THE RESILIENT MIND BLOG
The first trait of resilience: identify your top stressors
By Vic Lebouthillier · October 15, 2020
Resilience can sound like a single, mysterious quality — something some people simply have and others don’t. In reality it’s a set of learnable traits, and the very first one is deceptively simple: the ability to identify your top stressors. Before you can calm a stress response or respond to pressure wisely, you have to know what sets it off in the first place. Naming your stressors is the foundation the whole skill rests on.
You can only manage what you can see
Consider an ordinary morning: you wake up rested and content, reach for your phone out of habit, and within minutes a single message has tightened your chest and soured your mood. What happened in those few seconds is stress — but if you never pause to trace it back, it simply becomes “a bad day” with no obvious cause. Stressors that stay invisible run the show from the shadows. The moment you can point to one and say “that’s what got me,” it loses much of its power.
How to find your top stressors
Start by paying attention to your body and mood across a normal week. When you notice tension, irritation, or a dip in energy, pause and ask what happened just before. Was it a particular person, a type of task, a time of day, a recurring thought? Patterns emerge quickly once you’re looking for them. Many people find it helps to jot these moments down — not to judge them, just to see them clearly.
As the list takes shape, a small number of stressors usually stand out as the heaviest hitters. These are your top stressors, and they deserve the most attention because managing them yields the biggest return.
The first step of many
Identifying your stressors doesn’t make them disappear, but it transforms your relationship with them. Instead of being ambushed, you can anticipate. Instead of reacting blindly, you can prepare. And with that awareness in place, every other resilience skill — calming techniques, reframing, healthy boundaries — finally has something concrete to work on. Recognising the problem, as the old saying goes, really is the first step in solving it.
About the author
Vic Lebouthillier is passionate about bringing the latest advances in neuro, social, and behavioural science to individuals, organisations, and communities that need the support.
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