The Most Important Skill to Build Resilience
Scientists define psychological resilience as “flexibility in response to
changing situational demands, and the ability to bounce back from negative
emotional experiences.
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” People who are resilient experience positive emotions
even during stressful events, which helps them quickly rebound despite
adversity.
Consequently, the most important skill to build resilience is to learn how to
turn your struggles into something positive. The primary technique of doing this
is reframing.
Reframing is a way of turning bad experiences and concepts into more
positive ones. Instead of thinking about your problems as something that
prevents you from achieving your goal, you can turn them into opportunities to
grow.
When you’re struggling to keep going, you can reframe your struggles as a
part of an incredible story you’ll tell when you achieve your goal.
You can combine this technique with visualization. Imagine the day you’ve
achieved your goal and remind yourself of all your struggles and the obstacles
you had to overcome. When you go back to the present moment, you’ll see your
problems from a new, more empowering perspective. This will build your
resilience.
Here are a couple of examples of reframing.
An entrepreneur who has five failed projects behind her realizes each of her
previous businesses wasn’t in fact a failure – it was an opportunity to learn what
doesn’t work. Consequently, each new project can only be better.
A person who’s trying to lose weight couldn’t resist the cravings and gorged
on junk food for several days in a row. She can think of her failure as an
opportunity to find out what makes her lose control.
A salesperson who wants to become the most effective employee in the
company faces rejection after rejection. Each rejection makes her deal better
with rejection, which promises a great career in sales (and a great motivational
story to tell when she becomes a sales manager).
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