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Bouncing Back from BS
Resilience is life’s kevlar jacket (which, fun fact, is 5x stronger than steel pound for pound). It's the ability to get knocked down by nearly anything in life, brush yourself off, and maybe even grow from the experience. When you’re resilient, you can handle life’s stickiest situations without getting stuck.
But resilience isn’t just a matter of willpower. It’s a muscle that you build over time, by overcoming challenges in your life. I’ll help you learn what types of resilience are best for each situation, how to practice them, and where to turn when you need a little boost.
What Resilience Looks Like
Resilience only comes into play when you’re forced to handle unwanted change.
It doesn’t take much resilience to sit on the couch all day and collect royalty checks from your brief but lucrative stint as a child actor. You can’t build muscle or resilience without some resistance, but the more you push back, the stronger you’ll get. With enough practice, resilience will become second nature, and you’ll start to see adversity as an opportunity to flex your new Schwarzenegger-sized resiliency.
Signs of Resilience
- Rolling with stress
- Communicating effectively in tough situations
- Maintaining solid relationships
- Crushing unexpected adversity
- Being adaptable
- Staying optimistic even in tough times
- Turning setbacks into opportunities
Ways Men Push Through
Like weeds through concrete.
Resilience is a well-balanced cocktail made from equal parts mindset, support network, coping skills, and flexibility. Conveniently, resilience in one area of your life often spills over into other areas, helping you tackle expected and unexpected challenges thrown your way.
The following isn’t an exhaustive list, but here’s a few types of resilience to get your juices flowing.
Psychological Resilience
This is the ability to mentally bounce back from whatever unexpected, cruel, cheap-slapstick-comedy scenario life throws your way. It’s the ability to take a deep breath, shift your perspective, and maintain focus after throwing a pick six.
Social Resilience
As social creatures, we’re stronger together. Social resilience is all about cultivating a robust support network. Whether it’s your family, spouse, teammate you won the state bowling championship with in high school, or a coworker you can vent to about your other coworker who chews too loud at his desk — it’s your ability to lean into and accept support from others (and vice-versa) when you need it.
Adaptive Resilience
Being adaptive means being able to roll with whatever life throws your way. You get laid off, so you put your nose to the grindstone and have three interviews set up within a week. Your house gets hit by a meteorite, so you’re patching the roof the next day and chiseling a statue out of that space rock with a smile on your face.
Endurance Resilience
Sometimes life is just tough… no way around it. Endurance resilience is all about staying steady and enduring the storm, confident that you have the skills, abilities, and attitude to wait it out. And when the storm clears, you might even have enough energy left over to search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Spiritual Resilience
Whether you identify with a specific religion, exclusively pray to the fantasy football gods, or just have a reverence for a power bigger than yourself — spiritual resilience is an immensely powerful phenomenon for providing strength, courage, meaning, and purpose to nearly any life circumstance.
Resilience is like a Muscle
Training it is like teaching a stubborn cat new tricks—it takes patience, consistency, and a willingness to take some licks.
Wish you could hit your local hardware store to pick up a build-your-own-resilience kit? Me too, friend… me too. But while there’s no straightforward, step-by-step construction guide, here are a few key components to kickstart the process.
Find a Professional Spotter
If you find yourself struggling to build your resilience muscles, don’t give yourself a hernia. A professional therapist has the resources and expertise to help you overcome whatever’s been holding you back. Check out the provider directory or search for some near you and get in touch with a therapist or support group.
Man Therapy Provider Directory
Find a real life man-therapist.
We have partnered with real life professionals who specialize in men’s issues. Talking with a specialist can be way more efficient than googling symptoms. Browse and find one that sounds right for you; they’re ready for whatever you’ll throw at them.
Strategies
Adopt a Growth Mindset
Someone with a “fixed mindset” believes the world is locked in place. He thinks some people are just born smarter, funnier, and better at competitive belching. But someone with a “growth mindset” knows that he can get just as good at all those things and more — if he wants to. This growth mindset is also key to resiliency. If you tell yourself that things can never change, they never will. But when you remind yourself that any skill (including resilience) is within your reach, you’ll be able to achieve whatever you set your mind to.
Actively Build & Maintain Your Support Network
It's cliché, but no man is an island. Being able to turn to your support network to blow off some steam, get advice, or simply unwind after a rough day is one of the best ways to build resilience in the short and long term.
Accept Change as Inevitable
The only constant in life is change. If you can’t accept this fact, life is going to feel like a never ending uphill treadmill set on “heart attack.” Accepting change, setbacks, and failures is all part of growing and developing resilience. As it turns out, you’ve already endured lots of changes in your life (thanks, puberty). So the next time a hurdle comes your way and you’re thinking, “This sucks,” remember that the discomfort will pass, and in its place you might find brand-new depths of resilience.
Develop and Maintain Healthy Boundaries
Knowing when to say “yes” to things — and, more importantly, “no” — is a crucial part of staying resilient. Finding yourself stretched too thin by always saying “yes” can deplete resilience faster than a quarter-sized hole in your oil pan blows your engine. And on the other hand, constantly saying “no” will leave you feeling left out and unchallenged. As with most things, the secret is moderation.
Find Resilience Role Models
No, we’re not talking John McClane from Die Hard (although you could do a lot worse). Think of people in your life who have rolled with setbacks and come out on the other side stronger. It could be a family member, coworker, high school coach, or friend. When you feel stuck, ask yourself what they would do in the same situation. Also, don’t underestimate your past self as a role model. You’ve overcome plenty of obstacles in your life already. Consider what worked, and repeat. Look at what didn’t, and leave it behind.
Replace Internal Shit-Talk with Resilient Self-Talk
While it might sound like a steaming pile of horse manure, how we talk/think about ourselves has a huge impact on our overall resilience. Taking the time to critically explore your thoughts, especially when the going gets rough, is one of the quickest and most effective ways to build resilience. Many guys have a tendency to jump straight to self-blame and/or self-doubt when the going gets tough (“I’m a huge failure… why do I even bother?”) Instead, think of what you’d tell a friend in the same situation; it's likely way more constructive (“You made a mistake, but you’ll do better next time.”).
Need Help?
Resilience gets easier with practice, but don’t be afraid to accept help when it’s offered.
I’ve pulled together a collection of tools and resources to help you practice resilience and learn from others who’ve been building this skill along with you.
These resources will take all the mystery out of how to be… a Hardy Boy. I’ll see myself out.
Below, you’ll find an office chock-full of Gentlemental Health guides just like this one as well as other in-person and online community resources to leverage for your own mental health and to share with other guys who need a hand. Let’s dive in.
Suggested Resources
Maybe it’s time to practice breathing exercises or journaling, or to make an appointment with a trained therapist near you. Check out the resources I’ve handpicked below; you can’t go wrong.
There’s more meat on the mental health bone. try dr. rich’sMental health plan builder.
Gentlemental Health 101
Improving your mental health means taking charge of every aspect of your world. Mental health issues are often interconnected, so explore how other areas of your life can impact each other and get your brain and life into tip-top shape.