What does it mean when we say someone is resilient?  This is a term that sounds simple but can be difficult to define.  According Harvard University Center on the Developing Child resilience can be defined as “the ability to overcome serious hardship” (source). To put it another way, resilience is your ability to bounce back after difficulties and setbacks.

Everyone has some level of resilience (i.e. no one has none at all, though it may certainly feel that way when you’re really struggling!), but people vary widely in how much they have and where it comes from.  It is also common to have more resilience in one area of life and less in others.  For example, someone may be able to cope really well with break-ups and other relationship stressors, but find it extremely difficult to cope with stressors at work.

The more supportive things you can add to your life, the more you can help your resilience grow.  Relying on things like spirituality, a way of finding meaning in life, support from others, and finding balance in different areas in your life can increase the types of resources that you can draw on when you go through hard times.  It can be hard to be resilient when you have limited support from others or few things that bring enjoyment or meaning to your life.  Additionally, the more positive parts of your life that you have, the more likely you are to bounce back quickly when something goes wrong in one of them, because you have others to fall back on and bring you up.  No single area is all there is for you.  A positive attitude can also help you to be more resilient, though of course this can be difficult to cultivate, especially in the short-term.

Paying attention to each of these areas, and other things that you find that help you to bounce back from stress, can help to improve your overall level of resilience and make it easier for you to respond to stress in positive ways.  This doesn’t mean that the stressor doesn’t still bother you; it just means that you are able to accept it and use other resources inside yourself or in your life to move through it.  There are some things that happen in life that we might never be okay with, but we can learn to build our resilience so that we can cope with challenges more effectively and increase our confidence in our ability to do so.