5 Simple Skills to Build Emotional Resilience

What is Resilience?

Resilience is defined as the ability to recover from, or adjust easily to, misfortune or change. A main characteristic of resiliency is the understanding that life is full of challenges. To be resilient means that we are aware of situations, our emotional reactions, and the behaviors of people around us.

What is Emotional Resilience?

Emotional Resilience is the ability to adapt to emotional challenges with courage and faith. It is helping yourself and others the best you can and reaching out for additional help when needed.

Choose to Act Responsibly

Even when bad things happen around us, we still get to choose how we respond. Taking responsibility for how we react, even when facing challenges, brings peace and power.

Challenges or unexpected changes may seem unfair. We may be tempted to respond in ways that are unproductive. We may choose to do one or more of the following:

• Blame others
• Make excuses
• Rebel
• Complain or find fault
• Doubt
• Give up
• Procrastinate
• Get angry
• Indulge in self-pity
• Allow fear to rule
• Self-justify

Becoming emotionally resilient means recognizing these responses in ourselves and choosing a more appropriate response.

Five Simple and Effective Skills to Build Emotional Resilience

For the next while we will share a new skill that will help build and increase emotional resilience. These skills will help you:

1. Regulate Emotions
2. Tolerate Distress
3. Improve Relationships
4. Maintain/Improve Self-Respect
5. Ask for what you need; say no; and resist pressure