Have you ever wondered why some people have an ability to handle difficult circumstances and experiences better than others? It comes down to something called resilience. Resilience is our ability to bounce back from adversity. Essentially, it’s our ability to experience and move through difficult emotions.

The reason why this ability appears to be easier for some than others is because our resilience is significantly influenced by a complex combination of biology and conditioning.

There are biological factors, such as a weak prefrontal cortex, that influence resilience. And certainly, it’s easy to understand how growing up in a family of origin with parents or other caregivers who struggle with a negative mindset will influence their children’s resilience.

If this describes you, and bouncing back from mishaps or misfortunes is difficult for you, there’s good news. Resilience is a skill, which means that becoming more resilient is something you can learn through consistent practice. Like any other muscle, our mental and emotional muscles grow stronger through exercise.

Here are 5 ways you can become more resilient:

1) Gratitude – Practicing gratitude is one of the ways you can start to strengthen your mindset and your resilience. This involves more than just thinking about what you’re grateful for, although that’s a good start. However, to gain more strength in your ability to access powerful thoughts like gratitude, you’ll have to do more than just think about it. Journaling 3-5 things you’re grateful for every day will start to strengthen a new neuropathway in your brain.

2) Contemplate the Alternative Perspective– No matter what the experience, there are always multiple ways to interpret our experience that is greatly influenced by the conditioning of our mindset or what I refer to as our lens. The way one person interprets an event may be through a very different lens than another.

There’s a practice called cognitive restructuring that’s based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) where you move through a process of 1) writing down an experience, 2) your thoughts about the experience 3) your feelings about the experience 4) and then you challenge yourself to think about the experience from an alternative perspective, and then finally 5) how does this alternative perspective influence your emotions.

3) Seek the Silver Lining– Similar to gratitude and contemplating the alternative perspective, seeking the silver lining is a practice that will strengthen your resilience. This practice, like the previous exercises, is something done in retrospect. Taking time to journal about difficult experiences from a compassionate perspective and contemplating how you’ve grown from that experience and other potential benefits, will increase your ability to access productive, strength-based thoughts in the future.

4) Savor the Positive Moments– Unlike the previous three practices, this is a resilience exercise you practice in the moment. It’s a practice I learned from Dr. Rick Hanson’s book “Hardwiring Happiness.” Dr. Hanson is also the author of another one of my favorite books, “Resilient.”

Savoring the moment is a practice, just like it sounds, where you purposefully practice savoring the positive moments. Dr. Hanson explains that due to the nature of our brains being programmed for survival and not happiness, we generally spend much more time thinking about negative events in our lives than we do positive events.

Dr. Hanson suggests if we purposefully spend more thinking about positive experiences than we normally would, especially during the moment we are having the experience, we will strengthen and start to rewire our mind to experience more resilience.

5) Exercise – There’s a reason why exercise has been shown to be a main contributor to longevity. Exercise not only improves and strengthens physical fitness, but it also strengthens the brain and improves our overall mental health. Even thirty minutes of moderate exercise, such as taking a brisk walk 3 times a week, is enough to improve your mood and your resilience.

As someone who has had to work hard to strengthen my own mental and emotional muscles, and committed my career to helping others do the same, I’ve often been asked what people can do to help their children become more resilient.

First and foremost, it starts with you. Moreso than being told or taught, children learn much more through observing their environment. That’s not to say that your children won’t benefit from you teaching them to practice these skills. But setting the example for your children by practicing these exercises yourself will be a much more powerful way to help your children become more resilient.

Written by: Karrol-Jo Foster, PhD, LMHC