It has happened to all of us to hear an acquaintance praised for having successfully faced a difficult situation in their life. In these cases, what is praised is the ability to face difficulties without losing heart, perhaps putting a good face on a bad situation, and transforming a negative situation into a positive one. All of this depends on the mental strength or resilience of the individual.
Each of us has our own “reserve”, so to speak, of mental strength. It develops with birth, growth and the continuous relationship with the environment and the people around us, and becomes fundamental to serenely face the difficulties we encounter in everyday life. Let's look in more detail at what it is and what it depends on.
Mental Strength or Resilience: What It Is and Why It Matters
Resilience can be understood as a particular ability of the individual to adapt in the face of a negative situation or trauma. It could be the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, an accident or a dismissal: the essential thing is not the fact itself, but the reaction to it.
It is easy to understand that mental strength is important to live in a positive and as serene way as possible when faced with a negative situation. In fact, it is inevitable to encounter unpleasant circumstances and events in our lives, and the ability to learn to cope with the management of this type of difficulty is essential. Otherwise, one could suffer from very heavy emotional consequences, for more or less long periods.
As anyone with experience in psychology knows, it seems that each of us has our own resilience, even if this is not always activated in the face of difficulties, or is not always effective. The reason is that a person's resilience depends on multiple factors; some of these are beyond our control, while others can be trained.
This is what explains why some individuals react differently from others in difficult situations: it depends partly on their mental strength. There are those who cannot tolerate very heavy stress, those who tolerate it and overcome it with some difficulty and those who, instead, face the pressure in a reactive and energetic way, almost naturally: the key is resilience.
In this sense, it should be noted that resistance and resilience are two different concepts. The person who resists adversity opposes it and tries to remain as he is despite everything; instead, the resilient person manages, so to speak, to bend without breaking: difficulties transform and improve him. This also makes resilience very important for personal growth and well-being.
What happens when mental strength is lacking
Unfortunately, there are times in life when resilience may be lacking or not sufficient. It may depend either on a personal characteristic of ours, or on the fact that we are faced with a circumstance that, for us, turns out to be too worrying, heavy or difficult to bear. But what happens when our mental strength is not enough?
The first consequence could be the loss of control over one's emotions. Resilience, in a certain sense, brings with it the awareness of one's actions and empathy, and therefore the ability to direct emotions in a positive direction. Faced with a sad situation, those who lack mental strength end up not understanding what they feel, make less conscious choices and let themselves be carried away by negativity.
The same applies, on a more general level, to thoughts: without resilience, we become prey to negative thoughts. When faced with adversity, instead of preparing ourselves and trying to maintain serenity and happiness, we let ourselves be carried away by sadness, we imagine an impending catastrophe and so we do not concentrate on what we have to do, we do not gather the strength to fight but we risk giving up right away.
Finally, a lack of mental strength can lead to a drop in productivity: getting down leads to seeking relief in rest, which often proves to be useless or harmful. On the contrary, the resilient individual knows that, in certain cases, to find the appropriate solutions it is necessary to continue to commit and carry out a constructive effort, to demonstrate to oneself that the difficulties are not overwhelming but, on the contrary, can represent a stimulus to improve one's way of life.
Tips for training mental strength
If mental strength is so important, then it must be possible to find it, somehow, in times of difficulty, or try to train it. But is it possible to work on one's resilience, or is it a faculty that is, so to speak, fixed and impossible to modify?
As we have said, mental strength depends on each individual. In fact, since childhood, we begin the development of our resilience with progressive learning, facing step by step problems, disappointments, the end of our childhood dreams and the stressful occasions of everyday life, but we do not always become aware of it.
Once you become an adult, however, you can evolve and change your attitude in a conscious way: this applies to every aspect of life, including resilience. You can work on yourself to improve physical or mental abilities, change attitudes or ways of doing things, and you can also try to increase your mental strength to face everyday problems with greater serenity.
In particular, it is appropriate to try to change the concept we have of ourselves and the world around us. Those who are unable to activate the mechanisms of resilience often do so because they have a low opinion of themselves, feel fear and panic when faced with failure and believe they have lost from the start; or because they have too much consideration for others and their judgment, or because they are afraid of the environment in which they live and consider it dangerous, unsustainable and incompatible with their own mentality.
To simplify, we can say that it can be useful to try not to have excessive pessimism. Excessive optimism should not be sought, but the ability to reason with a cool head about what is happening; we should be able to see even in negative events not a constant threat, but a sort of contribution to our growth.
Some tips
To support resilience, then, it can be useful to change our habits and our vision of the world. To do so, we must force ourselves to make a significant psychological effort, a real training that certainly requires many steps and cannot be done overnight. On the contrary, continuous and serious work is needed, and above all, the desire to grow and change is needed.
The first suggestion to not lose heart on this path is to always look at a reasonable future. That is, you should always think about the future, but not in the short term (for example, tomorrow), nor in the long term (in thirty years, or fifty): the future on which to focus is close enough not to be unthinkable, and not so far away as to seem uncontrollable.
This will help us to strengthen our sense of responsibility and our desire to commit ourselves to overcome difficulties, setting ourselves achievable goals. Otherwise, by thinking only about tomorrow we cannot plan anything, and by looking too far ahead we end up losing hope of being able to change something by acting immediately, and we fall prey to feelings of guilt.
Another useful tip is to give yourself specific commitments and set deadlines. If our life is organized we will always have points of reference, which will be useful to us so as not to get lost along the way, even in the hardest moments. The important thing is not to overdo it: we are not robots, and we must also plan times for rest and slowing down for the health of the body and mind.
Even more useful, but also more difficult, is to increase our self-awareness in a targeted way. To do this we have many possibilities, but the best way is to dedicate time to ourselves, in meditation and reflection.
There are actually real “mindfulness” techniques that, thanks to specific training, allow you to obtain this type of results. For many, however, it might be enough to disconnect for a while and give yourself a few minutes of peace, to recover your energy, think about yourself and your way of looking at things.
Finally, one last tip: create a community that is as solid as possible. Whether it is family, school or work friends, a group united by a sport, a hobby or any activity, the important thing is to have some quality people around you, with whom you can share good communication and in whom you can place your trust.
Not everyone is suited to having many friends or an intense social life, and that's not the point: the essential thing is knowing you have someone you can count on in times of need. This awareness alone can help you increase your self-esteem and deal with any adversities in life in a more resilient way.
In any case, in case of personal problems it is always better to contact a specialist in the sector to share your experiences and doubts and for further information.