Resilience
Building resilience is an important goal for achieving good physical and emotional wellbeing. Resilience is your ability to adapt to or recover from significant challenges. It may also be described as thriving despite adversity, trauma, disease, or loss. COVID-19 and its long-term effects are challenges. Building resilience to meet those challenges can be helpful. Resilience skills can be learned, practiced, and applied to daily life.
Resilience is not the absence of challenges, difficulties, health issues, anxiety, or sadness. Resilience is also not denial. Resilience means being aware of both your limitations and strengths and using your strengths and skills to work around the challenges you face.
The building blocks of resilience are:
- Supportive relationships
- Problem solving abilities
- Good communication skills
- Ability to cope with negative emotions and savor positive ones
- Self-efficacy: the belief that you can manage or cope with a challenge
- Self-management skills
- Using existing strengths
To help identify and build on your existing strengths, you might ask yourself:
- How have I gotten through challenges before?
- What has helped?
- Who has helped?
- What do I know about myself from getting through past difficulties?
- How can I use similar skills and resources to face my current challenges?
To develop your resilience skills, explore the strategies listed below.