Resiliency is our capacity to recover from setbacks or challenges. Mindfulness can help us build the qualities that support resilience and a stronger resistance to stress. We look at what the research says.
“A tree that bends with the wind does not break.”
– Anonymous –
About Resilience
Resiliency is our ability to recover from challenges or hardships, and can also be thought of as a measure of our flexibility. That which is pliable can be stretched thin or bent out of shape, yet returns to its original form once it’s no longer under duress.
The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress.”
What makes us resilient is a complex mix of genetics, psychology, social and cultural influences, as well as our spiritual strength and our mindfulness.
Resiliency matters because happiness matters. People who score higher in resilience also tend to score higher on measures of subjective well-being, such as life satisfaction and positive affect.
While some seem to be born more resilient than others, resiliency can be learned. Mindfulness and meditation are useful tools for developing resilience. Using positive affirmations for women can also help you uncover your own capacity for resilience.
“Self-awareness is not just relaxation and not just meditation. It must combine relaxation with activity and dynamism.”
– Deepak Chopra –
Awareness vs. Just Relaxing
Those who are resilient are better adapted to handle stress. It might make sense, then, that relaxation training and other self-care methods could strengthen resilience simply by reducing stress, but the research below suggests there is more to it. When under duress, the last thing we want to be told is to ‘just relax.’
Unlike simply relaxing, mindfulness requires an active component of awareness that asks us to question our thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness gives us the ability to pause and observe the mind. Within that pause, there’s space for new perspectives, which can loosen our habitual reactivity to stress.
What Science Says:
A 2020 study of 121 firefighters found that a short mindfulness training program (four 2-hour sessions over four weeks) led to a greater increase in psychological resilience than relaxation training or no training. More days of out-of-class practice were linked to greater gains in positive affect and attention in the mindfulness group, but not in the relaxation group.
Similarly, a 2018 study of 46 human service professionals found a mindfulness and resilience skills program improved resilience and psychological well-being and reduced burnout. Most of these gains held when measured again one month later.
Mindfulness Exercises:
Build your resilience with mindfulness and heightened awareness.
- Improve your self-awareness with 10 journal prompts
- Enhance awareness and relaxation with 6 mindfulness body scans
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.”
– Anonymous –
Equanimity for a Stable Mind
Mindfulness can train the mind to become more balanced and stable. Equanimity refers to a mind that is centered and equally balanced between desire and aversion. This quality of equanimity can support resilience by making it more difficult to throw the mind off center. Even in the face of great hardship, a stable mind remains stable.
Those who embrace the quality of equanimity are discerning and healthily detached. This does not mean they are uncaring. True equanimity is imbued with love. One who is stable learns to lovingly go with the flow. Rather than getting thrown by the waves, the centered mind rides them.
What the Science Says:
A 2016 study of smokers and nonsmokers found that a brief mindfulness training (Integrative Body-Mind Training) improved emotional regulation and the stress response. These changes were related to increased activity in the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex, brain areas involved in self-control.
A 2018 randomized trial of 153 stressed adults found that smartphone mindfulness training that included acceptance reduced stress reactivity: cortisol and systolic blood pressure responses to a lab stressor were lower than with monitoring-only training or an active control. The authors point to acceptance as the active ingredient. When we’re mindful, we take note of what’s happening without judgement, and without needing things to be different. Acceptance in this sense is close to equanimity, the ability to remain centered and non-reactive despite one’s present circumstances.
Mindfulness Exercises:
Build resiliency by cultivating equanimity and a balanced, stable mind.
“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh –
Understanding Impermanence
Buddhist teaching holds that impermanence is a basic feature of experience, and mindfulness practice lets us see it for ourselves. By curiously paying attention to our own breath, thoughts, emotions and the world around us, we notice nothing lasts forever. Everything is in a continual process of change, and anything could change for the better at any moment.
Impermanence encourages unattachment. Rumination acts in the opposite manner. Obsessively re-thinking the past keeps us trapped there, attached to our resentments. In truth, even our memories can change over time, if we allow it. Reflection is a healthy adaptation of rumination. The difference between reflection and rumination is mindfulness.
What the Science Says:
A 2010 study of 164 students on mindfulness and uncontrollable thinking found mindfulness was negatively correlated with rumination, and specifically with how uncontrollable rumination felt. People higher in mindfulness were less likely to find their ruminative thoughts escalating into self-perpetuating cycles.
A 2014 study found that acting with awareness (a facet of mindfulness) and healthy reflection predicted greater tolerance for distress. Participants who scored higher on these traits persisted longer on a frustrating mirror-tracing task.
Mindfulness Exercises:
Strengthen your resilience by embracing impermanence and letting go.
- Reach an understanding of impermanence through guided meditation
- Learn more about impermanence and awareness
“Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves, as well as compassion for others.”
– Sharon Salzberg –
Compassion for Yourself and Others
Hardships, difficulties and challenges are part of life. There’s no avoiding them. Through mindfulness and meditation, we connect deeply to this truth. We can begin to loosen learned behaviors of avoidance and, with compassion, curiously turn toward our suffering. The greater our self-compassion, the more we can be present with our pain. It’s often when we’re able to face our own suffering that we can extend compassion to others. Compassion can also lead to forgiveness. It can help us drop the resentments that keep us stuck in our struggles, and free us to carry on and try again.
What the Science Says:
In a 2017 study of 259 adults living with Multiple Sclerosis, those with higher self-compassion reported better health-related quality of life, partly through greater resilience. The authors note that self-compassion and resilience are both modifiable, and can be targeted by programs that aim to improve overall wellness.
A 2018 study of more than 1,000 adolescents found self-compassion was positively associated with both resilience and curiosity and exploration. The authors suggest that interventions that build self-compassion may strengthen both, offering healthier ways to cope with life’s challenges.
In the workplace, a 2020 review described self-compassion as a trainable capacity linked to employee resilience, and outlined how organizations can build it through contemplative training and supportive leadership and listening styles.
Mindfulness Exercises:
Grow compassion for yourself and others to strengthen your resilience.
- Give yourself compassion for a difficult situation with a guided meditation
- Listen to a guided meditation on self-compassion
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity.”
– Melody Beattie –
Developing Gratitude
Gratitude is the mindful act of seeing the good in all things, even our most challenging hardships. Gratitude lets us reframe our experiences, so that even moments of deep suffering can become opportunities to learn and grow. When we’re grateful, we take nothing for granted. We mindfully notice our connection to the world and to others. With this understanding of interdependence, we may be more inclined to be kind.
What the Science Says:
A 2017 study of 359 students, faculty, and staff after a campus shooting found that resilience appeared to protect against adverse outcomes, while gratitude may promote positive outcomes following trauma. Gratitude may promote post traumatic growth (PTG), the positive growth that can result from adverse experience.
Learning and growth also showed up in a 2016 study of 110 college students that explored gratitude and the ability to stay resilient when learning feels challenging. Students who got text reminders to practice gratitude for three months, and who practiced it regularly, reported greater focus and resilience in learning. The author connects that resilience to an appreciation that challenges help us grow and learn. These findings are self-reported, and the author calls for further research.
Mindfulness Exercises:
Turn obstacles into opportunities, and build resilience through gratitude.
“Willingness to suffer fully, even for an instant, without trying to escape or be safe, means that suffering is no longer an obstacle to full surrender into the mystery of existence.”
– Gangaji –
Surrender
While it may seem counterintuitive, surrendering and fully accepting the present moment can be a key to resilience. Through mindfulness, we develop the capacity to remain present with our greatest struggles and our most challenging emotions. Once we can do this, they may lose some of the hold they had over us. Avoidance often makes our suffering worse. It’s our reluctance to turn towards our hardships and do the deep work of facing them. To surrender, be still, and face what is difficult can reveal the resiliency that’s already within us. It takes courage to practice this deeply introspective type of mindfulness.
What the Science Says:
If it’s resiliency we’re after, we must take the goal as the path. We must be resilient in our practice and in mindfulness itself. Research offers a few pointers. In a 2016 study of 37 therapists, the more effective practitioners had higher levels of mindfulness. A review of predictors of meditation success found that the consistency of your practice influences outcomes. And a 2016 comparison found that long term meditators, with about 9,000 lifetime hours of practice, showed lower stress reactivity than matched non-meditators.
This does not mean, however, that it takes a long time for meditation to have an effect. Many people with a mindfulness meditation practice notice effects right away. A 2010 study found that four days of mindfulness training, 20 minutes a day, improved participants’ performance on cognitive tests.
Mindfulness Exercises:
Embrace your innate resiliency by surrendering to life.
- Recognize your resiliency with a guided meditation
- Remove obstacles to resilience by practicing the art of surrender
- Learn more about what it means to surrender to life
For more mindful tips for the holidays, check out our complete guide to holiday gift-giving.
