What Are Resilience Exercises?
Resilience exercises are practices that can build resilience skills. As an example, the following simple resilience exercises are grounded in applied positive psychology research and designed to help practitioners and clients face challenges, overcome setbacks, and acquire the coping skills needed to navigate loss and change (Ambrósio & Adiletta, 2021).
Three good things
Martin Seligman et al. (2005) recommended this simple exercise to overcome the human mind’s inherent negativity bias and redirect attention to positive events that occur throughout the day, however small.
Exercise: Each night for a week, write down three things that went well that day and why they happened.
The goal of the exercise is to develop emotional resilience by focusing on gratitude and hope. Positive emotions help offset stress (Brunwasser et al., 2009).
Strengths spotting and use
This exercise is based on Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) original research on strengths spotting and application as the foundation of resilience.
Exercise: First, take the free survey VIA Character Strengths survey to identify your top three character strengths (e.g., curiosity, honesty, perseverance). Next, think back on your day. What did you handle well? Spot a strength in action by identifying how you used it to solve a problem, manage stress, or overcome a setback.
The goal of this exercise is to enhance self-efficacy and a sense of meaning by recognizing existing sources of resilience.
Growth mindset reflection
The following is a short reflection exercise based on Carol Dweck’s (2007) mindset theory, which contrasts a fixed mindset with a growth mindset. Someone with a fixed mindset responds to setbacks by getting stuck in negative feedback loops, while one with a growth mindset reframes failure as a learning opportunity.
Exercise: Recall a challenge you’ve faced recently where you struggled, made a mistake, or felt like giving up. Identify any fixed mindset thoughts that arose, such as, “I’m just not good enough.” Next, rewrite that thought.
For example, “I’m not very good at this yet, but I can learn and improve.” Reflect on what you learned from changing your mindset and how it could help you grow.
The goal of this exercise is to reframe adversity as a growth opportunity that can help develop resilience.
6 Activities to Build Resilience
In this section we’ll explore resilience-building activities for adults, groups, teams, and workplaces that support the exercises mentioned above.
For adults
1. Resilience journaling: Stress as a challenge
Resilience journaling is a powerful way to focus attention on our personal resources, strengths, and coping skills (Lohner & Aprea, 2021). This brief journaling activity is based on cognitive reframing, a cognitive behavioral therapy technique.
The idea is to reframe a stressor as a positive challenge that we can learn from.
When facing a stressor, write down:
- The event (what happened and where)
- Your automatic reaction (e.g., anger, anxiety, avoidance, or distraction)
- An alternative, more adaptive interpretation (taking a mindful pause to regulate emotions before solving the problem)
Viewing stress as a positive challenge enhances psychological flexibility and helps reduce anxiety and emotional overwhelm (Lohner & Aprea, 2021).
2. Self-compassion breaks
Self-compassion can be defined as being your own best friend during tough times (Neff, 2011). All too often, we judge and criticize ourselves when difficulties arise, which is not how we’d respond to a good friend who was struggling.
Self-compassion breaks entail taking some time out to self-soothe and do something nice for yourself, like writing a compassionate letter to yourself in your journal as if you were writing to a best friend. Treating ourselves kindly helps us to bounce back quickly.
3. Best possible life
The best possible life exercise is another way to reorient attention toward our personal and social resources, based on Laura King’s positive visualization research (King, 2001; King & Raspin, 2004).
Using a resilience journal, visualize a future where everything has gone as well as it possibly could, in detail. Spend 15 to 20 minutes describing your best possible life in writing to help develop optimism, goal-directed thinking, and emotional resilience.
For groups
4. Challenge-and-growth story swap
Storytelling helps to build resilience by normalizing struggles as opportunities for personal growth. Hearing others’ journeys reduces the isolation we can feel during hard times and reminds us that adversity can contribute to personal growth and wisdom (East et al., 2010).
Break a group into pairs and ask them to share a personal story about a challenge they’ve faced and a lesson they learned from it. Then, each person reflects on how the experience made them stronger and wiser.
For teams
5. Shared gratitude wall
Collective gratitude boosts team morale and positive emotions. It can also support a shared sense of meaning. It strengthens emotional bonds that serve as a buffer during challenging times (Ambrósio & Adiletta, 2021; Ang et al., 2022a; Brassington & Lomas, 2020).
On a physical or virtual wall, team members post notes expressing gratitude for other team members and team experiences or qualities. This could be performed as a periodic check-in.
For the workplace
6. Mapping micro wins
Focusing on small successes builds resilience by nurturing optimism and forward momentum. It reorients attention to progress despite setbacks and helps teams bounce back with a sense of competence (Ketelaars et al., 2024).
Consider weekly check-ins to reflect on workplace team micro wins — small victories or positive moments from the week. Each person shares one win and what it meant for them.
Resilience is more than bouncing back from adversity; it’s about growing by learning from life’s challenges. Resilience activities help develop the capacity to adapt, recover, thrive, and flourish during hard times.
These three resilience workshop ideas have been tailored to meet specific needs.
