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Resilience is an essential mental strength that allows us to thrive through life’s challenges. Just like a muscle, it strengthens the more we use it. By embracing suffering as part of life, focusing on what we can control, and regularly asking if our actions help or hinder us, we train resilience every day. Small, consistent practices like expressing gratitude can help shift your focus from hardship to growth, fostering mental toughness over time. With perseverance and awareness, you’ll build a resilience muscle that helps you overcome anything life throws your way.

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Strengthening Your Resilience Muscle – Life Stories 237

Hello, it’s great to have you back with us! Today, we’re going to explore something incredibly vital—how to grow your resilience, that inner strength that lets you bend but never break when life throws you curveballs.

Now, let’s talk about resilience—that mental fitness that helps us keep going no matter what. Every single one of us has faced tough times because adversity doesn’t discriminate. But here’s the good news: resilience is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. And today, we’re going to uncover how you can train this mental muscle, step by step.

Resilience expert Lucy Hone has broken down resilience into three key principles, and we’ll start by diving into each one to understand how resilient people navigate tough situations.

1. Accept That Suffering Is Part of Life

The first principle of resilience is recognizing that suffering, adversity, and challenges are simply part of the human experience. Resilient people don’t waste time asking, “Why me?” or dwelling on the unfairness of life. They understand that pain, just like joy, is temporary. This doesn’t mean they don’t feel deeply or experience pain—they absolutely do. But they know that, as Peter Levine, a trauma expert, says, life moves in cycles. Pendulation is the word he uses—emotions, like a pendulum, swing between joy and pain, between highs and lows. Resilient people understand that this swing is natural, and they let themselves feel the pain without believing it will last forever.

Think about a time in your life when you thought, “I’ll never get through this.” And yet, here you are. You survived, and the pain that once felt unbearable slowly faded. Life moves forward, and that’s the essence of resilience—knowing that nothing, good or bad, lasts forever. You’ve made it through tough times before, and you will again. Remember that pendulation, the swinging between states of mind, and know that with every low, there’s a high waiting around the corner.

2. Focus on What You Can Control

The second trait of resilient people is their ability to focus on what they can control and let go of what they can’t. This isn’t something we’re naturally wired to do. From an evolutionary standpoint, our brains are hardwired to focus on the negative—the potential threats around us. But resilient people train themselves to look for the positive, to focus on what is within their control. And that’s something you can learn too.

One simple but incredibly effective tool is practicing gratitude. Neuroscience shows that when we engage in gratitude exercises, the areas of our brain linked to empathy and awareness light up. By regularly acknowledging what we’re grateful for, we retrain our brain to see the good around us, not just the dangers. And this is key to resilience: knowing that no matter how dark things seem, there are always sparks of light.

Contradictory emotions can coexist. You can be grieving and still feel moments of joy. You can be sad, yet still experience gratitude. Resilient people know this—they don’t deny their emotions, but they also don’t let them define their entire reality.

3. Ask Yourself: Is This Helping or Hurting?

The third principle of resilience is the ability to step back and ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing helping me or hurting me?” This simple but powerful question brings awareness to your actions. In difficult times, it’s easy to fall into behaviors that make things worse—ruminating, blaming, or avoiding the problem. But resilient people pause, reflect, and choose actions that help them move forward, not backwards.

This is where resilience becomes an active skill. While you can’t control everything that happens to you, you can always choose how you respond. It’s about finding those moments of choice and using them wisely.

Building Resilience Daily

So how can you start building your resilience muscle? It doesn’t take grand gestures or major life changes—it’s about consistent, small practices. Here’s a challenge for you: for the next 30 days, take five minutes every evening to write down three things you’re grateful for that day. These don’t have to be major life events—something as small as a delicious meal, a smile from a stranger, or a quiet moment with a book counts.

On tough days, when it feels like nothing went right, this practice will be especially valuable. It helps train your mind to seek out the good, even in the midst of hardship. Over time, this daily habit will make you more resilient because it shifts your focus from what’s wrong to what’s right.

Final Thoughts

Resilience isn’t about avoiding pain or hardship—it’s about knowing you can move through it and come out stronger. Like any muscle, resilience grows with practice. It’s not easy, and it won’t take away the discomfort, but it will give you the strength to keep moving forward.

Remember, resilience is a skill you can train, and you’re stronger than you know. Keep showing up, keep flexing that resilience muscle, and know that each step you take is progress. We’re proud of you.

Until next time, keep on rising.

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