9 Ways To Cultivate Resilience
Pretty much most of us can say that we have been through a major crisis or life event that has hurt us deeply, broken our trust, or scared us in some way, shape, or form. This may have taken years to heal from and recover, with some never truly fully healing from those events. And with life and work being as busy and demanding on us as ever, and new problems and challenges arising to meet us on a seemingly daily basis, it is of the utmost importance that we learn to cope with the stresses, trials, setbacks, and obstacles of everyday life if we want to live a fulfilling and enjoyable life.
So, in order to overcome these obstacles of life, we need to learn to become more resilient, to cultivate the ability to bounce back from hardship, and foster strong mental toughness. In this video, I will go over nine ways to foster resilience in our lives so that we are better prepared for the trials and stresses that will undoubtedly come our way.
1. Physical Well-being by Exercising, Eating Healthy, and Resting Enough
When you take care of the basics like your body, mind, and rest, you are in a better position to tackle the things that come your way and therefore better prepared to be resilient. Make sure that you are getting adequate rest. I recently made a video about how to sleep more productively, which you can check out if you want to improve your sleep patterns and rest in general. Make sure that you are eating correctly and healthily and drinking enough water for your body type and your needs to be properly nourished, which will help aid in mental clarity. Ensure that you are getting enough exercise to maintain a healthy body. Cardio, like walking, is great to keep you fit, active, and healthy. So, it is important to make sure that we are taking care of all areas of our body and mind if we want to cultivate resilience.
2. Cultivating Focus and a Clear Mind for Tackling Obstacles
To go deeper into having strong mental fortitude, we need to discern what will give us a calm mind and a mind ready to be resilient. Meditation can help you build the habit of focus by taking the time to focus on just your breathing for a few minutes. Whenever your thoughts start to wander, bring them back to just focusing on your breathing. This helps strengthen your ability to focus on a singular task, which will give you more mental clarity during the day, both of which will help you to become more resilient in all aspects of life.
You do not have to meditate; you can do another activity like walking, stretching, etc. Anything that you can focus on for a period of time to build focus and de-stress promotes mental clarity. When you have more mental clarity, you can make better decisions and not be overwhelmed by the things that come your way that may test your resolve and resilience. Spending time in nature is a great way to de-stress and also gives you the space to think and gain a different perspective. From zooming out of our problems, we can see how small they truly are in the grand scheme of the world and in the entirety of your life. Being in nature can help with gaining that perspective.
3. Measure Yourself Against Yourself
It is no good measuring yourself against others, as the ceiling is literally endless. If you measure yourself against others, you will never run out of people to compare yourself to and therefore always feel inadequate, insecure, and a whole host of other bad emotions associated with measuring yourself against others.
The only person you should measure yourself against is you. Are you better than the version of you from yesterday? Are you actively seeking to improve, and how are you measuring that improvement or holding yourself accountable to yourself? Every day you should put the day up for review, as the Stoics would say, and reflect on the day. How did you act? Did you do all you could? Did you concentrate on all that you should have? Did you act in accordance with your values and morals? Did you take the daily steps necessary to get yourself closer to your goals?
It is uncomfortable to do, but it is necessary if you want to grow and become a better version of yourself and, as a result, more resilient. The more you are aware of how you are performing and where you are en route to your goals, the better decisions you can make in the moment to get you to those goals quicker and minimize confusion, thereby creating more mental clarity and being better prepared for hardship.
4. Practice Coping with Small Things So You Can Better Cope with the Big Things
The compound effect of any habit is doing the small steps to have big effects later on. When you go to the gym, you do not start out with the heaviest weights; you start off small and build up. So too do you build up the muscle of resilience and mental fortitude. As the verse goes, “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.”
The small things can be seen as power-ups on your way, helping you to grow and be more prepared for the bigger problems that may come your way in the future. See these small obstacles as a challenge to be overcome and as an opportunity to grow and learn. From that, you will become more resilient and more confident in your ability to handle the situations and circumstances that may arise in the future.
5. Make Regular Notes on Your Strengths, Weaknesses, Values, Morals, Visions, and Goals—Essentially, What Makes You You
Write down your values, morals, strengths, and weaknesses. Positive self-talk and becoming secure in who you are and what you stand for is crucial so that you are not shaken when something does not go your way or obstacles arise. For you know who you are, what you are capable of, and what it is you stand for. Once you are aware of that and are secure and clear on that, then you will be able to better internalize obstacles that come your way and navigate those situations. As you know your strengths, weaknesses, what your values and morals are, you can therefore make informed decisions based on that knowledge.
6. Spend Time in Solitude
Seneca said, “The primary indication of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”
Being able to spend time in solitude and think and reflect on your life will help you to reevaluate and reaffirm to yourself what it is you truly want out of life. Spending time alone and with your thoughts will help you have more mental clarity as you are focusing on becoming more clear on the things that matter to you and are removed from distractions. Spending time in solitude will help you develop the ability to remain focused and distraction-free, an ability necessary to become more resilient and achieve hard things. When we become comfortable spending focused time alone on the right things, cultivating mental clarity, we are sharpening our own mental toughness and prepared for hardship ahead.
Studies have shown that people who are comfortable with being in solitude are likely to be happier, experience lower levels of stress, and are less likely to have depression than others. The more you can detach from external sources of influence and validation, the more you will become confident and comfortable with yourself and your uniqueness. But this should also be in small doses; this is not an excuse to retract from society and disassociate from life.
7. Change Your Perspective About Situations (Every Day is a New Opportunity to Practice Building Resilience)
Use your life, the people that anger you, and the things that frustrate you as a training ground for practicing grace, patience, wisdom, and resilience. When you enter a situation that is testing you, become aware of why it is that you are feeling the way you do. How can you learn from that and grow so this type of situation does not bother you as much in the future? When you view life as your teacher and are open to learning from all circumstances and everyone, then you will grow exponentially and become more resilient as you mature and grow every day. Two people can go through the same situation and the same circumstances, and one can come out scared and worse off, while the other can come out having learned, grown, and stronger emotionally. A lot of that is to do with the self-talk and perspective we have when going through those situations.
8. Create More, Consume Less
It is becoming easier and easier to consume in today's world, where we have social media with amazing and entertaining content at the tap of a screen. It’s much easier to default to consuming than deciding to become a part of those that create. Creating over consuming has many benefits. You learn and grow as a person as you try and experiment; as you create. You learn new skills, and as you learn and grow, you become more capable, a more rounded person, and thus you build confidence in yourself.
When you become more competent in the skills you are building as you create more and consume less, you start to take pleasure in the skills you have mastered. This joy and pleasure you feel from the mastery of skills feeds back into your identity and mental resolve. Creating something and putting it out into the world requires you to have a measure of mental toughness and fortitude. Creating something and putting it out there can change your life in more ways than we can count. It is difficult to do, and as a result, if you decide to do it, you will grow as a person and in resilience.
9. Never Play the Victim
This goes back to the Stoic principle of recognizing what is in your control and what is out of your control. When you do that, you cannot feel like a victim, because you know what it is that is up to you, what you can influence and change, and the rest is not up to you. So, why bother feeling like a victim over it? You cannot change what is beyond your power, so only focus on what is. If you go around in life believing that you are the victim, in whatever area you decide, you will probably have a bad life filled with self-imposed suffering.
Take responsibility for your own life in all situations and circumstances. It is the only way to rise above the situations you may find yourself in. If you play the victim, you cannot build mental fortitude, as you are assigning blame to others and electing to disassociate from taking responsibility, which is part of building mental fortitude. When you play the victim in your own life, you are essentially rejecting control and responsibility for your life in that moment. We need that sense of responsibility and taking ownership of our own lives to move forward and make any reasonable contribution or progress in our lives.
A book I would highly recommend you read to build more resilience in your life is Ryan Holiday's "The Obstacle is the Way."
10. BONUS: Seek Out Community and Build a Support Network
When we need support and we are vulnerable, we need a good support structure to help us get back on our feet and face life again—not to be coddled, but to help us grow from whatever may have befallen us, to rise again with greater resilience for having gone through pain. But doing it alone is of no help to yourself. It is okay to ask for help when needed; it will help you gain a different perspective that you may never have had on your own. Seeking help is sometimes seen as weak, but it takes great strength to humble ourselves to ask others for help when needed.
Having a community you are a part of and gain support from when really necessary is also a great place for you to go beyond yourself and strengthen others. Going beyond your own needs and helping others to grow and become better versions of themselves is a great way to grow yourself as well and will increase your emotional intelligence and resilience. Seek out resilience role models and learn from them. They can be found in books, like the great Stoic philosophers, Japanese wisdom, modern psychology books, and so much more to help you strengthen your understanding of how to build resolve and also to find inspiration to draw from when you need it. Build your own consultation of the world's greatest minds by surrounding yourself with their works.
I hope that these tips and tools for cultivating resilience will be helpful to you and that by implementing these into your life, you are able to handle the obstacles that life will undoubtedly throw at you, and become stronger because of it. As a result, you will be able to live a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life.
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Till next time, guys.
Bye bye
