BY Future Quest
01 Jul 2020
Believe it or not, everyone has resilience to some degree. Some days you may feel that you are able to cope with whatever life throws at you and other days you may feel that stress has taken over and it is hard to be positive about anything. It is natural to have ups and downs, but now more than ever, life can feel very uncertain as we try and navigate whatever the new ‘norm’ is today.
This is a good time to check in with yourself and to explore new ways of coping and building resilience, as resilience is a skill that anyone can learn to be better at.
Check out our 5 simple ways to start building your resilience:
Focus on what you can control
COVID-19 has brought so many changes to our everyday lives, such as not going out as much as we like, seeing friends and family less, not going to school or college, and for some, not being able to sit exams. These are all situations that you can have little or no control over, and with not knowing how things will pan out later this year or next, it is easy to slip into the habit of ‘catastrophizing’ where we assume the worse-case scenario of a situation will happen. This can make us feel overwhelmed and anxious.
No-one knows for sure what is going to happen in the future, so instead of worrying about ‘what if’ something happens, try to think about ‘what will I do if...’ by coming up with a plan for a worst-case scenario that you are worried about. This will help you feel prepared. Then try shifting your focus to the things in your life that you can control – no matter how small, like what time you go to bed and get up in the mornings, what you have for breakfast, how often you exercise or how much effort you put into your school or college work.
Visit My Future Quest to create your Circle of Control.
Look for the good
Do you often see the bad things in a challenging situation?
You don’t have to have endless amounts of optimism, but acknowledging the negatives of a situation and then balancing it out by also looking for the positives will help you to react to a stressful situation in a more resilient way. This is sometimes easier said than done, but you can learn to become more optimistic.
Just by noting down 3 things you are grateful for each day can really help to shift your way of thinking. Practicing gratitude in this way over time will help you develop this as a healthy habit and see things in a more positive light. The time taken to develop a habit is different from person to person, but you should aim for at least 21 days as a start.
Why not start a gratitude journal? Or if you don’t like the idea of journaling, try creating your own Gratitude Jar.
Make time for yourself
Many of us have probably lost routine to our lives over the last few months, so it’s important to add some structure by planning activities into your week. It’s easy to become fixated on the big stuff like school or college work, but it’s just as important to plan in time for the small stuff that helps makes us feel good, like listening to music, chatting to our friends or going for a walk. Make sure you are including activities in your week that give all areas of your wellbeing a boost – physical, emotional and social.
What activities make you feel relaxed? What can you to be more physically active? How you could eat more healthfully? And what activities allow you to connect with other people?
Why not try out a new activity? Trying something new can give boost your confidence and give you a feeling of achievement.
Explore our Self-Care Toolkit for ideas.
Ditch procrastination
Sometimes we can spend too much time on things that actually aren’t that helpful for us when we know we should be doing other things, like school or college work or jobs around the house. It is so easy to put off doing the things we aren’t looking forward to, things that are overwhelming or those things that we find difficult or fear we will fail. But how do we stop procrastinating?
One of the best ways to do this is by setting yourself small, realistic goals. First write yourself a to-do list and work out what you need to do and by when. By writing tasks down, you are more likely to commit to doing them. Next, try tackling the more challenging stuff first. Tell someone what you are trying to achieve so they can encourage you and check on your progress. Think about how good you felt the last time you completed a challenging task and decide on a reward to give yourself once you have completed it. Actually picturing yourself completing the task can trick your brain into thinking that you have done this before and so are likely to succeed. This should provide you with the motivation to just get on and do it, and once you have completed the challenging tasks, you will fly through the easier tasks in no time!
Need help with visualizing your future goals? Get creative with a Future Me Vision Board.
Know your strengths
What are the best bits of your personality? Too often we tend to focus on the things we aren't rather than the things we are, but if we know what our character strengths are, we can build on them and use them to help us manage problems more effectively, reach our goals, manage our emotions and increase our confidence and self-acceptance among other things. Basically, we can work towards becoming the best version of ourselves.
Discover your character strengths by taking this 15 minute VIA Character Strengths Survey
Want to find out more about yourself and your wellbeing? Take a look at our 'Character Strengths and Wellbeing' week for
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Wellbeing