10 Options to Enhance Resilience While Navigating Life’s Challenges

In graduate school, I learned through personal experience how resilience in the face of challenge is something that can be learned and developed through the process of navigating life’s challenges head-on. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” Many highly sensitive people can learn to successfully navigate life’s challenges by enhancing their resilience.

As one of my professors was fond of saying, you don’t become resilient by sitting comfortably in your armchair. Going out and seeking opportunities to grow is one way to develop resiliency, but we can also count on a fair number of challenges to come to us.

Navigating Life’s Challenges is Universal

Transitions are universally challenging. I relate it to the old physics maxim that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Change is energy consuming. It’s effortful. It’s hard. On some level, we naturally prefer to stick with what we know because it’s familiar. Even things we think of as good changes—getting married, making a large purchase, going on vacation, graduating, getting a promotion—are challenging because they are transitions.

And then there are the challenges that seem more inherently negative. We get a life-altering medical diagnosis. We lose a job. Someone we love dies. Our marriage is on the edge of collapse. These painful transitions bring up universal feelings that are difficult to manage, like grief, anger, shame, regret, fear. We recognize these feelings in ourselves and others, even if the specifics of the situations in each of our lives are not the same. They are painful, so we may want to avoid or minimize them.

Navigating Life’s Challenges is Subjective, Too

How challenging we perceive something to be reflects who we are, what life experiences we’ve had, how we’ve built coping skills and resources for support, and whether that challenge happens in isolation or if we’re dealing with multiple problems at the same time. What’s “big” for me could be an everyday task for you, and vice versa.

By the same token, what feels like a big challenge at one stage of our life may not register the same way later or may become hard again after we thought we mastered the task. I think what it was like the first time I packed up all my belongings to move for the first time. I didn’t know how to go about the process, it took longer than I expected, and it was incredibly stressful. By my mid-thirties, with dozens of moves under my belt, the process no longer felt especially difficult, since I’d learned how to do it in the best way for me. Now, after buying a home that I’ve lived in for over a decade, I venture to say I would find the process challenging in fresh ways, especially since I’d be doing it with a child and dog.

Challenge is subjective and ebbs and flows with the shifts in our lives. That doesn’t mean you’re a failure; it means that you’re human.

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How HSPs Respond to Navigating Life’s Challenges

Let’s set aside the specific details and consider how challenging situations impact us as highly sensitive people. At our best, HSPs are primed to develop resilience. We are capable of being thoughtful, perceptive, considerate of and attuned to others. We are creative, innovative, and able to identify complex solutions to problems.

No one, however, is functioning at their best all the time. If we are not doing enough to manage the qualities that come with being highly sensitive—our deep processing, awareness of subtle stimuli, and capacity for empathy—we are likely to become overwhelmed and overstimulated. Instead of coping effectively with a big challenge, we may be become paralyzed, plagued by uncertainty and indecision, and unable to physically or emotionally stand up under the pressure of the situation.

Setting Ourselves Up to Handle Navigating Life’s Challenges Well

Tending consistently to our needs is the key to keeping our highly sensitive nervous systems in good working order, so that we can maximize our strengths as HSPs and minimize the shadow side of our temperament. We can rely on our powers of discernment to help us notice and respond to what we need in times of challenge.

Here are 10 possible ways to enhance your resilience as you ponder navigating life’s challenges:

#1 – Honesty About What We Control

It is vital to be deeply honest with ourselves about what aspects of a challenge we can and cannot control. Why? This is how we can direct our energy to places where it can make a difference and move us toward accepting things that are beyond our control. Acceptance can be a huge relief for the HSP mind that tend to be active and the HSP heart that needs to process its emotions.

#2 – Managing Expectations

We can hold ourselves to a standard that is too high, which only adds to our distress because we feel like we’re not coping well. Remind yourself that change is difficult, feels uncomfortable, and generally happens more slowly and with more obstacles than we would like. Anticipate that you’ll have ups and downs as you cope with the challenge and root out any perfectionist tendencies when they emerge.

#3 – Set Micro Goals

I’m a huge fan of setting micro goals—ones that are so small and easy to do that you practically have to try to not accomplish them. (Hint: if you’re consistently struggling to reach your micro goals, they aren’t small and simple enough! Break them down further. For instance, if you can’t make yourself drink 8 glasses of water a day, try to start by getting yourself to drink one more than you do now; or drink a sip of water every time you pick up your phone or when you brush your teeth. Micro goals should be as small and manageable as you need to make them to break out of inertia.) When we break big challenges down into a set of smaller steps and tasks, we give ourselves the opportunity to feel lots of moments of accomplishment and success. That motivates us to keep going, even when the road is long.

#4 – Reduce Sensory Stimulation

I’m someone who turns off the radio if I’m driving and looking for a new place. Cutting out that audio stimulation helps me use my sensory resources to focus on what I see while feeling less aroused overall. See how you can apply this idea to coping with big challenges. What are some ways to reduce both external stimulation and internal stimuli, like hunger, pain, fatigue, and mental chatter?

#5 – Soothe Your Nervous System

Somatic practices like breathwork, stretching, and gentle touch can help you settle your nervous system, which is more active in HSPs even at rest than in non-HSPs. When our nervous system is in a balanced, settled state, we think more clearly, notice the distinction between our emotions and other people’s feelings, and can take action more efficiently.

#6 – Pace Yourself

Big challenges are generally more like marathons than sprints. You wouldn’t run a long-distance race without pacing yourself, getting into a rhythm, and allowing yourself some breaks. Don’t try to deal with your challenges without stopping to pause, relax, and distract yourself with pleasurable activities from time to time. Not only does pacing help you have mental stamina, but it also helps reduce the physical collapse that HSPs sometimes experience when we push ourselves too hard for too long.

#7 – Social Support

It goes without saying that humans need humans. That’s especially true in challenging times. Even if you are highly introverted like me and need time alone to process difficult experiences, you still need to find ways to connect meaningfully with other people who can support and encourage you, help you feel less alone, and cheer you on through this time. Make sure that you’re designing social encounters to fit what you need and who you are, whether that’s an intimate phone conversation, a chat with a friend while walking, or a small group meal.

#8 – Spiritual Support

It is vital that you tend to your spiritual side during times of challenge. You might participate in organized religion, have a set of activities you’ve taken from your childhood that you practice independently, look to nature to feel part of something larger, or have some other connection to something greater than yourself. How you do that is less important than making it a part of this time. Orienting our challenges within a spiritual framework helps us to eventually find meaning in them or, at the very least, see them as part of a universal human encounter with suffering.

#9 – Connect to Your Values

We may get so swept up in the practical details of managing a challenge that we forget our why. What do we value that is at the heart of why we’ve accepted this challenge? Reminding ourselves of our personal “why” compliments and enhances our spiritual practices.

#10 – Stay Curious

I’ll admit that my first response to a big challenge is not always curiosity. I’m great at judging it (“this is going to be such a pain”), personalizing it (“why do these things always happen to me?”), looking for external solutions (“let me Google how people do this”), and jumping to conclusions about it (“I just have to do X, Y, and Z”). None of those responses are wrong, but they limit our ability to respond creatively if we don’t move beyond them. Wonder about what’s really going on. Ask yourself how other people might respond to this challenge. Imagine what the future might be like five or ten years after you’ve overcome this challenge. Speculate on who and what are going to help you go through it. HSPs are naturally curious (it’s a positive aspect of our deep processing), so make sure to let that side of you show up as you deal with challenges.

Sitting with the Fear of Failure Amidst Navigating Life’s Challenges

I’m going to dedicate a separate article to the fear of failure when we face big challenges, so let me just acknowledge here that this fear is inherent in the process. Things feel challenging to us when we care about the outcome. When we care, we open ourselves up to the fear of failing, being disappointed or disappointing others, and not feeling satisfied with what we’ve accomplished. The fear of failure makes us human, not just HSPs. But unsurprisingly, it’s important for HSPs to come up with ways of coping that go beyond “fake it until you make it” or pushing through our feelings.

For now, let me close with a quote from Deepak Chopra that may help us as we face big challenges: “Embrace the unpredictable and unexpected. It is the path to the infinitely creative in you.”

Wishing you beautiful self-discoveries as you build resilience in the face of big challenges!

Be sensitive, be free

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