Have you ever been in a crisis and wondered how to overcome or cope with the associated stress?

Building resilience is an effective technique for overcoming adversity, coping with stressful situations, and leading a better quality of life. Difficult moments are likely to impair your health, mood, and appearance. Building resilience enables us to regain control and cope with stress, trauma, and turbulence during uncertainty. So, how does doing hard things increase our resilience? 

How Does Resilience Help in Adversity?

While situations differ with individuals, resilient people tend to tolerate emotional distress resulting from difficult times. Such individuals tend to find better ways of bouncing back to normalcy. 

Building resilience is an ongoing process with no fixed strategy. Each person’s journey is unique, and so is the time individuals take to attain resilience. Through resilience, we learn to cope with hard things, times, and experiences without numbing emotions with drugs and substance abuse, among other unhealthy means.

Ways in “Which” Hard Things Enhance Our Resilience

Are you wondering whether there is anything to gain in doing hard things? Hardships help us build resilience in the following ways.

• Learning to Accept the Truth

Building resilience begins by first accepting that we are experiencing a crisis. Living in denial may prolong pain, grief, or sadness and delay healing. Concentrating on situations we cannot control can leave us drained, more anxious, and hopeless. Once we accept our circumstances and feelings and grieve our losses, we free ourselves to focus on what we can control.

• Reaching Out to Other People

When we connect with others, especially family and friends, during adversity, we can boost our moods, relieve stress, and find something good in the change or hard things we are doing. Having a shoulder to lean on can help in being strengthened and build resilience in adversity. Being resilient enables us to prioritize relationships, avoid withdrawing in tough times, avoid toxic people, and create social networks.

• Embracing Self-care Routines

Doing hard things can drain us physically and mentally or even lead to serious health, immunity, and digestive issues. Self-care is an essential part of building resilience and overcoming stressful situations. Some of the self-care activities to enhance our resilience include the following:

• Getting adequate sleep.
• Exercising regularly.
• Body-mind relaxation techniques.
• Healthy dieting.
• Developing stress level management skills.
• Discovering Our Purpose and Meaning in Life

Situations and hardships should not define us as individuals. We can uphold our identity, prevent hard things from overwhelming us, and handle problems prospectively by focusing on things that instill purpose and meaning in our lives. Building resilience enables us to focus on things geared toward our satisfaction without being defined by circumstances or other people’s opinions.

• Staying Motivated Throughout the Difficult Situation

Persistence and endurance through hard times help in coping with adversity. Some ways to stay motivated and persevere through tough times include learning to be grateful, celebrating the little achievements, addressing problems one step at a time, and having a hopeful and positive mindset. 

While building resilience in hard times, it is fundamental to recognize our situations’ uniqueness. Thus, we should be kind to ourselves to avoid being critics of our coping skills or blaming ourselves for every slip along the way to recovery.

You may consult Dr. Jason Jones at our Chiropractic office at Elizabeth city, NC to learn more on how doing “hard” things increases our resilience.