[afro88]

> Be resilient. Be able to bounce back from pain or discomfort.

That's kinda like saying "be rich". Resilience takes a lot of time and effort, and only really builds after going through adversity, with healing and processing on the other side.

Perhaps better advice: be vulnerable, and prepared to deal with some pain and discomfort as a result. Identify people in your life who can help support you through painful interactions or events along the way. Learn strategies for framing and processing adversity through books like Learned Optimism (the ABCDE model) or "The Work".

I'm far from perfect, but this helped me build resilience to handle times when I "put myself out there" and it didn't work out.

[rpmisms]

Being vulnerable builds trauma, not resilience. You could say "open yourself to discomfort", but you're actually saying "open yourself up to damage", which is only correct when you intend to be very close with the other party.

Resilience is a frame of mind and an acquired skillset. Resilience is learned, developed, and taught.

[afro88]

Being vulnerable only builds trauma if you're being vulnerable to damage that you aren't prepared to handle. Otherwise it's "just" adversity that you can overcome with support from close friends, family and/or a therapist, as well as what you have learned (books, courses, podcasts, lived experience etc). The former being the healing, the latter being the processing. The more adversity you overcome, the more resilient you become.

I would also say, don't rule out being a little vulnerable with people before you intend to become very close to them. Firtly, doing it in small doses at first and overcoming the damage will build some resilience before you meet someone new that you intend to be very close to. And secondly, often you won't know you want to be very close to someone until your connection with them is stronger and you know them well, and this can't happen without some vulnerability shown by both sides.