From: http://www.rch.org.au/emplibrary/transition/Developing_Resilience.pdf, 2 August 2011

Resilience

Resilience is the ability to cope with life’s ups and downs; being able to cope with and move on from an event that has a negative effect on your life. Resilience is an important area to develop, not just so you can deal with bullies, but so you can deal with other setbacks in your life, whether it is about dealing with a relationship breakup, or not getting into the course you want to.

Becoming Resilient

Many things can help you to become more resilient over time. These include:

• A caring and supportive family
• Supportive friends you can trust
• Trying out new things
• Setting yourself realistic goals and achieving them
• Being confident in yourself and your abilities
• The ability to communicate with others
• Using problem-solving skills successfully
• Managing your feelings

Building Resilience

Whether or not you have any of the things mentioned previously, you can build your own resilience by:

• Getting connected to people, teams, clubs and organisations. Get to know different people, talk with them about what is happening with you, and let them suggest ideas that might help
• Accepting that change is part of life and is often good. Accept it. It is unsettling when change first occurs but give it a chance and use it as an opportunity to learn about doing things differently in your life
• Make and achieve realistic goals
• Face your problems. Think about overcoming them and how you can go about it rather than wishing they would go away.
• Not giving up. Everyone deals with a crisis from time to time. Work your way through it and slowly it will get easier
• Learn from the bad times. After you’ve gone through a crisis you will have learnt new skills, possibly made new friends and got to know yourself better. Take this knowledge and use it for future reference
• Trust yourself. Develop your skills and instincts and then develop confidence to use them
• Don’t turn molehills into mountains! Sometimes things seem bigger than they are. Break the problem down, talk it through and you may start to feel it is more manageable.
• Be nice to yourself!
• Practice positive thoughts!
• Get to know who you are!