Resilience

Resilience

Resilience helps you adapt to change and recover quickly when things don't go well. How can we become more resilient?

Do the preparation task first. Then read the article and do the exercises.

Preparation

Raul never seems to let difficulties in life worry him. When someone disagrees with him, he sees it as a chance to understand things from a different point of view. When he had too much work, he learnt to improve his time management skills. When he lost his job, he took an online course so he could apply for better jobs. To Raul's friends, he's the best example of resilience.

What is resilience? One definition of resilience is the ability to be happy or successful again after difficulties. But resilience isn't just that. It is also the ability to adapt to challenging situations without feeling like it's all too much for you. It means using difficult situations to grow and improve. 

Some people might say Raul's just lucky. They might think he never gets stressed and that things just don't bother him. But they're wrong. Resilient people do feel stress, emotional pain, disappointment and other negative emotions. But it's what they do with those feelings that helps make them resilient. Resilience involves thoughts, behaviour and actions that we all can develop and strengthen. People are not born resilient – they learn resilience.

So what can we do to build resilience? Here are three tips.

1. Be aware of your reactions

When we think something is difficult or threatening, negative feelings and thoughts can lead to negative actions. By being aware of our feelings, we can learn to accept them and to deal with them better. Mindfulness activities like meditation can increase our awareness of our emotional state and help us calm negative thoughts.

Our brains often try to make sense of negative events by creating a story around the situation. For example, if Stella openly disagrees with us in a meeting, we might tell ourselves that she doesn't like us and was looking for the opportunity to make us feel uncomfortable in front of the boss. We tell ourselves this story until it feels real, even though it's likely that the reality is quite different. 

Being aware that everybody has a tendency to create stories around events is the first step to managing our reactions. When we realise that our version of events is just one interpretation of things, the situation becomes less painful and we are more open to seeing things from different perspectives.

2. Use writing techniques to gain different perspectives

It is not easy to recognise and change the stories we tell ourselves but there are techniques that can help us. Greater Good Magazine from Berkeley, the University of California, suggests expressive writing – writing freely about an issue for 20 minutes, putting your deepest thoughts and feelings on paper. As we write, the process forces us to face our thoughts honestly and helps us find new understanding.

Writing can also help us think more positively about difficult experiences. Once we have explored the negative side of something, another technique involves making a list of the positive aspects of the situation. For example, maybe Stella's comments in the meeting forced you to make your original idea much better. Or what she said might have helped you understand her point of view. A study found that people who did this 'list the positives' activity every day for three weeks felt more positive, particularly the negative thinkers, who reported feeling less depressed.

3. Be kind to yourself

It is important that we don't judge ourselves for the negative feelings and thoughts that we have, and that we forgive ourselves for the mistakes we make. Talking to other kind and sympathetic individuals can help support us when we are experiencing difficulty. Sharing experiences with other people can help us become more aware of our feelings and offer us different perspectives. Whether these are our colleagues, our friends or people in other social groups we belong to, forming strong relationships helps us feel less alone.

Being kind to yourself is also about looking after your physical health. Making sure you get enough sleep, plenty of exercise and healthy food can help reduce the stress you're feeling.

The stress, worry and emotional pain that life brings can be challenging. But if we work on building our resilience and getting the support we need to do so, we can gradually learn to deal with these difficult circumstances and, in the process, become stronger.

Discussion

Download
Worksheet89.76 KB

Language level

Average: 5 (5 votes)
Do you need to speak better English at work?
Learn to speak, read, write and understand English in a variety of work situations. Join thousands of learners from around the world who are making great progress with their English level with our online courses.

Submitted by Rubí H on Sun, 07/03/2021 - 01:33

Permalink
The reading was interesting since I didn't knowthe term of resilience, but now that I know what it means, I'm interested in putting into practice the tips that are given in the text to be able to be a more recilient person.

Submitted by Mary L on Sun, 07/03/2021 - 00:36

Permalink
I don't consider myself a resilient person, I always blame myself for bad things that happen, I worry about everything, I almost always give up when difficulties arise.

Submitted by Daniel V on Sun, 07/03/2021 - 00:30

Permalink
I think this is an excellent reading activity because it is useful not only to improve our english skills but to improve our social abilities.

Submitted by Julieta E on Sun, 07/03/2021 - 00:00

Permalink
I enjoyed reading this text. I think almost all the people need to know these tips about resilience for our own grow and both for our mental and physical health. I'm very interested about this topic because of the way people react to those situations.

Submitted by Myriam H on Sat, 06/03/2021 - 23:17

Permalink
This article helped me a lot, since I´m usually a person who worries a lot about things that happen to me and this tends to stress me too much, now I have found some ways to control my emotions and see the positive side of everything.

Submitted by Elizabeth M on Sat, 06/03/2021 - 23:13

Permalink
This article is really interesting .I liked and enjoyed it because it made me reflect about dificult situations and how sometimes we are mean to ourselves. Resilience is about remember to learn of every bad or god situation.

Submitted by Juan M on Sat, 06/03/2021 - 22:18

Permalink
I'm think that this type of articles are very interesting because you can learn english and how is that you can be better whit yourself.

Submitted by Alejandro S on Sat, 06/03/2021 - 21:55

Permalink
I enjoy reading this article, I had never read an article related with the resilience and i think that everyone should learn resilience and more in this difficult times.

Submitted by Ariadna R on Sat, 06/03/2021 - 21:51

Permalink
I liked the article, it is very true what it says and I think it is something worth working on.

Submitted by Mónica E on Sat, 06/03/2021 - 21:40

Permalink
The reading seemed very interesting to me since I did not know the meaning of resilience, now, after having read this I can say that I consider myself a resilience person since I identify with many of the aforementioned situations. It is very appropriate that these issues are mentioned in order to have a better vision and be able to make a change in your life as you want to.