Resilience to Bounce Back

Resilience is a characteristic which forces us to keep our head high in the sea of adverse situations, during high tides and low ones. Life is not a bed of roses and not everything will happen the way we want them. Things will move as per their best course of action perhaps and which may or may not be suitable for individual. Resilience is the only faculty which shall provide the necessary combat skills to suffer the adversities and outshine. Once we are faced with challenging time there is no pint being ostrich and sinking our heads deep in sand. Perhaps for ostrich it works in dessert area but not in our case.

Fortunately resilience can be learned and falls under acquired skills. There are ways and means to improve the resilience same as we are talking of improving immunity during COVID 19 times. We have various immunity boosters available which can improve upon our inner strength to ward of the disease or can give us enough weapons to resist major damage. Tough times never lasts tough people do.

There are certain ways to improve up on resilience-

Acceptance: Be in terms with reality and their non-permanence, unless we accept with stable mind and identify it’s own nature we might not be in a position to ward it off. Acceptance of defeat and acceptance of an enemy at the door is just a mind set. Resilient don’t throw their weapons they sharpen it during tough times. Denial is not going to serve the purpose or procrastination is only going to make it bigger and urgent. Therefore truly accepting the hardship is the best way to come in term with hard truth.

Why Me to why not me: getting upset over why me is a quick way to depression. Self-victimization is the worst enemy than the trouble itself. Finding meaning at tough times helps coping with stress attached. Lost job during COVID: give yourself an opportunity to rearrange your funds, gain some knowledge, find smaller courses online, read a book, bring back your fitness work for some charity. Mantra is to keep yourself busy in a productive way.

Improvisation: Resilient people find ways to improvise on the situation. They try and find the window of improvement all the time and work upon it. It’s not easy to be focused on what’s left and what we can make out of it but that’s the only thing which helps. Cribbing about what’s lost is only going to make things worse.

Save your Self-image: The greatest fall one can have is loss of self image. When you feel Oh I was dispensable!! It brings down your ideal self to a lower self esteem and impact on your persona and personality. Jack Ma was rejected in 18 interviews or Steve Jobs was fired from same Apple which he Started in a garage. Even he was dispensable. According to Albert Einstein a big failure in his early life from expulsion from school, to denial of admission in Zurich polytechnic – “Success is failure in progress.” Abraham Lincoln to Michael Jordon in fact the most common traits of iconic success is that it’s filled with miserable failures and people who kept believing in themselves have always bounced back. Self-loathing is a definite way to failure.

Anticipate the tough times: being prepared always help than being swept by good times. Life is cyclical and every tide has a fall as well. The whole universe is in circular motion thus success and failures are also cyclical in nature. Anticipating and preparing for bad times and fall back mechanism is very important. Keeping some funds aside, mentally keeping your-self in balance always keeps one in perspective.

Seek Help:  there is no harm in seeking help from trusted people. Never let your ego take over your current situation. Discuss your issues with your spouse or close knit friends not only helps in coping with issues but also provides varied perspective to the problem in hand. Sometimes alternate views provide a broader picture for improvement which is not very apparent if you keep staring at the issue from your own angle only.

Change the Narrative and stop negativity: Changing narrative has power to change the situation. I lost my job can be replaced with now I have time to explore businessperson in me. Finding silver lining in the darkest cloud and reinforcing the positive thoughts works wonders. Stop yourself from exploring more of negative information, industry is slow, recent unemployment data is worse, everyday news is showing darker shade of economy etc., read positive information in details and don’t entertain negative self or inputs.

Meditate and Forgive:  Meditation has now scientifically proven benefits on over all mental wellbeing. Just focusing on your breathing and bringing it to your diaphragm region has power to transform oneself for starters, body scan with closed eyes and focusing on each body part one by one is another meditation technique which can help. Similarly just let go, forgive people for whatever they have done. Empathetic approach gives booster to positivity in overall persona.

Success is always built on pillars of failures and resilient cope with the tough winds to sail through.