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How resilience helps us to get satisfaction

Satisfaction is linked to greater resilience in life. This is the suggestion of new research published in the journal Behavioral Psychology, which found adversities serve to make some people stronger by helping them to grow and garner new meaning from their existence.

A team from the Basic Psychology Unit at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) revealed people who are resilient are more content with their lives and believe themselves better able to control their emotions.

Dr Joaguin Limonero, Professor of the Research Group on Stress and Health at UAB - which has been in operation since 1968 - stated: "Some of the characteristics of being resilient can be worked on and improved, such as self-esteem and being able to regulate one's emotions."

People who are able to familiar themselves with these techniques may find they acquire the resources needed in order to improve their quality of life and adapt to a new outlook.

Dr Tom Fawcett, a Chartered Psychologist, comments:

"People who are extemely resilent have more of an ability to self-regulate their emotional states when challenged or threatened. When they experience adveristy they are more balanced and less likely to divert into 'panic mode' as they appear to remain unphased compared to others around them, who are less able to cope with such adversity. This is possibly due to a combination of cognitive and affective state management (selective perceptual processing  and attention to relevant task information/ astute decision making and emotional management together with some element of pain supression which is both physical and emotional).

"I am not so sure about being satisfied - I think this is a consequence of being conent and happy with who they are. But it would make sense in accepting that resilent people are more well balanced and less neurotic than others around them who flip when faced with adveristy."