Don’t bounce back, bounce forward: how to be more resilient at every age

Don’t worry, be hoppy … Learning to bounce forward with new skills is key to building resilience. Photograph: Martin Barraud/Getty Images

The word resilience is slippery and hard to define, but it isn’t about “bouncing back”, says Dr Nihara Krause, consultant clinical psychologist and founder of teenage mental health charity stem4. “It’s about bouncing forward, finding how you might progress based on developing new tools and skills.”

And it’s not just something to hone when young, but a lifelong pursuit, says Dr Julie Smith, clinical psychologist and author of Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?: “Resilience is something we work on all the time – when people hit a certain life event that proves more demanding than their current coping strategies can meet, we’re learning new ways of coping, to bolster that resilience.”