Building Resilience: 5 Ways to a Better Life | 5 Minute Video

In case you hadn’t noticed, life is difficult and unpredictable. So, how do you move forward in such a complex and confusing world? UCLA Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Marmer offers 5 tips for coping with life’s unwelcome surprises.

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Script:

In case you hadn’t noticed, life is difficult, complex and unpredictable. You can’t change this. It’s the nature of things. But you can prepare yourself for the next unwelcome surprise.

How? By building resilience.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from life’s inevitable disappointments, failures, and pains.

Let me use an analogy here.

If cars didn’t have shock absorbers, every ride would be a miserable experience. The ride through life without shock absorbers – that is, resilience – would be the same. So, without building resilience – your own internal shock absorbers – it’s not possible to lead a happy and productive life.

Resilience is the opposite of fragility. To be fragile means that just about everything upsets you. And if just about everything upsets you, you will spend a lot of time angry and hurt. And if you spend a lot of time angry and hurt, you will not be a happy person.

Here, I’m not focusing on severe illness, the death of a loved one or any crushing life-changing event. In such cases, people usually need help to recover. But for most of us, such situations are rare – while the slights and disappointments of ordinary life are not. And for those, we need resilience.

OK, then. How do you develop resilience? Here are some suggestions to get you started, drawn from my forty-plus years as a psychiatrist.

First, get some perspective.

Step back and assess your situation with as much objectivity as you can. “How bad is this problem?” “Have I overstated it?”

Sometimes my patients think an unhappy occurrence is much more serious than it really is – usually because it’s amplified by evoking a painful childhood issue. Often getting perspective is as simple as asking yourself this question: “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Usually you’ll discover the worst thing isn’t that bad – and isn’t even likely to happen.

Second, compare the undeserved bad things that have happened to you with the unearned good things that have happened to you.

When I ask my patients to do this, they invariably conclude that the unearned good in their life far outweighs the undeserved bad. I’d say the ratio is at least 10 to 1. In my own case, I didn’t earn the incredibly good fortune of my grandparents moving to America, or that life-saving penicillin was available to me in my childhood when I was sick. I could go on and on. And so could you.

In light of this, maybe things aren’t so bad after all. In fact, they’re probably pretty good.

Third, toughen up.

Life hits you from all directions – health, personal relationships, work challenges, family issues. To deal with them, you need to build up your mental toughness. The earlier in life one starts this process, the better.

That’s why parents who coddle their children and protect them from every hurt and failure are not doing them any favors. Nor are colleges that provide students with so-called “safe spaces.” To toughen up, you need to push yourself. How do you know what you’re capable of if you don’t do that?

[MrsBerry-oflr]

As a black woman, who grew up poor, everyone says I should be angry and bitter and play the victim. But do I...NO, I took every opportunity, no matter how meager with gratefulness. I pushed myself, I worked hard and I made myself who I am today. I am happy, healthy, married, successful.

[drsch]

I've tried so hard to hammer this home to my elementary classes over the years. Don't focus on the things you can't control, you're just wasting your time. Focus on what you can control and how you respond and grow from that which you cannot change.

[jimyoung]

One good thing about the military is that it teaches you to put up with more than you thought you could

[abelpeter]

Clean your room. Get your act together. Discover what you’re capable of. There is nothing better for you to do with your life.

[mattdavis]

as a conservative in Seattle I think I know a thing about being resilient.

[shawnrutz]

I coincidentally happen to be going through something personally difficult right now. This video has given me insight on how to cope with the situation. Thank you very much.

[WolfsFriend]

Thank You, I really needed to hear this. I am a stubborn old Wolf but have been in a Rut. I hereby vow to work even harder to improve my life.

[Yakko]

Don't let the words of others control your emotions. If you're easily "triggered", take a step back and rethink your outlook on life..

[congresswallah]

Wow, amazing. This one video is going to earn you a lot of subscribers.

[snakepliskin]

Honestly, good health is really all one needs to be thankful for out of anything. I realize this if I get sick or hurt.. We take for granted the most important thing everyday and that is our health and ability to function. Be thankful for every breath

[pvpvxfc]

Ever since I started talking to a professional counselor about a year ago, maybe just once a month, I've been getting a much better perspective on things, which has helped me drastically.

It is still very difficult for me to toughen up though, still at 29. I don't know if being given Ritalin as a kid maybe ruined my "shock absorbers" in my brain or something, but I've been saying it for years that deep down I feel incredible fragile.

But because of this fragility I have taken self-defense mildly serious my entire adult life. Physically I know I can beat the hell out of most men, but when I start working long hours and losing lots of sleep, then the depression can sneak up on me and get VERY bad.

Fortunately I switched careers outside the medical field. Some people might say I should have stuck it out and toughened up, but after several months I'm glad I took a boring office job over getting called into the hospital late at night sometimes, even though I make a lot less money now.

[rhiroyonve]

Building Resilience: Don't cry when someone disagrees with you.

[hobsdigree]

This is a really good video. I'm gonna tell my story now, you're pre-warned. When I was young, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't have many skills and realistically saw myself working some dead end job. I knew I wanted to go to college, but, I didn't want to waste money on a useless degree that I didn't know what I was going to do with, like i saw a lot of my friends doing or people i knew were doing. I had a lot of people look down on me because i wasn't really going anywhere. Then I looked at college degrees to find out what fields had the best outcome.
Engineering it was, but I sucked at math and science. I started at the lowest of the low math and science classes and it was grueling. I still had a lot of people looking down on me because I was still in school and was a little older. It was stressful and depressing at times, but I endured, graduated, got an awesome job with great pay and benefits and now life is awesome. Moral of the story, stick with it!

[ryans]

Good video, as PragerU usually does. Every monday something new.

[GeorgeSemel]

Well I look at being an American born here as winning the best prize of all, you see my father's side came here in 1866 from a part of Poland that was pretty much wiped out, whatever family that was left there didn't make it to 1945, Mom's side came in 1880, they lost contact with family left in Poland after 1 September 1939. Sure I have had my share of setbacks, made some poor decision, mostly due to my good nature and not wanting to say no. It may or may not be a fault of mine, I don't over think things, there is no point to it. I lost both my parents when I was young, dad when I was 12 and mom 16 days short of my 21first birthday. I am going to be 64 soon. Life is what you make of it. Nothing is permanent, I learned to just make do, I find joy in the little things, stuff that most will not even notice, Like that Deer, I saw this morning standing in a wide-open field, about a 400-yard shot if I had a mind to, Not my land, so I just watched, the average shot were I live is less than 60 yards and in the woods, Connecticut is like that. Besides I have two down already and will have many many great meals to look forward to. Cooking has become one of my main interest and I come to it very late in life. Being single requires that. Then there is the Fly Fishing whenever I feel a bit off, I know the cure, knee deep in a stream full of trout, whatever it is that is bothering me just disappears. Live is always worth living and living in the United States of America will that is just the Ice Cream on the Apple Pie!

[Scythra]

How to build Resilience.
1. Spec more on resilience, leave hp, attack and defence as it is.

[GhostLinx]

I needed this, I'll start being unaffected by negativity, I'll become a better person in control of my life

[fahimmiah]

1. Get some perspective
2. Compare the undeserved bad to the unearned good in your life
3. Toughen up
4. Be the architect of your own fate
5. Take an honest inventory of your life

[quattron-]

That’s it! I’m so happy I can change my life at any given time. I choose to be happy! 😄

[rifter]

This is one of the best things about joining and going through the military experience. Entry level and many advanced military schools focus - more than any other single thing - on developing resilience in people. You get better at appreciating the small things, finding humor where you can, and pushing through hard things knowing that 'this too will pass.'