“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” -Ben Okri
One question I hear the most is, How to get through hardships? Life’s tough. That’s for sure. And bouncing back doesn’t happen overnight. During challenging times, resilience is our superpower. It’s an essential skill to recover from adversity.
Resilience enables us to move beyond coping and thrive. It takes effort and commitment to develop and grow our resilience skills. Involve new habits to use our setbacks as resources and it’s helpful to seek support.
I would like to provide you with practical strategies that you could start implementing regularly in order to increase your resilience. Here I present an approach that Stephen Gribben summarize in his book Key Coaching Models. He outlined five ways to increase your resilience and I have provided some examples of them so you can create your own roadmap.
1 – Pump up your positivity
- Find the bright side in every situation
- Listen to encouraging podcasts
- Read supportive books and have positive reminders or little notes with uplifting words
- Do things that you enjoy
- Create a compelling vision of your future
2 – Live to learn
- Think of problems as opportunities and try new approaches
- Ask, What can I learn from this experience?
- What could I do differently?
- Reflect on what your role models did to overcome their challenges
- Find a mentor
3 – Open your heart
- Keep a gratitude journal
- Do random acts of kindness
- Write a thank you note
- Reach for support from friends and family
- Live life with purpose and meaning
4 – Develop healthy habits
- Do varied physical exercises that you enjoy
- Eat a healthy and balanced diet
- Get enough sleep
- Drink plenty of water
- Express your emotions
5 – Hang on to humor
- Watch a comedy or a TV show that makes you laugh
- Gather family and friends to share funny stories
- Recall a funny moment
- Read something funny
- Go to a laughing yoga class
As you develop new routines aimed to increase your resilience levels, you will begin to notice more flexibility to adjust to change. Building on your resilience skills will let you overcome life’s hardships. Start small and adopt a step by step process.
This could be a message that someone you love needs to read today, so please share on your favorite social media.
