Resilience is a socio-emotional skill that allows us to face adversity optimally. Let’s see what are the best routines to enhance this ability and become more resilient people.
Resilience, the ability to positively face and overcome adverse situations, is a skill that we can work on to improve our performance in it. At first, resilience was presented as an innate quality, but today we know that if we work on it, it can increase. There are different techniques that have been proposed as possible strategies for its increase, being the individual himself the one who must decide which ones are more adapted to his way of being and therefore which ones are more useful to him.
Likewise, we can work on different aspects, such as knowing how to deal with complicated situations, training social and problem-solving skills, maintaining good relationships with the environment, trying to be optimistic, self-knowledge, posing the problem as an apprenticeship, accepting changes, setting goals Be realistic and allow yourself to fail. In this article we better describe the capacity for resilience and give you some keys that can help you work on it.
- We recommend you read: “How to improve self-esteem? 12 keys to achieve it”
What is resilience?
Etymologically, the term resilience comes from the Latin resilio, which translates as “jump back or bounce”. In Psychology, resilience is understood as the ability to positively overcome an adverse situation , that is, despite the fact that the environmental conditions are not favorable, the subject manages to develop optimally.
Thus, there are two important components that must be met for resilience to occur: on the one hand, the subject must have the ability to resist the negative situation, be able to overcome the situation, and on the other hand, after overcoming the situation, it will be necessary that is able to develop and build a positive life.
At the beginning of this concept, it was believed that it had innate causes and that therefore either we were born with this ability or we could not do anything to develop it, but in later studies it has been observed that external variables such as the family, the community where you live the subject or the culture .
Keys to being a more resilient person
Given the functionality of this ability and the possibility of being able to train and improve it, it is important to know what strategies or keys we can use to become more resilient people.
Below we mention some of these keys and we explain what they consist of. You must keep in mind that not all techniques will work or be equally effective for all people, since each one will show different characteristics, will live in different environments and these variables will influence how we face difficult situations. So, choose the ones that best suit you and start training yourself.
1. Know yourself
Self-knowledge, knowing oneself, is a very important factor in our lives , and therefore it will not be less to increase our resilience. It is essential to know our fears as well as our strengths and abilities, since in this way we are better prepared to face any situation knowing our strengths to strengthen them and our weaknesses to work on them.
The best way to get to know each other is by dedicating time to yourself, pose and analyze what situation has been a problem for you, how you have dealt with it and how you should have done it, thus making it easier for you to know how to act accordingly when a similar situation arises again. effective way.
2. Consider the problem as learning
We know that it is inevitable that problems or complicated situations arise throughout our lives, the key is how we face them . In this way, in the first place it is important to assess whether or not it has a solution, since if it does not, we will try to change the way we perceive the problem so that it affects us less, that is, we will work more on an emotional level, instead If the problem has a solution, we will look for the best alternatives to solve it and be decisive.
Seeing the problem as learning, as a way of growing, helps us to gain perspective and be able to face it better by assessing what we can do and once we have overcome it, do not remember it as a traumatic event but as an event that we managed to overcome and made us stronger. .
3. Work on self-control
Having the ability to control oneself is not easy and also requires practice. Thus, given the difficulty of controlling ourselves in situations that generate tension or are unpleasant for us, we can try training first in less aversive situations to see which strategies work best for us and in the face of more complicated events it is easier for us to maintain composure and avoid acting impulsively.
Acting without thinking most of the time involves more problems and not being able to overcome the situation , on the other hand, if we give ourselves time to reflect, it is more likely that we will achieve better results, thus favoring our resilience capacity.
4. Set goals to follow
To achieve a good functioning, a good vital development, it is essential that we have and set ourselves goals, to stay active and motivated and showing ourselves strong and willing to overcome any adverse situation. Setting realistic goals is a way to help us set a direction and strive to achieve them.
5. Face the problem
Sometimes it often happens that we choose to ignore or act as if the problem did not exist , as if nothing bad happened in our lives, but this way of acting is not healthy or appropriate, since ignoring something does not make it disappear and on many occasions it only we will make the problem bigger and the situation worse.
6. Practice social and problem-solving skills
When we face a problem it is important to do it properly, to achieve this purpose there are different techniques that guide and help achieve better results in solving it. It is recommended to define in a concrete and precise way what the problem is, what realistic goal we want to achieve, propose all the possible solutions that may exist, make a decision taking into account the consequences that it may entail and execute it, assessing what the result has been.
In the same way, it is common for the problem to arise with another person, making it relevant that we have good social skills to try to resolve it in the best possible way and to reach an understanding with the other. Thus, we will work to know how to initiate and maintain a conversation, know how to listen, respect turn to speak and defend our interests but in a respectful and calm manner .
7. Be optimistic
To be resilient it is necessary to have an optimistic view of the situation. We know that being optimistic is not an easy task, but we will try to see the problem from a different perspective, not in such a catastrophic way, and assess whether there is a solution and we can do something to solve it. It may be difficult for us to be optimistic, but like any skill, it’s all about practicing, so we will try to focus on the positive events in our lives, so that it is easier for us to see the positive side when the situation is adverse.
8. Maintain a good relationship with your environment
As we mentioned before, initially it was pointed out that resilience was an individual construct that was not influenced by the environment, but we now know that it does depend on external factors, for this reason it is essential to maintain a good relationship with our environment, with the close people, since they will also be supportive for us when we have to face the different complicated situations.
It will always be easier to overcome a problem if we have someone who is by our side . Knowing that we have someone gives us peace of mind, it is not necessary for this person to advise us or help us in a specific way, the simple presence and support makes us not feel alone and we face the situation better. It gives us energy and strength to move forward, the support of the environment benefits your resilient behavior.
9. Accept changes
A frequent fear in people, which increases our tension, is change, the modification of some aspect of my life that can affect my routine. The routine is criticized when we have it, but when it breaks, we want to return to it, since it gives us security and peace of mind about what the course of my days will be like. But we must consider that it will be inevitable that changes will appear, which do not necessarily have to have a negative consequence.
We must learn to deal with them in the best way possible to try to make sure that our lives do not suffer . If you assume that these can happen, you will be more prepared to be able to act and adapt more easily, so, as we said, do not take it as something bad but as a learning that allows you to evolve and develop.
10. Allow yourself to fail
It is necessary to change the negative view of failure, it is common for people to be afraid to try something and it will go wrong, but paradoxically this is the only way to have the possibility of doing it well and achieving success. If for fear of failing we stop doing something, trying to solve a problem, it will surely continue and we will not be able to solve it. To be resilient we must resist the adverse situation and build a positive life in these conditions, therefore in this difficult process it is very likely that we will make mistakes.
To the classic question “what do you do?” I always answer “basically I am a psychologist”. In fact, my academic training has revolved around the psychology of development, education and community, a field of study influenced my volunteer activities, as well as my first work experiences in personal services.
