Recovering your mood

Here I’m going to talk to you about such a thing as so-called resilience. This really is vital, because it touches greatly our ability to recover our mood. And from my point of view in everyday life there is noting so important.

So resilience is an emotional muscle that can either grow with use and practice or atrophy whether ignored. Everyone can develop this emotional muscle. Actually everyone needs to. You are born with some resilience. You can choose how to apply it throughout your life. However to grow resilience you need fuel and you need challenge, as well as lots of practice.

Some people think that resilience is a trait that is inborn; you either annex it or you don't. I dare say that is not quite true. You are born with some set of characteristics that aid and abet the development of resilience. For instance, temperament makes a significant contribution to the acquisition of resilience. As a matter of fact some people are simply born with less reactivity to stresses, which makes them more hardy in the face of adversity and better able to draw on their cognitive abilities in situations that throw others off balance. Some people are also born with more optimism or are much more extraverted. Still others can have more courage, are more prone to take risks.

All of these qualities are generally thought to be inborn components of personality, and it is they that influence the ease with which you develop resilience. But determination and practice can help anyone foster resilience. It is, in fact, more a learning process than an inherited gift. What, then, do you do to grow resilience?

Firstly, when life hands you a setback, readjust your own identity. Stop thinking of yourself as a victim and start thinking of yourself as a problem-solver. Turn the switch in your brain. Don't waste time on pitying yourself, focus on your goal and what you need to do to get there. Ask yourself, how you can solve the problem?

Secondly, always provocation yourself to go just beyond your comfort zone. Risk builds resilience, and it's OK to take reasonable risks. Actually the simplest way to go beyond your comfort zone is to learn a new skill. Take up skiing, or snowboarding or anything else. There is no borderline to the number of areas in which you can try yourself beyond your comfort zone. If you argue a lot with your spouse, don't give up. But doing it don’t forget how much you love him or her. The idea is in converting everyday stresses into opportunities for growth. You use them as springboards for developing coping strategies that ensure the survival of self.

My third advice is to choose a hero, so that in the face of adversity you can maintain a positive identification. I know men who when facing difficulty assemble up images of themselves as Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Women can summon up the story of Joan of Arc. Or determine of a grandparent who survived the Holocaust.

Next one is to think of stories of resilience and stars of resilience. Search for models of resilience and study what they did. You don't have to get-up-and-go far to find them for the media offer plenty of such possibilities.

One more important thing is to gather actively information about resilience. Ask friends and relatives how they have handled setbacks.

Also push yourself physically. Regular exercise helps you maintain a positive attitude and breeds feelings of strength. It is in detail a model of strength and what resilience feels like. In fact it's much easier to understand resilience when you experience it organically.

Lastly teach yourself patience. Factually resilience requires being more strategic and less impulsive. You should train to give yourself more time before reacting to inflammatory situations. If someone is rude to you, don't immediately react in kind or display contempt. Take three deep breaths previously and only then choose how to act. You need to build more space between impulse and action. By definition, the less reactive, the more resilient you are.