Everyone needs a bit of resilience at some point in their lives.
You might need to bounce back from a tough breakup, learn a seemingly impossible skill at work or recover from a surgery. No matter the form, adversity requires mental toughness and self-reassurance to overcome it successfully.
Some people are innately resilient. Others may need to practice the soft skill. Here are three phrases that mentally resilient people never use, according to psychologists and executive coaches:
‘I can’t deal with this’
For many people, the go-to response for handling difficult, stressful or uncomfortable situations is to not handle them at all. They give into their “fight-or-flight” response, which may cause them to get defensive or tell themselves, “I can’t deal with this.”
Mentally resilient people take a different approach, according to Brooklyn, New York-based executive coach Jason Shen. Instead of closing themselves off or running away from their problems, they lean on their community to support them, which he calls “tend and befriend.”
“Even if you instinctively find yourself falling into the adrenaline and cortisol rush of fight-or-flight during a stressful period, you can still take conscious steps to reap the benefits of tend-and-befriend,” Shen wrote for CNBC Make It in March.
Your relationships and social support can help make you more resilient, found a 2022 public health study conducted by German researchers. The next time you need a mental boost, join a peer support group or set up quick, recurring coffee chats with friends and colleagues, Shen recommends. This can give you a safe space to vent and get helpful input from the people who know you best.
“Staying connected to people you care about seems to get harder with each passing year,” Shen wrote. “Consider pre-arranging a dedicated time — say a Monday evening or Friday lunchtime — when you and a close friend or family member will get together in person or catch up virtually.”
‘I’m the victim’
Some hardships can make you feel helpless. Chances are, you’re not. Succumbing to a victim mentality in these moments can make your problems seem bigger and send you into a wave of self-doubt or self-pity.
Instead, use phrases like, “I’m not going to let myself be a victim” or “I can get through this” to build the strength and self-determination you need to overcome your circumstances, recommends psychologist Cortney S. Warren.
“Emotional resilience is associated with grit and mental toughness. There is an understanding that we have to be strong and overcome adversity without letting it break us,” Warren wrote for Make It last year. “Being resilient means that when you experience the pain of mistreatment, you shift your perspective from ‘I’m a victim and powerless to help myself’ to ‘How can I grow from this?'”
‘Yes’ when you don’t want to
If you constantly find yourself taking on extra work or saying “yes” to requests you can’t fulfill, you can do something simple: Stop.
Mentally resilient people know how to set boundaries, psychologist Jessica Jackson told Make It in 2022. While saying “yes” to everything can make you seem eager and available to those around you, it can also cause burnout, stress and contribute to negative emotions, Jackson said.
“Resilience is often confused with independence, like, ‘let me shrink as much as I can to support others,'” she said. “But resilience should be more about prioritizing your needs.”
“If you have dinner plans with a friend, for example, but you need to stay home and rest, you shouldn’t feel bad about rescheduling – or if you need additional support at work because your brain is scattered, ask a manager or teammate for that,” Jackson added.
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