mental health Improves by building resilience

Contents:

1. Resilience.

2. What is Resilience?

3. Experience.

4. How to build Resilience.

5. The Takeaway.

When I started out to write about mental toughness, I had a repeating image of a bear floating through my mind. I guess I view bears as the epoch of toughness. That probably says more about me than anything else but when I think tough. I think bear.

Maybe that isn’t surprising, bears live in the elements, fight for dominance, and can be very protective of things that matter to them. They remind me of us. The difference is that they fight for survival every day. Literal survival. The kind that if I don’t kill something and eat it. I will die. My cubs will die. I have to go out and risk being injured or killed to make it through another day.

Mental toughness is embodied, to me, in a bear. A big one. A grizzly bear. Massive bodies, massive claws, and massive teeth that are designed by nature to be a literal monster.

That isn’t all though. When I project humanity onto one of these monsters, I think about the kind of mental toughness it must take to live like that. To be a small bear, in a world of monsters and have to figure out how to find a mate, find food, and a place to live. What kind of mindset must they have to take on an older more powerful bear for the right to live where they want? What kind of inner reserve must one have to get back up after losing a ferocious battle?

And where does it come from?

Mental toughness for me is a bear. Taking on the weather, nature, other bears, and an unpredictable future… It almost sounds…

Like us.

Mental Health = Resilience

Most of the time when we think about being mentally tough, we think about people who are able to get through hard times with some incredible inner strength. Being mentally tough can appear almost magical in comparison to their own lives. Lives that are filled with internal chaos, external turmoil, and uncertainty.

In our modern world, the going theme seems to be that if something causes anxiety or stress we should avoid it. The mantra of “let that shit go” or “you don’t need that kind of stress in your life” seems to be everywhere. Depending on the context of the situation that can be great advice. Holding onto unhelpful things can create a significant amount of extra stress in our lives which is definitely not helpful. But what happens if we take that situational idea and begin to apply it en masse to our society? What if we begin to avoid stress to the point that any time we are faced with a situation that creates some uncomfortability, we jet? If this is what we are doing, we are losing out on the opportunity to build our resilience. We are not allowing ourselves to become mentally tough.

Being mentally tough means that you are resilient in the face of external pressures.

How many times have you avoided making a difficult phone call? How many times have you dodged something that was stressful? How many times have you given up before you even got started on a new idea?

To build mental health and resilience we have to see what we are really capable of. To push ourselves just a bit so that we have the opportunity to see what kind of skills we really have. Building resilience is like building muscle. The more we work on it; the more of it we get. To get stronger sometimes we have to feel like we are getting weaker.

What is Resilience and how does it work?

Mental toughness and resilience are not two sides of the same coin. They are the same coin. Resilience is the ability to experience adverse events in your life and maintain your course. The bounce-back mentality allows you to learn from a difficult situation in life and not be overwhelmed by it.

So let’s break it down.

Let’s say you are heavily invested in a relationship and, unexpectedly, the other party ends it. The person who is resilient sees this as a frustrating setback, but the person who has not had the opportunity to build up their resilience is crushed by this. They may begin thinking that all members of that sex cannot be trusted or that other people can see what happened to them and are laughing behind their backs. Both of those ideas can create a very unhappy and lonely person given enough time.

Resilience is important because the other person sees that this is a painful experience but only another experience in the long line of their lives. They will bounce back. And be better for it. With new knowledge and experiences to avoid that experience again.

Experience as a teacher.

In some ways, what we are talking about here is experience. Every time I have a good situation I learn something about how to have another good outcome. Every time I have a bad experience, I am learning how not to repeat that in the future.

Let’s bounce back to our break-up scenario.

When we encounter a difficult situation like this, we are given the opportunity to grow as a person. I know… that sounds crazy. What we are talking about is extremely painful and not an experience that you would want to go through again.

All true.

But what if you did get through it? Who would you be then? How many times have you gone through a difficult time before?

Stressful situations teach us our own abilities. They empower us through our own ingenuity to evolve to survive. What we learn about ourselves after overcoming creates mental toughness and resilience to future difficulties.

If you could survive that situation, what else can you survive?

How to Build Resilience.

So now it is time for the million-dollar question. How do you, the reader, develop your own resilience? How do you embrace your inner wild side and become the bear.

1. Stop avoiding difficult things.

When we avoid hard things in our lives, we are not allowing ourselves to naturally develop our own awesome powers. We cannot learn how much we can really do if we keep ourselves shut down because something bad might happen. You, just like our monster bear, have to embrace risk for reward.

2. Set goals.

Sit down. Make a goal list. And go achieve it. Start small. Pick lower-level things that are hard, stressful, or anxiety-inducing, and go do them. This requires commitment, discipline, and hard work. Just like the bear, you have to be committed to achieving your goals. Make the goal to develop resilience, and base everything else on that.

3. Watch your thinking.

Setbacks are not defeats. They are opportunities to develop mental toughness. You are going to have setbacks. Expect them. Also, expect that you will walk away from some of them blaming yourself. This is an opportunity to learn. Take time to honestly evaluate your actions. If you did something wrong, what can you do differently in the future? If you really didn’t, don’t beat yourself up. Part of developing your own resistance is to learn that sometimes things just don’t work out. And that is ok. You, our recently developed grizzly bear, can handle this because you have developed, or are developing, the mental toughness to get through it.

Bears don’t give up and neither should you.

4. Expand your circle.

We all need a pick-me-up sometimes. No matter how mentally tough you are. You need someone to tell you how awesome you are at times. A little positive reinforcement goes a long way. The more human connection you have the more likely you are to have that one person who gets you and knows how hard you worked.

The world is changing. Your circle isn’t just direct friends and family anymore. It can be that one person in your Facebook group who always like your posts. The person who always games with you. Your circle can look, however, you want it to. Don’t get stuck in one-dimensional thinking!

Unless an African Prince who needs your help to regain his title is trying to be part of your circle, don’t let that guy in.

The Takeaway: Avoiding Stressful things is making you more stressed.

This may be one of the most unbelievable parts of this whole piece, but it is true. When you go out of your way not to think about something, to avoid a situation, or to shun stress, you may be making yourself worse off. Stressful things usually don’t go away on their own and the more time we spend not looking at a problem the more stressed we usually become.

Worse than that. We are limiting ourselves from an opportunity to develop our own self-esteem and mental toughness. Resilience to tough situations does not develop on its’ own but through practice, discipline, and courage, you can develop the skills to make yourself a resilient human being.

And we need you, this world needs people who can face the challenges of our lives and overcome them. Resilience gives you the ability to bounce back from difficulty and come out the other side stronger for it.

It’s not easy, but it is in you. When you stop avoiding difficult things, you start to see that you do have the power to overcome situations that you would never have thought possible. Those things that you have been trying not to think about begin to become less of an obstacle and more of a bump in the road.

The more we overcome those bumps in the road the more we are able to tackle bigger and bigger things. Stresses of daily life start to affect us less and we become less stressed overall. Resilience and Mental Toughness are good for you and anyone can start building them.

No matter who you are.

The bear learns the lessons of the past but doesn’t let them define him. He becomes better from each failure and the failures become less and less.

Now it’s your turn…

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