You can bounce back from the tough times in life by using any number of skills that help improve your resiliency. Here’s a quick list of some of the most useful tips with some helpful links included.

Remember that most of these are a practice. You’re not expected to master them overnight. But go ahead and pick out one or two – or fourteen! – to try.

1. Accept what is.You’ve got a bad situation in front of you and it’s time to become completely honest with yourself and really seewhat is happening. No more denial or wishful thinking that it will get better. Take away all the emotion from it, identify the problem, and accept that it is reality.

2. Firmly grasp the reality that change is a part of life.
You struggle against change. You expend a lot of energy making sure that change doesn’t happen in your life. Save your energy for better things and accept that change truly is a normal part of life. Expect it.

Resilience: The Beginning

Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith sifted through the mounds of data from their longitudinal study and noticed something peculiar. Of the children born on Kauai in 1955, there were a group of them that were at high risk for doing poorly as they grew older.

It wasn’t this group that caught the attention of the researchers, though. It was a subset of this group. The subset, about thirty-percent of the high-risk kids, was doing well. Really well.

They checked the data again. Yes, all of the high-risk children were facing the same types of adversity: parental issues including low education, behavioral health issues, and discord; health problems; poverty. And yet some of the children did very well while others did not.

Why?