Emotional Resilience - Staying Committed Through Challenges

We all face challenges and problems in life. Learning how to best cope with them is an acquired skill for most of us. Emotional resilience can be defined as the ability to adapt to a stressful or challenging situation with the least amount of negative impact on your emotional well-being. People who are emotionally resilient tend to be adaptable and flexible in how they approach every situation.

Emotional resilience requires other foundational skills to be developed. Here are seven factors that an individual needs to develop in order to be emotionally resilient:

1. Physical resilience:

When any kind of challenge or problem presents itself, the human body goes through a set physiological processes, such as, increased heart rate, a surge of hormones (namely adrenaline and cortisol), and a rise in blood pressure. In order to be resilient it’s important that your body is healthy and well maintained so that you are better able to handle whatever life throws at you.

2. Accountability and Responsibility:

Often when someone lacks emotional resilience their way of being when things get challenging is to play the victim. When you're the victim in any circumstance you DO NOT have control of the situation, the situation has control of you. The way to get control back is to take accountability for the actions that lead to this current situation. When I say responsibility people often co-mingle that with fault - I don’t mean blame and shame but rather look at the situation objectively and be responsible (and account) for what you did and did not do.

3. Commitment:

When the going gets tough, what will you do? Quit? Stick through it? Commitment is the act of seeing something through, it’s being dedicated to a task, or cause till completion. Commitment is a great quality to have when things become difficult and challenging - it’s the stuff that gets couples through the tough part of a relationship. It’s the stuff that will get you through challenging times in business as well.

4. Communication:

It helps to talk through challenges as they happen, either with a friend, mentor or therapist. Rather than keeping the challenge bottled up and trying to “tough it out”, it’s a good idea to “let it out.” Share what you are dealing with, it provides others an opportunity to contribute to you and support you. Communicating problems and challenges may also make you realize that you are not the only one who has encountered something like this.

5. Adaptability and flexibility:

Resilient individuals are able to adapt to changing situations. They have the ability to assess the situation and pivot or re-evaluate their course of action.

6.Psychological and emotional well-being:

It is important to have a healthy sense of self, know when to stop and when to say no.  Being self-confident, being confident in one’s abilities, and being confident that things will work out, all lead to someone being emotionally resilient.

7. Don’t Take it Personally:

Often when people fail or meet a challenge, they think they are to blame for the failing. Most of the time things do not go as planned. You should be prepared for things going off the rails and motivation dissipating. It’s not personal to you. It’s the human condition. We are wired to lose motivation, be disheartened when things do not go as planned and sometimes want to give up. Just keep reminding yourself that it’s not personal to you!

Emotionally resilient people are NOT bullet proof, they just have better tools for dealing with challenges when they arise. They are unwilling to give up on their goals and dreams and have a commitment towards what they really want. They are open to seeking answers even when it seems impossible to others that there is an answer.