Build your resilience with easy steps to develop grit and determination

​Life is filled with setbacks but some people seem to be better equipped to cope with them than others. It’s all down to resilience, says author and therapist Sally Baker whose new book offers a pathway to becoming emotionally happier and stronger.

Something terrible happened to me when I was seven years old. I told my mother, and she told me never to mention it again. I thought she was angry at me, and that misunderstanding changed how I thought and felt about myself for decades. I was 35 the next time that conversation with my mother was referred to again.

In therapy, I often see clients who, like me, not only suffered terrible things but also made up a story of self-blame and guilt that caused them the enduring pain of low self-esteem and damaged self-belief.

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Years later, my formative experience informed my interest in resilience. I was curious about what allowed some people to bounce back from adversity while others remained stuck and haunted by past trauma. As a therapist working with clients, I noticed common threads emerging. People typically come for help with issues like addictions, anxiety, depression, or panic attacks. However, the root cause of the emotional challenges they faced could often be traced back to self-sabotaging behaviours and limiting beliefs that originated in childhood.

Build your resilience so you can cope with whatever life throws at youBuild your resilience so you can cope with whatever life throws at you
Build your resilience so you can cope with whatever life throws at you

Through therapy, clients discover their negative self-judgments began at a young age when they, too, may have wrongly assumed guilt or shame for something that happened to them. Frequently, they subconsciously decided they didn’t deserve happiness or success, so they undermined their ability to thrive through addictions, self-harm, emotional eating, workaholism, overspending, and more. Their self-destructive patterns aimed to distract them from their feelings of emptiness inside due to their early experiences and memories as a lonely child desperate for love and acceptance.

What is resilience?We rely on others for safety and nurturing to help us survive and thrive in our early years. How we are cared for - or not cared for - profoundly shapes us as we grow. Some childhoods provide the nurturing protection that helps ensure the growth of resilience, while other upbringings fail to deliver the supportive family structure where this vital capacity can take root.

Life’s unavoidable hardships can overwhelm those who lack robust resilience. Without inner reserves of grit and determination, it becomes difficult to cope with losses, traumas, illnesses, pressures and unexpected changes that are inevitable over a lifetime. The shadow of past neglect continues to impact long into adulthood, making it hard to have faith in one’s ability to handle whatever curveballs may come.

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Yet the beauty of the human spirit lies in its potential to heal, learn and grow - at any age. Just because resilience failed to develop during the early years does not mean the opportunity has passed. When given the proper support, our capacity to cultivate resilience remains within us for our whole lives. It is always possible to uncover your unique inner resolve and strengthen it day by day. As signposted throughout The Getting of Resilience from the Inside Out, even small steps to change how you think and feel about yourself can gradually nurture the deep-rooted resilience that provides the fortitude we all need.

How do you develop resilience as an adult?One critical, fundamental step to building resilience in adulthood is learning to challenge the deep-rooted, negative self-beliefs people unquestionably take for granted. Those with an underdeveloped sense of resilience frequently experience harsh, negative self-talk rooted in childhood shame. For example, suppose you grew up in a family where you were constantly criticised by your parents or carers and made to feel inadequate. In that case, you may have a harsh inner critic that continually seizes on any mistake you make as proof of your unworthiness.

Interrupting the inner criticTo build resilience, it is crucial to interrupt and replace that cruel inner voice with self-compassion instead. It means being kind to and giving yourself the love and acceptance you craved as a child. This doesn’t happen overnight - it initially takes diligent attention to identify and then interrupt years of automatic negative thoughts. However, what starts as a conscious intervention can soon become a natural response that works to improve self-talk and change it from negative to more uplifting and encouraging. Developing self-love is a game-changer for bouncing back from setbacks.

Exploring unhelpful thinking stylesCultivating flexibility in thinking and letting go of rigid, black-and-white thinking is another pillar of resilience. Resilient people can adapt their perspectives and find creative solutions, even amidst crises. They don’t catastrophise or assume things will always go poorly. They maintain a realistic appraisal of any situation they find themselves in and work from that perspective instead of plummeting into a vortex of negativity.

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Acknowledging all emotionsResilience also requires emotional agility - the ability to fully experience difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed or resorting to numbing behaviours. When we avoid emotions, they only intensify. However, fully experiencing our more challenging emotions allows us to process pain and move through it more easily. Learning emotional mastery means fully feeling and releasing difficult emotions rather than suppressing them. This can lead to greater self-awareness with one's unique emotional patterns and triggers.Ultimately, resilience stems from a profound sense of self-trust and an unshakable belief in one’s capabilities. It’s about building an indestructible core of self-worth independent of external validation or life circumstances. This may sound lofty, but anyone can develop these skills with the proper tools and inner work.

A practical guide to building resilienceThe book is a practical, self-help guide with actionable steps based on how I work in my therapy practice. It uses my experiences and those of some of my clients to explore how to unravel the past and build self-worth and resilience. It equips you with practical tools to strengthen your intuition, overcome unhelpful thinking patterns, break free from self-sabotaging habits, and, most importantly, learn to let go of the past.Each chapter includes an easy-to-follow worksheet requiring no more than 30 minutes a week as you work through the book to help develop resilience from the inside out. There are also additional online resources to assist the work.

Strategies for resilienceAnother critical component of resilience is adaptive thinking. The book teaches actionable steps to reframe one's thinking and find alternative empowering perspectives so that one can experience situations from a position of influence instead of overwhelm.Coming full circle, since lack of resilience often stems from family dynamics, we'll explore ways to reparent yourself and resolve the unmet needs of your inner child. You’ll learn to grieve the past without remaining trapped in it. By doing this inner child work, your motivations will increasingly stem from self-love rather than old, wounded patterns.

Overall, this book aims not just to educate on resilience but to fully equip the reader with a transformative toolkit to cultivate a resilient mindset sustainably. I share hard-won lessons from decades as a therapist to help you forge an unbreakable foundation of inner strength, no matter what life brings.The path to resilience is a journey of profound growth and self-development. It begins by committing to releasing patterns of behaviour that never served you or ones you have outgrown. But the rewards can be liberating - with an unshakable sense of agency, a greater sense of peace, and a wholeness that allows you to embrace every experience life offers with courage and commitment.

​The Getting of Resilience from the Inside Out by Sally Baker is published by Hammersmith Books, £17.99

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