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If you feel you’ve been tested beyond your limits during the last year, this can push you out of your “window of tolerance” – the resilience zone in which you were used to operating. When you’re forced to operate outside of this zone for too long, it can leave you feeling depleted.

So, what builds resilience? Like building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and intentionality. Having confidence in your own ability to cope with the stresses of life can play an important part. Becoming more confident in your own abilities, including your ability to respond to crises, is a great way to build resilience.

How to Build Emotional Resilience:

1. Acknowledge the stress
2. Break the work into smaller pieces
3. Embrace change and flexibility
4. Identify your coping strategies
5. Practice self-love and nurture yourself
6. Start with your thoughts
7. Find a sense of purpose by:
   • Building a strong social network
   • Giving a voice to a social movement
   • Leading a healthy lifestyle
   • Learning about different cultures
   • Making art or music
   • Serving your community
   • Cultivating your spirituality
8. Believe in your abilities
9. Elevate your self-esteem
10. Be optimistic
11. Develop problem-solving skills
12. Establish goals

Keep working on your skills! Resilience takes time to build, so don’t get discouraged if you still struggle to cope with problematic events. Everyone can learn to be resilient, and it can vary dramatically from one person to the next.

Focus on practicing your skills, as well as the common characteristics of resilient people, but also remember to build upon your own existing strengths.

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF:

1. How do you deal with setbacks?
2. How do you cope with pressure?
3. Is this event going to change my life in such a way that a “new normal” will emerge?  
4. Is it possible that this event might change my life for the better or open new doors for me?
5. What aspects of this adversity can I directly control, influence, or leverage?  
6. What positive emotions could emerge from this event?

Support That Lifts You Up:

It’s one thing to read examples or hear how affirmations can be positively life-changing, and another to personally experience how these affirmations can become a powerful coping tool.

This month, you are challenged to repeat to yourself one of the two following affirmations. Repeat this affirmation every day for 30 days. If it takes 12 seconds, that’s only six minutes out of the 43,200 minutes you have available during those 30 days!

• I give myself permission to do what is right for me. To take time for myself, and to put energy into things that matter to me.
• I focus on what I can control and make peace with what I can’t.

Using resilience affirmations will allow you to become aware of your thought patterns and feelings, which will reduce the risk of negativity taking hold.

You can’t change what happens to you, but you can change how you respond to it. Incorporating affirmations may not erase stress, but it will help you get through it and bounce forward more easily. There will always be more challenges, but affirmations have the power to motivate you to take steps towards achieving emotional and mental resilience.