Life can be a challenging and, at times, unforgiving experience. Handling the emotional strain our bodies and minds grapple with throughout our individual life journeys can be equally tricky. So, I doubt many of us would say no to a little extra help in the mental fortitude department. Luckily for us, there are a host of tried-and-tested frameworks and mental health tools we can employ to help us thrive in the face of adversity. Let’s look at some popular strategies you can leverage to your benefit.
Cultivate Emotional Awareness
A common misconception about mentally resilient people is that they routinely ignore their feelings and trudge forward without paying any mind to their internal emotional monologue. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Resilient people are often keenly aware of their emotions and understand how to manage them. In the words of the great stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius: “The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second rule is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.” So, how can you build a better view of your emotional landscape?
Practice Mindfulness
Put simply, mindfulness is the state of present awareness. Practicing mindfulness often takes the form of meditation, but it isn’t the only way to train your mind to be more aware and tolerant of complex thoughts and feelings. One effective mindfulness tool is to notice the physical sensations that arise in your body due to a given emotion. Notice any tightness in your chest, lumps in your throat, or changes in your heart rate. By becoming more aware or interested in how a particular emotion, thought, or belief feels in your body, you give it the space it needs to run its course without being overwhelmed.
Take a few moments every day to take stock of how you feel. Using your breath as an anchor for your awareness to latch onto might be helpful. By moving away from the stories in your head and towards the physical sensations in your body, you’re better able to ride the wave of emotional discomfort to its trough.
Develop Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a buzzword that gets thrown around quite a lot. But what does it actually look like in practice? As an emotionally intelligent person, you can understand and manage your emotions and those of the people around you. Doing so can help build trust in yourself and your ability to weather psychological turmoil. By recognizing an unhelpful thought or turbulent feeling for what it is and how it tends to affect you, you can better manage unhelpful reactions or behaviors. While some folks are naturally more emotionally savvy than others, emotional intelligence is undoubtedly a skill you can practice.
Journaling
Journaling is a fantastic practice for better understanding your emotions, what actions or experiences trigger negative feelings, and brainstorming helpful tactics to navigate those difficult emotions. You can opt for a physical notebook or use one of several online journaling apps and websites.
Here are a few popular journaling apps you might want to check out:
Self-Regulation
When you’re going through adversity, maintaining healthy habits and behaviors and avoiding unhealthy ones can become increasingly difficult. A crucial aspect of cultivating robust mental resilience is tolerating psychological discomfort without falling back on bad habits or abandoning healthy ones. When you self-regulate in this manner, you signal to your brain that regardless of your agonizing current situation, you have the strength to carry on with your responsibilities, hobbies, and personal goals.
The next time you find yourself in a rut, try compiling a list of ‘non-negotiables.’ These include actions you will and will not take throughout your day-to-day life. For example, you might commit to practicing an instrument you’ve been wanting to get better at for an hour every day or read for 30 minutes before bed each night. Whatever you include on that list, the goal is to dedicate yourself fully to that activity, no matter your circumstances (excluding emergencies, deaths, or other severe circumstances).
Self-regulation is not easy, but it is one of the highest forms of self-care. Not only are you accumulating a system of good habits and actions that pay off in the long run, but you’re reminding yourself that self-abandonment is not an option when the waters turn choppy. This builds a deep reserve of self-trust you can access when you feel unfit to handle adversity, and it goes a long way toward cultivating that stone-firm quality of mental resilience we all crave.
Be Kind And Understanding To Yourself
Imagine how you would feel if you noticed your loved one being hard on themselves for an issue they struggled to resolve. Maybe they were grappling with the aftermath of a break-up or buckling under a lot of work stress. You’d most likely want to place a hand on their shoulder and urge them to cut themselves slack. You might remind them that they’re human at the end of the day, and being hard on themselves isn’t only unhelpful, it’s unfair.
So why do so many of us struggle to save some of that compassion and understanding we dish out to our closest friends and families for ourselves? After all, we are the people we must live with from the moment we wake up to the minute we turn in for the night. Wouldn’t it make sense to foster a loving relationship with ourselves rather than the harsh, judgemental, and downright cruel inner monologue that repeats during challenging times?
Self-Compassion
Approaching yourself with kindness rather than judgment during trying times is crucial for fostering self-compassion. A helpful mental framework for this practice is to “treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.” As we explored in the previous paragraphs, you’d never think to pile more harsh criticism onto a struggling loved one, so doing so to yourself is equally unhelpful.
The next time you notice your inner critic yelling abuse at you from the bleachers, you can gently acknowledge his presence without engaging with his rhetoric. Remember, the goal isn’t to completely suppress or silence that voice. After all, underneath all that anger and judgment is an honest, measured voice meant to check you on poor behavior and keep you accountable for your actions moving towards or away from your purpose.
The problem arises when that rational voice is muddled by all the static coming through with it. All we want to do is turn the frequency knob down and get rid of some of that unnecessary noise. By doing so, you can allow for more of that quiet confidence and self-trust we wish we had more of, especially during difficult moments, to filter in.
Using The ‘Wise Mind’
In the late 1970s, renowned American psychologist and author Marsha M. Linehan developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), a therapeutic model that aims to help people build healthier relationships with their emotions. A central component of DBT is the concept of the ‘Wise Mind,’ a state of being that bridges elements of the rational mind (the logical side that approaches issues pragmatically but might ignore the importance of your emotions) and the emotional mind (powerful feelings that aren’t inherently negative but can cloud your judgment and have you act on impulse).
What is The Wise Mind?
The wise mind has aspects of both the rational and emotional mind. When you’re ‘in a wise mind,’ you can see your feelings for what they are without letting them hijack your ability to make healthy decisions. You’re also willing to acknowledge their presence without judgment or fear. The wise mind approach is helpful for people looking to nurture mental resilience because it helps you better regulate your emotions, problem-solve more effectively, and manage stress by reducing your propensity to ruminate.
The Wise Mind in Action
Mindfulness is an excellent tool you can leverage to better access the wise mind. When facing a difficult situation, it’s common to feel overwhelmed emotionally, which makes it harder to take appropriate action. Deep, mindful breathing can help you get out of your head and into a place of relaxation and focus from which you can make more precise decisions. Practice mindful breathing daily to build the habit and train your mind to access that calm, rational, emotionally integrated space more readily.
Final Thoughts: A Note On Comparison
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Human beings come into this life with a host of different traits, abilities, flaws, and strengths. It is true that some people, whether due to upbringing or biology, have a higher tolerance for psychological pain and hardship. Maybe fostering mental resilience doesn’t come as easy for you as it does for them, but using others as a benchmark for your capabilities is ultimately unhelpful.
Comparing yourself today to where you were yesterday is a far more helpful method you can use to assess your progress toward building a more robust and resilient mind. Focus on gradual, consistent improvements each day. It might be helpful to focus on creating a system of habits that involve the methods and tools mentioned above rather than fixating on specific goals. Over time, these tiny changes continue until you’ve made massive gains toward fostering genuine mental and emotional strength.
As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and neither is resilience. Be patient with yourself. As long as you put in consistent effort, it is only a matter of time before you reach the state of being you hope to achieve. Remember, mental resilience isn’t the absence of fear, pain, or uncertainty. It’s the commitment to continue living a meaningful and fulfilling life, whatever that may look like for you.