6 life experiences that will make you an emotionally resilient person, according to psychology

One of my all-time favorite songs is Dianne Reeves’ “Better Days.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to this song as a crutch during those dark times in my life.
There’s a passage that I particularly love:
You can’t get to no better days / Unless you make it through the night
This part is such a soulful reminder that enduring the tough times is often what builds our emotional resilience. Such is the great paradox of life.
Psychologists agree that certain life experiences can forge this resilience by pushing us to our limits and teaching us to bounce back from adversity.
Here are six life experiences that are particularly potent in building a more emotionally resilient person, according to psychology.
Hopefully, you’ll see them in a much better light despite the pain.
1) Failure
I’d say this is the most common of all life experiences. I don’t know a single person who has never failed in life. Even the great Thomas Edison did…10,000 times!
Tim Hill Psychotherapy describes resilience as “emotional fitness,” and failure as an exercise to develop it.
According to them, “We can’t build resilience on success alone. It takes failure for us to build our inner strength and work out how to deal with failure. A life of unbroken success doesn’t test us; if we are untested, then we are unprepared for what might come.”
True enough, if you look at kids who’ve never been allowed to fail, who have always had everything handed to them on a silver platter…you’ll notice that they tend to fall apart more easily when they don’t get what they want.
In contrast, kids whose parents didn’t swoop in at the slightest sign of struggle cope much better.
Being allowed to fail and learning from their mistakes teaches them one important thing – if they get knocked down, they have the ability to recover.
This belief is what makes someone resilient and ready to face whatever challenges come their way.
2) Rejection
Similarly, rejection is quite the powerful resilience trainer. It’s absolutely dreadful in the moment, of course – it’s embarrassing to get rejected!
I love pointing out J.K. Rowling’s story whenever the conversation turns to rejection. Imagine a book you’ve poured your heart and soul into getting nothing but rejection slips during your first 12 tries of pitching it to publishers…
As a writer, I can so relate to this. Rejection is such a natural part of the writing life, after all. I have to admit, when I was first starting out, it was horrible. Some days, I’d feel like giving up.
But well, I’m still here. I eventually developed a thicker skin and trained myself to see rejection for what it was – just another step in the process. Just an opportunity to learn, improve, and try again.
Definitely not the end of the world.
I’m pretty sure you’ve experienced rejection in some other way. Maybe a romantic interest turned you down, or you didn’t get the job you wanted.
I know it stings, but you’re perfectly capable of bouncing back from it.
3) Heartbreak
Getting your heart broken? Yeah, that can definitely feel like the end of the world, too.
But it’s not. As Charles Dickens once said, “The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.”
And yes, for a while, the days will be terrible indeed. The days will be spent wondering what went wrong and replaying conversations. The nights will be spent pining for a lost dream.
But you best believe that as time passes, those sharp edges of pain will begin to soften.
You start to adapt, learn, and eventually, find ways to heal. And in the process, you learn more about yourself.
You realize that that heartbreak meant something important – that you cared deeply enough for someone. Not everyone is brave enough to do that!
You may even be thankful for the person who came into your life, even though they hurt you when they left.
That’s how you get emotional resilience from heartbreak. You find meaning in it and move on.
And you know what? This is actually the funny thing about the human heart – it’s capable of loving anew, even though the risk of it getting broken again is still there.
Like I said, brave.
4) Death of a loved one
Have you ever been told, “Everything happens for a reason” when you lost a loved one?
I’m pretty sure that was frustrating, and I can’t blame you if you snap at them.
Grief is such an enormous, complex emotion that could swallow you up whole and spit you out in gnarly, tattered pieces.
It certainly isn’t an emotion you could easily explain away with a cliche like the one I mentioned.
It may never even go away, that’s the reality of it. But the resilient among us will find a way to live with it.
In her book “Resilient Grieving: How to Find Your Way Through a Devastating Loss,” author Lucy Hone said:
“It will always be different, with your loss part of your new world and personal identity. But that doesn’t mean you won’t function effectively and meaningfully again, or fully embrace a life full of love and laughter, alongside plentiful memories of those who once stood beside you.”
There is no right way to grieve, but Hone advises us to be active participants in our grieving process through strategies like:
- Accepting the good that still remains
- Hunting out positive emotions
- Establishing routines and rituals to keep your loved one’s memories alive
5) Unemployment
If you’ve ever been fired or laid off, you know how stressful it is. Not only do you suddenly not have a source of income, but you also suffer a huge blow to your self-esteem.
You lose a sense of purpose and meaning; you lose status and stability.
Add to that the anxiety-inducing thought that you don’t know how long you’ll be without a job. It’s a lot to think about!
But if you do it right (meaning, you get proactive instead of curling up in a ball and crying in the shower), being unemployed can teach you to be emotionally resilient.
The Greater Good advises these strategies to minimize the suffering and bounce back:
- Move your mind. Keep your brain stimulated.
- Try to eat right and sleep right.
- Seek out social connections.
- Practice self-compassion.
- Give yourself some structure by keeping to a schedule and routine.
- Find yourself a purpose.
6) Financial difficulties
Not knowing how you’ll pay the next round of bills or how to buy food for the day can either make or break you.
And judging from the human race’s survival instincts, I’m willing to bet it will be on the “make” side.
When faced with financial hardship, we often discover strengths we didn’t know we had. We become more resourceful and creative.
As the old saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” The ones who managed to pull through their financial hardships are the ones who’ve adapted and stayed hopeful.
Final thoughts
At the end of the day, resilience really boils down to self-belief. How resilient you are will depend on how much you trust that you’ve got what it takes to get through the tough times.
So, if there’s one thing to take away, it’s this: start with believing you can handle it, and you’re already halfway there.