Most of us face hard times at some point during our lives, and we all want to get through adversity and become stronger as a result. What’s the secret to dealing with life’s difficulties and challenges?
Although there’s no single method for making us resilient to difficult times, we can develop a range of attitudes and habits that will help us manage, and which we can adapt to different situations.
Get social support
There’s a large body of research to show that support from friends and loved ones is an important part of dealing with adversity. A well-established model, proposed by psychologist James S. House, divides social support into three categories:
1 Emotional support: being reassured that we’re liked, trusted, respected, cared about, and loved. This feels good and, when we’re in need, it can make an important difference.
2 Instrumental support: when someone offers practical help and assistance, such as a lift to an interview, a loan, or a hand decluttering the house.
3 Information support: when someone shares their knowledge with us, or points us toward useful resources.
These types of social support are interrelated and, at times, we need all three. In a digital age, there are many ways to seek support. According to a study performed in 2012, however, even regular internet users found face-to-face support (across all three levels) more effective than online advice.
Get your focus right
In order to feel good about ourselves, it can be more useful to focus on what we want to do rather than who we want to be. A series of studies focusing on athletes identified two major ways to relate to our goals:
- Task-involvement: we focus on gaining knowledge, and improving competence and understanding. We relate to our own skills; other peoples’ aren’t very relevant.
- Ego-involvement: we seek to demonstrate our superior abilities to other people, or to gain their good opinion. Competition and doing better than our peers is important.
Researchers found that task-involved people tended to be less vulnerable to negative emotions and stress, and to have a higher faith in their own effectiveness. Ego-involved people, on the other hand, were more likely to avoid or distract themselves from difficult situations. These avoidant coping strategies tended to impact negatively on their performance and, in turn, their emotions.
More successful ways of coping included reappraising attitudes, restrategizing, and accepting but managing emotions. While you’re focused on a goal, it’s usually better to think less about your competitors and more about what you need to learn.
Know when to turn it off
Coping can become a habit, but not a cost-free one. American psychologist Gary Evans points out that our coping strategies can become problematic if we apply them in situations where they’re not needed. For example, if you live in crowded conditions, research suggests that you learn to withdraw into yourself to find “space,” but that this can lead to having less social support because it’s hard to maintain friendships if you can’t get out of your shell again afterward.
If you’re going through a difficult time, you may need to put up some barriers. For example, if your boss is temperamental, it makes sense to communicate with him or her as little as possible; if you have loud neighbors, it makes sense to train your ears to screen out background noise. For each situation and person you encounter, think about how best to respond in order to optimize the outcome as well as the relationship with the person.
Learn a new strength
Increasing your confidence in one area can lead to greater confidence in general—this can be especially true if you learn a somewhat risky physical skill. A 2000 US study by Julie C. Weitlauf, Ronald E. Smith, and Daniel P. Cervone found that women who took a self-defense course not only felt less frightened by the thought of being attacked, but six months later they were shown to be both more assertive and less hostile to other people.
Is there anything in your life that you’re afraid of, and does that fear make you feel less free? If you can discover a way to make that fear less intimidating, you may find yourself feeling stronger and calmer in other aspects of your life as well.
Express or suppress?
Should you show your feelings or try to hide them? According to a 2004 study for the journal Psychological Science, the people who fare best in the long term can do both. Different situations call for different responses, and if you can make adjustments according to what’s needed, you’ll be more successful as time passes.