How well do you recover from disappointment, stress, loss? If you tend to snap back like a taut rubber band, then you’re resilient all right. But if you feel you’ve lost a bit of your stretch and have a harder time getting over each new stressor, then it’s time to hit the resilience gym.
We talk a lot about resilience here at meQ, and a recent study underscores how important this is.
What Researchers Set Out to Find
Researchers at the Basic Psychology Unit at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona analysed the responses of 254 students from the Faculty of Psychology in different questionnaires. The goal of the study, published in Behavior Psychology, was to evaluate their level of satisfaction with life and find connections between their resilience and their capacity of emotional recovery, which they define as “one of the components of emotional intelligence which consists in the ability to control one’s emotions and those of others.”
Survey Says…
Research data (as summarized here) shows that students who are more resilient, 20% of those surveyed, are more satisfied with their lives and are also those who believe they have control over their emotions and their state of mind. Researchers say that resilience positively predicted the level of satisfaction with one’s life.
Build Your Resilience
Here are two ways to start improving your own resilience.
- Understand the way you think. When things go wrong, do you automatically blame yourself or others? Do you jump to conclusions before you have the facts? Do you assume you know what someone’s thinking? You could be caught in a thinking traps—find out which ones and learn to unsnare yourself.
- Look for icebergs. What deeply held beliefs about yourself, others, and the world are causing you to behave in ways that are self destructive? We call these iceberg beliefs, and they can be sneaky because you don’t even know they’re there. But they are, and they’re huge. They’re worth diving down below the surface to identify.
Read more about resilience and get more tips.
Terri Trespicio is a writer, speaker, expert, coach, and founder of Best Decision All Day. Visit her at trespicio.com