7 Powerful Ways to Build Resilience: How Teens (and You) Can Develop a Stronger Mindset

Illustration of one person helping another up a hill, symbolizing resilience and support.

Is your life perfect? Chances are the answer to that is no. I know mine isn’t. If you’re a teenager, you face daily trials that are sometimes hard to overcome. If you’re a parent or adult, you’ve probably faced a lifetime of ups and downs.

Failure is something we all face on an almost daily basis. Sometimes the failures and obstacles we face are goliath sized. Sometimes, they are small like when we just didn’t show up in the way we thought we should have or had planned. The simple fact is that failure is a pre-requisite of life which also means that standing back up again, and again, and again is a pre-requisite of life as well. But how do you overcome failure time and time again? There are 7 strategies that I use to have a resilient mindset to keep moving forward.

Create a Peace Place

When your world is spinning out of control it helps to have a place to go where you can reset. It could be the car or your bedroom (but you have to keep it clean…so it’s not in chaos when you need peace). For me, it’s a spot on the top of the hill that I like to walk my dog to. I go there when I need to pause, breathe, and think. My walks back home after going to my peace place always have a little more pep in my step to tackle the day. Wherever it is, make it your sacred place that is designated for peace.

“That Wasn’t So Bad”

Take a look back at your life. Chances are, if you’re like me, you’ve failed…a lot. Now look back again with a lens of resilience. You’ve made it through all of the rough patches. When you put failure in perspective you start to realize “that wasn’t so bad” and you didn’t die. Try this today. Think about your most recent set back and don’t give it power and simply say: “that wasn’t so bad”.

Take Control with Decisive Action

Remember when Maverick and Rooster are careening towards the earth in their fighter jets (if you haven’t seen Top Gun Maverick you’re missing out!!). At that moment, there was only one thing that they needed to do. Grab the control yoke and pull up! There’s a million dials and gears and other things in an airplane cockpit (can you tell I’m not a pilot?) but there is only ONE thing to do. Pull up. When failure happens, we have to control what we can control and nothing else. Your mentality, your attitude, and your energy and 3 things you can immediately control when everything outside is out of control.

Don’t Bottle Up Failure - Talk About It

This is the hardest one for me because it requires a little vulnerability to admit that you failed. But you can’t keep failure on the inside because it eats away at you. You have to get it out. Find a trusted friend, parent, significant other, or sibling and talk about your failure. The key here is that we want someone who is a listener, not a fixer. So tell them that! “I’m going through something and need someone to listen, not fix my problem. Can I trust you to do that?”. When we start the conversation asking for someone to listen, it allows us to get it off our chest. If we just have someone try and fix everything we do less talking ourselves and that’s not helping us be more resilient.

Create A Foundational Habit of Health

Being resilient and overcoming your future failures starts today. This is important because we want to create a strong foothold to jump off of. Recently, my wife and I were driving to the airport for our anniversary trip at 3 in the morning and we hit a moose while driving 65 miles per hour on the freeway. The moose flipped onto the hood, into the windshield, and up over our car. We are fortunate to be alive today. Sadly the moose didn’t make it. In the moments after that traumatic event I was calm and able to assess the situation and know what to do next. It’s not because I’m a superhuman, it’s because I’ve spent years working on my mental health and self-improvement. In other words, I had laid a foundation, through healthy habits, that allowed me to be resilient in a moment of trauma. Start this today! Where do you start? 1. Exercise daily 2. Listen or read self-improvement to boost your self-worth 3. Meditate and pray.

Take a Power Pause

Hard days and failure will happen. When it does…pause. When you take an intentional power pause then you can intentionally restart. I like to think of it as a STOP:

S. Be Still

T. Take a breath

O. Observe where you are and accept it - don’t judge yourself

P. Proceed with a plan (see #7 below)

This level of intentionality will help you be more resilient regardless of the set back.

Make a Plan

There’s two parts of planning that are essential for a resilient mind. First, you have to have a plan (do this right now) to stand back up and try again. When we make a predetermined choice to stand back up, we’ll never stay down! Second, to be resilient we need to plan our next step. Not all the things we need to do. Just one thing. In fact, your next step should be small, manageable, and an easy win. I want you to check the next box of success so fast that you are already back on the path to achievement.