What is the difference between people who seem to be able to solve problems, cope with crises, overcome them and return to “normality” with ease and those who get stuck in the crisis? A buzzword that has gained more and more presence in recent years is resilience. Being able to stretch like rubber in difficult times and then get back to where they started. How do they manage to do that? Are they just born that way? Or did they train to do it? In fact, both are true. There are some personality traits that are innate or formed in early childhood through our upbringing and socialization. For this reason, one reads different views in the literature on resilience research.
Focus on what can be trained
Resilience is often viewed as a state that arises from a variety of factors and enables successful handling of challenging situations. Contrary to this behavior-focused view, resilience is also operationalized as a personal characteristic. That is, what you get in your genes and early childhood.
How can you better manage challenges?
The key to train your resilience is looking at the parameters we can change. So the focus is not on whether you are already a resilient person, but rather on what you do to overcome a crisis. That means looking at several factors: First, resilient people have often experienced a resilient role model in childhood. They had the opportunity to learn from this role model how to overcome difficult situations. Often, these role models are also a reliable contact person in all situations of life. Someone who loves them unconditionally, supports them and believes in them. This has been proven to have extremely positive effects on self-efficacy, i.e. belief in one’s own abilities, and resilience.
In addition, personal character traits and basic attitudes that have developed and strengthened over the course of one’s life also play a role. The more situations one has successfully mastered in one’s life, the higher one’s resilience competence usually is. In addition to a mentor, a stable and supportive environment also plays an important role in building personal resilience competencies.
One possibility: Accept challenges
This also means when you accomplish something you wouldn’t have thought you could, you’re exercising your self-efficacy, or your belief in yourself. At least if you don’t put what you’ve achieved down to luck or fortunate circumstances. If you’re in a situation where you think you can’t solve it or just don’t know how: Accept the challenge. Get support and overcome the challenge. This is how you train your resilience, for example.
