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Making Good Choices

Coping positively with difficult situations and life's ups and downs has been found to reduce distress and improve psychological health. Here are the key elements that experts found to help manage stress and improve resilience:

  • Use positive distracting activities (games, music, books, and movies).
  • Talk to someone for support.
  • Take time every day to calm yourself.
  • Exercise.
  • Spend time with others.
  • Stay busy—mentally and physically.
  • Actively apply coping skills and strategies that have worked in the past.
  • Learn to recognize reminders that may upset or bother you. Prepare how you will deal with them, such as using positive self-talk, distracting, and breathing.
  • Focus on something practical that you can do right now to manage the situation better.
  • Use relaxation methods regularly, such as breathing, visualization, and muscle relaxation exercises.
  • Draw upon religion, spirituality, or personal beliefs.

Shutting down may help during stressful circumstances. However, afterward, when out of the threatening situation, opening up and relaxing with others is often helpful.

Cultivate a positive attitude! Promote patience, hope, fortitude, decorum, and the will, in the worst situations, to do your best:

  • Celebrate successes, and take joy in completing tasks, even small ones.
  • Do not be discouraged by setbacks.
  • Create an ongoing feeling of motivation, and give yourself small breaks from the stress of the situation.
  • Accept that the environment is constantly changing.
  • Embrace the world that you find yourself in, and see opportunity in adversity.
  • Identify and concentrate on building strengths.
  • Accept circumstances that cannot be changed, and focus on circumstances that you can alter.
  • Consider the stressful situation in a broader context, and keep a long-term perspective.
  • Look for opportunities to learn something about yourself, and find self-growth in some way.
  • Control self-defeating statements.
  • Realize that life is not fair, and find a place to make peace with that for yourself.

This article was adapted from the National Center for PTSD.

U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center. (n.d.). Making good choices. Retrieved July 18, 2019, from https://www.med.navy.mil

More about this Topics

  • Mindfulness Matters

  • Maintain a Healthy State of Mind: Parents and Caregivers (Part 1)

  • Secondary Trauma: When You're Affected by Another Person's Traumatic Experience

  • Manage Stress and Build Resilience

  • Single-Session Therapy: Therapy Now

Other Topics

    • Behavioral Health and LGBT Youth
    • Coping with Stress During Infectious Disease Outbreaks
    • Eating Disorders
    • How to Be Happy
    • Changing Negative Thoughts About Yourself to Positive Ones
    • Information Overload (2015)
    • Mental Health Drives Performance (for Employees)
    • Building Resilience Muscles
    • Maintaining Your Team's Resilience During a Crisis
    • Coping with Change
    • Recognizing an eating disorder
    • Managing holiday stress
    • Winter Blues
    • Caring for a loved one with autism
    • Exercise and Depression