Why do some people endure despite all? Why do some people can still see the bright sunny day despite everything bad that happens to them? How come there are people who can still stand tall when everything seems crumbling down? Why does someone, after a violent passing for instance, gives in to alcohol while another chooses to help others survive like they did? That is the question many researchers are trying to answer. What makes people thrive despite adversity?
Being resilient
Resilience is a key concept. Being a resilient person doesn’t mean that events don’t hurt the same as it would hurt anyone else. It just means you have more resources to stand up and fight the negativity in our life, despite all the hurt it may cause you. In the end you will use that hurt is an adaptive and constructive way.
Why is resilience so important? It serves as a mental health protection. In face of tragedy, resilient people will not perish and give in to depression, helplessness or despair. Of course not everyone is as resilient as their next door neighbor and that’s ok. Because resilience is also something that can be built.
“What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”
The famous sentence by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche applies here when discussing resilience. Actually the more though situations you go through, you are more likely to have both the experience and the ability to answer once that same challenge is presented to you a second time.
But what if positive emotions could also serve as a fuel for resilience? Fredrickson’s broaden-and-built model of positive emotions argues that positive emotions broaden our scope of action and thought, and also build up as resources to be used in stressful situations.
In their study Cohn, Fredrickson, Brown, Mikels and Conway were able to link daily positive emotions experiences to ego resilience. Ego resilience is a “fairly stable personality trait that helps people adapt to their environment by identifying opportunities, adapting to constraints and bouncing back from misfortune” (page 362). In their study they found that experiencing daily positive emotions helps build ego resilience and deal with mild to moderate stressors, in a more constructive way. Ultimately growing your ego resilience will also help you experience higher levels of life satisfaction. But, as the authors of this study warn us, in cases of extreme psychological pain or psychopathology these results are not able to be seen.
How can you be more resilient in your life?
- Focus on the positive. It has to do with the kind of lenses you use to see the world. If we wish to focus solely on the negative, then we will find no reason to live and endure the kind of pain there is in the world. But nothing is ever just bad or just good. But focusing on the good will help attract more good things your way.
- And search for it. We sometimes have a tendency for self-destruction and self-pity. But what if you decide to break the cycle and start searching for the positive emotions in your life? It may take a while but you’ll soon find more reasons to look on the bright side.
- Keep feeding the positivity cycle in your life. Experiencing positive emotions in your life will decrease your stress levels, which in turn will help you build more resources, which will make you seek for more positivity in your life in a constant cycle.
- Learn from experience. Staying in touch with the philosophers, Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. The way I see it, it means that thinking life through will help you grow and not repeat the same mistakes again, making you a better person. So, if you examine your life and learn from your experience, you will learn how to seek positive emotions and build your resilience.
Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisschoenbohm/9916669806
