Building Resilience
Everyone faces challenges and hardship at times.
Resilience is your ability to cope with and bounce back from stress and adversity, and hopefully even grow through the experience. It is sometimes referred to as “thriving” … and not just surviving.
Resilient people are more likely to ...
meet the demands of their academic/work and personal lives successfully
take action to deal with challenges, problems, and setbacks
seek support and assistance when they need it
know when to stop, rest, and replenish inner resources
have a sense of independence, self-efficacy, and self-worth
form and maintain positive, mutually-respectful relationships with others
have a sense of purpose and goals for the future
Resilience is not a fixed state. You may be more resilient at different times in your life than others. Most importantly, resilience can be learned, practiced, developed, and strengthened.
What is resilience?
Resilience is an individual’s ability to positively cope with stress and adversity – bouncing back to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of adversity to enhance flexibility and overall functioning. Resilience has multi-dimensional aspects (Wong, 2012) including:
Cognitive: How events are interpreted (cognitive style, appraisal, attribution) and how daily stressors and life circumstances are negotiated (coping)
Behavioral: Habits of persistence and endurance in face of obstacles and failures (behavioral practice and reinforcement)
Motivational: Clear sense of life purpose and commitment (will to live)
Existential/spiritual: Sense of larger purpose and meaning of human life (meaning and life purpose)
Relational: Sense of social connectedness, engagement, and altruism
Emotional: Ability to tolerate negative emotions and rejection and to maintain emotional confidence and hopefulness (emotion regulation, emotional intelligence)
Resilience stems from the interaction of a person with their environment and the resulting processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of risk factors.
All individuals will face some challenges to well-being and thriving throughout life. Learning to work through these challenges is necessary for basic survival, but also offers a powerful opportunity for enhancing growth and well-being.
How to build resilience
Social engagement
Cultivating social connections – and avoiding social isolation – is one of the best ways to build resilience. Positive peer relationships and supportive interaction with family, faculty, and staff are known to be important factors in students’ academic performance and emotional well-being.
Find ways to connect with other students in meaningful ways
Unplug, and interact with others face-to-face
Join a student group, organization, or team
Volunteer (you can start at Cornell’s Public Service Center)
Practice random acts of kindness
Start conversations; ask questions and be an active listener; look people in the eyes and say “thank you”
Get to know your professor or TA
Self-awareness and self-care
Self-awareness is your capacity to clearly understand your own strengths, weaknesses, emotions, values, natural inclinations, tendencies, and motivation. Self-care refers to behaviors, thoughts, and attitudes that support your emotional well-being and physical health.
Eat well, move your body, and get enough sleep
Manage stress
Practice self-compassion
Cultivate opportunities for personal growth; develop interests outside of your field or major
Make time for quiet reflection through meditation, prayer, journaling, yoga, spending time in nature, or practicing gratitude
Play, and have fun!
Attention and focus
Attention allows you to tune out information, sensations, and perceptions that are not relevant at the moment and instead focus your energy on the information that is important. A benefit of undivided focus is the increased likelihood of achieving a flow state, characterized by Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, as “the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”
Train your mental focus through meditation, visualization, deep breathing exercises, thought-stopping exercises, or other techniques
Focus on one thing at a time
Avoid multi-tasking
Unplug; take a break from checking your phone, especially when studying. Turning off your phone (or the sound) will give you periods of uninterrupted focus while preparing for an exam or presentation.
Listen to classical music (or other music without lyrics) or natural soundscapes like ocean waves, wind, or birdsong to tune out stimuli and help you focus on the task at hand
Meaning
Finding meaning is the act of making sense of – and exploring the significance of – an experience or situation. Research shows that cultivating a sense of meaning in your life can contribute more to positive mental health than pursuing happiness.
Come to understand your purpose: examine your strengths and talents, develop skills you want, recognize your values and pursue interests and passions, and live your own unique combination of these
Develop realistic goals and work toward them
Find ways to help others
Keep a long-term perspective and consider stressors in broader context
Embrace change
Reflect on what's going well and what's not
Explore spiritual or religious practices that fit your world view and values
Strive to accept what you cannot change; make conscious choices to take action where you can influence a process, outcome, or relationship
“Growth mindset”
Cultivating a “growth mindset” can be an important part of building resilience. It is the opposite of a “fixed mindset,” when you believe that your intelligence and abilities are fixed, innate traits that you can’t change. Instead, a “growth mindset” acknowledges that you can learn from challenges, and through these experiences can increase your intellect and abilities.
Leave the “genius” myth behind – achievement requires hard work, not just natural talent
Focus on “brain training” – your brain is like a muscle that needs to work to get stronger
Prioritize learning over approval, and the process over the end result
View challenges and set-backs as opportunities to grow, to learn something new
Acknowledge and embrace your imperfections, and try different learning tactics
Applaud your effort, and not just your inherent skill
Avoid comparing yourself to others – we all have different strengths and learn differently