Flexing Your Resilience Muscle: Building Skills to Thrive, Succeed & Shine

by Melanie Griffin September 01, 2021

Full Disclosure: After carefully vetting monetary opportunities that allow Spread Your Sunshine, LLC to best serve its community with helpful and meaningful content in-line with our goals and mission, this post contains one or more affiliate links, meaning that Spread Your Sunshine, LLC will receive compensation for the posting of this article.

Spread Your Sunshine Founder Melanie S. Griffin, Esq. recently delivered a keynote address at the 2021 Delta Zeta Sorority National Convention entitled, Flexing Your Resilience Muscle: Building Skills to Thrive, Succeed & Shine. As further detailed herein, this presentation explores how to “build your resilience muscle” by believing in yourself and having the skillset to keep going when times are tough. While this program was presented to collegiate and alumni members of the Delta Zeta Sorority, the entire discussion is applicable to all audiences. We therefore hope these ideas help fabulous YOU have the determination that lets you know you’re awesome and you’re going to make it.

How Do You Begin to Build Your Resilience Muscle?

Throughout your life, there will be multiple significant experiences that will impact you moving forward, such as divorce, not getting into the grad school you’d hoped to, getting fired by a major client, declaring bankruptcy, losing your house, a family member getting diagnosed with an illness or dying, adopting a child, and so on. There are also smaller experiences, such as getting a “C” that you weren’t expecting in a class, that will allow you to build your resilience muscle for the more significant ones. Nothing in life is too trivial to experience disappointment, but to maintain a healthy mindset, your responses to these challenges should be proportionate to what has happened. So, how can you move forward and transition when these experiences occur?

Your brain believes you when you talk negatively to it about yourself, so you must learn to speak positively in order to love yourself, be authentic, and to give your best self to the world. Many people go on a diet to lose five pounds, but how many go on a diet to lose five percent or more of their mental negativity? Dwelling on negative life experiences, playing it safe and being a perfectionist are not allowing you to be your best healthy self. Perfection is sometimes equated with confidence, but it is actually a way of attempting to make up for our perceived lack of confidence within ourselves. A good starting point is to begin repeating to yourself, “I am enough.” Showing yourself love and grace is imperative to overcoming challenges. When you learn to implement these skills, it can create a positive change in both yourself and in your community.

Strategies For Continuing to Build Your Resilience Muscle

Knowing it is important to build resilience, how can you do so? We recommend trying the following four strategies.

Eradicate “Failure” from Your Vocabulary

There are things in life that are not going to go as planned, but the outcome and what you do about it is important. Even though it’s often difficult to see it while it’s happening, these challenging situations can be setting you up for the best ways in which you can impact the world.
Don’t Dwell On the Past

Mourning periods are absolutely necessary, but you must not stay there. It won’t change what happened. Ask yourself if there was anything you could have done differently. If so, implement such changes in the future. Forgive yourself and say, “If I would have known better, I would have done better.” But perhaps after self-evaluation, you realized you did everything you could have done and that it’s just not where you’re meant to be. That’s okay! This is when you can start figuring out where you are supposed to be.

Helpful Tip: Process, Learn, Analyze and Move On.
You May Need To Pivot

At first, you may not know which next step to take, but do not stress! If you haven’t been able to figure it out during self-analysis, just take one baby step. This will help you clarify the path forward. It may come from what brings you joy, feedback from your community or in some other way. Just get started because you don’t know what you don’t know until you begin! We are not given a roadmap when we’re born, we get to figure it out as we go. Successful people pivot all the time, including from Virtual Headquarters, to Sales, to Products Manufacturing, to Customer Service, and beyond. The best way to know how you can most significantly impact the world is to try doing so.

Those who you are closest to in your life should be your biggest cheerleaders. If you’re surrounded by people who constantly judge you for not having everything figured out, perhaps you have the wrong people in your inner circle. We are the product of the people with whom we spend the most time. Do you have people who challenge you? Who mentor you? You are meant to be with people who support you and your dreams!
Talk About Your Challenges When and If You Feel Comfortable

For many, this comes once the storm has passed and they finally feel like they can take a breath of fresh air and tell the truth, but it can also be very helpful to tell those closest to you in real time. If you are surrounded by people who support you, they want to know and they want to help! But they can’t help if they aren’t aware of what you are experiencing. More than one brain is always better, as it can give you ideas that you can’t see in your own box.

Vulnerability isn’t easy, but if you can find a safe space to share what you are experiencing, you are going to be so much better for it.

Attaining Balance & Finding Peace

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Balance and perspective are incredibly important. Don’t miss out on life’s magical moments because you’re not allocating your time appropriately. What is important to you? Everyone’s definition of success is different! As long as you’re truly happy with how you are spending your time, that’s what matters. If you’re not, make the desired changes.

Remember, you’re not going to get an “A” in every area of your life every day, it’s not humanly possible. Instead, look at your balance long-term - the week, the quarter, the year - whichever is appropriate for you.

Hopefully this has given you some insight on strategies to build your resilience muscle. If nothing else, know and believe that YOU. ARE. AWESOME!! We sure think so.

To listen to this keynote address in its entirety, please click here or on the video above.

And, now that you have the strategies necessary to build your own resilience muscle, is there additional information you want to receive from Spread Your Sunshine?! We’re sure there is, so please share your ideas by emailing Melanie@SpreadYourSunshine.com or sending Spread Your Sunshine a message via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. We love hearing from you, as together we are strongest.