What is resilience and why is it important?
Resilience is what gives people the emotional strength to deal with hardships in their lives. Resilience is important – resilient people use the resources around them and their personal strengths and skills to work through challenges and overcome hardships. Improving our resilience can improve our ability to respond to financial stress and improve our financial resilience.
How can I improve my overall resilience?
- Cultivate an awareness of your personal strengths and resources. When we are feeling financial stress, it is easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed. Recognizing our strengths can help us get through it.
- What qualities/strengths do you have that can help you in your current situation?
- Intelligence?
- Courage?
- Adaptability?
- Resourcefulness?
- Creative?
- Perseverance?
- Others?
- What qualities/strengths do you have that can help you in your current situation?
Make a list of your strengths. If you are having trouble identifying your strengths, think back to another time when you experienced hardship and you got through it – what qualities/strengths helped you to cope? No matter the hardships, we all still have our own personal set of strengths and core capacities to help us through challenges throughout life.
- Lean on your supports and stay connected - When you are overwhelmed it is important to lean on your support system and stay connected to family, friends and other supportive people in your life. A quick 10-minute call to a family member, chatting with a co-worker, or attending a weekly peer support group meeting is important to building up your resilience so that you don’t feel isolated or alone.
- Talk about what you are going through. Talking to a trusted person about your situation can also be helpful and give you additional strength to draw upon.
- Focus on the positive. Find the things in your daily life that bring you joy, make you laugh, make you smile and commit to connecting to these people, places, or things more often. Connecting to nature, dancing to your favorite tune, or simply enjoying the pleasure of catching up on your favorite TV show can change your mood and reduce stress. Think about the types of activities that you enjoy most and make a plan to insert those activities back into your daily experience today.
Remember, setbacks are bound to happen throughout life. However, by preparing ourselves for them in advance of problems, we can reduce our stress and better cope with any hardships that come our way.