How to Beat Back Stress and Build Your Resilience

Stress affects everyone in life, from the poorest to the wealthiest and most successful among us. And as the world gets more technologically advanced, it seem our lives are only getting busier and more stressful. The American Institute of Stress reports that as many as 44% of adults in the United States feel that they are more stressed today than they were approximately five years ago. Around 20% of all American adults experience more severe symptoms that are associated with stress, such as heart palpitations and shaking. And at least 75% of all doctor visits are directly or indirectly related to stress.

An inability to deal with stress effectively can lead to symptoms of depression, which in turn has been associated with numerous health risks, including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, and substance abuse linked to illegal drugs, tobacco products, and alcohol. Learning how to manage stress and bounce back quickly has a significant impact on your life. Becoming resilient, which is a term used to describe a set of skills that allow a person to adapt to certain situations that involve tragedy, trauma, adversity and other stressors, is an excellent way to take back control of your own life and to manage your stress more efficiently.

How Reduce Stress and Build Resilience

In this article, we would like to share some essential tips, exercises, and resources that you can utilize to help you on your journey to becoming resilient, so you can learn to bounce back from stressful situations and successfully adapt to the circumstances in your life that may induce stress. These tips are practical, easy-to-implement and highly effective.

Focus on the positive things in life

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

- Helen Keller (read more quotes)

When stress overthrows our lives, we tend to focus on the negative things that these stressful situations bring about. Unfortunately, seeing only the negative side of situations won't do you any good. The negativity will keep building up, which will only increase the stress and unpleasant emotions you are experiencing. Instead of focusing only on the negative attributes that are causing you to stress more, you should try to look at the positive side of things as well. Don't limit yourself to the positive aspects of the particular situation you are in, but also try to think about the positive attributes of your life, and use them to help improve your mood. Being positive in life has many benefits, including the ability to reduce your stress levels, which can help to enhance your mental health and even assist with improving memory, boosting your mood, and increasing your ability to perform mentally challenging tasks.

Turn stressful situations into educational resources

When you are faced with a particular situation that causes you to stress, you should not only try to think of the positive attributes related to the case but also consider what is happening as an educational resource. Learning from your own mistakes is one of the most efficient ways to improve yourself and become better at life. A stressful situation may not be of your own making; thus you shouldn’t only focus on what mistakes you might have made to cause it, but also on the particular details of the case. There are often many lessons to be learned that will help you to better tackle similar situations in the future.

Think of difficult circumstances as a challenge

Circumstances do not make a man, they only reveal him to himself.

– Epictetus

Severe conditions can be troublesome and hard to overcome. When you're in such a situation, it can seem like a neverending cycle of stressful events, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of focusing on how difficult a situation is, try to transform the particular situation into a challenge that you need to overcome. Remember that overcoming challenges is an excellent way to grow as a person. You can turn hardship into a great opportunity by keeping a cool head, thinking of the situation in a different way, ignoring the usual rules, and anticipating potential outcomes.

Accept your own flaws

People often believe that they have to be perfect in every aspect to succeed in life. They perform random acts of kindness for others to help them overcome their flaws, but they expect themselves to have no flaws at all. The truth is that no one has ever been truly perfect. Thus, you should not be too harsh on yourself and expect to be perfect at everything you do. Accept that you have flaws, just like everyone else, and then try to think of them as features that make you unique. Accepting yourself and your flaws can be empowering, help you experience freedom, and contribute to greater happiness.

Stop questioning yourself

When we are overwhelmed with stress, we often have a tendency to doubt ourselves excessively. While it is important to reflect on the problems and come up with the effective strategies to resolve them, you should try not to overthink things. This will lead to a constant debate inside of your head, which will cause you to start questioning yourself. Overthinking the problem usually won't solve it, but instead will only add more stress to the current situation.

Conclusion

Stress can be a barrier between you and your best life, and can lead to depression and a host of other health issues. Managing stress and building up your resilience is a crucial life skill that will enhance your ability to mitigate stressful situations and bounce back quicker each time.