6 habits that increase resilience

Let's face it -- life can be pretty stressful and it's hard not to let the battles of every day drag you down. These six steps will help you change your outlook on life and become more resilient.

Laughter keeps you optimistic, helps you cope, reduces stress and reminds you of what's important in life. If you don't have a sense of humour, now is the time to work on one.

• Start with the professionals: watch comedies on TV, rent funny movies, read funny books.
• Be less stern and more playful with your family.
• Have animated conversations about unimportant things with friends.
• Learn the art of the gentle tease — and be open to teasing in return.
• Come bedtime, look back on your day and think about whether you laughed enough. Then vow to laugh more tomorrow.
• Just one warning: avoid sarcasm, mockery and any other forms of humour that degrade or hurt others.  Humour, when twisted improperly, can be more bitter than sweet.

Let's be honest: There's no shortage of people and things that can make us angry. In every case, you have a choice: Get angry or don't. We recommend choosing the latter. Getting angry solves nothing. But it does accomplish something: It ruins your mood, hurts your health and gets in the way of constructive responses. Resilient people avoid anger. Rather, if they can control the situation, they work to improve it — and if they can't control it directly, they find ways to cope with it. The next time anger starts to sweep over you, shut it down, smile at the absurdity and frustrations of life and get busy fixing things.

This is closely related to the tip on controlling anger. Most people do what they do by choice. People who take the time to ponder the other side's perspective almost always sidestep anger and respond constructively. Rather than just getting angry at your boss, for example, take a moment to think through why he said what he said or did what he did (more often than not, he's acting in response to someone else's unreasonable demands!). The ability to see situations from multiple viewpoints is extremely handy for building a more resilient personality.

When adversity hits, take a deep breath, think about the situation and then list five things you can do without falling apart. Say to yourself, "In the near future, this will already be worked out, and things will be getting better."

We're not recommending that you become a "lemonade-out-of-lemons" kind of person, but no matter how bleak a situation is, there's always something positive to be found. There is a couple whose house burned down on Christmas Eve, just two days after they'd moved in, when the husband tried to light a fire in the fireplace. They lost everything they had accumulated over their 40-year marriage. But they still had each other. And, they said, starting over was kind of fun!

Just because Mary lost her job and had to declare bankruptcy doesn't mean you will. Just because your neighbor Al had lots more good fortune this past year than you did doesn't mean you're a failure. Mary and Al are very different people from you. Focus on your situation in the context of your life, not that of anyone else around you.