“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!”
~ Rocky Balboa (a character from the celebrated ‘Rocky’ movies)
A scene from ‘Rocky’
Building a mind and body that is resilient isn’t any typical image you might have— being jacked, hitting the gym all day long and looking like a steroid-injected idiot.
A physique that projects strength is good, but only as long as the mind in that body is strong enough.
It’s about building a better system around your mind that allows you to fail, and make comebacks right after.
As a collective, we’ve experienced a lot of things in the past few years that have made us realise that we need to be strong and defend ourselves and in the process take care of our loved ones. Whether it be the pandemic, the global recessions, your heartbreaks, setbacks, and whatnot.
And I know, it isn’t easy being resilient to everything in your life. For different people, it takes different experiences to truly be resilient.
I have listed out a bunch of things that can help you build resilience in your life, which I have applied and found to be helpful over some time.
1. Build Strong Relationships
There are times in life when nothing seems to go your way and everything becomes blurry. The next step becomes harder to see through and the confusion just fogs your brain more than you can even imagine.
These times are not uncommon— especially when you’re young. But that one pat on the back from your parent, or words of encouragement from your teachers, reassurance coming from your partner, or just spending time with your friends, helps make these times bearable. Your mood automatically improves and you go on.
Human beings are social creatures. We have a primal instinct for finding tribes within our environment. Relationships with people— be it friends, your parents, any relatives or your partner— need you to put in the work and effort to be fulfilling and rewarding.
Don’t wait on external stimuli so you have relationships in your life. Willingly make an effort to have genuine connections. The more connections you have, the more benefits of life you can reap.
My father had a terrible accident right at home when I was 13. He suffered a serious fracture in his femur, the thigh bone. It was a terrible situation that needed immediate and high-level medical attention. At that moment, I froze (also, I was very young and did not know how to react). But the way people that were close to him came around to handle the scenario— be it finding a good surgeon, calling an ambulance, making arrangements for the blood required for the surgery, and in general, being there for him— everything was taken care of within a matter of hours.
This was the first ever incident that made me realise that the people I have connections with matter a lot. Probably the most. Because people need people. In his own words, my father’s excruciating pain seemed bearable to him because he was certain that there are people who have his back and he can rely on.
Every person you have in your life— has a different outlook toward life and that naturally makes you more empathetic and present. It naturally makes you feel like you are stronger because they exist.
Your good times (and bad times) don’t ever last forever. The bad times seem longer than they are. And thus, your resilience is directly proportional to the quality of people you have to count upon.
2. Practice Self-Care
Self-care and resilience are closely interconnected. Our relationship with our thoughts and being matters the most. It can be improved only by taking care of ourselves and having a compassionate attitude toward ourselves.
Self-compassion and self-acceptance are two things that are essential for resilience. When we are kind toward ourselves, we are better at coping with the adversities that life throws at us.
By practising habits like meditating, getting enough good sleep and exercising regularly, we are taking care of our minds and body. And when we are stronger physically and mentally, we have the capability of bouncing back from adversity.
“If your compassion doesn’t include yourself, it is incomplete.”
-Jack Kornfield (Buddhist teacher and author)
The relationship that you have with yourself defines your views— that you see the world with. Your perception of the world matters more than what the world is like.
The stuff that happens out here is exactly how you perceived it to happen— the device that you were dicey about buying always turns out defective, the person that you knew is a red flag proves it right, the way you slept yesterday thinking you won’t wake up early and ended up snoozing your alarm 5 times— almost all this is your mindset that has been pushed out.
And that is exactly why self-care comes into the picture. It improves your self-perception. It makes you resilient; by helping you be in the driving seat of your emotions and actions in return.
I often have come across people that are negative for no reason. They always find ways to find something to complain about— even in the best times. Imagine their reactions to a negative experience. You wouldn’t want to be around them when your tyre is flat in a thunderstorm, would you?
3. Cultivate a Growth Mindset
90% (or even more) of the humans that you interact with, have what is called a ‘Fixed Mindset’. A growth mindset is the exact opposite of that.
The way cultivating a growth mindset helps you in building resilience is by encouraging you to see challenges as an opportunity to grow and learn. As I have said earlier, your mindset alone can shift the entire game in your direction. And that’s how you should look forward to willingly seeking discomfort in your life and taking it positively.
Some experiences are genuinely negative. But that’s all they are— experiences.
“The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience.”
-Mark Manson (in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck)
The most resilient people I have come across are also ones who are always striving for growth. It isn’t apparent when I first met them. But with time I observed, they are constantly learning, in their lane, expanding their horizons and being better each day.
They have a huge risk appetite too. They move to different cities, even go abroad, make difficult situations seem easier, and spread the same mindset among people they know.
It might differ in your case, but I love being around these kinds of people. They always have something new to show off (in a good way), some new skill they’ve learnt, some new friends they’ve made, and some new ideas they came up with, it is unique each time.
What I also find out, usually, is— they have surpassed their record of resilience to get to that point. Someone switches jobs, someone loses a person, someone broke up, everyone has something going on but they don’t let it affect them. They’re resilient because they have something else much more interesting to work on.
4. Learn from Adversity
The best example of this point, that’s always on the top of my mind, is that of Steve Jobs and Apple.
Imagine building a company from scratch, taking the valuation at sky-high levels, making some of the best electronic products at that time, and being thrown out of that same company. He never wanted to get fired.
Sometimes doing everything right can lead to no results or even worse results. But the key is to keep going. To keep believing, that it will help us in one way or the other.
Here is what he said in his infamous keynote speech at Stanford:
“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.
It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, and another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.
Don't lose faith.
Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
This is such a great example, and man do I love seeing such instances even in my own life (even though, they’re on a much smaller scale than losing out a billion dollars). Every time I have faced something that I felt like the ‘end of the world’ at the moment, turned out to be a necessary event for something even better ahead.
Adversity can break you— I mean some things are out of your control— but you can start by accepting it and moving on with a better response.
Accepting that life sucks sometimes and knowing that there are ways to come out of that misery, will help you.
Some ‘suffering’ is necessary.
5. Develop coping strategies
There is a very negative connotation with the word ‘cope’.
A word that is thrown around in memes is ‘copium’, and it comes from two words- cope + opium. Opium is a drug that is addictive and has some really bad effects on your health. The slang comes mainly from the unhealthy coping mechanisms that people form in their bad phases.
Your job is simple, to form healthy coping mechanisms. Exercising, mindfulness, and deep work come under these. Some people perform their best when facing adversity. These are the people who are regularly inculcating good ‘coping’ strategies.
This is already a very, very long read. I will end this post here. Hope you’re all doing well, thank you for reading :)
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