Building Resilience in Youth

Introduction

Resilience refers to the quality of facing all the adversities and making your way through them. A resilient person is able to resist, absorb, recover or successfully adapt to adversities or change. Some of the factors that contribute to resilience include our beliefs regarding ourselves, others, and the world. It also includes education, information, skills, behaviours, biases, and mental processes. There are 6 key skills that help us in building a resilient character that includes Vision, Composure, Tenacity, Reasoning, Collaboration, and Health. Therefore your resilience depends upon the way your life unfolds rather than a personality test.

6 Key Skills to Build Resilient Character

1. Vision: The first key skill that helps in building resilience in youth is Vision. It refers to your sense of purpose, goals, and personal vision for yourself. If you have a clear vision, it helps you in making tough choices. Clarity regarding your vision keeps you more focused so that even in tough times, you know what’s important. It’s the most important skill.
2. Composure: The second key skill that helps in building resilience in youth is Composure. It includes the art of regulating your emotions when there are sudden changes at work. You can do so by overcoming the instinctive emotional response and being composed. It helps you in recognizing hidden opportunities and solving problems. 

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3. Reasoning: The third key skill that helps in building resilience in youth is Reasoning. It refers to the problem-solving ability with the help of creativity and innovation. It also includes anticipating things that can go wrong ahead of time proactively, making plans regarding them, and building resources like people, information, tools, and techniques to minimize their impact.
4. Tenacity: The fourth key skill that helps in building resilience in youth is Tenacity. It refers to the persistence for success. In order to be successful, you need to work hard and smart. But more importantly, you need to stay with a problem especially when you want to achieve something that nobody else has achieved. You must learn from your mistakes and have realistic optimism.
5. Collaboration: The fifth key skill that helps in building resilience in youth is Collaboration. Since we are social beings, it is very important for us to build support networks. Whatever we do and focus on is to improve our world. By collaboration, we can be a safety net for others and have a safety net for ourselves as well. It’s just that we need an understanding of the context of the interaction with people.

6. Health: The sixth key skill that helps in building resilience in youth is Health. It refers to the skill of taking care of your body by mindful eating with a balanced diet, exercise, and taking sufficient and quality sleep. It lays a strong foundation for your resilience that allows you to focus on your goals. Therefore we should avoid eating junk, packed and oily food. Also, we must do yoga/exercise every day and take sound sleep for 6-7 hours daily.

Summary

All of us are capable of building the above-mentioned 6 skills for building resilience in ourselves. These skills help us in building resilience that keeps us guided and helps us in sticking to our vision in spite of different adversities and tough times that can come in our way to success. If we already have these skills, we can still work upon them and improve them. It is a life-long process that helps in improving the quality of our life. It contributes to achieving personal and organisational goals. Therefore, we must try to develop these skills in ourselves and keep on improving them with time all through our lives.