How to Build Resilience and Motivation in the New Year

Maybe everyone else seems ready to have a "Happy New Year" yet you are still feeling grief and stress after hardship, whether that's the loss of a relationship, job troubles, or the pain and sickness of a loved one.

How do you become resilient – in other words, able to bounce back after hard times?

Change Your Thinking Patterns

Being under stress or duress for an extended period of time can cause your mind to fall into negative patterns of thought – or ruts.

It’s important that we recognize those ruts and not get stuck or caught up in these streams of thinking.

When you catch yourself having negative thoughts, learn a method to stop and redirect those thoughts to a more positive or at least neutral frame of mind. Have a plan ahead of time.

Make a plan for a physical and mental break. For instance, if you’re at work and find yourself going down a really negative pathway, take a short break to run up a flight of stairs and back down. Try to reset that mindset.

Another effective technique involves deep-breathing exercises. You can find techniques on the internet. How they work has to do with both our physiology and our psychology.

A different cognitive technique is to imagine a stop sign when you find your thoughts are turning toward a negative direction.

Reestablish Your Motivation

Purpose, enjoyment in what we do, and a sense of autonomy are critical components in our motivation to work. If we’ve lost one of these three things, we can easily lose our motivation.

It’s important to get back in touch with your values and what generates positive feelings for you. Try to optimize those thoughts and feelings and reframe your thinking.

Recall past successes and interactions with grateful people.

Remember those times when you have impacted someone’s life in a positive way – maybe just by listening or showing empathy. Consider the ways in which your work helps people experience a better quality of life.

You can reestablish a positive attitude and motivation by trying to change one person’s life every day with something as simple as a smile, a kind word, or a bit of assistance when you see they are struggling.

Allow Yourself to Grieve Losses

Grief is one of the hardest things we deal with in our society and perhaps the one of the most misunderstood. Loss is often associated with the death of a loved one, but can also be experienced in the loss of a job, friendship, colleague, financial security, personal identity or way of life.

The stages of grief are well known, but were never meant to be a pathway or structure for grieving. We don’t all grieve the same and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. We all cope in our own ways.

You may be feeling sadness or anger, or you may not. You may want to share your burdens with others, or you may want to grieve alone.

In any case, you do need to let your emotions out. It’s helpful in most cases to share with at least one person that you trust and feel comfortable with.

Practice Self-Care

We often underestimate the importance of self-care, even though it may seem to be common sense.

Self-care involves getting the rest, nutrition and exercise your body needs. This becomes the hardest when we are under stress, yet that’s exactly the time when we need to be most attentive to it.

Find Your Hope

Hope is a critical component of resilience. If you’ve lost hope, that’s a dangerous position to get into. Hope is that one thing that keeps us moving forward in dark times. Sometimes the only way to get through difficult times is to just keep stepping forward, one step at a time.

You might find hope in your faith, your belief in the future, your belief in yourself or others. If you’ve lost hope, seek help. It’s that essential to our lives.

If you are struggling, reach out to a close family member, friend or mentor. Or, reach out for professional help through your workplace Employee Assistance Program (EAP), or local behavioral health services. Avera’s 24-hour assessment center can be reached at 800-691-4336.

Misuse of alcohol or drugs can also be a symptom of crisis. Learn more about Avera’s Addiction Care services by calling 605-504-2222.