39 Practical Ways to Build Resilience
Resilience can be developed by anybody of any age. Leaders across Canada offered their personal practices that helped them build resilience.
Find God’s purpose for your life. Living on purpose will boost you up on downer days.
Build positive beliefs in your God-given gifts and abilities. Resilience comes in cans.
Remind yourself of your inestimable worth to God. Jesus created you, died for you and was raised from the dead for you.
Develop a strong social network of people who support you and who you can confide in. One is too small a number to accomplish anything great.
Embrace change as the inevitability that it is, and be ready for it.
Be optimistic—you don’t need to ignore your problems, just understand they are temporary and that you have what it takes to make it through. Plus, people like optimists.
Expect a comeback when you face a setback. Even better, expect a greater comeback than the setback. Good is coming.
Nurture yourself with healthy self-care by getting enough sleep, eating well, and exercising.
Develop your problem-solving skills through strategies like making a list of potential ways to solve your current problem.
Establish reasonable goals by brainstorming solutions and breaking them down into manageable steps.
Take action to solve problems rather than waiting for the problem to solve itself.
Allow yourself to feel a wide range of emotions. The Psalms are filled with lament, joy, disappointment, praise, frustration and optimism.
Identify your support system and let them be there for you. Vulnerability is courageous.
Process your emotions with the help of a therapist or counselor.
Be mindful of your wellness and self-care.
Get some rest or try to get an adequate amount of sleep.
Give up the poverty mindset.
Get out of the competitive mindset. How can you support and resource others?
Try your best to maintain a routine.
Write about your experience and share it with others.
Change the narrative by free writing about the issue or deciding to focus on the positives.
Face your fears and challenge yourself; expose yourself to things that scare you in increasingly larger doses. Sky-diving?
Practice self-compassion; try to be mindful, remind yourself that you’re not alone, and be kind to cut yourself some slack.
Cultivate forgiveness by letting go of grudges and letting yourself off the hook.
Make connections with people on the margins or who are not like you to build empathy, grow your wisdom network, and encourage resilience.
Look for ways to help others.
Get out of the fear swamp.
Get strategic.
Get focused.
Pick up the phone and ask for advice. Everyone knows someone smarter than them.
Say thanks.
Work together.
Take a break. Excessive worrying is unproductive. Set aside what you are worried about at least once in a while.
Schedule down time to just relax and have fun.
Set reasonable goals and move toward them, one step at a time. Focus on what you have accomplished rather than what you haven’t accomplished.
Remind yourself how you successfully handled difficulties and hardships in the past.
Take the long-term view—especially when you are stuck on something negative right now.
Look for opportunities for self-discovery. You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Last but not the least, accept that change is an inevitable part of living, and that you can always replace goals that have become unattainable with new, more relevant goals.