How to Build Resilience and Improve Your Mental Toughness

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed." — Michael Jordan

You can still succeed no matter how long you've failed or been disappointed. You just have to learn how to build mental toughness and resilience.

Building resilience may sound like a buzzword or something out of an infomercial, but it's a legitimate way of improving your mental strength.

The process involves identifying your strengths and talents, becoming self-aware, cultivating a positive outlook on life, taking stock of your stressors and sources of support — and then setting goals and making plans to achieve them.

What is resilience?

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. It's the skill of recognizing when you're experiencing stress and then finding ways to cope with it.

You can learn to be resilient, but it takes practice. You need to practice resilience regularly so that when life throws you curveballs (or even just normal stuff), you'll be ready.

Resilience isn't the same thing as toughness or strength. These words are all related but have different meanings:

Resilience: The ability to recover from difficulties in life by bouncing back stronger than before. This involves emotional growth and learning new skills.

Toughness: Having physical strength, endurance, or determination. The ability to withstand harsh conditions without showing signs of weakness.

Why is it important?

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from setbacks. It's about finding meaning in life, achieving goals, and being a better leader.

Resilience definition is "the capacity to recover from difficulties; toughness."

In other words, it's how well you deal with stress, whether that stress comes from within yourself or outside of yourself (such as losing your job). Resilience helps us cope with challenges so we can bounce back instead of giving up when things get tough.

Resilience makes you more successful and happier because it gives meaning to life by helping you achieve your goals while dealing with hardships.

How do you build resilience?

Take some time to reflect on the skills and abilities you already have — and those you'd like to develop.

Then, look for ways that these can help you achieve your goals in life, and don't forget to celebrate them.

Stress can lead people into unhealthy habits, such as overeating or sleeping too much. It can also make them feel more irritable or depressed than usual (not exactly "tough" qualities).

By being aware of what kinds of situations make us feel stressed out or even more tired than usual — we're better able to take steps toward reducing our stressors.

Step 1: Identify Your Strengths and Talents

The first step to building resilience and improving mental toughness is identifying your strengths and talents. It's important to know what you're good at because it will help you feel more confident about yourself and your abilities.

Here are some examples of strengths:

I'm a great listener who always knows how to offer solutions when someone needs them.

I am very good at coming up with ideas for fun things that my friends and family can do together (like camping trips or parties).

Step 2: Become Self-Aware

The next step is to become self-aware.

We all have strengths and weaknesses, triggers that make us emotional, motivations for what we do and how we live our lives or aspects of ourselves that make us happy or sad.

Becoming more aware of these things can help you better understand yourself so that when something happens in your life (like losing a job), it won't catch you off guard as it used to when you weren't aware.

Step 3: Cultivate a Positive Outlook

Be positive about yourself and your situation. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of a situation, try to find some good in it.

If you can't come up with anything, look at other people facing similar challenges and see how they handled things.

Focus on the good things in life. If you start thinking about all the good things that have happened recently — a compliment from a friend or coworker, a time when someone went out of their way for you, etc.

It will help shift your mindset from dwelling on negative experiences and finding joy in everyday activities.

Keep a journal of positive experiences. This will help reinforce these new habits.

It will keep track of them so that when times get tough again (and they will), those memories will resurface as reminders about what matters most during difficult times.

Step 4: Take Stock of Your Stressors and Sources of Support

Now that you have identified the things that make you feel stressed and those that help, it's time to take stock of your stressors and sources of support.

Stressors can be both positive and negative: For example, a job promotion is often seen as a good thing but might also come with added responsibility and pressure.

Sources of support are similar: Your spouse may be supportive when he or she sees how overwhelmed you are with work but then become frustrated when they don't get enough attention in return.

To improve our mental toughness, we need to find ways to manage these stressors while continuing to reap the benefits they offer us. This all starts with taking stock!

Step 5: Set Goals and Make Plans to Achieve Them

You have your plan, now it's time to set goals to help you achieve it. If you don't know what your goals look like, then look at the results section of the SMART goal sheet again.

It will help you figure out your endpoint, so when you get there, it feels like success.

Once you have specific goals in mind (and written down), start creating a plan on how exactly they will come true.

If a goal is too vague or broad, then break it down into smaller steps until each step becomes manageable enough so that even one small thing would count as having achieved this section of your overall objective or vision statement/purpose statement/goal-setting exercise.

For example: "I want more energy" could mean something like "Drink more water throughout my day" which could turn into "Drink eight glasses per day during waking hours."

Or maybe instead try something like: "I want more friends" which might translate into something like "Join a meetup group where people share common interests."

Conclusion

You can't control everything in life, but you can control how you react. And the more you practice, the better you'll get at it. So start today!