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Three Steps Towards Greater Resilience

If you’d like to be more resilient in the face of adversity, take courage: you don’t need to be naturally good at optimism or lateral thinking. According to a great many people, resilience can be developed and strengthened at any age — even in primary school. Here are three practical steps you can take to improve your ability to bounce back when the going gets tough.

1. Nurture your spirit by giving yourself time to think.

Blaise Pascal observed that “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Where do you do your best thinking? Some people love to meditate indoors. Others concentrate better when doing something physical outside: Tai Chi, walking, chopping wood or gardening. The setting is up to you. What matters is the mental clarity you gain there. According to Tarthang Tulku, when we learn to deal directly with our problems “We see that what is important is to take responsibility for ourselves, and to always be aware of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.”

Such tranquil times are ideal for focusing on your personal goals and desired results. This is quite different from day-dreaming, as Charles Swindoll explains: “People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualise in their minds that they are not quitters; they will not allow life’s circumstances to push them down and hold them under.” Quiet reflection along these lines can do a great deal to strengthen your courage and tenacity. Mary Anne Radmacher has found that “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”

2. Learn from the greats.

Whatever field of endeavour interests you, there’s no shortage of inspiring individuals. For instance:

3. Develop your stress-management skills.

In their book Resilience: bounce back from whatever life throws at you, Jane Clarke and Dr John Nicholson note that a lack of resilience may restrict the benefits that we gain from both our analytical and our emotional intelligence. Their discussion of stress is especially helpful. They report that psychologists describe stress as energising up to a point – after that it becomes distress: a debilitating burden.

How can you learn to deal with distress? By identifying your own personal stress points and finding practical ways to counteract them. Clarke and Nicholson divide stress-management strategies into two categories: distraction and resolution. Both are very useful in their view. In fact, the two categories can be used together to cope with the same problem. Someone using distraction to manage stress might breathe deeply, go for a walk or play tennis. The same person using resolution would focus specifically on the problem, analysing it systematically and finding the best possible solution. For a comprehensive article by Clarke and Nicholson about their book, go to www.managementtoday.co.uk/features/978755/how-become-resilient/

There’s much more to building resilience than these three steps, of course. But they could form part of a lifelong (perhaps even life-changing) journey of discovery, adaptation and growth. In Charles Darwin’s assessment, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” A Japanese proverb puts it this way: “The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.”