As we begin this new year, I am overwhelmed with all of the self-help, new ways of living, and stress management tips that fill my news feed. As I am sure everyone can agree, we are all hoping for a better year than 2020. The question is, how do we make that happen this year?
It brings to my mind, a key factor that helps us build success, which is resilience. A large amount of research has been completed on the psychological and social aspects of resilience. A simple way to describe resilience, is the ability to bounce back and deal with the stress of everyday challenges, disappointments, adversity, and traumatic events. Through learning more about the concept of resilience, I have noticed how very resilient my clients, friends, and family have been with their individual experiences during this pandemic. They all seem to possess these certain factors and it is important to keep building on them to insure we can manage this next year with inner strength and determination!
Here are some factors that are important to develop resilience at any age: connection to others, communication, confidence, competence and commitment, and control.
1. Connection to others
· Reach out to family and friends (virtually or by phone)
· Get involved with community, school, charitable, or faith-based groups
· Develop and internalize a sense of connection with important people in your life
2. Communication
· Ability to share, explain, explore, and understand others
· Ability to take another’s perspective and engage in back and forth conversation
· Development of insight and good judgement
3. Confidence
· Develop a positive, yet realistic view of yourself
· Determine an accurate sense of your abilities and skills
· Recognize what you have learned from previous experiences
· Visualize your current and future goals
· Believe that you can influence how things turn out
4. Competence and Commitment
· Follow through and don’t give up
· Work toward your goals every day
· Keep your eye on the big picture or 5 year plan
· Seek out ways to problem solve
5. Control
· Engage in healthy coping skills (i.e., exercise, hobbies, stress management)
· Develop self-expression and emotional self-regulation skills
· Keep things in perspective
· Understand how your thoughts may be controlling your behavior and emotions
If you want to learn more about resilience and research around this topic, here are the resources I referenced. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181637/ https://positivepsychology.com/resilience-skills/
If you feel that individual therapy would help to build these skills, please feel free to contact me to schedule an appointment or one of my colleagues here at https://www.capesoftexas.com/.