Resilience

Resiliency helps many people bounce back from adversity

By The Survivors Club Staff
 
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What is Resilience?

According to the American Psychology Association, resilience is a quality that helps people “bounce back” from stressful events like illness, tragedy, trauma and financial setbacks. It is important for you to realize that almost everyone has some degree of resilience and that you can actually learn techniques to improve your level of resiliency.

APA Health Center: The Road to Resilience - What is Resilience?

Measure Your Resilience

The Mayo Clinic’s resiliency quiz helps you measure your level of resilience. This is an effective way of recognizing your strengths and weaknesses so that you know what areas you can work on to make you more resilient.
Mayo Clinic: Resilience - Build Skills to Endure Hardship
12 Ways to Boost Your Resilience

There are a lot of ways to boost your resilience. Here are some great tips from the Resiliency Center and American Psychology Association:
  1. Learn from your life experience. There are lessons in every bad thing that happens to us. Learning how you can respond, anticipate and grow from these lessons improves your resiliency.
  2. Use childlike curiosity. Asking many questions helps you learn more about yourself and the world. The more questions you ask, the more you learn.
  3. Express your feelings honestly. It can be difficult for us to admit that we have negative emotions like anger, but you deserve to express yourself honestly. Expressing feelings of love, anger, grief and dislike is healthy, but you should also learn how to reserve expression for the appropriate time.
  4. Have an optimistic perspective. Those who expect things to work out well often rebound best. If you have a pessimistic outlook, then you should ask yourself if it actually offers you any advantages. If it doesn't, then why use it?
  5. Defend yourself. You can defend yourself well without putting up a wall around you. Find allies that support you and resist the temptation to give in to those who try to take advantage of you or manipulate you.
  6. Use your intuition and hunches. Your brain works in many ways, but you might not be conscious of all of them. Learning to use your hunches and intuition will give you access to subliminal cues in your environment that you don’t consciously recognize.
  7. Care for yourself. Taking care of your own needs helps you develop a caring relationship with yourself.
  8. Develop confidence in yourself. Meet challenges with the expectation that you can succeed and do your best in every situation so you can grow and nurture confident feelings in yourself.
  9. Keep painful events in perspective. Sometimes negative events take over our whole lives, but there are always positive things to focus on as well. Keeping the bad things in perspective can help you get through the day.
  10. Progress toward goals. Take pride in small accomplishments. They add up.
  11. Accept the changes in life. Change is going to come. Learning to accept that helps you focus your energy on the things that you can influence.
  12. Connect with people. Spend time with friends, family members and other people to make loving connections that will help sustain you.
You can find more ways to boost your resilience at How to Be a Resilient Caregiver or Co-Survivor

Improving your resiliency as a caregiver or co-survivor gives you the strength to make a real difference in someone’s life. The Resiliency Center offers several tips that can help you improve your resiliency and how you can learn to improve your own life in the process.
ResiliencyCenter: Caregiver Resiliency
Famous People Who Are Resilient

Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions was certainly one of the most resilient writers. His combination of dark humor and humanism brought insights to the lives of many people. Despite his mother’s suicide, his son’s experience with bipolar disorder and his own mental health problems, he was able to write prolifically for most of his life. You can learn more about his works, beliefs and life at Vonnegut.com
Michael J. Fox is an actor who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1998. At the time, he was not even 40 years old. Fox continues to act as much as his health permits and he founded an organization that supports Parkinson’s research.
Recommended Online Resiliency Training Programs Recommended Books
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