Short messages on Positive change from Respect Yourself, the guidance site for young people to help make good decisions in life.
In some situations, despite our best efforts, we still can’t fix the problems we find ourselves in. Coping strategies can help you learn to accept situations that are beyond your control and find ways to help you feel better even if the problem still exists.
Being able to stop and think before reacting, to generate alternative solutions, weighing consequences of decisions before you act, and having openness to seeking support when needed, will help build your resilience to adversity.
Resilience uses four basic skills: awareness (noticing what is going on around you and inside your head); rational thinking; reaching out (how we call upon others to help us meet the challenges we face); fitness (our mental/physical ability to cope with the challenges without becoming ill).
Resilience relies on different skills and draws on various sources of help, including rational thinking skills, physical and mental health, and your relationships with those around you.
“Resilience” is the ability to cope with and rise to the inevitable challenges, problems and set-backs you meet in the course of your life, and come back stronger from them. It is a life skill that anyone can learn and develop.
Start the new year with an empty jar and fill it with notes about good things that happen. Next New Years Eve, empty it and see what awesome stuff happened this year.
You have stories, but you are not your stories. You have labels, but you are not your labels. Make a list of everything you are, maybe 200 things. Return to your list regularly: keep adding to it or cross a few things out, which are no longer true for you.
Your stories, memories, and experiences have shaped your personality but they are still only stories. They may have been real once, but are definitely not real now. They exist only inside your head, as fleeting thoughts, beliefs, pictures, and ideas of “self”.
Treat people kindly, for your own sake as well as theirs. In the end, you will be the one who suffers, as you will have to live with yourself knowing what you’ve done. Respond with compassion and help others to do the same.
Although we all have differences, ultimately we are all the same, and we all feel lost at times. We all have the same feelings, and we all need to give love and to be loved.