Have you ever felt knocked down that the walls around you feel like they are just crumbling down and you feel so despondent and vulnerable and have no way of picking yourself up and it doesn’t matter what anyone says? You just don’t have the motivation, strength and courage, to get up and go. As a therapist I have seen some clients fall and call out for help and come through some really difficult moments in their lives.
Well, there is something called Resilience. Resilience as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/resilience: ” the ability to be happy, successful, etc. again after something difficult or bad has happened.”
Merriam Webster Dictionary: “An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortunate or change.” In the human psyche terms, it would be the human getting back on his or her feet after a traumatic or difficult event.
There are some people who believe that those that have it good or are successful are the lucky ones and that they never had to go through hardship to become famous or successful, “They were well off from the beginning”, is what some people will say.
You will be surprised to read about the following very successful people and what they experienced as their challenges and still got to where they are today: Bill Gates; Albert Einstein; Jim Carrey; Bethany Hamilton; Benjamin Franklin; Richard Branson; Stephan King; Oprah Winfrey; Thomas Edison; Kris Carr; Jay-Z; Vincent Van Gogh; Franklin Roosevelt; Simon Cowell; Charlize Theron; Steven Spielberg. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/successful-people-obstacles_n_3964459
In reality no path is easy, clear or straight and there will be difficult choices and obstacles to get through and some paths don’t always lead to success, it may lead to nowhere and you have to take a change in course, as difficult and as uncomfortable as it may be. But how do we bounce back, or get back on our feet or accept the term ‘when one door closes, another will open’.
Let’s take for example something that I’m confronted with most of the time at my practice where the parents complain that their child gets very frustrated when something doesn’t go his way and gets mad with himself and others around him and throws things or destroys what he has created because it didn’t come out like he had envisaged and that he is no good at anything. The child puts himself down and gets frustrated and angry with everyone and himself. Parents’ fear is wondering if their child is going to react like that, out in the real world and in the future, and if they are going to manage any challenges and overcome adversities or even become successful.
THE SIX DOMAINS OF RESILIENCE: https://home.hellodriven.com/6-domains-of-resilience.html explains it nicely on an adult’s perspective or individual goal. Jurie Russouw states: ‘We are complex beings. Therefore, it makes sense that there are a great many different factors that contribute to resilience including: beliefs we hold of the world, of ourselves and others; information we have access to; biases, skills, and education; mental processes and behaviours. To make sense of all of these, it’s useful to group related components into domains. Through our research we’ve grouped these components into six distinct domains that explain the specific factors that makes a person resilient.“
If you are interested in finding out how resilient you are, take this resilience measurement test: click here
Another perspective to looking at the above six domains for resilience is also understanding your Window of Tolerance, for example, how and what do you do to manage a challenge:
- Visualisation- have your goal in mind, move towards it with purpose and be congruent with what you have in mind and how you put it into action. Follow through.
- Mindfulness- being present in the here and the now. Be grounded, doing exercises that keep you in touch (literally) in reality and in your present physical state, so you don’t lose yourself in a panic state. Example: drink water, step out for fresh air, take shoes off and feel the cold tiles or grass under your feet.
- Techniques for self-soothing- to get you grounded and calm and deep slow breathing exercises.
- Emotional regulation- get in contact with someone that can bring along calm and support to make you feel safe (social engagement).
- Positive self-talk- knowing and understanding that adversities or difficulties do take place and not allowing your negative self-belief to put you down. Be ok with what goes wrong, accept it and see it as a learning experience and what you can gain from this and make a new choice or decision and follow through positively.
- Persistence- don’t give up! And as Dory, in Finding Nemo, kept saying: “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.”
Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again
Nelson Mandela
So now after reading this, you can watch as Lucy Hone describes the 3 Secrets of Resilient People:
