“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.”― Steve Maraboli

Ten Strategies For Building Resilience & Bouncing Back From The Bottom!

Abhishek Shah
10 min readJan 25, 2020

Have you ever failed at something or gone through a rough patch? Have you made a mistake or suffered a setback and found yourself eating way too much ice cream afterwards?

Take heart! You’re in good company.

Even James Altucher, Martha Stewart, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, Vincent Van Gogh, J.K. Rowling, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein have faced hard times. But the difference between people who rebound from difficult situations and folks who stay curled up in a fetal position is the way they CHOOSE to respond to these events.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “resiliency” as the “ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change.” The good news is, you can learn how to become more resilient. Yes, you can make the CHOICE to bounce back from the bottom.

So, put down that ice-cream carton and get ready for a pep talk. Here are 10 strategies for building resilience that will help you overcome obstacles and rock your life, go ahead!

1. Failing is Normal — Just Keep Going

Life can leave you feeling depleted and weary. Anxiety is controlling your life and circumstances leave you feeling restless. You begin to feel like you’ll never get it all done and you’ll never measure up. By the end of the day, we often find ourselves feeling maxed out, overwhelmed, or lost. But God whispers to you, don’t give up. There are many ways to say it. Keep going. Don’t stop. Hang on. Hold fast. Stand firm. Our circumstances may look different, but the message of faith never changes. Don’t give up. Just Keep Going!

Buy “Don’t Give Up: Leaders Guide” from Amazon.com

2. Adopt a “Growth Mindset” to Build Confidence

For the last 25 years, Jim Kwik has helped everyone from celebrities to CEOs to students improve their memory, increase their decision-making skills, learn to speed-read, and unleash their superbrains.
In Limitless, readers will learn Jim’s revolutionary strategies and shortcuts to supercharging their brains, with simple, actionable tools to sharpen the mind, enhance focus, and fast-track their fullest potential.

“No matter your age, background, or level of education, you can learn new ways to use your brain. If you’ve been searching for better ways of coping and growing, I’m here to help you fall in love with learning again.” — Jim Kwik

Buy “Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life” from Amazon.com

3. Use Failure as Feedback

Learning from our mistakes is the only way to make sure we don’t make the same ones twice. But what if you could use every failure — large and small — to actually create a successful business, career, and life?

You can.

Fail More provides the knowledge, insight, and tools to do just that. This one-of-a-kind guide teaches you how to take active, strategic measures to turn the sting of failure into the reward of growth. It reveals the setbacks that are both inevitable and valuable, and it delivers practical ways of quickly moving past self-judgment and recrimination to:

  • Create large and small goals
  • Establish milestones for achieving them
  • Analyze data to determine what worked and what didn’t
  • Make the necessary corrections to your method
  • Determine what you need and adjust accordingly
  • Evaluate your actions
  • Assess your progress while refining your game plan
  • Use failing as a core tool for motivation

By embracing failure, not just “getting past it”, you will fly past your competition, whether you’re building a start-up, advancing in your career, or improving your personal life.

The most underrated tool for success is a failure. Now, you have a pragmatic program for turning failure today into profits and growth tomorrow.

Buy “Fail More: Embrace, Learn and Adapt to Failure As a Way to Success” from Amazon.com

4. Develop Your Superpowers

We’re rational creatures — well, at least that’s what we’ve been told. Naturally, when it comes to making decisions, you don’t look at how you really feel about it — you do what your left-brain think is right.

That is, until one day you wake up and realize you’re not happy. Something’s terribly wrong — even though you did everything right.

You have everything you need alright — but none of what you want.

What happened?

Don’t let what you believe to be the choice of your rational mind suck all happiness out of you. Sometimes, you’ve got to do a leap of faith — and trust your intuition a tiny bit more. It’s here to serve you — and save you from wasting time on all the wrong people, in all the wrong places, doing all the wrong moves.

How do you know when is the right time to trust that little voice at the back of your mind — or completely ignore it? Intuition isn’t the opposite of logic & facts — it’s about embracing both the spiritual and rational.

Intuition isn’t the voice of your biggest fears — or strongest desires and intuition isn’t something only a few chosen ones have — it’s rather a skill that can be taught and mastered.

That’s where Intuition is Your Superpower comes to give you some much-needed guidance and clarity.

In Intuition is Your Superpower, you will learn more about:

  1. What is intuition and what intuition is NOT. Clear away all the prejudice and master the art of using your right brain and left brain at the same time
  2. How to sharpen your intuition — easy methods everyone can use without having to leave modern living behind!
  3. How to tell the difference between intuition and fear — never again let the ego make you doubt your own choices!
  4. How your intuition talks to you using your body and get access to the body wisdom chart — understand your own self better!
  5. How to use intuition to heal past trauma, heal, and move on the right path for yourself.

Your intuition can take you places — only if you trust yourself a bit more and your intuition is your superpower. Are you ready to harness it?

Buy “Intuition is Your Superpower: Learn how to follow your gut and gain confidence in the little voice at the back of your mind” from Amazon.com

5. Find Your Tribe

Part personal development guide, part adventure tale, Tribe of Millionaires teaches listeners six timeless lessons about the power of those around us to transform our lives.

When Ethan Martinez receives a mysterious invitation after the death of his father, he embarks on an adventure not only to save his struggling business, but to discover his past.

Traveling to a tropical island with the mysterious “Tribe of Millionaires”, Ethan finds his whole approach to business and life shifting with each lesson. The more time Ethan spends with the enigmatic members of the tribe, the more he comes to realize that the answers he seeks are, as they are for all of us, hidden in plain sight.

Buy “ Tribe of Millionaires: What if one choice could change everything?” from Amazon.com

6. Remove Toxicity From Your Life

As important as it is to surround yourself with a positive tribe, it’s also essential that you distance yourself from people who rain on your parade. In everyone’s life, there are difficult people whose goal is to make your life unbearable, smash your self-esteem, humiliate and trample you.

How should you deal with relationships that pull you down, limit your progress, and affect your mental health? Should you just continue on and hope for the best? Is it more prudent to get rid of toxic people? Or is there something you can do first before cutting them out? Is there a way to communicate with difficult people; to let them know what they are doing to you? What happens if they know and still do not change? Should you still retain them in your life?

I have written this book about toxic relationships to help you answer these questions. Your success, happiness, and fulfilment in life are important, and you cannot let anyone stand in the way of those.

What will you learn by reading this book about toxic people?

  • You will understand the definition of difficult people.
  • You will know why people become toxic.
  • You will distinguish between types of difficult people.
  • You will learn how to determine which people are toxic.
  • You will find out why you may attract negative people in your life and how to avoid them.
  • You will learn to improve your self-esteem and to set boundaries with difficult people.
  • You will learn how to build effective communication with toxic people.
  • You will learn to take responsibility for your life.
  • You will know when and how to end a toxic relationship.

7. Be Good

In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are “nasty, brutish, and short,” why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies?

Illustrated with more than fifty photographs of human emotions, Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy. Positive emotions, Keltner finds, lie at the core of human nature and shape our everyday behaviour―and they just may be the key to understanding how we can live our lives better.

Buy “Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life” from Amazon.com

8. Practice Kindness

A course in compassion from the creators of Random Acts of Kindness, Practice Random Acts of Kindness is a compilation of inspiring meditations, affirmations, and true stories collected from the growing number of “kindness experts” in the world. Contributors include Cecil Williams, Billy Graham, Rosalyn Carter, the Dalai Lama, presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, and a once-homeless millionaire in Los Angeles whose life was transformed by an anonymous act of generosity.

Kindness is a revolution whose time has come and, while most people sincerely want to be more caring, Practice Random Acts of Kindness brings it all home with simple suggestions of how to be kinder and why. From the wake of Hurricane Katrina to the tragedy of the tsunami to troops in Iraq performing acts of daily compassion, we see many glimpses of what a more benevolent world might look like. In Practice Random Acts of Kindness, the editors who flamed the spark of kindness tell us exactly how we can create this future and effect REAL change through kindness.

Buy “ Practice Random Acts of Kindness: Bring More Peace, Love, and Compassion Into the World” from Amazon.com

9. Say Positive Affirmations

“How to love yourself” — this evocative question has led millions of people to Louise Hay’s affirmation work. Now, this modern, beautifully designed deck of 64 powerful affirmations and uplifting messages will help you remember that at the very centre of your being, you are safe and you are whole. Each vibrant card invites you to look within and uncover the beautiful treasure that you are.

You deserve to live in an atmosphere of joy and acceptance. Open your arms wide and say: “I am receptive. I am wonderful. I accept all good in my life.” The 4" x 4" cards are a convenient size for placing around your home, car, workplace, or anywhere you will see them often. Spread the joy by offering some to friends and family. Meditate on a different card each morning and bring its positive energy into your day.

Buy “How to Love Yourself Cards: A Deck of 64 Affirmations Cards” from Amazon.com

10. Set Yourself Up for Success

In The Success Principles, the cocreator of the phenomenal bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, helps you get from where you are to where you want to be, teaching you how to increase your confidence, tackle daily challenges, live with passion and purpose, and realize all your ambitions.

Filled with memorable and inspiring stories of CEO’s, world-class athletes, celebrities, and everyday people, it spells out the 64 timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history — proven principles and strategies that can be adapted for your own life, whether you want to be the best salesperson in your company, become a leading architect, score top grades in school, lose weight, buy your dream home, make millions, or just get back in the job market.

Taken together and practised every day, these principles will change your life beyond your wildest dreams.

Buy “The Success Principles(TM) — 10th Anniversary Edition: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” from Amazon.com

We all experience defeat at some point; it’s part of being human. But you have a CHOICE about how to react to hardship. If you CHOOSE to learn from your mistakes and persevere with a growth mindset, you can succeed at pretty much anything, especially if you come up with alternative pathways to your goals and surround yourself with people who believe in you.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed or stressed out just remember to keep going. You’ve got this.

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Abhishek Shah

Nomad | Early Stage Investor | Wannabe Anthropologist | Technology Evangelist | Curious, Inquisitive & Experimental Entrepreneur