Chapter 4: Reduce stress & increase resilience
You can recover from challenges. You can be resilient. Bounce back like a rubber band.
Have you ever wondered how people can recover so quickly from challenges? They are following several of the ways below.
Read these ways to build resilience and start working on 1 today.
Ways to Build Resilience
Resilience is the ability to recover or bounce back from challenges. Here are several ways that can help build your resilience:
Stay connected to friends, family, and community through phone calls, face-to-face, and written communications.
Ask and offer support when you’re faced with challenges.
Be mindful, including deep breathing, rubbing hands or fingers together, or focusing on objects.
Be reflective, take time to journal and capture your thoughts, share with others verbally, or with a therapist.
Take deep breaths regularly throughout the day.
Take breaks throughout the day to focus your energy elsewhere and renew your energy for other areas.
Master your mindset by noticing your beliefs, emotions, and thoughts, being mindful, assessing & questioning them, and shifting to a positive reframe or action. Envision what you want to believe, feel, or think and take intentional action to get there.
Practice gratitude daily, naming what you’re grateful for each day and naming unique things each day.
Set SMART goals and break them down into smaller steps, focusing on the first next step.
Celebrate the wins along your journey.
Expect change to happen, it always does, and embrace it as a growth opportunity.
When you identify a problem, get clear on what the problem statement is, the real problem. Then, brainstorm options to solve it, consult other people, decide on a solution, and then take action. Find the right balance between assessing options and taking action. Sometimes you need to take action right away and sometimes you have time to research in depth. Find the balance. Weigh the risks. Make a decision and commit.
Learn from previous challenges, reflecting on lessons learned and how it’s helped you grow today. When new challenges arise, identify where you may grow this time, too.
Take care of yourself, including diet, exercise, sleep, medication, and where your energy is spent.
Love yourself. Be kind to yourself. Remove self-doubt through preparation, support of others, and mastering your mindset.
Taking multiple steps over time to build resilience will empower you to bounce back quicker and quicker.