How to Strengthen Your Resilience Muscle

Everybody’s gotten knocked down at some point in life. For many, that time may have even been during this current pandemic. Those who have resilience or emotional resilience in their toolbox recover from adversity and keep on keeping on: As the English rock band Chumbawamba once quipped in its well-known song, “I get knocked down, but I get back up again.”

That’s exactly what having resilience is: the ability to overcome adversity and carry on, despite it not being done beautifully or perfectly, says Colleen D. Cira, PsyD, founder and executive director of the Cira Center for Behavioral Health in Chicago.

While most folks do get up again (although Cira says most don’t give themselves credit for doing so), true resilience takes it a step further. “Some people are able to learn, grow, feel, and reflect on the hard thing they just experienced and become wiser, stronger and more grounded as a result,” she says. In other words, these folks move from surviving to thriving, and you can, too.

Resilience 101

Resilience might sound like something you’re either born with or you must do without, and that’s true—to a point. “For some, there’s a genetic predisposition to think and act a certain way,” says Eva Selhub, MD, a resilience expert in Newton, Mass., and author of numerous books, including the Stress Management Handbook. These individuals have been born with an inherited and biologically determined temperament that shapes how they interact with others, respond to external events, and perceive the world, Cira says.

Yet that encompasses a small part of the population, and for the most part, resilience is something you can learn. “Part of what creates resilience is recovering from adversity and then being curious about that experience,” Cira says. To be truly resilient, it’s not enough that you just make it to the other side. “Some amount of feeling and then reflection and/or introspection about these feelings is what creates and builds on resilience,” Cira says

Building resilience

Of course, when you’re faced with adversity, it’s easy to think you’re not good enough or you don’t have enough resiliency to rebound. “That type of stress response decimates your ability to think optimistically,” Dr. Selhub says. Rather than thinking that the stress you’re facing isn’t manageable and putting yourself in victim mode, you need to take action to fuel your body mentally and physically. “You want to give yourself what you need to function at your best,” she says.

That’s why Dr. Selhub recommends doing things like nourishing your body with healthy foods, exercising and moving more, connecting with others while physical distancing, spending time in nature, meditating, developing a spiritual connection, working with somebody who can help you turn lemons into lemonade, and shifting from a physiology of fear to love. “Think of courage as fear with an open heart,” she says.

While those are certainly sound strategies that resilient folks employ, there’s also a trait that separate resilient people from others, according to researcher Brené Brown: They’re able to tolerate distress. In other words, “They’re aware of and can sit with their emotions without needing to react immediately,” Cira says. Instead, resilient people pause and respond deliberately, which is the opposite of letting your emotions take the wheel. “Distress tolerance builds resilience,” Cira says. It’s not easy, but it’s worth the work.

So how do you do become more resilient? Cira has a six-step guide.