Life can be beautiful, but occasionally it can also kick us in the teeth. We can experience loss, disappointment, adversity. Eventually, everyone has to face their fair share of pain. What makes the difference between someone who barely survives these challenges in life, and someone who meets these challenges head-on and thrives? It’s the presence of resilience.

Resilient people stay happy, productive and connected to others, and they keep doing the things that they love, no matter what hardships they’ve faced.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines resilience as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change,” or “the ability to become strong, healthy or successful again after something bad happens.”

If we’re going to get through the inevitable moments of difficulty in our lives, we need to learn how to recover, or bounce back; that is, become more resilient. Even if we never learned how to do it before, it’s not to late to develop resilience, today.

I’ve made a list of 12 attitudes and strategies we can adopt, in order to become more resilient in the face of adversity so that we can bounce back to our best life.

1: Avoid victim-mentality. We can’t take it personally when bad things happen. Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” we could ask if there’s anything we did that might have brought on this trouble, or anything we failed to do, and we can make better choices, moving forward.

2: Stop blaming other people. When we blame other people for our difficulties, we give away the power to change things for the better. The more responsibility we take, the less helpless we feel and the more confidence we have in our ability to confront our challenges.

3: Learn to let go. Instead of trying to control our situation- which is impossible- we can face what’s happening right now. When we give up our ideas of how things “should” be, and accept the way they actually are, we’ll feel less overwhelmed and it’ll be easier to focus on finding solutions to our problems.

4: Do what’s possible, when it’s possible. Sometimes, the trouble we’re facing is so awful that we can feel like giving up. That’s understandable, but if we think of just one thing we can do- even a subtle shift in our attitude- we’ll feel less despondent and more motivated to keep going.

5: Lean on our loved ones. Love is a necessity in hard times. When we’re facing a crisis, our loved ones give us support, comfort, advice and practical assistance that make it easier to cope.

6: Feel the burn. Exercise flushes out stress hormones, like Cortisol, leaving us physically more able to face our problems. It also helps us emotionally, by flooding us with endorphins- the body’s “feel-good chemicals,” and by helping us to let go of pent-up feelings of frustration, anger or anxiety.

7: Cry it out. Crying is good for our physical and emotional well-being. It flushes out toxins through our tears, and helps us to face what’s happening, accept our losses, and let go of our pain.

8: Take care of ourselves. Hardship is incredibly stressful, so we really need to focus on good self-care, like getting enough sleep, eating well, maybe getting a massage. And most importantly, we have to go easy on ourselves, especially if we notice that we’re doing things a bit differently.

9: Create. Creativity is incredibly empowering, so it counters the helplessness we feel when bad things are happening. Pain is isolating, but being creative makes us feel more engaged in life.

10: Laugh. It seems counter-intuitive, I mean, how do we laugh in the middle of a tragedy? But we need it. Humour is so good for our mind, body and spirit. It builds optimism and gives us perspective, momentarily bringing some light into the darkness.

 11: Meditate. Spirituality, meditation and prayer are calming and centering and can help us recover our strength and purpose when we feel lost, vulnerable or alone during difficult times.

12: Turn the lemons into lemonade. It might not feel possible when we’re in the middle of a crisis, but at some point, even the worst situation can be seen as an opportunity for growth and learning.

Instead of feeling oppressed by our circumstances, we can use the difficulties we encounter in life to evolve as human beings. When we transform the yucky stuff in life into fertilizer for our personal growth, we’re able to become more thoughtful, compassionate, loving and wise.

Regardless of what we’re going through, we can all develop resilience. It won’t prevent the hard times or take away our pain, but it will weave our hurts and losses into the fabric of a richer and more meaningful existence.

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