Life is full of ups and downs, with many things that are beyond our control. While life doesn’t always give us complete control over everything happening in our lives, in time, it helps us to develop resilience to overcome life’s greatest challenge yet. We must maintain strong resilience in our life to ensure our survival, happiness, and, most importantly, our mental health.
Resilience is important for mental health because it helps us improve our problem-solving skills, establish and maintain healthy interpersonal skills, create realistic goals, and more. Resilience is what keeps us going. Without it, we lose our ability to do meaningful things in life.
In this article, we will discuss 10 reasons why resilience is essential for mental health, so read on to explore every one of them and the ways on how to improve our mental health.
Helps Us Improve Our Problem-Solving Skills
We can’t escape life’s problems, but we can control how we react to them. It’s normal to feel threatened when faced with unexpected events, so don’t feel guilty for feeling that way. It’s a human instinct to fight, freeze or take flight for survival.
When we choose to fight, we develop resilience. Over time, we become more resilient, and we become better at solving problems, no matter how small or big they are. Of course, there are times when we feel stuck and don’t know how to solve problems more immense than what we’ve encountered before.
Resilience will kick in, regardless of how big the problem is because it’s human nature that we’ll do whatever it takes to survive. Our state of mind plays a significant role in our survival because when our well-being is fragile, we tend to withdraw from our fights and freeze instead. Resilience is negatively correlated with negative emotions, anxiety, and depression, and it’s positively correlated with life satisfaction and positive emotions.
Resilience helps us overcome all kinds of challenging life events, such as working in a demanding job, surviving on a low wage in a big city, facing bullies and criticisms, or keeping up with financial commitments. It is resilience that drives us to overcome our problems. Resilience helps us achieve satisfaction and happiness, but without resilience, we’ll break down.
Helps Us Establish and Maintain Strong Interpersonal Skills
We face people with different characters every day, and often our differences cause conflicts between us. We may not always agree with one another, but we can be resilient towards each other. Resilience helps us improve our interpersonal skills, which are essential communication skills for socializing with other people.
Resilience will help us develop confidence and self-esteem, which are essential for our mental health. Confidence allows us to project a positive attitude around other people and motivate us to perform meaningful things in life. Building confidence and maintaining good relationships with others avoid awkward situations or conflicts that can lead to stress and dissatisfaction.
Reminds Us To Create Realistic Goals
Many people face disappointment when they cannot pursue or achieve what they want. People who often get backed down and then get backed up understand that resilience is what keeps them going. Resilience helps us learn from our mistakes, thus guiding us to better manage our expectations and only create realistic goals.
When we create realistic goals, we can work within our capabilities. We can also have better control over what we can only manage. Realistic goals prevent us from failures that can negatively impact our confidence or self-worth.
Helps Us Adapt to Hardship
Some days are better than others. It’s normal to experience stressful events and sometimes trauma. Still, while we go through emotional pains, we should continue to function — resilience helps us overcome our most difficult times.
Being resilient isn’t always about overcoming hardship alone — being able to seek help or support from others is also a form of resilience. Resilience reminds us that adversity is part and parcel of life, and it’s okay to ask for help when necessary. When we are resilient towards whatever life throws at us, we’ll prepare ourselves emotionally and mentally to face anything that goes in our way.
Protects Our Mental Health
Resilience helps us maintain our mental health because it can protect us from depression and anxiety. Resilience can also help us get through painful experiences or trauma. For individuals who are suffering from mental health conditions, resilience can help them improve their coping ability.
We cannot conveniently erase past memories that are painful and difficult. Fortunately, those bad experiences don’t have to determine the outcome of our lives. Resilience empowers us to respond positively to the aspect of our lives that we can control, grow with, or change.
Encourages Healthy Thoughts
Resilience is essential for mental health because it promotes healthy thoughts, especially during our most difficult times. Resilience encourages us to be rational and realistic to make balanced decisions. Every time we feel overwhelmed by life’s challenges, resilience reminds us that whatever happens to us now doesn’t determine our future.
Can Lead to Self-Discovery
Often, people learned that their struggles help them grow in certain ways. If your previous problems have helped you improve certain aspects of your life, that’s resilience. Resilience is about learning from life experiences.
When you’ve experienced hardship and overcome it, you learn a lot about yourself. You realize that you are tough and proactive. You also begin to discover your self-worth and appreciate life more.
Helps Us Accept Change
Life doesn’t always go our way, and often we have to adapt to change. Resilience teaches us about change and that we should learn to accept change. People who cannot accept change will always feel pressured or forced to accept change, which isn’t healthy for the mind, body, and soul.
While resilience teaches us how to have realistic goals, it also teaches us to adapt to changes and change our plans to fit our current life situation. Resilience also helps us accept things we cannot change and helps us focus on things we can control or alter. Resilience guides us on moving forward and adapting to change — adaptability allows us to make options.
Can Help Us Better Manage Stress
Stress can be dangerous and life-threatening if it goes out of control. Enduring stressful events isn’t healthy if our minds have many negative thoughts. Resilient people may endure hard times, but they believe there’s a silver lining from whatever happens to them.
Resilience helps us bounce back and face difficult circumstances while maintaining a stable and positive mental and well-being. Everyone can be resilient. Resilience is an innate human capacity that any of us can learn and develop.
When we choose to be resilient, we can better manage our stress. Less stress means better well-being. The more resilient we get, the better we become at handling stress and maintaining our mental health.
Helps Us Open Up to Others
Resilience isn’t about overcoming life’s challenges alone. Many resilient people seek comfort from others to help them get through dark or difficult times. Resilience even makes people more empathetic toward other people facing similar situations.
When we can open up to others about our feelings or problems, we lift some burdens off our chests. Sharing our pain and having our voices heard is essential for our mental health. Our resilience will also provide others (with similar hardship) emotional support, faith, and hope, which is also crucial for their mental health.
Final Thoughts
While resilience is an innate human capacity, it is an ability that we have to discover and develop on our own. Resilience is important for mental health because our resilience will determine how we react to our situations. Without resilience, we may lose control over our lives and descent into mental health conditions, like anxiety and depression.
When we adopt resilience into our lives, we’ll have control over what we can control or alter. Resilience reminds us that what happens to us now doesn’t have to indicate our future outcome. Over time, resilience improves our problem-solving skills, adaptability, and well-being.
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