How to Build Resilience: 15 Practical Strategies

✅ Today's Sunday • 📖 8 mins read

Resilient people deal with the same hardships as the rest of us. What makes them unique is how they bounce back, emerging wiser and stronger. Not only that, they also find new meaning in their struggles.

How do they build resilience, and can we too learn to develop it?

Yes, we can. Each of us can build resilience because it is a skill, not a fixed trait. Some of us have more and some have less resilience, but everyone can learn to hone it.

To be clear, advice like “grin and bear it” or “get over it” does not build resilience.

Resilience means four things:

1. confronting challenges and processing difficult feelings rather than suppressing them,
2. ability to bounce back and return to a stable state after experiencing adversity,
3. seeking to understand and find purpose in the struggles for self-growth, and
4. being open and prepared for future challenges, using past lessons.

While resilience is a uniquely personal journey, studies suggest certain behaviors can help build it.

15 Practical Strategies to Build Resilience

Here are some expert-supported ways to build your resilience:

1. Reframe Failure as Feedback: Winners have a key advantage: they see setbacks as valuable data. Start this today: reframe every failure as feedback. Look deep to find out what you can learn, what you might change, and what support you need to solve the issue. Treat failure as a part of the success process, not as a poor judgment of your worth or skills.
2. Psychological Flexibility: Look for possibilities, ask what small step could improve the situation, and what could still go well, without denying what is difficult. This is psychological flexibility, the ability to change your opinions, discard learned patterns, and move forward using your strengths.
3. Discover a Sense of Purpose: Notice what gives your life meaning, such as caring for others, learning, creating, or contributing to a community. Purpose can help you stay oriented when circumstances are uncertain.
4. Set Meaningful Goals: Choose realistic goals that matter to you and stretch you a little. Break them into manageable steps, and adjust them when your circumstances or needs change.
5. Regulate Your Emotions: Give yourself a moment to notice and name what you’re feeling before responding. Slow breathing, movement, or talking with someone you trust can help you find a steadier next step.
6. Build a Supportive Social Network: Spend time with people who listen, encourage you, and respect your boundaries. Resilience doesn’t mean handling everything alone; it also means knowing when to reach out.
7. Believe in Your Abilities: Recall challenges you have managed before and the skills that helped you through them. Trust your judgment while staying open to new information and advice.
8. Update Your Skills: Keep learning in ways that fit your goals and circumstances. Small, regular steps, like practicing a skill, taking a course, or asking for feedback, can build confidence and expand your options.
9. Embrace Negative Emotions: Difficult feelings are a normal response to stress, loss, or change. Allow yourself to feel them without letting them define you. Seek support if they become overwhelming or persistent.
10. Prioritize Self-Care: Regular meals, enough sleep, movement, and time to rest can support your ability to cope. Aim for habits that are realistic and sustainable, rather than expecting perfection.
11. Focus on What You Can Control: Identify what is within your influence, like your next action, your boundaries, or who you ask for help, and put your energy there. For the rest that you can’t change, practice letting go of. Stoic philosophers call the principle of dichotomy of control.
12. Nurture Positive Relationships: Invest in relationships built on trust, care, and mutual respect. Make time to connect, listen with attention, and be willing to offer and receive support.
13. Take Calculated Risks: When a change or challenge matters, weigh the potential benefits, costs, and uncertainties. Start with a manageable step, prepare where you can, and learn from the outcome.
14. Maintain a Positive Mindset: Try to hold a constructive perspective while acknowledging real difficulties. Focus on what may help next, rather than demanding that you feel positive all the time.
15. Practice Mindfulness: Bring your attention to the present moment through breathing, your senses, or a routine activity. Even a brief pause can help you notice your thoughts and feelings and choose how to respond.

Resilient people often have these two advantages:

1. They have supportive relationships to buffer the ill effects of hard times.
2. They have successfully avoided intense, frequent, or prolonged stress.

Maysoon Zayid is a stand-up comedian with cerebral palsy who personifies resilience.

How To Build Resilience At Work

According to Paula Davis-Laack, M.A.P.P., resilient employees do these seven things differently:

1. Develop high-quality connections.
2. Take care to pursue their passions.
3. Manage changes and setbacks well.
4. Have mental toughness and flexibility.
5. Manage their stress and avoid burnout.
6. Stay, and try to keep themselves, inspired.
7. Are authentic and work on their values and strengths.

Facts About Resilience

Resilience in the face of adversity is a fairly common, not rare, human capacity. This study found that even when 50-60% of the U.S. population is exposed to traumatic events, only 5-10% of those develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); the remaining 90-95% bounce back to normalcy.

• As humans, we are naturally resilient.
• All of us can make ourselves more resilient through practice.
• Resilience is not a permanent state. Showing resilience in one situation does not mean we have been hardened for all other hard times.
• Resilience in one area (like professional life) may not hold good for another (say, personal life). A person may feel equipped to manage one stressor and still be overwhelmed by another.
• Resilience is a dynamic state of physical and mental health. It needs maintenance because stressors come in varying sizes and kinds, and they often come out of the blue.
• Resilient people can be anxious, angry, afraid, or sad, which doesn’t make them any less resilient. It makes them only human.
• Resilience is a process of learning how to manage stressful situations, work around them, and transform ourselves for future moments that may require stronger resilience.
• What’s clear from the research is that there is no single “hardy personality” type. It’s not that certain people are more capable than others, but that we can all be resilient. Though it may not always feel that way in all areas of our lives or all at once.

Gratitude practice has been shown in studies to rewire our brains to be more optimistic and resilient.

Dr. Rick Hanson says gratitude has many physical health benefits, including “boosting your immune system, preserving your cardiovascular system, and increasing the chance of living a long life.”

An attitude of gratitude nudges you to focus on the positive things in your life that came about because of others. While it may not minimize your difficulties, it can give you a greater feeling of self-control.

6 Characteristics That Make People Resilient

The Resilience Institute shares this short list of attributes to improve to recover from serious adversity, in approximate order of impact:

1. Strong relationships of respect, love, and trust
2. Impulse control and positivity
3. Physical fitness, good sleep, and nutrition
4. Capacity to stay calm under pressure
5. Ability to focus attention and be situation-aware
6. Ability to plan and execute effective solutions

3 Sources of Resilience In People

1. Personal Factors

• Positive emotions
• Optimism and Hope
• Psychological flexibility
• Spirituality and religiosity
• Intellectual resourcefulness
• Mastery, self-efficacy, self-esteem
• Social attachment and adaptability
• Emotional regulation and internal locus of control
• Personality traits: openness, extroversion, and agreeableness
• The positive interpretation of events, positive self-concepts, and mindset

Some other personal factors that influence resilience are age, gender, race, ethnicity, and stage of life.

2. Biological Factors

Findings from recent research on biological factors in resilience reveal that harsh environments at an early age can affect the development of brain structure and function.

There can be changes in brain size, nerve networks, receptor sensitivity, and neurotransmitter production.

These changes in our brains during our childhood can reduce our ability to regulate negative emotions and lower our resilience to adversity.

Past and current life and social experiences can lead to sizable and long-term changes in genes. Later on, one can transmit these genes to the next generation.

Genetics may play a role in our ability to be resilient. A German study involving 15,822 people found that in 25% of individuals, higher levels of resilience are linked to lower neuroticism and a higher likelihood of overall happiness (Marisol Herrera-Rivero, 2024).

3. Environmental Factors

The factors in one’s environment can sufficiently increase or decrease their ability to show resilience.

• Stable family, good parenting, non-abusive father/mother
• Social support, including family, teachers, and peers
• Depression or substance use in the parents
• Peacefulness near home or neighborhood
• Good school and supportive community
• Sports and artistic opportunities

Final Words

Think of resilience as an ongoing process.

Resilient people make it a point to learn fast and recover after handling traumatic situations and difficult emotions.

√ Also Read: 23 Rare Resilience Quotes For The Best Business Leaders

√ Please share this with someone.

» You deserve happiness! Choosing therapy could be your best decision.

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