5 Steps to Shift From Surviving to Thriving

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“How was I supposed to know this?” a young single mother responded in frustration as we discussed how to handle the pressures of parenting. Yes, it would be great if we all had the skills, knowledge, strength, and flexibility to handle the challenges of life, but often, we don’t. Fortunately, it is never too late to learn the skills and mindsets that underlie resilience, even when we are under pressure.

Decades of research in child development point to the importance of a secure attachment between parents and children as predictive of academic success, resilience, physical well-being, and emotional health. Numerous skills are learned in a secure environment that facilitates self-awareness, emotional regulation, character development, learning relationship skills, and mental flexibility.

More recently, we have learned how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) contribute to an increased risk of depression, anxiety, poor work performance, obesity, attention difficulties, addiction, sleep disturbance, and health problems. In an unstable home environment, healthy coping skills are less likely to be learned, and fewer close, secure relationships are experienced.

If you have an unstable background and blame yourself for what you don’t know, please try to extend some compassion to yourself and recognize your incredible strengths. You have survived, overcome countless problems, and done many things on your own that others likely could not do.

When life has taught you to survive but not thrive, it is never too late to learn. Resilience is something you do, not something you have. If life is coming from all sides and you are unsure what to do, here is where to begin.

1. Self-Awareness. Practice the skills of focused attention, sustained attention, and open awareness. We spend much of our time focusing on the past, which is full of regret, or the future and all the things that might go wrong. Set time aside daily for a mindfulness exercise where you focus on your five senses, internal physical sensations, thoughts, feelings, and desires. With open awareness, practice observing your thoughts and feelings with curiosity and kind intention.
2. Emotional Regulation. Learn the skills of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) that help you recognize adverse events, unhelpful beliefs, unhelpful negative emotions, and the problematic behaviors that follow. The heart of resilience is a set of flexible beliefs that helps you have realistic expectations of yourself, others, and life. When we demand that we perform well, be treated well by others, and have life go as we would like, we set ourselves up to be distressed. We will also be inclined to punish ourselves and others. But when we change our demands to preferences, we can change our negative emotions from overwhelming and destructive to manageable. Another key skill to practice is generating positive emotions through gratitude, savoring positive experiences, and loving-kindness. The more we build positive emotions into our lives, the more resilient we become.
3. Character Development. Learn to recognize and develop your character strengths. We have a certain internal structure that helps us to face problems and build good relationships. Character strengths help us build trust in relationships, take personal responsibility, work productively, face problems, and transcend ourselves. Take time to learn about specific character strengths that focus on wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance, and transcendence. We typically know a hundred things wrong with ourselves, but very little about what is good. Take time at the end of each day and notice when you have used your character strengths. The more you see them, the more you will use them.
4. Relationship Skills. Learn the skills of asking good questions, reflective listening, and turning conflict into a conversation. An underlying rule governs all interactions in unstable homes where conflict is normal. The rule goes like this: External events cause me to act and feel like I do. Therefore, I need others to change so I feel better. It is good and right for me to force others to change. This rule is a perfect recipe for a miserable relationship where people use criticism, blame, complaining, nagging, bribing, rewarding, punishment, pleasing, and contempt to get others to change. Learn the skills of listening, respecting, trusting, supporting, asking questions, and encouraging. And remember that the only person’s behavior you can control is your own.
5. Mental Flexibility. Learn the skills of acceptance, letting go, and tolerance of uncertainty. A core struggle of being human is avoiding our negative experiences. When distress shows up, our go-to strategy is to avoid or control thoughts and emotions, attempt to control our circumstances, and hide our misery from public view. Rather than fight with our thoughts and emotions, we can learn the skill of acceptance and make room for whatever we experience without trying to change or wish for it to be different. Rather than fighting with our thoughts and emotions, we can use mindfulness skills to observe them and allow them to come and go. We can also develop a better outlook on life that recognizes that life is uncertain and does not owe us anything. Yet, we can learn from everything that happens in life and grow from the experiences.

It is never too late to rebuild a foundation for a resilient life. To do this, we must learn to turn toward problems, not away. There is no growth without challenge and discomfort. Change only comes through hard work, discomfort, and persistence, but the work will help us build a life worth living even if our life is not what we want right now.

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