KEY POINTS:
Bounced back from Christmas yet? Are you ripping into the new year with renewed drive, or can you already feel your stress levels rise and your spirits sink as the work piles up and the juggle begins all over again?
We've all made the New Year resolutions: exercise, get work under control, drink less, exercise, spend more time with family. It's not even Waitangi Day yet, school's still not back and already that summer sense of fun and I-can-do-anything is fading rapidly.
Maybe this is the year to decide you will get stress under control. The first step is to understand where it comes from and recognise your warning signs. Then you can look at your lifestyle, get serious about exercise and healthy living - finally do that yoga course you've been promising yourself. You can also work on banishing those negative thought patterns and find more helpful ways of thinking.
We call these stress-busting techniques and they do work. But new research shows something even more important about how to cope with stress. The key is resilience. It's a well known concept in the field of positive psychology, but if you've had no reason to visit a psychologist lately, it's probably news to you.
Experts say as our lives have become more pressured and complicated, the emotional tools we have to deal with it have not kept pace.
So what is resilience? It's the ability to bounce back. Just as resilient metals bend but don't break, resilient people bounce back from stressful experiences faster and more efficiently.
The good news is that we know more about the building blocks of resilience. Resilience is not some magic quality that you either have or don't have. It is something you can learn and practice. Psychologists say resilient people tend to see problems and difficult times in their lives as challenges to overcome.
They're hopeful and optimistic, even in hard times, and they hold on to a belief that things will get better. More than that, they report learning from those difficulties and even experiencing personal growth as a result.
You know the times: your job is looking shaky, the car breaks down, someone you love gets sick. Resilient people manage the stress of those intense episodes. they cope well, adapt to changing circumstances and come out the other side stronger. Rather than just struggle through and survive, resilient people thrive.
How to build that resilience is an exciting area of research. What we know so far suggests the things most likely to help build resilience are having good social support, cultivating positive emotions, optimism, and what Hungarian-born psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called "flow", the intense feeling of being in the moment that we get in rare snatches, perhaps when we're running, or concentrating hard on a project.
There are other ingredients of resilience too, such as self-belief, humour and finding coherence and meaning in life. Seeking new challenges helps and we get a powerful kick from achieving whatever it was.
Research studies have consistently found social support to be a powerful buffer against stress and it is also an important building block of resilience. "Talking with friends, and the practical help they give me, is what is keeping me sane," says Karen, a 42-year-old Government sector manager who is juggling house renovations, part-time study, employment and looking after her children.
Says 38-year-old full-time mother Barbara: "For me, the support I get and give to other people is the most important part of my life."
Feeling well-supported by others, and feeling we can give support back, are linked to positive physical and mental health.
This is completely in line with the growing body of research on happiness, which places relationships with people above everything else as a source of happiness.
Of course, the support needs to be the right kind. Having people around us who persistently make demands without giving anything back, or who are relentlessly critical, may be harmful. So an important part of maintaining good social support is being a bit picky about who is in your close network.
Cultivating positive emotions is another consistent message from resilience studies. We know that when we're in a positive mood, we are less likely to view events as a threat or problem than if we're feeling negative.
There's also good evidence that feeling positive helps to broaden our thinking, so that it is more flexible and we're able to come up with more options to deal with a situation, rather than being boxed-in and pressured.
Positive emotions can also cancel out negative ones.
You know the feeling: you're driving home, stewing about a problem at the office, and a catchy song comes on the radio. You start singing and, without noticing, the frustration of the day has melted away.
Those moments happen by chance but you can nudge the process along. Fostering positive emotions can be as simple as making sure you do something that makes you feel good, preferably every day.
You might have to schedule it to begin with - Wednesday: go to a favourite cafe. Thursday: have a bubble bath. Friday: a movie you missed at the festival.
Optimism is also key. Research shows people who practise optimism have higher self-esteem and are happier and healthier than the pessimists among us. And forget the old idea of being a born optimist - like the other elements of resilience, this is something anyone can learn.
Ask the students at Australia's elite Geelong Grammar School, where optimism guru Dr Martin Seligman will this year lead a team of positive psychologists teaching learned optimism techniques.
Even with that kind of head start, becoming a more resilient person takes time and there will inevitably be setbacks. Nor will you ever know if you've got there. But maybe one day you'll look at your New Year's resolution list and realise you are sticking to it.
Sarah Boyd is the co-author, with clinical psychologist Gaynor Parkin, of I've had it up to here: From stress to strength, published by Consumer.
WARNING SIGNS
* Irritability
* Trouble sleeping
* Eating too much or not enough or choosing unhealthy options
* Difficulty concentrating and making decisions
* Worrying or getting upset or angry about trivia
* Loss of sense of humour
* Feeling overloaded or overwhelmed
TOOLS FOR RESILIENCE
* Social support
* Cultivating positive emotions
* Optimism, including counting your "blessings"
* Intense absorption in a task or activity
* Self belief
* Giving and receiving physical affection
