Building Reslience: How to use Mental Resilience to Combat Stress
Coping with stress, or should I say effectively coping with stress, contributes directly towards building resilience. The whole idea of being emotionally resilient revolves around how well we are able to handle stress and get back on track. Getting tied down with the daily stressors of life can be a big reason that we lose our emotional resilience. We become more sensitive, over-reactive, and emotionally unbalanced. Even a little change of plans can leave us in a state of anxiety and panic.
Studies have indicated that resilient individuals can deal with stress more effectively. They can bounce back from any stressful situation with positive energy and confidence, and they are more likely to learn lessons from traumatic encounters rather than get overwhelmed by them (American Psychological Association, 2012). If you struggle with managing the stress in your life, then it would benefit you to learn how to build your mental resilience. Keep reading for tips to building your mental resilience.
What is Resilience?
Resilience is:
- The ability to bounce back from difficult situations, failure, or trauma.
- To have the strength to carry on despite what you have been through,
- And to have grown beyond those past circumstances to become a stronger person.
Possessing also mental resilience greatly aids in well-being and mental health. Some people are well equipped with resilience while others are not so lucky. The good news is that resilience is a skill that can be developed and enhanced through hard work and perseverance.
Five core factors that Build resilience
We all need tools for navigating hard times and difficult emotions, especially right now. Hence, we need ways to build resilience against stress and depression. Building resilience is especially important, because of intense change and challenge—and those challenges and uncertainties have been multiplied by the stressors of the global pandemic. The five components necessary to build resilience are:
- Self-esteem/Confidence
- Self Control/Ability to Change
- Developing Social Skills
- Having a Sense of Purpose and Vision
- Self care
Self Esteem and Confidence
Low levels of self-esteem and confidence make it difficult to build resilience. Therefore, to develop mental resilience it is important to first address your self-esteem and confidence.
Self-esteem starts to form and develop during childhood. Parents have a very big influence on their child’s self-esteem and they can make a big difference in how healthy the child’s self-esteem becomes. Healthy self-esteem is a strong protective factor for children, adolescents, and adults too, and it is a strong predictor of resilience. To build resilience one must work on strengthening one’s self-esteem and self-confidence in general.
Confidence on the other hand, comes from learning from your failures. Every mistake has the power to teach you something important, so look for the lesson in every situation. It is also important to make sure that you understand the idea of “post-traumatic growth.” – This is when people allow crisis situations, such as a job loss or the breakdown of a relationship, to help them re-evaluate their lives and make positive changes.
Confidence also comes with knowing how to be assertive. Being assertive means finding the right balance between passivity (not being assertive enough) and aggression (angry or hostile behavior). Confidence means having a strong sense of yourself, your value, and acknowledging that you deserve to get what you want. It also means standing up for yourself even in the most difficult situations.
It likely won’t happen overnight but by practicing these techniques regularly, you will slowly build up the confidence and self-belief necessary to become strengthen your mental resilience. When you do, you’ll likely find that you become more productive, efficient and respected, too.
Self Control and the Ability to Change
Building mental resilience will also require you to understand the importance of self-control and knowing when to make changes to stay in control. We are all on a path of becoming and evolving, so to become more resilient, change is often necessary which is why self control is essential.
Self Control
Having self control is a natural part of growing in maturity and maturity is born out of responsibility. You cannot be mentally or emotionally resilient if you are irresponsible.
People with maturity understand that life is difficult. Being able to accept this fact allows mature people to learn to handle life in all of its difficulties, not expecting it to be different. They have learned to accept that not everything in life is:
- Going to be their way all the time
- Show up in the way they thought it would and
- They also understand that the world won’t change on its axis to make them happier.
Mature people know for any change to happen, it first has to come from within themselves which is where self control comes in because you have to be mature enough to let go of the beliefs, habits, people or circumstances that keep you stuck. The only way to live a more fulfilling, successful and purpose-driven life is when the choice is made to fully develop and live the attitudes and principles of a mature person who practices self control.
Embracing Change
Another thing that resilient people understand is that things change. Things may happen which may require carefully-made plans to be amended or scrapped. But by learning how to be more flexible, or adaptable, makes people better equipped to respond when faced with a life crisis. Resilient people often utilize these events as an opportunity to branch out in new directions. While some people may be crushed by abrupt changes, highly resilient individuals are able to adapt and thrive.
In order to effectively embrace change, you need to have a a good level of problem-solving skills. People who are resilient have effective and efficient solving problems. They are able to understand a situation, identify the correct issue and create the best solution. In addition, they are less likely to misread the situation which could cause them to identify the wrong topic and then produce the incorrect answer to that issue. People with low mental resilience may not solve problems as well as mentally strong individuals and may inadvertently choose options to make their situation worse.
Developing Social Skills
I’m sure you have heard before, that we have not been created to live an isolated life. We need a support network to be resilient in times of trouble, so its important to develop healthy social skills. Developing social skills will inevitably aid in building more resilience so if you want to build your social skills, it would help to work on the following:
- Self Awareness
- Building Strong Connections
- Interpersonal Relations and Rapport
- Setting Boundaries
- Inspiring Trust
Having the abilities to effectively communicate your needs to others is crucial to developing mental resilience because it is not healthy to be solely dependent on yourself.
Having Self Awareness
Self-awareness is another necessary skill to build mental resilience because it lets us bounce back from any setback in our life. When we understand our strengths and other areas for improvement, we are able to adjust accordingly, acquire extra knowledge when necessary, and make positive decisions that reflect who you really are.
Being self aware requires us to know how to embrace our emotions. When we become aware of our emotions, we embrace them healthily and know how to deal with strong, or difficult, emotions in a constructive way.
Although excessive negative feelings tend to inhibit learning and communication, emotions play a vital role in relationships, conversations and feedback. They convey emphasis and let others know what we value. Emotional experiences stick with people, last longer in their memories, and are easier to recall.
In recent decades, extensive neuroscience research has shown that emotions are essential to our reasoning process. Strong emotions can pull us off course, but in general, emotions support better decision making. So, although we may want to avoid triggering a threat response, we shouldn’t try to remove all emotions from our relationships. Doing so can diminish the impact of our presence and lead to a cycle of ineffective behaviors. Instead of suppressing your emotions, aim for balance: Express just enough emotion to engage with others but not so much to provoke a hostile or defensive reaction, shut down the conversation, or damage the relationship.
Of course, we may not know how another person will respond to our emotions. When we’re in the grip of strong feelings, it’s hard to calibrate how we express them in conversation. The best way to control your emotions is to practice. One of the ways we can practice is by having more mindful conversations. When do so, we learn not only how specific individuals respond to us but also how we express our emotions in helpful and unhelpful ways.
Building Strong Connections
People who have strong connections in their personal and professional life are more resistant to stress, and are happier in their role. The more we develop genuine relationships, the more resilient we become. It’s important to not only have a strong support network to fall back on but to also have people we can confide in. Having caring, supportive people around you acts as a protective factor during times of crisis. While simply talking about a situation with a friend or loved one won’t make our troubles go away, it does allow us to share our feelings, get support, receive positive feedback, and come up with possible solutions to resolve problems.
Interpersonal Relations and Rapport
People who are skilled at interpersonal relations can develop and maintain effective relationships with others.
- They relate well to people from varied backgrounds and in different situations
- They show understanding, courtesy, tact, empathy, concern, and politeness.
- They also relate to people in an open, friendly, and professional manner.
Keep in mind that interpersonal skills are only well received when they are consistently shown from that individual. This is where having a good rapport comes in.
Rapport is the gateway to trust. It is what allows people to feel relaxed with you and open up – so that personal barriers and fears can be identified. It also allows the relationship to grow in capacity to handle tougher circumstances and conversations. People are more likely to be supportive when a good rapport has been built with them. Therefore, when difficult times arise, you will have a good support system to help you be resilient enough to bounce back. Being unable to have a strong support system that you can equally depend on makes it difficult to have have the mental resilience to recover during hard times.
Setting Boundaries
People with healthy boundaries expressing to others what they love, what they want, what their purpose is, and what they stand for. These people are very different from those who are known by what they hate, what they don’t like, what they stand against, and what they will not do.
In the physical world, boundaries are easy to see. Fences, signs, walls, manicured lawns or hedges are all physical boundaries. In their differing appearances, they give the same message: THIS IS WHERE MY PROPERTY BEGINS. The owner of the property is legally responsible for what happens on his or her property. Non-owners are not responsible for the property.
Boundaries define us. They define where we begin and others end. Knowing what is in our ownership and taking responsibility for those things gives us freedom. When we know where our “yard” begins and ends, Then we are free to do with it what we like. Taking responsibility for our life opens up many different options.
However, if you do not “own” your life, then your choices and options become very limited. In addition to showing you what you are responsible for, boundaries also help define what is not “on our property” and what we are not responsible for.
Inspiring Trust
Trust is essential to well-being as well as mental resilience. But if you look around today, it’s apparent that we are smack in the middle of a trust crisis where social, healthcare, economic, media and political distrust jeopardize our lives. Trust can improve both our personal and professional lives. From relationships at home to leadership skills at work, it’s an essential component of communication, productivity and efficiency. Although we consider trust to be abstract and obscure, like love, it’s actually a measurable factor that we can improve!
Trust is beneficial to us, as it facilitates good communication. For example, it’s far easier to understand someone when you trust them. Trusting someone allows us to understand what someone is saying even when they aren’t speaking clearly. Conversely, it is harder to understand what people are talking about when we aren’t familiar with them. – Even if they’re speaking in plain terms.
One way we build trust with is when we relate to others with empathy which is our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes and appreciate how they are likely to be feeling or thinking in a given situation.
Daniel Goleman, who coined the concept of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ stated that ’empathy is the most important people skill’. He says that empathy is an important communication skill that can be easily forgotten because we focus on what should be done in a situation, rather than how the other person feels.
Humans were not made to live isolated lives, we are meant to support each other and to be connected to each other through solid and trustful connections and loving and supportive friendships. Having a strong network of friends and family is necessary for mental resilience and empathy can help strengthen those connections.
Equally important, it is also important to build self trust. It is kind of hard to be mentally resilient when you can’t even trust your own judgment. You can build trust within yourself by:
- Keeping your promises to yourself
- Remembering your successes and triumphs
- Being your own cheerleader
- Following your intuition/trusting your hunches or gut feelings
If you are unable to trust yourself to make the right decision when times get tough, then it will be hard to develop the mental resilience necessary to overcome life’s obstacles.
Having a Sense of Purpose and Vision
The final core factor related to building mental resilience is having a sense of purpose or vision. Purpose is linked with meaning which is really important to because having purpose, gives us direction and helps us to handle adversities with ease. When we have a sense of purpose or vision, we tend to become self motivated.
The ability to self motivate is yet another important skill for mental resilience. Self-motivation drives people:
- To keep going even in the face of set-backs
- To take up opportunities
- And to show commitment to what they want to achieve.
Self-motivation is, in its simplest form, the force that drives us to do things. The topic of self-motivation, however, is far from simple. There won’t always be people to constantly cheer us on in our pursuit to achieve our goals. And sometimes, people may deter us from our goals as they ask for us to help them in times of crisis or turmoil. This is why its important to have clear boundaries as well as self control to make sure that we stay on track.
Self Care
The final component necessary in building resilience is self care. Self-care motivates us to maintain a healthy relationship with ourselves so that we have the health and energy to handle life’s stresses while still being good to others. We cannot give to others if we do not have anything to give to ourselves. Self-care is not selfish, but necessary. What do you think it says when we take care of, and nurture, ourselves? What does it say to others?
Likewise, self care also helps build a personal connection. Have a personal connection with ourselves makes it easier to pay attention to our own needs and feelings instead of pushing through to appease the demands of others. This is why self-care and creating boundaries is so important.
Need Help Building Resilience?
Building resilience can be done alone, but is much more successful when working with a professional such as a therapist or coach. Here at The STEW Project, we offer a variety of services an courses to help build the mental resilience necessary to tackle anything that comes our way. I hope this helps!
In Good Health,
Amber Stewart BS,
Holistic Nutritionist
Certified Master Life Coach
ACSM Exercise Physiologist,
CTNC Mental Health Specialist
TBMM Corrective Exercise Specialist
Hi! My name is Amber and I’m a Body Goals Builder, Master Life Coach, Certified Health Coach, CTNC Mental Health Specialist, Stress Alchemist & Fear Conqueror
I used to be a people pleasing, work-a-holic who stressed herself out to climb the wellness industry’s corporate ladder, while obsessing over her self image. I soon realized that none of it mattered if I wasn’t happy with myself, inside and out, and surrounded around people who loved and respected me.
I now help individuals who are stressed out, out of shape and struggling to find balance in their lives learn how to ease their worries, improve their health, create 10x more joy in their lives and manifest the life of their dreams. At the STEW Project, we are maximizing our living potential by Simply Taking an Emphasis on Wellness.
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[…] arousal. The same stressor has ability to affect people differently depending on their level or resilience, or the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; mental […]
[…] arousal. The same stressor has ability to affect people differently depending on their level or resilience, or the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; mental […]