By Leo Babauta

For long-term pursuits like goals or habit change, one of the most important things we can develop to help us succeed is resilience: the ability to bounce back from setbacks and struggles.

It’s inevitable that we’ll get knocked off course. We’re going to have bad days, we’ll get discouraged from failure, we’ll miss days of doing a habit … all of this is expected, par for the course.

It’s not about whether we’ll get knocked off course or discouraged — it’s a matter of when. And when that happens, everything depends on whether we can get ourselves back in the game.

This is long-term resilience: the ability to handle difficulty, setbacks, being thrown off course, and emotional challenges.

And it’s something we can develop, with some practice.

Let’s talk about how to develop this long-term resilience — and if you’d like to work on this with me, join my Fearless Living Academy where we’ll be focusing on this theme for November!

What Resilience Actually Is

Resilience is not about whether or not you have strength, but whether you can deal with the difficulties that come your way, cope with them, and get back to your center. Get back on track.

It’s about being able to handle some discomfort, accepting that hard things will come your way, and trusting yourself to deal with all of it.

It’s about accepting struggle, and developing a new relationship to it.

The Mindset Shifts That Matter

Becoming more resilient starts with mindset. If we have a more resilient mindset, we take struggles and setbacks more in stride.

Here are some mindset shifts to consider — depending on what your current mindset might be:

• Setbacks: Instead of them being evidence that something is wrong with you, or the world is against you … see setbacks as a part of the path.

• Failures: Instead of seeing “failure” as a negative word that means something bad about you … see it as a packet of information. It’s teaching you something valuable that you can grow from.

• Timeline: We often think of setbacks as bad because they’re throwing us off our timeline — maybe we hoped to achieve a goal by a certain date, and the setback delays things. Instead, we might let go of the timeline (which was made up anyway) and see that this journey doesn’t happen on a schedule, but unfolds as it needs to.

• Emotions: When we have negative emotions, instead of seeing it as evidence that something is wrong or you should quit — you might see them as a part of any meaningful journey. You’re going to feel frustrated, discouraged, inadequate, defeated, or powerless at some point along any challenging endeavor. It’s something to feel, to process, to move through, as opposed to a reason to quit.

• Starting again: Often we see starting again, after falling off track, as a burden or a discouraging sign — instead, we can look at it again as a part of anything meaningful. Any longer, challenging endeavor will include many starts and stops. Our challenge is to master the art of starting again!

Look at these mindset shifts and try to distinguish which ones often get in your way. Then practice the shifts with some practical practices below.

Practical Practices for Building Resilience

Mindset shifts are where we start, but the way we actually build resilience is with regular practice, just like with any skill or capacity we want to develop.

Here are some ways to practice on a regular basis:

• Calm: Start by noticing when you’re thrown off. You’re discouraged, frustrated, stressed about a setback or a struggle. The first thing, after you notice this, is to calm your nervous system. You can do that by sitting still for a couple of minutes, and letting yourself breathe slowly. The slower, deeper breathing will calm you a bit. Think of one of the mindset shifts, and see if that helps calm you as well. Remind yourself that a setback is no big deal. Relax your body.

• Accept: Whatever is happening to throw you off, it is a good practice to try to accept it as a part of your journey. Miss a couple of days of exercise? No big deal, it happens. Forgot to study French the last few days? No big deal, things got busy, get back on track. Feeling down and unmotivated? Sure, it’s OK to feel that way sometimes. Acceptance helps relax you around whatever is happening, reducing stress and overreaction to the setback.

• Feel Emotions: It’s a resilience practice to let yourself feel your emotions when you face challenges and setbacks. Maybe you’re feeling disappointed, frustrated, discouraged. That’s OK! Running from the emotions only makes you more fragile, because you become afraid of them. Instead, you might try just letting yourself feel the emotions, as a physical experience. It’s like letting yourself feel wind on your face. Just feel the emotions, don’t get caught up in thoughts about them, and let them pass on.

• Start Again: When we bounce back, it can feel like a drag to be starting again … but this is a key skill to practice for anything that takes awhile, from new habits to achieving goals. It can help to think of it as the excitement of a fresh start — it can be motivating to start from scratch.

• Get Support: We are more resilient when we have community. Find others to be a part of your journey, to join you in your goals, or to talk to when you’re struggling. A coach or a therapist can be a part of this support as well. This helps us to feel less alone, and more resilient.

• Find Meaning: We can’t always control the setbacks we face … but we can choose the meaning. Instead of “why is this happening to me?” or “this sucks, it always happens to me” … what about “What can this teach me?” or “How is this serving my growth?” By asking these kinds of questions, we frame the setback with something meaningful.

Resilience — the ability to bounce back gracefully from anything — is a long-term capacity and set of skills to develop. Take it one small step at a time. Pick one tiny practice and commit to practicing it daily.

You don’t have to bounce back perfectly, or even quickly. You can just learn to do it better over time, with practice and reflection.

If you’d like to build long-term resilience with me, join my Fearless Living Academy where we’ll be focusing on this theme for November!