Resilience: definition and 10 habits to boost resilience

What is resilience and how can we be better able to cope with bad times?

Life goes on... Life always goes on, but often without us feeling like it, we are slow to re-engage with the values that keep us going when the future is suddenly cut short.

We want to predict what will happen and we dedicate a lot of energy to establish a stability that will give us the tranquility of the calm sea, but sometimes the weather changes, sometimes waves come and sometimes tsunamis appear and other times tsunamis appear that destroy not only what we have built but also what we had cemented, even what we had imagined and what we had kept in our minds.even the imagined that kept us with illusion and motivated us to get up every day in the morning. That is when we need resilience.

• Recommended article: "The 10 typical habits of resilient people".

Resilience: a virtue to face the bad patches

What to do when we are going through a bad time? The alternative is so simple that it is cruel, the alternative is to go on livingThe alternative is to continue living, because living is also suffering, it is moving forward without desire, it is confusion, fear, rage...

We have to give ourselves permission for this stage, after all it is a logical phase of grief.

Society fills our life plan with a lot of premises that we must fulfill to be happy and it seems that if we do not do it, we are blamed for choosing to be unsatisfied, as if the emotional state can be programmed and kept active in joy mode until you decide to change it. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

How do we face a process of loss or a sad stage?

In terms of how we face these moments of low mood, many different things happen. Some people who believe in it and fortunately their sea is calm, can allow themselves to look at other gapsThey may think that swells or unexpected storms may come, or that now that the sea is calm, it is a shame not to enjoy it, having someone else to be with, a better job, a smaller nose...

Others are elite athletes in this discipline.Others are elite sportsmen in this discipline, they continuously ride wave after wave, without time to enjoy the calm, they simply deal with everything that comes without paying attention to anything and at least while this busy stage lasts they do not feel too much discomfort, which however they notice later as a physical and emotional hangover, proportional to the maelstrom in which they have been immersed.

Other people get used to living with discomfort.but with the permanent feeling of being responsible, this reassures them and gives them at least a sense of control, but the sea cannot be controlled as if it were the pool at my house, so unexpectedly, without deserving it, without predicting it, a storm destroys our lives and? what do I do next?

Learning to live differently

This is the most complicated of situations, in which the Pain is so intense that everything around you passes into the background, in which any complaining comment for something that to you is a banality offends you, and plunges you into the silence of incomprehension and sadness.

It is often said that the most bitter pains are intimate.They hurt so much that we do not want to expose ourselves to the double victimization of incomprehension and we keep silent, hearing as an annoying noise the great difficulties that others encounter in their daily lives and that you would give too much to exchange.

At that moment when you come to the conclusion that a single sentence from you, a headline of your misfortunes, would completely minimize their problems, you get angry and shout it out, to decide to opt again for silence, it does not pay, in the end it does not pay.... And that's when we need tools to be able to get out of the quagmire. The key tool is resiliencean aptitude that can be improved and that drives us to be able to get out of the most adverse situations well.

So how can we strengthen our resilience?

The most effective way to develop resilience is to adopt a series of habits and attitudes, as well as to establish certain resilience guidelines.We can also establish certain guidelines for self-discovery, such as the following:

• Identify what you are experiencing on an emotional level.
• Identify the somatizations that reflect what you feel in your body.
• Ask yourself what you would do at that moment if you did not feel that way and try to carry it out.
• Make sense of every action you take.
• Act to improve your life in the long run and not to eliminate the discomfort you feel.
• Observe your automatic response pattern.
• Create an alternative list of different coping strategies.
• Decide which ones are for eliminating discomfort and which ones are for building a life that pays off.
• Begin to consciously choose each decision that is usually made impulsively.
• Allowing oneself to make mistakes, accepting discomfort is the greatest learning process and increases tolerance, making us freer people.

Learning to relativize

One of the most important aspects of resilience consists of being clear that, whether we want to or not, we will never be able to make appreciations, we will never be able to make totally objective appraisals about reality.. This fact, which philosophy has been exploring for hundreds of years through one of its branches (epistemology), raises the question: since we will always have to interpret what happens to us, what is the best way to do so?

The key to resilience is to know that we must avoid being dragged down by pessimism, since pessimism is also based on a series of constant inventions about what happens to us. The fact that pessimism and sadness keep us mired in malaise does not make this reading of reality any more reliable.

Therefore, since no matter what we do we will not be able to know reality directly, let us choose to to construct an interpretation of our life that has an important meaning for us. important to us. It is a matter of choosing, all things being equal, a life story that allows us to move forward.

From this ability, which requires time and practice, resilience will be born, which will help us to empower ourselves and to be a little closer to the happiness for which we have fought so hard.

Bibliographical references:

• Forés, A. and Grané, J. (2008). Resilience. Growing from adversity. Plataforma Editorial Barcelona.
• Triglia, Adrián; Regader, Bertrand; García-Allen, Jonathan. (2016). Psicológicamente hablando. Paidós.