help then join my transformation program and will help you every step of the way.
In the meantime have a great life, keep smiling and I will see you soon. Best wishes Scott
