Everyday Health Assessment: Get Your Resilience Score
R esearch shows that learning and adopting simple habits that are scientifically proven to improve resilience has a huge payoff: Being more resilient means you’re better able to navigate life’s challenges from a place of strength and conviction. Resilience may also help you preempt and prevent adversities.
“The multitude of challenges we have had to face of late — from an unrelenting pandemic to gun violence and inflation — has produced an enormous cognitive and emotional load that our brains aren't well equipped to lift,” says Everyday Health Wellness Advisory Board member Amit Sood, MD, executive director of the Global Center for Resiliency and Well-Being and creator of Resilient Option.
Resilience can help lighten that load, help us better respond to these challenges, and help us bounce back quicker, he says.
Take the Everyday Health Resilience Assessment, developed with Dr. Sood, to find out what your resilience score is and to learn which skills you can develop to become your most resilient self.
If you just took the assessment, you've learned about nine skills, or attributes, that make you resilient. These attributes are rolled up into internal and external factors that build upon each other. Think of internal factors as skills we have or have learned, and skills we can better develop; they influence how you present yourself to the world, the relationships you have, and how you interact with others and with life. The internal and external factors work together.
9 Essential Skills That Make You Resilient
Internal Factors
Self-Control Flexibility, ability to cope, adaptability, acceptance, and willpower
Self-Confidence Strength, self-reliance, determination, resourcefulness, perseverance, courage, optimism, and humor
External Factors
Personal Relationships Friends, loved ones, colleagues, and others
Purpose and Meaning Things that motivate or inspire you
Communities and Social Support Your tribe, including people who can empathize with your circumstances at life’s challenging moments
These factors and the assessment are adapted from Sood and his team’s model of resilience, which has been validated and proven reliable through numerous clinical trials. Sood is also author of The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living and The Mayo Clinic Handbook for Happiness. Download the Discover the Resilient You workbook written by Sood for Everyday Health.
Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking
- Loprinzi CE, Prasad K, Schroeder DR, Sood A. Stress Management and Resilience Training (SMART) Program to Decrease Stress and Enhance Resilience Among Breast Cancer Survivors: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial. Clinical Breast Cancer. December 2011.
- Sood A, Prasad K, Schroeder D, Varkey P. Stress Management and Resilience Training Among Department of Medicine Faculty: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial. Journal of General Internal Medicine. August 2011.
- Berkland BE, Werneburg BA, Jenkins SM, et al. A Worksite Wellness Intervention: Improving Happiness, Life Satisfaction, and Gratitude in Health Care Workers. Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality & Outcomes. December 2017.
- Bhagra A, Medina-Inojosa JR, Vinnakota S, et al. Stress Management and Resilience Intervention in a Women's Heart Clinic: A Pilot Study. Journal of Women’s Health. March 23, 2019.
- Magtibay DL, Chesak SS, Coughlin K, Sood A. Decreasing Stress and Burnout in Nurses: Efficacy of Blended Learning With Stress Management and Resilience Training Program. The Journal of Nursing Administration. July–August 2017.