April Showers Bring May Flowers: Setbacks & Resilience

The second step to practicing resilience in your everyday is to adopt practical strategies for managing setbacks so when you do face hardship, you can bounce back more easily. Some strategies you can begin to incorporate into your metaphorical toolbox include:

Practice Self-Compassion: Be kind to yourself after you’ve endured a difficult situation or setback. Avoid harsh self-criticism and acknowledge the effort you made. Do small things to make yourself feel better, like going for a walk or reading a book, as you work to regain your footing.

Develop a Growth Mindset: Rather than replaying your supposed “failure” in your mind, remember that every setback is a learning experience. Take 30 minutes and write down any lesson you can derive from the hardship you have faced. Focusing on progress over perfection and identifying where you went wrong the first time, can help you improve and get closer to success going into the future.

Adaptability and Problem-Solving: Once you’ve identified where you went wrong, make adjustments to your path going forward. Embrace adaptability by learning to pivot and finding alternative solutions when faced with obstacles. This will not only lead you closer to the solution for this specific problem, but it will also help you become a better, more flexible problem solver for any other difficulties you may face.

Turn Challenges into Actionable Steps

The third step in managing setbacks and practicing resilience is to turn your challenges into actionable steps. Similarly to step 1, you are reframing the setbacks you have faced as learning experiences and identifying how you can do better in the future. This step involves:

Reflecting and Learning: Identify key takeaways from the setbacks you experienced. For example, if you failed an exam, perhaps you know that you didn’t study enough and you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. By reflecting and learning, you open yourself up to positive change.

Set Small, Achievable Goals: After learning what went wrong the first time, set goals to help you improve for next time. It can be helpful to break down larger challenges into manageable steps, so that you can more easily incorporate those changes into your routine. For example, after you failed your test and identified sleep and lack of studying as two key problems, begin to adjust your bedtime and integrate dedicated “study time” into your schedule, so you feel more prepared the next time you have a test.

Seek Support: Ask those around you for help when you need it. By leaning on mentors, friends, or professional guidance, you are building a support system around you to keep you on track and continue your path toward positive change. For example, once you have adjusted your schedule to involve more sleep and study time, ask a friend to help you prepare for a particular test or a mentor to give you advice on study methods that have worked for them.

By utilizing each of these tips to address the setbacks you have faced, you can turn your challenges into actionable steps that will keep you moving forward.

Exercise Patience and Persistence

One of the easiest ways to counteract setbacks is to remember how temporary they are, and how much you will grow from the difficulties you face, similarly to flowers in the springtime. While the flowers are faced time and time again with cold fronts, frost, and hungry animals, they persist through their setbacks, which often lead to new growth. As you face your trials and tribulations, stay committed to your long-term goals and trust that the challenges you face will teach you more about achieving and maintaining your goals.