5 Steps to a Stronger Mind

How to develop mental resilience

Most people believe resilience is something you are born with or it’s something you either have or you don’t. The truth is, no one is born resilient. Quite the opposite actually — we are all born weak and dependent. Resilience is something we can build over time with hard work.

1. Stop focusing on appearances

Excessive focus on appearances is externalising behaviour. It is trying to control other people’s perceptions of you (external forces) to regulate your inner world.

This means you can only feel as successful, confident, strong, good-looking, independent, friendly and empathetic as other people see you. You will crumble when criticised or challenged because you lack a solid inner core.

It is also impossible to gain complete control over your environment and render it predictable — people and events in life are unpredictable by nature. If your self-esteem is tied to your appearance, unexpected circumstances will continue to deliver blows at it for the rest of your life.

“For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

2. Accept your natural irrationality

It is easy to spot other people’s hypocrisy, whereas we never look at ourselves and see our own irrationality. I, for one, never realised my obsession with appearances until more recently. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be strong and resilient. I think this was because I have been in situations as a kid where I felt the opposite. So, subconsciously, in my mind, I created an ideal person I wanted to see myself as — someone who was completely invulnerable.

This ideal person I imagined myself to be was not allowed to care for anyone, feel emotions that I considered weak or have any vulnerable moments. But the reality was different. This imaginary person was unrealistic, and no human, including myself, could match the level of perfection I had desired. So often, I found myself in positions that challenged the image of how I wanted to see myself, where I felt vulnerable or powerless, and this was highly ego-dystonic.

For example, when I was younger, I had problems standing up for myself and expressing myself directly. I got into situations where people noticed this and started trying to use it against me. To mitigate this, over time, I became great at strategising. I learnt to conceal my weaknesses to create an even better appearance — one that seemed invulnerable and intimidating and, therefore, would deter people from trying anything in the first place.

Yet, all my hard work on becoming more resilient was only about improving my appearance. I never asked why I couldn’t stand up for myself, why I was terrible at confrontation unless I became extremely angry or whether I could fix this.

When I started to learn more about myself, my initial goal was to find confirmation that I was indeed naturally strong and resilient. I was looking at outside labels and explanations to confirm this belief. In other words, I was externalising as usual. Regardless, the more I looked inward, the more the belief that I was strong as the façade I had created was challenged. In the end, I had to face the truth — and that was I had weaknesses and insecurities that I refused to admit even to myself.

“We all deny our human nature. We think I’m not irrational, I’m not aggressive, I don’t feel envy, I am not a narcissist. It’s always the other side. It’s the Republicans, it’s the Spartans, it’s the Ethiopians-they’re the ones who are irrational and aggressive. Me? No. Accept the nature you share with others. Stop separating yourself out as special or superior.” — Robert Greene

3. Understand your “enemies”

Accepting your insecurities and weaknesses is a good start to getting rid of them — it’s the first crucial step, actually — but simply knowing what your problems are doesn’t change much. What made the difference for me was realising just like how I wore a mask, other people did too. They were also desperately trying to conceal their insecurities and weaknesses. They were trying to present themselves to people around them in the best way that matched their own ideals of perfection.

Once I noticed this, I could relate to others more. I gradually stopped seeing people as enemies and getting into meaningless competitions with them. Because what’s the point? Regardless of how awful their behaviours are, every person has a reason for what they have become. They have a logic that makes sense to them based on their interpretation of the world, which arose from their past experiences. When you start to see people for what they are, you learn to stop holding onto grudges, let things go and move on.

“To know your enemy, you must become your enemy…It is easy to love your friend, but sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is to love your enemy.” — Sun Tzu

4. Turn your weaknesses into strength

We all have weaknesses. It’s not possible to completely get rid of these but through self-introspection and awareness, we can gain control over them. Also, a trait is rarely either weak or strong. We do not live in a black and white world and mostly it isn’t the traits themselves that are weak. Weakness is when traits are expressed in an exaggerated manner.

For instance, I struggle to trust people so when someone gives me a piece of information, the first thing I do is to doubt and challenge it. While this can be a strength in the sense that I always question things and therefore I’m motivated to analyse and learn more, I am also biased towards supporting the opposite view because by nature I’m opinionated, stubborn and feel the need to go against the norm.

Being aware of this tendency means I can take a step back and analyse my reaction when necessary — am I siding with something just to be controversial and go against people, or is there a genuine reason the other side should be challenged? I can also make sure I take longer to make a decision and wait until my natural urge to oppose and disagree is diminished. The more I do this, the easier it gets.

If you can take an honest look at yourself and question and analyse all your emotions and behaviour, you will start to gain control over them and use them to your advantage.

“One might say that the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible. And certainly, ego makes it difficult every step of the way. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.” — Ryan Holiday

5. See every incident and failure as an opportunity to build more resilience

Whenever something bad happens to us, we tend to get emotional because we either blame ourselves or we blame the other party. Yet, the truth is, events in life are neutral — they are not good or bad. It is our mind that chooses to interpret things as one or the other. Just like how we can choose to see something as a crisis, we can also see the same thing as an opportunity to grow and become more resilient.

Additionally, it is important to remember that people are irrational, but so are you. You should accept this human nature and see analysing people and yourself as a fun game of solving puzzles. This will ensure you always observe everything in an unemotional, rational, and impartial manner. You will remain calm and balanced and most importantly stop projecting your own emotions onto other people.

“If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity, you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge — a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

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