Resilience Training - Technique, Goals, and Need

What Does Resilience Mean?

Resilience means bouncing back. It is not resisting changes, it means being flexible and adapting to changes. It is to adapt well when exposed to trauma, tragedy, adversity, or stresses including career, family, and financial stresses.

Resilience is not an inborn character, but a learned pattern. Everyone faces some adversities and challenges at some point in life. These adversities can make one weak, while the other stronger. Resilience can be learned and taught. Resilience training is similar. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences have raised the need for such programs.

What Are the Ways to Build Resilience?

The ways to build resilience include the following:

• Building Connections:

Building connections with empathetic, trustworthy, and understanding individuals will provide a platform where one can share feelings, which aids in building resilience.

Trauma may cause some to go into isolation, leading to psychological problems.

Building connections helps in achieving resilience in such cases.

• Self Care:

Self-care is important for building resilience. Following a healthy lifestyle, including proper diet and hydration proper sleep, and regular exercises will strengthen one’s body and mind. Yoga and other spiritual activities (like prayer and meditation) can help build hope and resilience. Quitting bad habits like smoking, alcohol, and drugs are also self-care.

• Finding Life’s Purpose:

Every individual has a passion that relates to their purpose in life. Developing realistic goals and working towards them can help build resilience. Help those in need. Accept one’s emotions, acknowledge them, and work on them for possible solutions.

• Healthy Mindset:

Develop a healthy mindset by learning from past experiences. Focus on what can be changed, rather than focusing on what can’t be. Maintain an optimistic outlook for the future.

What Is Resilience Training and What Are Its Goals?

Resilience training is a structured and planned activity that helps improve one’s ability to bounce back from turbulent times. It helps develop a positive mindset by focusing on what can be changed and modified in a challenging situation.

Resilience training is given to disaster management teams and military personnel to cope with various situations they face. Such resilience training programs are given to soldiers in the US. The US Army’s resilience program is called MRT (Master Resilience Training) and lasts for about 10 days. Apart from these, resilience training is provided to patients with chronic health conditions, school students, for employees in organizations and other places to improve the quality of one’s life by helping them cope with stress.

The goals of the resilience training program include:

• To develop a realistic and optimistic outlook for the future.

• To develop compassion and empathy.

• To shift the focus to what can be controlled and modified.

• To develop achievable solid goals.

• To develop a desire to achieve the goal.

• To understand one’s locus of control.

• To develop skills of emotional regulation.

• To develop self-esteem.

• To learn to thrive in an ambiguous situation.

• On the whole, it improves overall productivity.

Who Needs Resilience Training?

People with low resilience skills (those in a challenging situation or a stressful condition) require resilience training.

These low-resilience groups present with one or more of the following symptoms:

• Anxiety.

• Insomnia.

• Social withdrawal.

• Feeling overwhelmed.

• Mood swings.

• Decision-making difficulties.

• Depression.

• Decreased sexual interest.

• Self-doubt.

• Grief.

• Stomach upset.

• Weakened immunity (frequent cold, fever, or other illness).

• Increased substance abuse.

• Procrastinating and neglecting responsibilities.

• Short temporariness.

• Lack of concentration, poor judgment, and constant worrying.

What Are the Components of Resilience Training?

Resilience training has three core components that include:

• Setting a Goal:

By setting realistic goals and working towards achieving them with full commitment, resilience is improved. The goals are referred to as ‘SMART’ goals. SMART goals represent specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound goals.

Setting a goal involves the following steps:

• Defining the goal.

• Knowing your current status.

• Focusing on what needs to be developed.

• Planning for steady growth.

• Doing regular action for achieving the goal.

• Complete commitment to the goal.

• Constantly monitoring improvement.

Stress Management:

Developing resilience helps one cope with stress rather than fully avoiding it. The focus should be shifted to the good things in life and being grateful. In the resilience training program, the client is asked to note down the good things that happened on each day (like the fun moments, accomplishments, etc.).

Energy Management:

Our body utilizes energy to carry out various functions. In a stressful situation, the sympathetic system gets activated followed by symptoms like increased heart rate, rapid breathing, etc. A lot of energy is utilized for this response. Energy management helps in properly channeling the energy and prevents unnecessary energy wastage. Different exercises are performed to achieve the same, rhythmic breathing exercise is one such exercise.

What Are the Benefits of Resilience Training?

Resilience training is conducted for employees in an organization. The benefits of resilience training in an organization are:

• Time Management and Better Organization:

A better-organized staff can efficiently contribute to the organization’s progress. Resilient employees plan realistically which increases their productivity.

• Better Teamwork:

Resilience help in building relationship among coworkers that enables better teamwork.

• Better Communication and Better Relationships:

Resilience training provides more confidence and self-esteem to the employees, which allows them to express themselves more clearly and productively.

• Employees Become Better at Handling Challenges:

Resilience training helps in developing a positive mindset, this allows employees to take up challenging situations more calmly and tackle them well.

Benefits of Resilience Training as an Individual:

• Become more optimistic.

• Improves self-esteem and confidence.

• Helps build better relationships.

• Gives a direction for life.

• Improves leadership skills.

• Improve total health(both mental and physical).

Benefits of Building Resilience In Kids:

Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg suggested the 7 C’s of resilience that helps in children. It helps children recover from setbacks in life quickly and help them face life’s challenges in a better way.

These 7 C’s include:

• Competence - Developing a feeling that they can effectively handle a situation.

• Confidence - Developing belief in one’s capability.

• Character - Developing moral values and helping them distinguish right from wrong.

• Connection- Developing a good relationship with family and friends.

• Control - Kids learn to take control of the outcomes of their decisions.

• Coping - Learning to cope with stress.

• Contribution - Understanding the importance of personal contribution to the world.

Conclusion

Building resilience offers benefits like developing an optimistic outlook, a positive mindset, better health, a proper direction in life, good relations, and becoming a better contributor to the world. The need for resilience training has increased in the present days, due to more stressful life situations. The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences have raised the need for such programs. Everybody faces challenges in life it all depends on how you react to them.