Whether you’re facing setbacks in your career, dealing with personal conflicts, or navigating through unexpected family crises, challenges are an inevitable part of life.

Naturally, these difficulties may lead to greater stress and anxiety, but they’re also opportunities to become stronger and tougher. Cultivating resilience is about thriving despite the odds and in the face of adversity, which in turn can help you move forward and find enjoyment in life—even when you least expect it.

Why resilience is important

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines resilience as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” In other words, it’s the capacity to endure through hardships and even thrive in the face of significant stress. Rather than circumventing challenges or ignoring their emotional impact, resilient individuals confront them directly, persevering and progressing when others might give up. As a result, research shows that they tend to cope with stress better, maintain a more positive outlook on life, and enjoy a greater overall well-being.

However, it’s important to recognize that being resilient doesn’t mean you never experience anxiety, sadness, anger, or frustration. Instead, it involves learning to confront and process these feelings so they don’t defeat you, which will better enable you to face problems head-on and find ways to continue despite them. By embracing the understanding that life’s journey isn’t always smooth, you can persist and discover joy amid the chaos.

How to cultivate more resilience

Resilience relies on a combination of your inner workings and outside resources, such as the people you surround yourself with. So to become more resilient, you must examine your thoughts, actions, and emotions as well as your relationships with others to develop a healthier mindset, behaviors, and bonds. Such an undertaking can take time, but with dedication, you may find it slowly becoming easier to get through challenges and move forward with more strength.

According to the APA, there are four main components of resilience: healthy thinking, connection, wellness, and purpose. Here are a few practices to try that will help you hone each one so you can better withstand any setback.

Healthy thinking
It’s essential to develop and maintain an overall positive outlook on both life and the world. By staying optimistic, you can reframe issues as opportunities for growth and learning, enabling you to feel more in control when things inevitably don’t go your way. This doesn’t mean ignoring the impact of difficulties but instead focusing on finding solutions for them while maintaining a high level of hope.

In this vein, resilient individuals view change as a natural part of life rather than something to be feared. Aim to always be flexible and adaptable, which will allow you to navigate periods of transition with greater ease. In turn, you can open yourself up to experiencing other paths that you may not have considered before.

Connection
Your social network is a powerful buffer against stress, so foster strong relationships with friends, family members, coworkers, and even support groups. When you do this, you may find that you have a greater sense of belonging and connection to the world, which will remind you that you’re not alone during tough times. Simply knowing that you have people you trust to lean on can make all the difference in how well you recover from and persevere through a roadblock.

Wellness
Taking care of your physical, emotional, and mental well-being is a major key to building resilience. Every day, engage in activities that nourish your body and soul, such as exercising, reading, or spending time in nature. When you make self-care a priority, you give yourself time to relax and recharge, helping you stay prepared for anything you may face.

Mindfulness practices, including meditation and deep-breathing exercises, can also help build resilience by fostering present-moment awareness and emotional regulation. Learn to ground yourself in the present and focus on the positives, and you can be better equipped to cope with stress and maintain a sense of inner calm amid life’s storms.

Purpose
It’s not always easy to find a sense of purpose, be it in your job, your hobbies, or your daily activities. But there’s a simple tactic that can help: establishing achievable goals. Such concrete targets can give you greater meaning in life and serve as powerful motivators to keep you continually moving forward. For instance, if you recently lost your job, instead of becoming overwhelmed by everything you need to do to find a new one, create a simple yet realistic goal for each day, such as saving ten job openings or reading about emerging trends in your industry. These objectives can provide a road map for what steps to take next, offering you purpose in moments when you may otherwise be feeling lost.

Like with just about anything else, resilience is not a trait that one person naturally has and another lacks. Rather, it’s a skill everyone has to learn and develop. So if you currently struggle to bounce back from stressful situations, that’s OK! Just be patient with yourself and pay more attention to how you mentally and physically respond during periods of crisis. With more time and greater intentionality, you can cultivate a healthier mindset and strategies to help you recover more effectively.