Bounce Back

Lately I’ve been thinking about ways to build up my resilience during stressful events and situations. Resilience is required in a variety of situations—whether they be largely traumatic or small instances of stress. Personally, I think there are many habits I could work on breaking in order to build up my resilience, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

I looked on apa.org, the American Psychological Association's website, to find out more about what resilience is and how one can grow his or her resilience. In an article called “The Road to Resilience,” the APA says that 'resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress . . . it means “bouncing back” from difficult experiences.’ This “bouncing back” is what I think of when I think of the word resilience. But bouncing back isn’t as easy as it sounds. It takes significant amounts of mental strength and courage, and those things aren’t always so easy to find within yourself.

In the same article, the APA lists 10 ways to build resilience. The methods are: Make connections, avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems, accept that change is a part of living, move toward your goals, take decisive actions, look for opportunities for self-discovery, nurture a positive view of yourself, keep things in perspective, maintain a hopeful outlook, and take care of yourself. A lot of these methods pertain to or mention self-care and self-love. Personally, I know that self-care is something I can definitely work on.

In today’s age, it’s hard for us to focus on ourselves. With social media, it’s so easy to slip into getting invested in other people’s lives and things outside of us that we shouldn’t really care about. Social media makes it harder for us to focus on our own wellbeing and happiness. And if focusing on myself will help to build up resilience, I’m definitely going to vow to use social media less in my day-to-day life.

Overall, I think keeping a positive outlook, remaining hopeful, and looking at ourselves in a nurturing light are important tips that we constantly need to remind ourselves of. As busy people with so much going on in our lives, it’s too easy to be hard on ourselves and think negatively. But things don’t have to be this way. If we actively try to look at things positively and love ourselves, resilience will start to build. And there are so many ways to remind yourself to stay positive. I like to put signs with positive sayings on them up around my apartment. I also like to go to a meditation class at my local yoga studio every now and then to push out the negative thoughts. But I, along with everyone else, always need to be reminded to keep a hopeful outlook, and love myself more than all the social media I surround myself with and the tasks I have to complete throughout my day. I come first. And remembering that I come first will help me build up resilience.

Real Talk