Armour Up: Resilience for Good Mental Health

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I’ve heard from a lot of people that they felt like last year kind of kicked their buts. Maybe it is phenomenon marking 20 years since the New Millennium, the Y2K, the end of the world…or maybe not. It really doesn’t matter - our reality is what matters, and the reality is that life will test our resilience, sometimes with no heads-up, and it can hurt. Life is indiscriminate. It doesn’t care if you had a tough 2019 and just need a break. That’s life. 

Fortunately, our challenges do not define us, how we rise to them does. Without struggles in our lives we would probably stagnate. Challenges forge character, purpose, and grit. It shows you who you are now and who you can be. It imparts to you a richness of experience and learning that you would be unlikely to ever possess otherwise. It creates opportunity if you allow yourself to see it. It makes you human. It makes you one of us.  

So often what happens to us is beyond our control, but the truth is that however difficult it may seem, we can choose to be knocked around by our circumstances, or we can armour up.  

So here’s to being brilliantly human, and here’s to building mental resilience!

Before we get to the ‘how-to’s - let me just say this: The only constant in life is change and challenge. Accept that and you are halfway there.

And with that uplifting sentiment ringing in your ear I’d like to offer you five ways to armour up against 2020 and beyond:

  1. Get to Know Yourself

    Spend 3 minutes and take a resilience inventory such as this one by Al Siebert, PhD. Understanding yourself is a necessary foundation for good mental health. How can you know where to go if you don’t know where you are?

  2. Focus on What You Can Control

    Focusing obsessively on things outside of our control is a futile exercise that will erode your mental health and self-confidence. Instead of wasting time with that, refocus on what you actually do have a level of control or influence over and use that knowledge to proactively move forward. Ask yourself the questions: “What can I control here?” and then go from there.

  3. Adopt a Victor Mentality to Challenges - Fake It Till You Make It!

    Entertain the possibility that you have what it takes to navigate through challenging times. Humour me! Attempt a hopeful, optimistic outlook, and expect a positive outcome instead of a negative one. Sometimes we really do have the right to feel hard done by, but be aware that a victim mentality will  weaken your sense of resilience and can keep us trapped in an unhealthy mental state, not to mention unhappy circumstances. “Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine

  4. Reframe Your Thoughts to be More Optimistic

    Martin Seligman’s 3Ps Model of Resilience, a positive psychology framework, is a simple but very relevant reminder of how not to fall into the typical traps that come with setbacks and stressful life experiences.

    When trouble hits ask yourself these three questions to raise your awareness of how you are responding in the moment. This can allow you to step out of the often unhelpful automatic thought and behaviour process and into intentional and more helpful process that help you to adapt and cope:

    • Personalisation: Am I putting unnecessary blame or accountability on myself for this setback/situation? 

    • Pervasiveness: Am I generalising this setback/situation to other areas of my life and over-emphasising the negatives in my life right now? 

    • Permanence: Am I assuming that this setback or situation will last forever? 

    For each question that you answered 'yes' to, ask yourself: Is this true? Is this helpful? 

    Follow this up with a technique to foster positive emotion and reset your perspective. For example, if you answered yes to the question around pervasiveness, think about what is good in your life, and what is going right.  

  5. Seek Support. Don’t be a Hero. Create a Caring Community.

    • Connect with friends and family on a regular basis.

    • Identify your sources of support at work, at home, and in the community.

    • Practice good communication. In other words, ask for what you need and then say when you no longer need it. Just because you admit that you need help right now does not mean you will need help next week. 

No matter who you are, what your job, age, nationality or religion, when it comes to mental health we are all the same: we feel suffering in the same way and we conquer suffering with the same tools, starting with step 1.

Blog by Ance Strydom