3 Strategies That Will Show You How to Build Resilience

Today, I am going to introduce you to a good friend of mine, let’s just call her ‘Nancy.’. If someone asked me to name the most resilient person I know, ‘Nancy’ would not be high on the list. In fact, she would be near the bottom of the list.  When I think of someone who is resilient, I think of someone who can bounce back from a stressful type of experience, both rapidly and effectively and while Nancy has many amazing qualities, being resilient is not one of them.

For example, I was having coffee with her the other day and these are the kinds of things that she would say:

“This divorce lawyer is going to take me to the cleaners, I’m too naïve” – FYI, she was meeting with a divorce lawyer the next day for the first time as she is going through a divorce.

“My boss completely ignored me today, she must hate me” – when her boss neglected to reply to a couple of her emails.

“I am not putting that in my mouth, it’s too big, I will gag” – when telling me about something that happened on a date she had last night.

After hearing all of us this, I finally had enough and told her she needed to learn some techniques on how to build resilience. More on how she did that in a bit, but first let’s define resilience.

There are a ton of definitions of resilience…

…in the literature such as:

“The ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences and by flexible adaptation to the changing demands of stressful experiences.” ¹

and

“Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. But notice this other part, resilience is also the ability to grow from challenges.” ²

If you look at those 2 definitions, there are a couple key things in those definitions that I want you to keep in the back of your mind – flexible adaptation and the ability to grow. As you will see later, they are both important factors in how to build resilience.

Why Being Resilient is Important

We’ve all had challenges, we all have challenges now, and we will all experience challenges in the future. That is part of life, and it is what makes life interesting and what makes us grow. Being resilient won’t make those challenges go away BUT what it will do is give you the ability to see past those challenges, find enjoyment in them and in life, and better deal with the stress that comes with them.

When ‘stuff happens’, being resilient enables us to be able to roll with the punches and keep functioning despite the emotions that come with adversity such as anger, grief, and pain.

Factors That Make Us Resilient

Before we dive headfirst into how to build resilience, lets first take a quick look at some of the factors or variables that science tells us makes us resilient:

Relationships:

One of the most important factors is having people in your life that can provide support, encouragement, and reassurance and who you can rely on.

Being Optimistic:

Another key factor is optimism or the belief in a positive future. Staying optimistic after ‘stuff happens’ is almost like the backbone of being resilient as it gives us the mental attitude to keep going.

Being self-aware:

Being able to stop and ask yourself what is really going on in your head. So, being able to not only track your thoughts and emotions but how you respond to them and how that reaction is either helping or hurting you. It is also being able to assess how you are responding physiologically in our bodies in terms of our heart rates and breathing as they affect resilience too. Lastly, being self-aware of our strengths and how to use them to overcome our challenges while also being aware of our weaknesses and how to improve them to improve our results.

Your ability to change your thoughts, emotions, and physiology:

This kind of goes hand in hand with being self-aware. Once you notice that your thoughts, emotions or physiology isn’t helping you, you need to be able to self-regulate and change them to be resilient.

Confidence in your strengths and abilities:

This includes being aware of and confident in what you are good at to master your environment. Having an attitude of ‘I can do this’ is incredibly important in being resilient.

Multiple perspectives and problem-solving:

One of the things that makes people resilient is the ability to look at things from multiple vantage points or perspectives. As well as being able to figure out the root cause of a problem and then be able to come up with and implement solutions.

Positive environments:

The last factor we will look at it is being a part of positive institutions which may include your family, workplace, and your community, which can either help support or erode the factors we discussed above.

Thinking Traps

Karen Reivich, Ph.D., Co-Director of the Penn Resiliency Project at the Positive Psychology Center has created an interesting term for the rigid styles of thinking that affect our ability to be resilient. She has coined a term called ‘thinking traps’ which she has cultivated from previous research done on resilience.

According to Reivich, what happens is that when we enter a new situation, many times our thinking is rigid or almost on ‘autopilot’, which means we may not be seeing the current situation accurately. This can negatively affect how we solve the problem because we are not seeing it as it really is – which makes it harder to bounce back.

By understanding the different ‘thinking traps’ we will be able to identify the rigid styles of thinking that are affecting our resilience.  Then once we can identify those thoughts and beliefs and how we respond, we can do something about them. Remember, we do have control over how we interpret things and we do have control over our thoughts.

After understanding the thinking traps below, we will at some ways to challenge these old ways of thinking.

Some of the thinking traps which affect our ability to be resilient are:

Mind-reading:

This trap involves you assuming that you know exactly what the other person is thinking and usually it is something negative about you. i.e. ‘It is obvious she doesn’t respect me at all’ or ‘she thinks she is better than I am’. The problem with mind reading is that it blocks communications because by assuming that you know what the other person is thinking, you don’t ask – which can have very negative impacts on relationships.

The ‘Me trap’:

The ‘me trap’ is when you blame yourself as being the sole cause of every problem or setback. This also makes you think you are causing a lot of harm to other people which makes you feel sad and guilty.

The ‘Them trap’:

This is pretty much the opposite of the ‘me trap’. In the ‘them trap’ you blame other people or situations as being the sole cause of every problem or setback. It’s all their fault! By blaming other people and things it can anger and aggression.

Catastrophizing:

The catastrophizing trap involves you going around and around on the worst-case scenario of various circumstances. What ends up happening is that you waste a ton of energy ruminating and it ends up like a snowball getting bigger as it rolls down the hill. This wasted energy and anxiety ends up blocking you from taking action as you see threats as worse than they really are. You overestimate how bad things area while underestimating your abilities to overcome them.

Helplessness:

The last thinking trap we will discuss is helplessness. This is where you think that the negative situation is going to impact every area of your life and there is nothing you can do about it. By thinking about how all these bad things are here to stay, it makes you feel hopeless and helpless. It makes you feel depleted and that takes away the energy you have to come up with solutions. You end up being passive, withdraw and give up.

Before we move on to the next section on how to build resilience, take some time to review the thinking traps above and reflect on which of these has affected you in the past or is affecting you currently.

Now that we understand some common thinking traps, let’s take a look at a simple method that Reivich calls ‘real-time resilience’ which is a method of changing non-resilient thinking as a way for…

How to Build Resilience

Being self-aware enough to understand which thinking trap is affecting you is great, but it is not enough. We now need to build some skills that help us to self-regulate and become resilient by thinking more productively.

Real-time resilience consists of 3 strategies that can help you overcome the common thinking traps we discussed above. We will look at each strategy in succession:

Strategy 1:  Evidence

The first strategy is what is called ‘evidence’ or where we use data to prove to ourselves why the thought we are having is false. The key with this strategy is to make sure that the evidence you provide is so vivid that it completely overshadows your negative thought.

One way to accomplish this is by using what Reivich calls ‘sentence starters’ which are short phrases that you tell yourself in response to the negative thought. For example, “That’s not true because —” And you complete the sentence with a reason on why your negative thought is false.

Strategy 2:  Re-Framing

The second strategy is what is called ‘re-framing’ or where you change the way you see something to create optimism to get the result you want. Remember, optimism is a key factor in resilience.

A sentence starter you can use in this case is, “A better way to see this is—” And you complete the sentence with a more positive or optimistic view of the situation. This will help you become more confident and relaxed when looking at the situation.

Strategy 3:  Planning

The third and last strategy is one that is especially effective when you catch yourself catastrophizing.  It is a strategy called ‘planning’ and this is simply coming up with contingency plans by telling yourself, ‘if this happens, then I will do this’. When you are catastrophizing your mind is overwhelmed by terrible things you think are going to happen, which causes anxiety that stifles your ability to perform. By creating a plan on the spot, it helps you relax and go into the situation feeling better equipped.

Back to ‘Nancy’…

 After walking her through the thinking traps and the real-time resilience strategies above, it was time for her to utilize what she had learned.

So, we took the situations I shared with you in the introduction and applied the real-time resistance techniques above, so she could get better at how to build resilience.

First, she responded to the following situation:

“This divorce lawyer is going to take me to the cleaners, I’m too naïve”

By using the PLANNING strategy, “I will ask her how much it is going to cost, if she quotes me a huge amount, then I will negotiate a flat fee or find another lawyer.”

Then, she responded to the situation where she fell into the mind-reading trap,

“My boss completely ignored me today, she must hate me”

By using the RE-FRAMING strategy, “A better way to see this is that she was probably just busy and in meetings all day. This has happened before, and she responded the next day”.

Well, that’s it for today’s post on how to build resilience.

“Wait!”, you say. “What about the situation from her date last night?”

Ah right, I totally forgot about that one.

So in that case, she responded to a situation where she fell into the catastrophizing trap,

“I am not putting that in my mouth, it’s too big, I will gag and die”

By using the EVIDENCE strategy, next time she will simply say, “That’s not true because even though I’m not a big fan of hot dogs, I have had way bigger things in my mouth like that huge lollipop at the state fair last year. Plus, it’s late and I’m famished, and although it’s unhealthy, it won’t kill me.”

Until next time, keep being resilient and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

Use It or Lose It:

To build resilience, first…

Figure out what thinking traps affecting you the most:

  Mind-reading
  The ‘Me trap’
  The ‘Them’ trap’
  Catastrophizing
  Helplessness

Then use one of the 3 strategies real-time resilience for how to build resilience:

(1)  Evidence
(2)  Re-framing
(3)  Planning

When to Use It:

When trying to rebound from a setback.

What Do You Think?

Are you affected by any of the thinking traps more than others in your life? Do you use any of the strategies above to build resilience? Please share in the comments below!

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References

1 Tugade MM, Fredrickson BL. Resilient Individuals Use Positive Emotions to Bounce Back From Negative Emotional Experiences. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2004;86(2):320-333. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320.

2 https://www.coursera.org/learn/positive-psychology-resilience/home/week/2

8 tips to help you become more resilient

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311

https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx