Building emotional muscles and acquiring resilience

Some readers have requested for advice about acquiring resilience and reducing their vulnerability to stressors. Resilience and vulnerability may be likened to having two balls: a plastic ball and a glass (ornamental) ball. If you throw them against a wall, the plastic ball will bounce back…none the worse for the impact.

But the glass ball will shatter into a million pieces. The quality of the plastic ball that allows it to bounce back is resilience. Whereas, the quality of the glass ball which caused it to shatter is the vulnerability. How do we ensure that we don’t crumble and shatter when confronted with stressful situations in our lives?

Are people born with resilience or can it be acquired through training and practice?

It is true that everyone is not born with the same temperament, and some people are naturally more patient than others; or more optimistic and not easily frustrated by negative events compared to others. This is an incontrovertible fact.

However, the converse is also true – people can learn to be more patient in the face of adversity and can learn not to be frustrated with setbacks; to persevere and work hard, to ensure success. A reader’s comment captured the scenario brilliantly as follows:

“Resilience is an innate gift for a few, but a satisfying reward for as many as work to achieve it.”

The process of learning how to master our emotions and convert negative emotional reactions (or negative patterns of thinking) into positive and constructive channels is essentially what some forms of “talk therapy” (psychotherapy) aim to achieve…. with very positive results.

Once individuals can realize how they tend to fall into a negative pattern of thinking about events, which is ultimately hurting them and causing them distress; then they can attempt to break such patterns.

More often than not, they are usually very pleasantly surprised to see how changing their approach and their reactions can translate into much better outcomes for themselves.

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Can you provide step by step guidance on how to develop resilience?

Unfortunately, there is no magic formula that I can prescribe to make you wake up tomorrow, as a changed, very resilient and optimistic version of yourself. Having said that, the reality is that it is a slow, but steadily positive pathway that yields benefits slowly over time.

You need to be consistent with it, and even where things don’t go as well as planned and you find yourself reverting to your old ways, it is still alright. Just recognise it and then resolve to do better moving forward. It is like exercising and lifting weights, results may not be apparent until after several weeks/months of consistently lifting the weights.

The five principles outlined below are helpful towards acquiring resilience and building our emotional muscles:

• Invest in social capital: Cultivate and nurture your relationships with your family (spouse, children, siblings, parents), friends and colleagues – expand and invest your time and energies on those around you and they will equally reciprocate the positive vibes and energy back towards you. We will have our low moments in life when we would need an emotional crutch to lean on.
• Live an active life: Exercise promotes physical and mental wellbeing, and encourages positive feelings about self; as well as outlook to life. It causes the release of feel good chemicals.
• Learn from setbacks: When things don’t go your way, pause and consider what you possibly did wrong. Be honest and learn from the experience. This way, you become wiser, rather than bitter. If you accurately identified your mistakes, you will be more confident moving forward, and eager to avoid repeating such mistakes.
• Give generously and help others: A famous psychologist, Martin Seligman, once conducted experiments where he asked students to perform two tasks (Do something pleasurable for yourself; and then do something nice to help others). He then asked them to report on how each scenario made them feel. He concluded that helping others resulted in a longer lasting feeling of satisfaction and emotional wellbeing. These results have been replicated severally and found to be valid.
• Take notice of the here and now: Sometimes we are so busy and fixated on our five-year target, and are too busy formulating plans in our heads, to even appreciate the simple pleasures of life – such as breathing fresh air, or the ability to use the rest room without pain or difficulty. Or to notice the interesting diversity of people who surround us: whether it is in a commercial vehicle for the next two hours of a journey, or the 30 seconds you spend in the lift with a stranger, or your colleagues at work. It improves our emotional wellbeing when we can focus on enjoying the here and now, while planning for the future.