A guide to building inner toughness to help you thrive in our changing world
Isn’t it remarkable how modern humans continue to struggle in these times of abundant knowledge? Despite all the developments in our lives over the past one hundred years, we feel like we are ever more adrift and lost about how to cope with modern living. The doom and gloom is like a constant wall of booming noise that has no off switch. Our phones, laptops, family, friends, media sources, politicians, and institutions continue to bombard us with low-value but incessant fear. We can’t seem to see a path forward through the mist of crises and algorithmic computer code.
“On the other side of a storm is the strength that comes from having navigated through it. Raise your sail and begin.” – Gregory S. Williams
Many years ago, I realised that when I got lost while driving somewhere, I found myself driving faster down the wrong road. The more people feel lost in technologically addictive work, the more they scroll, click and consume mindless cat videos, all in the hope of some miracle video that will end the pain and get them back to a normal that no one can define anymore.
The material and medical changes over the last century have occurred at a pace faster than our brains have been able to cope with or adapt to. I’m sure you feel that your life is moving faster now than you have the ability to adjust to, which increases your fear and anxiety for the future. I put these tips together to help you realise that by building resilience, you can be ready for challenges that will come into your life.
1. Challenge your perspective – embrace change and uncertainty
Our brains are magnificent things. They sustain our lives and enable incredible thinking, but hinder us in the modern world. We are driven by a two-million-year-old “lizard” brain, specifically the amygdala, which is programmed to detect threats in our world and drive our response to fight or flight. As our world is no longer threatened by giant, vicious creatures or marauding tribes, our brains tend to seek out threats in our personal world, where they may not actually exist. We make things up or make small issues way worse than they are because of the Amygdala’s role in actively looking for threats.
By changing your perspective in life, you will come to realise that life is about change, and there is nothing you can do about it. No matter what you do, your body will change with age, and your journey on this planet will someday end. Bad things will happen to you alongside all the many great things. There are no safe spaces or failure-free zones, so choose to focus on the good things by ignoring the threats that your brain keeps seeking out to protect you from.
Don’t keep viewing life as a series of threats and challenges. Change your perspective to see these as challenges to solve, uncertainties to work through, or opportunities to capitalise on.
2. Accept what you can’t control
A key aspect of mental resilience is recognising the difference between what you can control and what you can’t. Shift your perspective to work on the things you can control. You certainly can’t control the failing economy, but you can educate yourself in ways that enhance your skills in finance and business. These skills could allow you to command a higher salary or start a second side hustle.
Dwelling on other aspects like world politics, celebrity feuds, or other people’s reactions to you in the world you live in is simply a recipe for more stress and anxiety. There will always be uncertainty, so work on things you can be certain about. Take control of what you can in your life.
What you can control are your thoughts, your daily habits, and actions. By this, I mean you can control your responses to issues you encounter and decide what to focus your precious energy on. You’ll hear it called ‘agency’ a lot going forward as it becomes trendy, but it’s simply about taking control. When you have agency, you take control of your life rather than just letting life happen to you.
3. Build your support system in the real world
I know this should be obvious, but humans have evolved as social creatures, so we need strong social connections as a fundamental aspect of healthy mental well-being.
Seek out positive and supportive people to uplift and encourage you in your life. This can be family, friends, a small friendship group, or a community centred around an interest you have. These are people who will champion your success and support you when you fall, which is inevitable. They will also act as a buffer against life’s challenges, providing you with an avenue to vent, seek advice and celebrate your victories. Make sure to find these people in the real world, not just online. Let toxic people drift out of your life if they are not on the same path as you.
Social and mainstream media have distorted people’s perceptions of communication and support. We have so many “followers” who constantly need to be entertained, so we become dancing monkeys for their likes and heart emojis – none of which are valuable connections in any way. They are just thoughtless, lazy and of no value.
4. Embrace challenges
It is such a counterintuitive concept to our evolutionary journey that we need to embrace hardship and pain to grow. It goes against the flight instinct to embrace the obstacle that stands in your path. That challenging moment, event, emotion, or problem that will, in fact, develop you and make you stronger should you decide not to run from it. Stand your ground and embrace it as a learning opportunity.
There are two types of mindsets (fixed vs growth) that influence us in very different ways. Approach challenges in your life with a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset, believing that your abilities can improve through effort and perseverance. Difficult situations will push you to think creatively, find innovative solutions and build your skills. You must shake off the shackled teaching of our schools and universities, which drills into you that being wrong or failing is a weakness that needs to be avoided at all times. That is typically why someone with a fixed mindset believes you can only have a fixed intelligence and can never learn any more.
If you’re trying new things and facing significant obstacles, it usually means you’re on the right path and must persevere. Failing is the best way to test yourself and your ideas so that you can realign and make some small tweaks to break through the obstacles in the path
“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” – Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way
Accepting that you will fail many times and learning from each failure is a great way to build resilience to the uncertainty we face in the world today. Regardless of what comes your way, you will be able to bend like a willow tree in a storm and still be there when it blows through. Failure can build faith in yourself, allowing you to endure.
5. Practice self-care
Make time for activities that nourish your body, mind and soul. Make it a goal to sleep seven to eight hours every night, as it’s the best way to reset the brain and rebuild your body after stress and exercise. If possible, practice meditation to help manage stress, or go for a walk in a local forest or meadow.
Engage in physical exercise at least four times a week. I am not a believer in the ten thousand steps per day guidance unless you have never exercised before or have let yourself get so out of shape that your movement is compromised. You may start by walking for a few months, but then transition into a zone where you elevate your heart rate with some cardio.
Begin weight training as soon as possible because I believe it is vital for both men and women to develop strength, which will ultimately lead to improved mobility and overall health throughout their lives. Lifting weights to improve your physical health provides a foundation for mental resilience, helping you manage stress hormones and enhance your overall mood.
Avoid crash diets, cleanses, or other shortcuts that are available for exorbitant amounts of money online. You are personally responsible for your own health, nobody else. No one can do your push-ups for you. Don’t aim for shortcuts because the results don’t last. Take the tougher routes to condition yourself and make it a part of your lifestyle.
Prioritising self-care helps you to recharge, maintain a positive outlook, and approach challenges with a sense of calm and clarity
6. Develop gratitude
A grateful heart is a resilient heart. Taking time to reflect on the things you’re grateful for, big or small, fosters a sense of positivity and contentment. Make a list of all the things you have in your life that you are grateful for and read through them regularly, especially when you are confronted by fear or anxiety.
Start the list with the obvious ones, such as your health, your partner, your children, your family, or a great job. Anything that you can think of that you know that somebody else out there in the world would be desperate to have in their life.
“Somebody is in a hospital right now begging God for the opportunity you have. Don’t you dare go to bed depressed” – Paul Walker, Actor
Gratitude helps you appreciate what you have, even amidst challenges, and builds resilience by nurturing a sense of optimism and a positive outlook.
7. Focus on the present – Mindfulness and self-awareness
It’s not your brain’s job to make you happy because its job is to prioritise threats and issues in your life. It is your responsibility to find happiness (joy) and make yourself happy.
I know it’s very easy to get caught up in the past or worry excessively about the future, both of which are mentally draining. Mindfulness helps you stay grounded in the present moment, reducing stress about both the past and future, which is crucial when your world is unpredictable or chaotic. Remember, the past cannot be altered, and the future doesn’t exist yet. All you have is the present.
Be on guard about what your thoughts are, and notice any negative thoughts, patterns or limiting beliefs that may be causing you anxiety. Meditation, or at least focusing on your breath, can help reduce these thoughts and anxieties. By focusing on the present, you can address any negative challenges that may occur in the future more effectively. You don’t want to be focused on or be overwhelmed by what-ifs that will probably never happen.
8. Learn from setbacks – cultivate a positive outlook
As I mentioned earlier, embrace the obstacles in your life as opportunities for growth, and also welcome the setbacks and failures that will inevitably arise. This will help to cement a growth mentality in you rather than a fear-based or emotional outlook. Setbacks could be like a lost job that you love, a failed relationship you thought would go on forever, or a side hustle that you poured your heart and soul into.
Allow yourself time to process and grieve before reflecting on what worked and what you need to learn from. Feel the emotions that we all need to feel during these events. You didn’t fail. You just got a chance to learn about yourself. Use these insights to enhance your knowledge and equip yourself with mental resilience for when you pursue the next job, relationship, or side hustle. Setbacks are not the end of the road. They are just stepping stones to the future that you want for yourself.
9. Celebrate small wins
I’ve always found that we tend to focus on failures more than our successes, and this is something that you really need to rectify. No, I’m not talking about excessive bragging or strutting about as if you are the best in the world. As Tony Robbins says, “We are not supposed to sit at the table of success too long, or we get bored and fat.”
I am talking about acknowledging that you have accomplished something that you set out to do and then completed it. Patting yourself on the back reinforces a sense of progress and motivates you to keep moving forward to the next success. Initially, these successes may be tasks on your to-do list that you have been putting off for a while. It could be you leading an event or calling a meeting that you’ve been dreading.
I created a bucket list way, way back when I was eighteen. This was an extensive list based on numerous countries I wanted to visit, journeys I wanted to take, or activities I wanted to try. It has served me well as a guide along the way, but nothing gave me a jolt of pride and confidence like when I created my success list decades later. This was simply a list, akin to a personal CV, of all the things I had done and succeeded in. Many items were on my bucket list, such as scuba diving, parachuting, and visiting fifty countries, but there were also smaller ones not on any lists, like photographing tigers in India and polar bears in the Arctic.
Celebrate every win, big or small, to help with your mental resilience
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller
10. Seek professional help
Looking at the future, according to the newspapers and politicians, we should all be in permanent therapy, but we aren’t. We possess an incredible ability, a trait that has enabled and allowed our species to conquer its environment and move about the earth, called adaptability.
Being able to adapt to the challenges we’ve faced with solutions has allowed us to grow and take control of so much of our world. Yes, we had minimal expectations and needs back then, but we were flexible and could grow. Nowadays, there are so many expectations placed on us in the earn-to-consume world that we struggle to cope. I believe this is primarily due to the last hundred years of technological development across various industries, medicine, and Big Tech.
We’re not accustomed to hardship like our ancestors were because we expect everything to go as smoothly as an Amazon next-day delivery. Wrap that all up, with a lack of family and community support, means that an increasing number of people will need help from professionals. I have always believed that hardship leads to learning and growth, but if you cannot see any way out of your issues, please reach out to someone who can help you return to a place of comfort.
Bonus Tip – Critical thinking.
What is Critical thinking?
Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skilfully analysing, evaluating, and synthesising information to reach a reasoned judgment or conclusion (thanks, Google, for that description).
I’ve left this tip for last because it is simply more important to your resilience in the future than any of the other in today’s information world. Since I began analysing the environment, energy, economy, and geopolitics in 2006, I’ve noticed a significant decline in people’s ability to question what they’re being told is happening around them. All of the above ten areas will be greatly enhanced with you cultivating a better critical thinking ability.
Since the advent of smartphones, particularly social media and 24-hour news, we are inundated with information, much of which is pointless. It is natural to feel overwhelmed because you are up against a wall of tech that has been designed with the help of behavioural scientists and analysts to keep you hooked on the incoming data and information.
Personally, I don’t care about the left vs right argument, capitalism vs socialism, race or gender issues because these are all just echo chambers meant to entrap and divide people into controllable tribes. Once you understand the echo chamber effect, you won’t look at content in the same way again…and this is great.
Basic steps to help with your critical thinking
- Stay away from Mainstream Media because they are now entertainment shows, not balanced news media. Find independent writers across your interests or use AI aggregators like Ground News, which lists the number of news sources that run any story, plus it gives the Left, Centre, and Right bias. It also features a great Blindspot section, which lists news stories that are covered solely by one of the three.
- Question everything you read on your phone and laptop. Everyone has a message, an opinion, an angle or a bias. Understand this. Look into the various types of bias, such as recency bias, partisan bias, confirmation bias, negativity bias, and anchoring bias, among others. Don’t trust what people say – Verify what they say.
- Apply commonsense logic to things and understand that most experts out there today are paid for their particular views by people who want to push that particular narrative. Journalists are pushed by editors funded by wealthy groups or owners. Professors are funded by university departments that collect donations from groups with a particular bias on specific issues. Professors lose their jobs if they speak out against the department’s or benefactor’s bias.
- If you watch a podcast from someone on one side of any argument, immediately go and find someone who disagrees with them and listen to a podcast about their differing opinion. Constantly ask why people are saying things and where they get their information from.
- Continue to look for new individuals and podcasts to follow because this is the new evolving media landscape. Just ask Kamala Harris about the Joe Rogan effect.
The future of our society and civilisation is at a very interesting stage. I’ve compiled these tips with the hope of helping you begin your resilience journey. We will all need to toughen up if we want to thrive in the face of what is coming at us. I don’t like being a doom-monger in any way, but it saddens me more when I see people with their heads in the sand. That is the main reason I started The Resilient Path.
Wayne Marinovich is a Resilience Life Coach and the founder of The Resilient Path, a platform of articles, eBooks, and tips for navigating a path through the coming challenges of our world, and for those who are struggling to see their future. We focus on providing tools and guidance.
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