His father died in a car accident three months before he was born. Therefore, his mother had to earn a living alone. To train as a nurse, she moved away and left him with his grandparents when he was one year old. When she returned three years later, she married again. But her new husband, his stepfather, was a gambler and drunkard with a propensity for violence. He beat the mother and his half-brother. He himself was held at gunpoint by his stepfather – the bullet landed in the wall between him and his mother. Thanks to scholarships he was able to study in Washington, Oxford and Yale and in his professional career he made it to the White House.
Who is “he”?
The man we are talking about here is Bill Clinton. He made it to the presidency of the United States of America despite his difficult childhood and youth. And if we ask ourselves how this is possible, the crucial answer is resilience.
Resilience refers to the ability to cope with stress and crises while remaining healthy. In other words, it is a person’s psychological resilience.
How does resilience develop?
Like almost all traits or characteristics that make us human, part of our resilience lies in our genes. Among other things, it has something to do with serotonin, the so-called happiness hormone in our brain. Our childhood and adolescence are responsible for another part of our resilience. Depending on the experiences we have during this time, we develop more or less psychological resilience.
However, we cannot retroactively change both our genes and our childhood as adults. The good news, however, is that resilience can still be strengthened and changed in adulthood. Resilience is therefore dynamic even beyond our childhood and can therefore be trained.
The 7 pillars of resilience
Resilience is made up of various components that we can strengthen and train individually. The best-known resilience model names seven pillars, or seven basic attitudes or skills. These are:
- Acceptance
- Solution orientation
- Self-control
- Network orientation
- Optimistic future orientation
- Self-efficacy
- Positive self-perception
Resilience training for everyday – Your success journal
Write down at least 3 successes of the past day every evening. Small things are perfectly fine, they don’t have to be huge milestones. For example, you finally found the time to read a book? Or maybe you were able to help a friend? Each night you write down your successes, you’ll find it easier to put three things together.
Why do it? Our brains love to focus on the negative things. Evolutionary speaking, this once made a lot of sense. Today, however, it makes our lives unnecessarily difficult and prevents us from seeing the positive things. However, we can actively change this by regularly and consciously directing our focus to the beautiful and successful experiences. Your success journal helps you to create a more positive self-image, strengthens your optimistic attitude and increases your self-efficacy – in other words, training for three pillars of resilience in one fell swoop! Small tip: If you ever have self-doubt or a bad mood, just take a look at all the successes you have collected over time. It’s guaranteed to give you a boost in the right direction and lift your spirits.
So go ahead and start your own personal success journal tonight!