How to Build Resiliency

Resiliency is something that every athlete is familiar with. After all, part of competing is a willingness to push past your limits. What we might not often consider, however, is that mental resiliency isn’t just reserved for competition. It’s a key skill in mental health and wellness. 

As an athlete, you face all sorts of adversity during your athletic career, in life after sports, and elsewhere in your personal life. For example:

• Active players might face injuries, roster cuts or changes, competition from younger teammates, trades, etc.

• Retired players might struggle with a host of challenges in adapting to life after sports including identity and isolation.

• Outside of sports, in your personal life, there are many other potential stressors including family, relationships, and finances.

Resiliency is important because how you mentally approach a problem (i.e., your mindset), can be a major factor in your mental health and avoiding potential issues such as depression, anxiety, and addiction. And, when you learn how to stay in growth mode, it can also help you boost your performance during the highs and the lows of games and your career.

3 Tips for Building Resiliency

1. Develop a growth mindset.

A growth mindset is one in which you focus on opportunity. Here, you strive to be in a space that is open to possibilities. It’s essentially a winning attitude. It doesn’t mean that you won’t face problems, but what it will do is help you stay open to successful solutions. 

When things don’t go your way, instead of shutting down or going into survival mode (i.e., fight or flight), be aware of and deliberate with your thoughts. Take a moment to pause to choose your reaction. For example, when something goes wrong instead of focusing on a thought like, “why doesn’t anything ever go right for me?” or “we’ll never win now,” pause to observe what’s really going on. What can you do differently? What opportunities exist?

2. Practice non-attachment.

During challenging times, sometimes the suffering a person endures is due to being too attached to an outcome. For example, there are studies that have shown that athletes who struggle the most in transitioning after sports are the ones who most strongly identify themselves as an athlete. The stronger the attachment is to your identity as an athlete, the more suffering you might endure.

When building resiliency, you need to ask yourself, how attached am I to this? The key here is to train your mindset that regardless of the outcome, you’ll be okay. In other words, put in the work, let go, and learn to be okay with the result. This goes back to the growth mindset. Do your best and let go of what you can’t control. You can always shift and adjust, but instead of beating yourself up, learn to accept where you are so you can move forward rather than going in circles over something you can’t control. 

3. Learn to trust by telling a new story.

On the field, you might be used to “keeping your head on a swivel” as a part of your resiliency arsenal, however, in other areas of your life, you have to learn to trust what you can’t see. When practicing a growth mindset and non-attachment, one of the most challenging obstacles is trust. 

Like most people, you probably trust what you know (i.e., what you’ve seen and experienced). This is the lens that you bring to your current experiences. So, when something happened to cause you pain, shame, threaten your livelihood, etc. you are likely to want to avoid that in the future. Perceived threats can therefore thrust you into survival mode where you’re now thinking about surviving instead of thriving. To develop resiliency, you have to learn to tell a new story and then trust that you’ll be okay. 

Building resiliency is one of many keys to mental health and wellness. A mindfulness practice can help you develop these skills. If you’re struggling with your mental health or suffering from an addiction, contact the Hall of Fame Behavioral Health (HOFBH) concierge service at (866) 901-1241. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency or require emergency assistance, please call the HOFBH Crisis Line at 866-901-1245, call 911, or head to your nearest local emergency room.