“Resilience is better understood as the opportunity and capacity of individuals to navigate their way to psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that may sustain their well-being.”

Michael Ungar

Resilience is a process, not a character or personality trait. This is great news! That means that we each can become more resilient, to increase our tendency to bounce back from adversity, crises, stress, and even calamities.  We can develop, practice and engage our capacity to recover faster from, and to resolve difficulties.  Dare I say it, we can all grow our level of toughness….mental toughness, even.

During my time in high-threat environments, I’ve come across many cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  We’ve all seen or read the stories. What you don’t see or hear, are that the vast majority of professional warriors suffer from PTG, Post-Traumatic Growth.  Most professional warriors, practice the process of resilience until it becomes second nature, and thereby create within themselves a “steeling effect”. This psychological armor is as essential as physical armor, by which the force of catastrophic blows are dampened.  Building this psychological armor is hard work, there’s no question about it, but the benefits are monumental.

Here are 10 techniques to construct a steeling resilience for yourself:

1)     Maintain a trusted inner circle of family or friends that love you enough to tell you when your attitudes, actions, or behaviors aren’t taking you in the right direction (i.e. you are screwing up).

2)     Don’t waste one ounce of your energy fretting about things that you CANNOT change. (Feel free to vent though.)

3)     Refuse to see crises as unbearable problems. They may be difficult, stressful, or even calamitous…but NEVER unbearable.

4)     Write out a vision for your life, and then develop the goals (steps) to get you where you want to go.

5)     “Deer in the headlights” is a NO!! Be decisive and take action in adverse circumstances.

6)     After trauma or a loss, steer yourself towards self-development.  Reach for Post-Traumatic Growth instead of PTSD.

7)     Grow your levels of self-confidence by recalling your past victories. (Telling your “war stories” to yourself. If you don’t have any, borrow someone else’s, what one can do, you can do.)

8)     Always view life’s events from the 50,000 ft. level, it tends to give you some emotional distance and space in which to make logical decisions.

9)     Create for yourself a culture of expectation of good.  Imagine your life being great (reference your written vision).

10)  Last but not least, FOCUS on good nutrition and fitness (YES- DIET & EXERCISE).

There are many other techniques to build up your resilience (a fancy word for Mental Toughness), but these 10 are a good start.

Boo Yah!