There are many admirable qualities that a human being can possess, helping them pave their way into a happy and successful life. One of these psychological qualities is the quality of resilience. Resilience refers to the capacity of an individual to recover from stressful situations and adversities of life.
It is a particular strength and toughness which people have. It can also be seen as the elasticity of a person’s character. A resilient person will be more elastic- able to spring back to their original state even after facing an amount of push and pull in all directions.
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Why Is It Essential to Improve Resilience When Living Abroad?
Moving to a new country is an adventure full of emotions and experiences. While most of them are good, there will be a few bad ones as well. Moving abroad requires a lot of qualities, abilities, and skills. However, one of the essential attributes is resilience.
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When you move abroad, be it for studies or a job, or to start a new life there, you will inevitably face a bombardment of emotions. There will be cultural dissonance, new languages you will hear around you, new kinds of food, traditions and holidays.
You will even have to get used to a new type of currency! With so many changes around, it is not surprising to find yourself feeling overwhelmed and confused at some point in time.
Many people often find this change to be quite destabilizing. It can take them a long time to bounce back to a state of ‘normalcy,’ where their body clocks have adjusted, they are used to the food, the language, and the culture. However, the longer this process takes, the more painful and long drawn it can become.
Those people who can adjust quickly to these changes can handle the emotional, physical, and psychological difficulties that can occur in day to day life, in work, and in merely adjusting to a new country, are the ones who can thrive abroad.
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To make your journey of finding your own identity and fitting into a new country more leisurely, it is good to increase your resilience.
How Can You Improve Your Resilience?
Well, no 5 step program can help you improve your resilience, but there are a few things you can start regularly doing, which can help you:
1. Positive Thinking and Optimism
There is high power in thought; your mind can help you move mountains. Most people have heard this clichéd line but have hardly understood the meaning of it. What this line tries to teach you is that the power of your mind and thought, especially definite idea- is immense.
Those individuals who make it a habit to practice positive thinking and optimism are far more resilient in their lives than those who call themselves cynical or sceptical. For many people, positive thinking and confidence do not come naturally.
If this is the case with you as well, then you should know that this is something that gets better with practice. The more you consciously force yourself to think positively and push away negative thoughts, the easier it gets overtime to do it naturally.
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2. Ability to Regulate Emotions
Now, this is a tough one. Most people, unfortunately, are not always entirely in control of their emotions. Even the most practised individuals can find themselves losing control over their feelings once in a while.
If it happens once in a while, it is okay. But those who regularly make it a habit of losing control over their emotions- be it positive or negative emotions, will find it much harder to bounce back from tough situations in life.
This is an acquired skill that needs to be practised at every single moment of your life. There are many ways of doing it. You can always take help from a counsellor or a therapist who can teach you the right, healthy techniques to regulate your emotions. You can also practice mindfulness, awareness, and meditation.
These techniques can help you understand yourself better, and thus, by creating this self-awareness, you will have a better hold over your own emotions.
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Once you can do this, you will also find yourself being able to bounce back better from tough situations.
3. Learning Lessons from Failure
Everyone faces failure in life, even the most successful person you can think of! Learning from failure can be a significant step to becoming successful in life. A great way to improve your resilience is by healthily accepting defeat.
It is the most natural thing in the world to take your failure personally and get demotivated enough to give up altogether. However, it is also going to lead to even further failures.
Learning to cope with failures, and find proper techniques of getting back on your feet is one of the methods to becoming more resilient in life. Once you learn to accept defeat as one of the rungs to the ladder of success, you will find it so much easier to bounce back and get right back on the horse.
4. Healthy Habits
Another great way to improve your resilience is to practice regular healthy habits. These include getting the appropriate hours of sleep per night, eating healthy food, some form of exercising regularly, and of course, cutting down bad habits.
An important thing to keep in mind is that when one is faced with difficult situations in life, it is straightforward to take the help of substances- alcohol, nicotine, even drugs, and get addicted to them. However, this not only disrupts your mental stability but also makes you less resilient.
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It is essential to be aware of the fact that difficulties will inevitably arise in life. Still, it is vital to have a problem-solving attitude to overcome these difficulties, instead of getting bogged down by them.
Failure is a profoundly human thing, and accepting the defeat, learning from it, and bouncing back as quickly as possible is what will make you a resilient and prosperous human being in all of your endeavours abroad.