Resilient Thinking

 One of the absolute foundations of healthy thinking is resilience. Some of us start out naturally more resilient than others, but the good news is we all have some resilience to begin with. And the even better news is you can teach yourself to be more resilient by training your mind to think in the right way.

Let's just establish exactly what resilience is. The more resilient you are, the faster and better you will bounce back from anything bad, negative, traumatising. Most of us can come to terms with missing the bus, but not everyone recovers well from bereavement or abuse or redundancy or serious illness. Of course they don't, but it's still the case that some people cope better than others. So what are they doing that means they're able to come to terms with life's tragedies?

Resilient people have higher levels of belief in themselves and their power to control their own lives. This gives them confidence that they will overcome their difficulties in time.

In my experience, the people who cope best with disaster are usually the same ones who cope best with missing the bus. That's really useful because it means you can practise being resilient every time you miss the bus, or burn the food, or have a bad cold, or can't afford a new item of clothing you fancy. Once you believe you can cope with the little things, it gets easier to believe in your ability to cope with the bigger things when they come along. So let's look at the kinds of thinking that will make you a more resilient person.