6 Resilient People’s Habits That You Can Emulate | Emotional distress is common and unavoidable: from sorrow and panic to indignation and disappointment, everyone experiences painful emotions. However, how people respond to emotional pain varies greatly.
Emotional pain can cause a cascade of suicidal feelings, self-destructive behavior, and even more painful emotions in some people. Others, on the other hand, seem to recover quickly from emotional trauma.
People who are emotionally resilient know how to suffer without succumbing to it.
Thankfully, mental toughness isn’t as enigmatic as it seems…
As a psychologist, I’ve found that the following four behaviors are particularly effective in helping people become more emotionally resilient.
1. They learn easily to cope with negative feelings.
Most people strive to avoid negative feelings by distracting themselves or “fixing” them with coping mechanisms and problem-solving techniques.
Remember, sadness isn’t harmful in and of itself, no matter how bad you feel.
It doesn’t matter how upset you are; the feeling of frustration will not affect you.
Shame, no matter how bad it makes you feel, isn’t going to harm you.
It’s normal to want to get rid of things that make you feel bad, like unpleasant feelings. But there’s a catch:
When you make the habit of avoiding or attempting to remedy negative feelings, the brain learns to fear them.
So the next time a painful emotion like guilt arises, you’ll feel both guilty and afraid. When unpleasant emotions are combined, you don’t just feel a little worse; you feel a LOT worse.
You must develop emotional endurance if you want to become more emotionally resilient — willing to experience stressful emotions while still moving on with your life and goals.
To put it another way, emotional tolerance is when you practice experiencing a negative emotion without acting on it.
Instead of calling your partner for reassurance the next time you’re nervous, set a timer on your phone for 60 seconds and just sit with the anxiety, understanding that it’s stressful but not harmful.
Instead of reacting impulsively to your anger or blaming yourself for it, actually, note and feel your anger the next time you’re mad.
Instead of jumping on your phone to distract yourself the next time you’re sad or disappointed, consider sitting with the disappointment and noticing what it’s like.
The most important thing to note at the end of the day is this:
And when your emotions are painful, emotional resilience comes down to acting on your beliefs rather than your feelings.
However, once you’re conscious of it, it’s not something you can only do. It’s a talent that takes time to learn and master.
Make it a point to practice small amounts of emotional endurance during the day, and your emotional strength and trust will gradually improve.
When one is completely free to be nervous, one is much less anxious, and the same can be said about remorse.
Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
2. They tend to let go of things they can’t manage.
Many people fall into the pit of relying on the illusion of power to protect themselves from helplessness.
As much as we hate unpleasant emotions like fear, sadness, guilt, anger, and the like, there is one emotion that most of us despise and would go to great lengths to avoid: helplessness.
At our heart, humans are control freaks. We’re experts at finding challenges, designing innovative ideas, and relentlessly implementing those solutions. Our desire to exert control over our world is perhaps our defining trait as a species, from constructing bridges to creating vaccines to sending people to the moon.
While asserting power is often beneficial, it can also backfire and make things worse.
Take, for example, sleeping. Surprisingly, the harder you try to sleep, the less likely you are to fall asleep. If we’re not trying to fall asleep, such as when we’re reading a magazine on the sofa in the early afternoon, it’s pretty easy to do so.
You must be cautious about which issues in your life profit from or worsen as a result of your attempts to manage them.
Emotionally resilient people grasp this idea intuitively and are adept at resisting the desire to try to influence what they can’t.
People who are emotionally resilient don’t waste time and energy trying to manage what they can’t.
When it’s necessary, they embrace and tolerate helplessness and concentrate on controlling their attention and actions.
If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.
― Shane Koyczan
3. They know that self-compassion is a good thing to practice.
Treat yourself like you would a good friend when things get rough.
When we make a mistake or find a weakness, most of us have this odd habit of beating ourselves up and being excessively self-critical — which is ironic because, at the same time, we’re normally extremely forgiving and understanding when other people make mistakes!
Unfortunately, most of us discovered as children that being hard on ourselves is the “key” to success and happiness. We falsely assume, like the stern drill sergeant shouting at his new recruits, that being tough on ourselves will keep us from falling.
Most people excel despite, not because of, their self-criticism.
In reality, most people will be much more productive and happy if they stopped berating themselves for any mistake or blunder.
Since berating yourself for making a mistake just adds more intense emotion and tension to the guilt or sadness that comes with making mistakes in the first place.
Self-judgment only exacerbates difficult emotions and frequently results in mood swings and negative feelings.
Learn to cultivate self-compassion rather than self-judgment if you want to become more emotionally resilient.
If you make a mistake, recall something you’re embarrassed about, or find yourself struggling in some way, consider treating yourself the same way you’d treat a good friend who’s struggling: with support and compassion.
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.
― Elizabeth Edwards
4. They make reasonable expectations.
The problem with assumptions is that we think they’re doing one thing when they’re really doing something completely different.
Expectations, most people believe, are a way to encourage growth and achievement:
- Setting high standards for our colleagues motivates them to work hard and produce high-quality results.
- Having high expectations for our children motivates them to succeed in school and at work.
- Setting high goals for ourselves, of course, leads to self-improvement.
We always use high standards to soothe our own anxieties and insecurities.
Many people despise confusion. They are worried and fearful that their children will not be good and happy, or that their workers will not do their jobs without continuous supervision.
But, since they can’t directly influence their children’s academic achievement or the output of their employees, they settle for the next best thing: expecting certain things to happen.
It temporarily relieves some of the tension and confusion when you build an illusion in your mind — which is really just you imagining the thing you want to be true. It makes you feel a little more in command and more confident that all will go smoothly.
But, in fact, your expectations are just stories you’ve made up in your head. And they’re frequently focused on shaky facts. As a result, these standards are likely to be repeatedly broken. As a result, you’ll experience a great deal of tension and anger.
Expectations have a place in life. However, they can quickly run amok and result in emotional fragility, which is the polar opposite of emotional resilience.
Make it a practice to frequently explain your goals to make sure they aren’t too ambitious if you want to become more emotionally resilient.
You will know how to live as soon as you trust yourself.
— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
5. They bounce back easily no matter what
Despite all the things that happen with them and around them, emotionally resilient people are able to bounce back faster than anyone else. This is an attitude that all the great leaders throughout history have. Looking at history’s famous generals and war heroes, and top business leaders, being able to have that heart to be resilient despite the odds is what separates the brave from the cowards, so to speak.
Being able to bounce back from a loss doesn’t necessarily mean victory all the time. Even Napoleon and Hitler were beaten eventually in the wars they initially led.
The key is strategic resilience. Having an unrelenting heart to stand up each you fall is a good thing. But knowing when to pause, pivot or retreat takes a little common sense and sound judgment.
Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.
― Angela Duckworth
6. They don’t look at only one solution
When the chips are down, resilient people don’t tend to sulk in self-pity and wait till everything resolves itself. Instead, they try to find all the possible solutions.
This trait is of such importance because the inventors of this world have experience hundreds of failures yet in the end, they have triumphed.
These people are willing to admit that all they see is filtered. They see a dilemma from a variety of perspectives and try to think beyond the box. They are aware that their own prejudice may become their default role. That is why, as they progress toward empowerment, they strive to broaden their perspective. They are also willing to wait for answers rather than looking for fast fixes.
You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
― Margaret Thatcher
What You Need to Know
Good behaviors are the most effective way to increase emotional resilience. And these four are excellent places to begin:
- Learn to cope with negative feelings.
- Allow yourself to let go of things you can’t manage.
- Self-compassion is a good thing to practice.
- Make reasonable expectations.
- Have a perpetual bounce-back attitude.
- Find various solutions to one problem.
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Referenced from Original Source
