Building Resiliency to Face Adversity

Dear Beaten, 

The American author, Robert Jordan, has poetically summed up your dilemma, “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” It sounds like right now you’re feeling like the oak, a person with strength who needs to tap into her resilience and learn to bend with the storm.

You’re certainly not alone. It’s common for trauma, tragedy, and extreme stress to tax our ability to be resilient. Serious health challenges, the loss of a job, a move, a divorce, financial difficulties, a pandemic, a hurricane (to name a few) - all require resilience if we’re going to move forward in a healthy way.

Resiliency is the capacity to adapt well in the face of adversity. In my experience, I’ve found that those who demonstrate resilience generally have these six traits in common: 

1. The ability to sustain supportive relationships with family and friends.

2. A strong self-image and confidence in their strengths.

3. The ability to accept change as a part of living rather than seeing it as insurmountable. 

4. Good communication and problem-solving skills.

5. Practice healthy self-care.

6. Build on their past experiences and trust that what they have survived made them stronger.

Which of these six traits do you need to work on? What will you do today to build up your resiliency in order to better accept your current circumstances and future events?

Like you, many of us feel broken from time to time. Cultivating your ability to be resilient in the current storms will help you bend and not break in the future. Similar to building up resistance to cold and flu, building up your resilience in the good times (working on good self-care, cultivating friendships, etc.) will serve you well in the future. 

I’m wishing you all the best in the months to come. You can do this!!