According to the Positive Psychology Center in the University of Pennsylvania, resilience is “the ability to persist in the face of challenges and to bounce back from adversity.” The ability to bounce back is trainable. That’s why UPenn built a Master Resilience Training program for the U.S. Army.
We all face challenges and setbacks in different stages of our lives. The fear of rejection, embarrassment, pain, isolation, and loss of control can hold us back. Sometimes they even eat at our confidence and send us down a spiral of anxiety and depression. While we can’t control what happens to us, we can definitely train our response to adversity. The repeated and purposeful exposure to adversity in the safe environment can desensitize our extreme reaction or withdrawal. It builds our mental toughness to handle whatever comes our way. In many instances, it even enables us to grow in spite of the challenges. The effectiveness of the purposeful training is backed by the exposure therapy practice in psychology according to the American Psychology Association (APA).
Below is the “50-Days of Resilience Building Challenge” list that may help to raise your tolerance levels for rejection, embarrassment, pain, isolation, and loss of control. It will build up your immunity and mental muscles. These are the ones that we recommend and are taking on ourselves. Feel free to come up with your own safe challenge ideas. Share these ideas with us through email, video, or post and we might add it to our list and credit you as a contributor. Join our journey and write about your experiences and insights in the comments at the bottom of this page. If you decide to share a bit of your experiences on social media, please tag us and we will share it on this website! (DISCLAIMER: Always ask permission from the people you interact with before posting a picture or video with them.)
“Be brave, take risks. Nothing can substitute experiences.” – Paulo Coelho
Rejection Challenge
- Ask to be the mayor/ governor for a day
- Interview the governor
- Ask to decorate a business’s elevator or lobby
- Be a tour guide at the zoo
- Invite someone you admire (celebrity) but don’t personally know to your graduation or a birthday
- Sell an used item of yours for $50/$100 (anything above its true value) to someone (not your family)
- Ask to arm wrestle or race a stranger
- Make people pay to watch you do an activity. (eg: they pay to watch you play an instrument or sports)
- Interview random strangers about times they were resilient and video tape it to submit to our website (We’ll credit you as a contributor.)
- Ask a food place for their excess/ leftover food
- Ask a stranger if you can do appropriate chalk art on their driveway
- Ask a restaurant to write a special (and appropriate) message in your food or a stranger’s
- Ask a stranger if you can pet-sit their pet for a day
- Give flowers to elderly people in a retirement center and ask for life advice
- Ask random people to sing a little bit of their favorite song. Make a playlist out of everyone’s song choice. (Make sure to make a video to submit to us. We’ll publish it for you with you as a contributor.)
- Ask a stranger out on a date
- Make a friend in one day
- Style a stranger’s hair
Embarrassment:
- Fake an engagement proposal in a crowded area
- Pretend to be pregnant
- Style your hair in a crazy way
- Have a friend pick a weird outfit for you to wear to school or to go out in
- Use a whoopee cushion on yourself in public
- Have your friends send an embarrassing text from your phone to someone in your contacts
- Walk around with toilet paper hanging out
- Put on a “No Talent” Talent Show
Pain
- Run until it hurts, then run another mile
- Shock yourself with a balloon
- Eat only food that you don’t like for a week
- Have (not dangerous) insects crawl over you
- Volunteer to clean up a public bathroom or a Porta Potty
- Learn to do the splits in a week
- Eat something very spicy
Isolation
- 24 hours in your room alone without technology
- Go to a movie by yourself
- No electronics and no social contact for (5) days
- Take yourself on a date
- Solo trip
Losing Control
- Accept this Resilience Building Challenge
- Have a friend decide what you do for 24 hours
- Survive on $10 a day for a week
- Have a friend feed you blindfolded food of their choosing for a day
- Have someone decide everything you say for a day
- Meditate in a busy area (find the resilience to have “inner peace” anywhere)
- No looking in a mirror or anything reflective for a week
- Spend a day mute
- Start a pay it forward trend at a drive thru
- Switch credit cards with a friend (set a limit beforehand)
- Have your friends redesign or set up a dating app profile for you
- Tackle agoraphobia with an escape room