Viktor Frankl wrote in his book “Man’s searching for meaning “about his experiences while he was in a concentration camp in Auschwitz and how he managed to survive, both mentally and physically. Even though he had been exposed to conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food, and various mental stress he had retained his human dignity. He accepted suffering as an ineradicable part of the life, even as fate and death. In his book he stated that in those moments he chooses to act “by having a normal behaviour even though he was finding himself in an abnormal situation.”
Even though researchers, psychologists, psychotherapists, and social workers had done their best, into defining and explaining why some people have or not emotional resilience it is important to be flexible in accepting that everyone is different. Those who lack emotional resilience will be preoccupied with planning, less self-control, less self-reflection, less determination to meet life’s challenges.
Really knowing and understanding ourselves is a particularly important part of developing resilience especially during these difficult times. Ideally it will be to develop self-awareness by acknowledging who we are and identify our strengths, likes and why not, dislikes. In the book, “The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles”, Karen Reivich and Andrew Shattéit explained how we can develop resilience and how to master it.
We are all familiar with the proverbial turning life’s lemons into lemonade, that really emphasizes that we are capable to regulate our emotions and reconsider our events at a cognitive level.
Resilience is under our control, we can be taught to be resilient and we can change the way we handle setbacks, how we face challenges. Resilient people have found a system for stimulating themselves and tackling problems thoughtfully and energetically. It is not that they are not anxious at all, they also feel anxiety and have doubts, but they have learned how to stop their anxiety and doubts from overwhelming them.
When we are faced with stressful situations and we cannot control the event itself, we can only control the way we respond to it and by changing the way we think, we can change our life for good.