Emotional Resilience

During trying times, how can you work on and build emotional resilience?

What an interesting and unexpected first six months of 2020. Clearly, this has been a year of disruption, and one that is demanding much of us. As you continue to navigate this year, you may have a wide variety of emotional reactions to everything you have experienced up to date.

In order to cultivate emotional resiliency during trying times, it’s helpful to reframe your experiences. For instance, if you hold the belief that everything is terrible in the present and will remain terrible in the future, then there is no reason to persevere beyond disappointments, frustrations, pain, or other difficult experiences.

If, however, you deliberately shift your thinking, so that you acknowledge the possibility of growth, opportunity, and positive developments resulting from these life challenges, you will be better poised to develop the necessary resilience to face whatever obstacles are in your way.

In the face of painful challenges, let’s incorporate the attitudes, intentions, and actions that can make a difference in your capacity to be resilient and your ability to rebound to an even better place than before a setback. These same resources can help with perseverance as you pursue a long-held goal or dream.

During these next couple weeks going into July, please write the statements below on a piece of paper, and put them somewhere you will see everyday. Please read them as often as you need, as a reminder that you can face life’s challenges and persevere past them.

1. I know change is the constant in life; my intent is to be flexible and adaptive in the face of change.

2. I am willing to experience the unfamiliar, uncertain, unpleasant, and uncomfortable in life, so that I may cultivate a “Growth” mindset.

3. Mistakes and setbacks are evidence I’m taking action, signs of progress, and a test of my commitment to what I want; they are not signs of inadequacy or failure.

4. I know I have faced other difficult life circumstances, and I can draw on my experience of having successfully made it through them to face my current challenges.

Sending my best,
Dr. Joan Rosenberg

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