How to Remain Resilient

Pain, loss, hardship, and difficulty are features of your existence, not bugs.  

Life is not about avoiding them, but having the agility to handle them when they inevitably appear.  How can you be more resilient to overcome and learn from these inevitable challenges?

When you face any form of adversity, resilience is the art of staring it down and refusing to blink. 

It is leveraging your mindset and your skillset to overcome whatever obstacles may appear, and continuing to push on when the world has beaten you into a corner. 

It is being disciplined enough to stay the course when all you want to do is just throw your hands up and quit. 

It is the ability to bounce back as much as it is to move forward towards a more evolved way of being that uses the scars of past pain to uncover future opportunities for growth. 

There are three pillars to resilience that provide the foundation to support you through whatever you may be going through:  Purpose, connection, and perspective. 

• Purpose is being determined to see your goals through even when the trials you are facing are so difficult that chasing them doesn’t feel worth the effort. It is the “why” that is able to endure through any “what” or “how,” especially when you feel lost and there are roadblocks standing in your way in every direction. 

• Connection is the ability to feed off the strength and support provided by others to know that you are not alone. When you are facing difficulty, it can almost feel like you are on your own mental island.  In the depths of that isolation, it can be easy to sink lower and lower because your mind becomes an echo chamber of negativity.  It is crucial during these instances to remember there are people out there who want the best for you and will do what they can to help you succeed.  Whatever form that support comes in, be willing to open your mind to see it when it appears and to accept it.  You don’t get extra points for forcing yourself to walk alone. 

• Perspective is the final pillar. It is optimistic thinking in a pessimistic world.  It is the ability to see that even when you are at your lowest, that is only a singular point in time that does not define who you are.  It is the talent of zooming out of your current situation and being able to answer yourself honestly – will this matter in one month, one year, ten years?  If you can be sure the answer is no, then you will have already begun to shift your thought patterns and know you can exhibit the necessary emotional regulation to down-shift in those moments of deep personal adversity.

Throughout periods of difficulty remember self-talk matters;  what you say to yourself in moments where you are deeply affected by hardship will make all the difference to the person you are when you come out of it. 

Be intentional with your approach to overcoming your problems, and don’t default to ignoring them, suppressing them, or wishing them away. 

Your resilience muscle grows by putting them out into the open, acknowledging the role they play in shaping your character, and conquering them head-on. 

Build them through deliberate practice so that you can leverage short-term adversities into long-term strengths.