Four Ways to Become a More Resilient YOU!

For many of you, summer is a great time to reconnect with the most important person in your life, YOU!  Summer is a time to be enjoying the weather, vacationing, and a time to breathe since spring semester is closing.  This is the perfect time to focus on ways to develop resilience. 

…Wait, what’s that?  Resilience is how you manage stress. While stress is inevitable, it doesn’t disappear.  You can get worn out from carrying stress over time. To have higher resilience, you should consider practicing resilience-building activities intentionally.  Practicing regularly will allow you to have a higher resilience, in other words, a quicker “bounce back” and better management of stress. 

Think of a bouncy ball: the more you practice resilience, the higher your bouncy ball will rebound after a stressful situation.  Who doesn’t want to bounce back quicker after a stressful situation?

Here are some ideas to build into your day to help you build your resilience:

1.     Ever drive to work and wonder how you got there?  Why not take this time to practice mindfulness.  You can do this by paying attention to your surroundings and focusing on being presence.  When you get stressed, you lose a sense of presence.  Regularly practicing mindfulness will help you to notice when you aren’t focusing on what you need to in the moment.  This has helped me to bring my wandering mind back to focus on a student’s needs during appointments when I have many other projects on my plate that day.  Mindfulness can be applied to other areas of your life, too.  Try practicing mindful eating and exercising.

2.     Practicing gratitude isn’t as simple as naming something you’re grateful for.  You should take time to think deeper about the person, thing, or event that you are grateful for to the point that it brings emotion or a sense of awe.  Create a gratitude journal and write down 1-3 things you are grateful for some time during your day.  Some great questions to help you dive deeper into gratitude:

·       Why does that person, thing, or event make you so grateful?
·       What attributes about the person, thing, or event make you grateful?
·       What would life be like if you did not have that person, thing, or event in your life? 

Better yet, why not write a letter to someone who you are grateful for.  Making time to read this letter to them is one of the best ways to reap the benefits of practicing gratitude.  

3.     What things make you happy? What are your personal strengths?   What activities do you do that make you lose track of time?  Activities that you enjoy are likely using your strengths.  Identify your strengths and make sure you are utilizing them. Take time to build these activities into your weekly schedule.

4.     Take time to develop meaningful relationships.  For some, this may mean renewing the relationships you already have.  Seek out a mentor; it doesn’t have to be within your career.  Is there a new hobby you want to learn?  Find somebody who can teach you.  Who is that person who always makes you feel awesome?  Have you spent time cultivating your relationship with them recently?

Finally, take time to take care of yourself.  This is essential to developing resilience.  People who get more sleep, eat healthy, and exercise have a higher resilience, among many other benefits.  This probably isn’t news to you, right?  Slight adjustments to your diet or just 10 minutes to walk on your lunch break are simple steps to creating a healthier lifestyle.

Hopefully you have some new ideas for taking time to take care of yourself, or at the very least, you are reminded of some activities that you can try to practice more intentionally this summer.  What small changes can you commit to this week to be a healthier, more resilient you?

Ali Mears

Ali has been a career services consultant at Purdue University’s Center for Career Opportunities since 2013.  Prior to her work at Purdue, she researched how college students develop grit, resilience, and persistence.  She created a curriculum based on this research that was taught at Ohio University in a summer bridge program for provisionally-admitted students.  Ali recently took a course in developing resilience and created an interactive workshop that she facilitated for career consultants and pre-professional advisors at Purdue and at the 2015 Career Development Professionals of Indiana Conference.