Throughout a lifetime, everyone experiences trauma, grief, failures, challenges and setbacks. Resilience is the essential skill needed to help us overcome these experiences. Some people have a better grip on the skill than others, but luckily resilience is something we’re all capable of building — today, we’ll take a look at how:

Understanding Resilience

At Sage Collective, we recognize that everyone faces adversity in life, and that stress is a natural component of the human experience. Rather than the complete elimination of stress (which would be unrealistic), we take a more pragmatic approach, advocating for stress reduction as part of our 9 Ways of Vibrant Living. Resilience is an essential tool for stress reduction. 

According to the American Psychological Association, psychologists define resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.” Resilience isn’t just about getting through a challenge, but about emerging on the other side feeling more confident and empowered in your ability to cope and overcome adversity. 

Building Your Resilience

There are four core components that build resilience. 

The first component is easy enough to tackle: take care of your physical wellness. Often, when we take care of our body, our mind will follow suit. Taking care of your physical wellness includes maintaining a healthy diet, participating in moderate, regular physical activity and getting a good night’s sleep. If you incorporate these physical wellness habits into your daily lifestyle, you’ll begin experiencing elevated energy levels and improved moods, both of which will help you become more resilient.

The second component that follows suit is: take care of your mental wellness too. When building resilience, it’s important to both get in touch with your emotions and to learn how to control them. Mindfulness practices such as meditation, yoga and breathing exercises can help with this. Practicing gratitude, developing a self-care routine and engaging in activities you love are all great ways to restore balance and wellbeing to your mind.

The third component that will help you build resilience: seek out connection. You don’t have to go through trials and tribulations alone. Rather than isolating yourself, instead build a network of trusted friends, family and community members that you rely on to validate the troubles you’re going through and to help uplift you when needed. You can also find a sense of connection and support in more structured environments such as support groups, civic groups or faith-based organizations.

And finally, the fourth component: find meaning. Going through a traumatic experience often overwhelms us with negative feelings like despair and hopelessness. Combatting these feelings with a sense of life purpose helps us maintain our groundedness and to hold onto hope and optimism. Whether you’re driven by a desire to help others or to pursue opportunities for self-discovery and improvement, finding meaning through your life purpose — and taking the steps needed to reach your goals and objectives — helps us maintain the problem-solving, motivation and drive that’s key to resilience.

Challenges will continue to come our way. With these tools to help build resilience, we hope you’re left feeling more prepared for the next time adversity comes your way.