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Resilience is a set of learnable skills and behaviors, not a single or fixed trait.

Resilient behaviors consist of four core components: connection, wellness, healthy thinking, and meaning.

Resilience is fluid—its different components may need more focus at different times in life.

We often hear about “resilience” and its connection to building a healthy lifestyle. Resilience is the ability to adapt and recover from difficult situations. It's also known as the ability to "bounce back." It is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.

However, knowing what resilience is differs from knowing how it works. Resilience involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that anyone can learn and develop. Research has shown that it is an ordinary skill set, not an extraordinary one. However, just as with building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and intentionality.

Resilience is not constant across all areas of life. You might demonstrate a lot of resilience when it comes to one challenge you’re faced with, such as a professional setback, but struggle more with being resilient when it comes to another challenge, such as a health crisis.

It helps to think of resilience via four core components, each of which can help you to cultivate it in different ways: connection, wellness, healthy thinking, and meaning.

One of the most important ways to build resilience is to build social connections. Connections can be a source of comfort, encouragement, a sense of belonging, and sometimes practical help, all of which can strengthen resilience. Some methods for building connections include prioritizing personal relationships,........

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