Resilience is a crucial ability to live a successful life. However, what is resilience? According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is the process of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences. Many factors affect resilience, including an individual’s view of the world, social resources, and coping strategies. Resilience helps you adapt to the stress, trauma, and challenges that are everywhere on your path to success. Many successful entrepreneurs are highly resilient people. They have failed more often than they have succeeded. But instead of bringing them down, the difficulties helped them achieve success in their businesses.
How Do You Become A Highly Resilient Person?
Some people are born with resilience. They grow up with an optimistic personality and an enthusiasm for life and learning. They can quickly recover and get back on track when a setback hits them. If you are one of these people, congratulations on your natural resilience. If you are unfortunately not one of them, don’t be pessimistic (that’s one of the signs of resilience). The good news is that resilience can be nurtured and built. This means you can acquire resilience through training later in life. Here we introduce six simple habits that help you become a highly resilient person.
6 Habits That Help You Become A Highly Resilient Person
Eat Well, Sleep well, And Exercise Regularly
It is the primary habit of becoming a highly resilient person. Research has shown that diet and mental health are strongly linked. Microorganisms in the gut can influence brain function by synthesizing neurotransmitters. A healthy diet, as represented by the Mediterranean diet, can significantly enhance the brain’s ability to resist stress.
Add more fruits, vegetables, and unsaturated fats such as fish and nuts to your diet. Avoid unhealthy foods such as processed meats, fried foods, baked goods, and sugar-sweetened beverages. We believe that you will feel energized and relaxed after a period of time, which will help you recover from stress.
The importance of sleep and exercise in becoming a highly resilient person cannot be overstated. Adequate sleep allows the brain to rest fully, reducing anxiety and increasing efficiency. Regular exercise produces dopamine, an essential neurotransmitter for the brain to get happy and stay optimistic. In a word, eating well, sleeping well and exercising regularly are signs of healthy living and foundations for developing resilience.
Stay Socially Connected
People are social animals. In ancient times, humans hunted and lived in groups. It not only brought food and security to humans but also enriched their spiritual life. Our genes have preserved social connection because it has helped humans to survive. But what does it have to do with resilience? Social connection is a crucial driver of resilience. The flip side of social connection is social isolation. Social isolation creates a sense of insecurity and greater sensitivity to challenges. Think about how COVID-19 makes people in isolation feel depressed and helpless. Staying socially connected to family and friends makes you feel supported and loved. They are your most loyal support force in times of frustration. When you know you are not alone, you are able to cope with difficulties more comfortably. So make it a habit to connect with your family and friends often. For example, call your family every evening and talk about what’s new in your life. Meet up with friends regularly for fun. These small habits nurture your ability to cope with challenges.
Reconcile With Yourself
What should you do when a setback has become a fact that you cannot change? Highly resilient people will choose to forgive themselves. Many things are beyond our control, such as war and natural disasters. When your failure results from uncontrollable factors, you should not blame yourself. Instead, place the blame where it belongs. It is one of the secrets to recovering quickly from setbacks. As long as you try your best, you should reward yourself whether you succeed or not. There is a quote called “I am enough.” This quote means that you have tried hard enough and do not blame yourself for everything, that is, to reconcile with yourself. You can print this quote and put it on the wall of your room. Remember, highly resilient people can always let go of the past and move on to the future.
Positive Thinking
Positive Thinking means that you approach life’s challenges with a positive attitude. Everything has a positive side as well as a negative side. Highly resilient people are good at finding the positive side of things. For example, when you are stuck in a traffic jam on your way to work, a negative person would view it as bad that he might be late for work today. But a highly resilient person may think: “Well, it is a good chance to enjoy music in the car.” When a challenge comes, a highly resilient person will view it as a stepping stone to progress rather than a hindrance on the road. Some tips can help you think positively. Smile more often, for example. Smiling enables you to maintain a positive attitude toward the world. Studies show that even a fake smile can help you lower your blood pressure and reduce your heart rate, which allows you to manage stress better.
Learn To Relax
Relaxation plays an essential role in restoring resilience. We mentioned that resilience could be acquired through training. But you may also lose resilience if you don’t use the right approach. Psychologists believe that over time, stress and trauma tend to reduce resilience. From a physiological perspective, repeated trauma puts the brain on permanent alert, damaging the brain’s ability to respond to a crisis. The way to cope with constant stress is to relax. There are many ways to relax, so that we won’t get into specifics here. We will list a few relaxation techniques of highly resilient people. Meditation is one of them, and it has proven to be an effective way to cope with trauma. Other techniques include yoga and Tai Chi. Even a simple deep breath can relax you. So practicing relaxation regularly is a simple but effective habit for becoming a highly resilient person.
Be Faithful And Pray
If you are a Christian, you may better understand the power of faith. Many inspiring stories in the Bible teach how to adapt well to adversity and trauma. Reading these stories is undoubtedly beneficial in becoming highly resilient people. We are not saying here that a highly resilient person should be a theist. In fact, whether you are an atheist or a theist, you should believe that things will work out for the best. Prayer makes you feel you have something to rely on, thus reducing anxiety and promoting positive thinking. Keeping faith gives you a sense of hope for the future and helps increase confidence in dealing with challenges.
Final Words
Becoming a highly resilient person is not a one-day task. But these habits can help you take a small step forward. We know it’s not easy to maintain good habits. There are a few tips that can assist you in developing good habits. Inspirational jewelry, for example, can be a constant reminder to stay positive, keep your faith, and love your family. As mentioned above, these are all critical factors for building resilience.