Know when to seek help outside of your circle. People often find it helpful to turn to:. On a rafting trip, you can encounter all kinds of different waters — rapids, slow water, shallow water and all kinds of crazy turns. Much like in life, these changing circumstances affect your thoughts, mood, and the ways in which you will navigate yourself.

In life, as in traveling down a river, it helps to have past experience and knowledge from which to draw on. Your journey should be guided by a strategy that is likely to work well for you. Other important aspects include confidence and belief in your abilities to navigate the sometimes choppy waters, and perhaps having trusted companions to accompany and support you on the ride.

The Resilience Builder Program for Children and Adolescents — Enhancing Social Competence and Self-Regulation is an innovative program designed to increase resilience in youth. The book is based on a week resilience-based group therapy program and applies Cognitive Behavioral Theory and strategies.

The program outlines 30 group sessions that work on the areas of self-esteem, self-control, confidence and coping strategies Karapetian Alvord, Zucker, Johnson Grados, Key competencies addressed in each session include self-awareness, flexible thinking, and social competence.

These group activities help develop specific protective factors associated with resilience. The program includes relaxation techniques such as visualization , calm breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and yoga , to enhance self-regulation.

Resilience Builder Program is inventive, well thought out, sequenced and formatted, and offers a well-structured group framework, concrete enough for beginners.

If you are looking for a detailed program to teach your child or student how to be resilient, this is an excellent option. If you are a coach, teacher or counselor and it is your passion to help others become more resilient, then the Realizing Resilience Masterclass© is exactly what you need.

Consisting of six modules which include positive psychology, resilience, attention, thoughts, action and motivation, this comprehensive online course will provide you with key psychological concepts, in an easily digestible manner for anyone that is new to the field.

Upon completion of the self-paced course, you will be awarded a certificate and can use the extensive library of tools, worksheets, videos, and presentations to teach resiliency. Mental Stamina is the single defining trait that enables us to endure the adversities of life.

It is essential for withstanding both long-term challenges or unforeseen and unexpected struggles, concerns or trauma, and is only developed by practice and repetition.

Often when we talk about stamina we reference elite athletes and sports teams, as both physical and mental stamina is crucial for this type of performance. However, everyone can benefit from increased mental stamina, not just athletes.

Although no one builds mental stamina overnight, below Corb n. offers 5 tips for building your mental stamina over time:. Training yourself to think optimistically and find the positive in every situation will most certainly help to build mental stamina over time.

Visualization is an excellent tool for managing stress, overwhelming situations, and performance anxiety. Close your eyes and imagine a time that you succeeded in a similar situation. This includes remembering the feeling that accompanied that achievement, not just the visual. Life most certainly does not always go the way we hoped or planned that it would.

We cannot control the external events that happen around us, but we can control what we do afterward. Our ability to manage stress plays a large role in our ability to build mental stamina. Though not all stress is bad — positive stress excitement can be a motivating factor — it has the same physical effects on our bodies.

Useful techniques for managing stress include meditation and progressive muscle relaxation. Sufficient sleep can help with on-the-spot decision making and reaction time. A sufficient amount of sleep is said to be seven to nine hours, or more if you are performing high-stress activities, both physical and mental.

Community resilience is the sustained ability of a community to utilize available resources energy, communication, transportation, food, etc. to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations e. economic collapse to global catastrophic risks Bosher, L. Successful adaptation in the aftermath of a disaster ensures that a community can return to normal life as effortlessly as possible.

As is the case when faced with any problem, a community should implement a plan of action in order to come together and rebuild after a disaster.

Below are the key components necessary for a community to build collective resilience after a tragedy:. While Mental Health Awareness draws attention to the importance of valuing your own mental health, it is also about positively impacting the lives and mental wellness of the people around you.

Furthermore, a strong social support network has been linked to a decrease in alcohol use, cardiovascular disease, and depressive thoughts Cherry, So do yourself and the ones around you a favor and remind them how loved and deserving they are of a little mood boost.

Remember : you never know what somebody else might be going through, so your random act of kindness might make a world of difference. Resilience is a very important aspect of any relationship. Relationships require ongoing attention and cultivation, especially during times of adversity.

Have you ever wondered what makes some friendships or romantic relationships more likely to survive than others? Below, Everly suggests certain factors which seem to foster resiliency in relationships, and increase their likelihood of survival.

Active optimism is not just hoping that things will turn out well, rather, it is believing that things will turn out well and then taking action that will lead to a better outcome. In a relationship, this means an agreement to avoid critical, hurtful, cynical comments, and to instead, work together to harness the power of a positive self-fulfilling prophecy.

When we commit to accepting responsibility for our actions, being loyal to one another and forgiving each other and ourselves , we are bound to cultivate resilience within our relationships. This includes the old adage that honesty is the best policy, regardless of the outcome and consequences.

This means having the courage to take action, even when the action is unpopular or provokes anxiety in a relationship. Tenacity is to persevere , especially in the face of discouragement, setbacks, and failures.

It is important in relationships to remember that there will always be ebbs and flows, good times as well as hard times. As it pertains to relationships, the ability to control impulses, resist temptations and delay gratification are clearly important qualities.

Self-control helps one to avoid practices that will negatively impact their relationship, while promoting healthy practices, especially in the face of adversity. Often times the most difficult conversations to have are the most important ones.

Present mindedness has many positive implications for the individual, and this is also true for partners in a relationship. Present-minded awareness within a relationship leads to a calm, non-non-judgmental thinking style and open communication. Presence of mind enables collaborative thinking and openness to new solutions, rather than shooting them down and projecting blame.

These are just some of the characteristics that predict resilience in a relationship and increase the likelihood of a relationship rebounding after difficult situations.

Practice and commitment to the strategies and tips discussed above, will over time increase your ability to bounce back and adapt once life has presented you with hardships.

The silver lining to experiencing adverse life events is that the more you are able to flex your resiliency muscle, the better you will be able to bounce back again the next time life throws you a curveball!

Download 3 Free Resilience Exercises PDF These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients to recover from personal challenges and turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.

In this study, Lipaz Shamoa-Nir presents a description of building organizational and personal resilience at three levels of institution: management, faculty, and students of a multi-cultural college.

To do so, the college utilized three different framework models: the contact hypothesis model, the joint projects model, and the theoretical model. The study discusses the complexities of constructing this multi-dimensional framework for improving communication between a radically diverse group of students with opposing political and cultural views.

The students are immigrants living under a continuous threat of social and economic crisis, with tension and conflicts both internally and externally.

Each level of the institution must contribute to developing coping strategies for crisis situations as well as everyday reality. For faculty, this includes building a program that considers the strengths and weaknesses of students from social minority groups.

For students, this includes social projects that express their cultural and national diversity. Most importantly, the process requires leadership from management-focused solutions and activities intended to instill a sense of confidence and certainty at all levels of the organization.

Some key takeaways from the case study are that although processes for building resilience may take several years, they can be accelerated by changes or crises that arise; and that while aspects of resilience are built-in routine situations, most of them are only tested in crisis situations.

Although every individual develops their own unique coping style, the proposed multi-dimensional resilience model references these six factors that comprise each style:. Lastly, the case study may very well be relevant to other organizations or communities during or post-conflict.

Nurturing a positive self-view and developing confidence in your ability to solve problems and in trusting your instincts, is one of the main factors in building resiliency.

So how do we cultivate a more confident mind? Confidence and accomplishment go hand-in-hand. Accomplishing goals, and even taking small steps towards your goals, can help build your self-esteem and confidence in your abilities.

When working towards a goal, big or small, it is important to break it down into smaller, more manageable steps.

In doing so, one will find it easier to monitor their progress and build confidence as they see the progress happening in real time. It helps to quantify your goals, as well as the actionable steps towards those goals.

When your decisions are aligned with your highest self, it can cultivate a more confident mind. Exercise not only benefits your physical body but your mind as well. Mental benefits of exercise include improved focus, memory retention, and stress and anxiety management. Exercise is also said to prevent and aid in depression.

Confidence from exercising comes not only from the physical, visible benefits but also from the mental benefits. To be fearless in the pursuit of your dreams and goals requires a level of confidence.

Conversely, challenging yourself by diving head first into things that scare you, will help to build your confidence.

Often when we set big goals for ourselves it is easy to get overwhelmed and be fearful of failure. In these instances, it is important to gather up your courage and just keep going, one step at a time. All too often we may end up believing the naysayers, as they are echoing the self-doubt we may be hearing in our heads.

To nurture a positive self-view is to replace those negative thoughts with positive ones. Try to do so as well when someone does not believe in you. Developing your follow-through skills will also help you accomplish your goals and likely strengthen your relationships, too.

Often times, we trade in long-term happiness for more immediate gratification. We can build up our confidence by making sacrifices and decisions based on long-term goals rather than short-term comforts. Build your confidence by believing in yourself and continuing to move forward, even when others might not agree with you.

When we take time for self-care and doing the things that bring us joy, it helps to enrich our lives and becomes our best selves. Confidence comes when we are aligned with our highest selves and proud of it. At the root of many of these tools and strategies for building your mental fitness, are Self-Awareness and Acceptance.

In order to enhance, improve or build upon our existing mental strength, we must be aware of where we are at, and also accept that this is where we are at. Only then can we begin to take steps toward a stronger, healthier mental state. Another key takeaway is that you cannot control everything that happens to you but you absolutely can control how you react to what happens.

In these cases, your mind can be your biggest asset or your worst enemy. When you learn how to train it well, you can bounce back from difficult situations and can accomplish incredible feats. If you want to experience greater overall life satisfaction, you must be in good mental health.

Mental fitness includes strength, toughness, and resilience. Building these muscles may be very challenging, and might take years of effort and commitment, but the benefits of being mentally fit and resilient will be seen in all aspects of your life. Enhanced performance, better relationships, and a greater sense of wellbeing can all be achieved by developing healthy mental habits while giving up unhealthy mental habits.

We can all improve our mental health by implementing these strategies and committing to the process for the long-term.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. About the author Michelle Ribeiro , BCom. A lifelong learner and seeker, Michelle holds a Bachelor of Commerce from McMaster University, and a Life Coaching Certification from the Centre for Applied Neuroscience. Her coaching practice emphasizes authenticity and self-compassion, applying meditation and other mindfulness techniques to improve wellbeing.

How useful was this article to you? Not useful at all Very useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Submit Share this article:. Help me a lot to take a life forward with a lot of confidence.

Was it a physical or mental one? Make notes in your training log so you can refer back to them later. Compare your results to previous days when you have completed the same or similar workouts.

Over time, you will develop mental toughness during these specific intervals which will translate to enhanced focus at those critical moments. Setting specific short-term goals on a regular basis will take your training to the next level of performance! We all want to have a good performance on race day.

But how many athletes actually visualize what they will need to do during competition in order to achieve their goals? Whether you do it in the few seconds before the gun goes off, or the minutes before your head hits the pillow every night, making visualization part of your training routine will bring you one step closer to mental toughness.

However, like physical training, the key is repetition and specificity. If you only visualize one time before the race for a few seconds, chances are you will not even remember it and there will be no positive impact on your performance.

Similarly, if you simply visualize a general swim start without any specific details about your strategy, the impact will be negligible. Repeating this vision before every open water swim training session will increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome on race day.

Repetition and specificity will make your visualization more efficient, which is a valuable tool to have in your mental toughness arsenal. When things get tough, what do you say to yourself?

Much like visualization, positive self-talk is a strategy that should be repeated during your regular training routine in order to be most effective. Here, Peloton instructor Logan Aldridge shares his best strategies for learning how to be mentally tough. Mental resilience is about so much more than gritting your teeth whenever things get hard.

It's also about looking for ways to overcome those difficulties and embracing challenges with a positive mindset. One way to practice focusing on the positive is to find your own positive mantra.

Whatever your inspirational words are, practice repeating them to yourself in times of stress. In fact, one study from Brain Behavior found that repetitive mantras can have a calming effect on brain activity.

Translation: Positive affirmations can calm you down in moments of stress, giving you the confidence and cool head to prevail.

If we can have this perspective, our potential is truly endless and growth is inevitable in all aspects of life. It might seem counterintuitive that trying something new can help build confidence.

However, trying something totally outside of your comfort zone can help you feel more confident in your ability to handle stressful, unfamiliar situations. These skills seemed minuscule in the moment, but monumental in the development of my mental framework for what I may be able to accomplish in the future.

Instead, skills and intelligence can be developed through hard work and determination. Plus, someone with a growth mindset will view setbacks as opportunities for improvement instead of flat-out failures—or worse, reflections of their own worthiness.

Ergo, challenging yourself to try a dance cardio class for the first time or take up the piano will help you build your mental resilience. To practice acceptance with grace, consider turning to a mindfulness routine.

not trying to control your current circumstances is a big contributor to all the benefits of mindfulness—like reducing anxiety and depression, lowering blood pressure, and improving sleep, according to the National Institute of Health.

With that in mind, a mindfulness practice or meditation routine can help you accept the unchangeable and move forward. Try meditating in bed or using a visualization meditation that imagines a positive outlook.

I will be this way for the rest of my life. I did not want to put false hope into thinking that a prosthetic limb would replace my arm. Instead, I wanted to accept the reality of this situation and own it. So Logan resolved to turn his life around.

It may feel like your life is ending if you've suffered a traumatic event or you've been sidelined by a major injury, but you can build mental toughness by keeping your perspective. Another thing that might help build mental strength: reflecting on past experiences and how you handled them.

What went well, and what would you have done differently? This type of self-reflection helps build up your stores of resiliency as you learn from past obstacles and put those insights into practice. Emulating somebody you admire is a great way to build mental toughness.

After all, if they overcame similar challenges, why can't you? See how they moved through and past it. I also relearned how to surf and taught her how to wakeboard! In fact, building your own support system is an incredible way to give your mental toughness a backbone. In fact, research from the journal Psychiatry shows that having social support helps build resilience to stress.