5 Ways to Build Mental Strength and Resilience

When the mental activity of the “monkey mind” won’t switch off, life inside our own heads can become an inescapable nightmare. An analogy from Buddhist teaching, this term describes the restless animation of non-stop thoughts that crash around our interior world like monkeys swinging from tree to tree. A racing mind can keep us up at night, affect our work and personal lives, keep us paralyzed in inaction, steal our inner peace, drain our energy, and have longer-term consequences on our well-being. We can even get addicted to the incessant activity of the monkey mind, which reinforces the stress cycle rather than solving it. According to both Buddhism and modern clinical research, mindfulness is the most effective way to quiet things down. By “training” the monkeys to be calmer and less distracting from moment to moment, we can actually think more clearly and act more effectively. Here are some mindful methods for quieting the monkey mind.

According to the World Health Organization, mental health exists on a spectrum – and when someone is in a state that is considered optimally healthy, they are able to fully realize their own potential. Upon this spectrum exists three psychological states ー struggling, surviving, and thriving ー with each one representing how mentally healthy a person is feeling at that point in time.

Whether or not life begins at first breath is a topic that’s still under heavy debate – many believe that it may be earlier – but one thing we can usually agree on is that with our final breath, at least, comes death. What death may actually mean to each person can differ, with various faiths and cultures each following their own belief system of what happens to our consciousness after we die, whether or not there is an afterlife, and what that may involve – but the bottom line still remains that as long as we are still on this earth, living our human existence, we are breathing. 

Whether or not it’s extreme enough to make us feel like the crestfallen dignitary from Game of Thrones being derided with a cutting chorus of “Shame!”, the painful feeling of experiencing humiliation or distress can wreak havoc on our well-being. Research suggests that women are often quicker to feel humiliated, and that men, on average, have greater difficulty with feelings in general – including shame. It has also found that adolescents feel shame more intensely than their elders. 

Imagine if you had superpowers that could help you surpass tough challenges, beat any obstacles in your path, and be as wise as you could possibly be. Well, you do have them – all of us do: they’re called character strengths, and knowing what they are (and how to use them) could transform your life for the better.

Imagine you're bankrupt all of a sudden due to an unexpected emergency that you can't possibly control. Perhaps it could be that one of your family members is suffering from chronic health issues and requires your help with additional medical expenses, or it could be that there's catastrophic damage to your house that needs you to instantly make a huge financial sacrifice to renovate the property. If in just a few days, you could lose most of the money and assets to which you have dedicated most of your life and time, how would you feel? You would probably experience various negative emotions from depression and rage to grief and despair. Maybe you’d also blame the world for the misfortune, finding pain in how helpless you feel, since what’s happening appears to be something that you have no power to control, no matter how desperately you wish that things could have turned out differently. 

You may think you have good, healthy boundaries. Yet for most people, when asked what exactly their boundaries are, they have a hard time defining them clearly. Setting and upholding healthy boundaries is an important part of our self-care. Boundaries are designed to protect our physical and emotional well-being, and are determined by what behaviors we find acceptable or not to allow in our lives. 

Confidence is, most often, a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe we will do well in life, chances are more likely that we will. Even when people with a high level of confidence fail, the secure sense of self that comes hand-in-hand with confidence means that they are much more likely to get back up, brush themselves off, learn from the experience, and move forward. While psychologically, there’s a bit more to building true confidence than a simple ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ approach, there certainly are measures we can take to kickstart a little more conviction in our self-belief. Whether you’re experiencing chronically low levels of confidence or just experiencing a temporary dip, you can take control of the narrative.