Man never made any material as resilient
as the human spirit.
Bern Williams
Life is full of ups and downs. When you meet up with some of life’s challenging experiences, you want to be ready to rise to the occasion. Your ability to bounce back after passing through a tough transition or overcoming a hardship will often determine whether you are truly enjoying your life and find it meaningful or if you are finding it troublesome, frustrating and full of fear.
This idea of coming back again and again can be summed up in one word, RESILIENCE. The basic definitions of resilient are:
1. Capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture;
2. Tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. The more resilient you are, the quicker you are able to readjust to a situation in move forward in your life.
Here are a few ways that you can test your own resilience:
1. Initial responses.
When something begins to trouble you how do you usually respond? Perhaps you bury your head in the sand and hope it will simply go away. Perhaps you instead choose to ignore the situation and pretend that it is not really affecting you.
If you are truly resilient, you will more often elect to face the situation head on and promptly. You will start by defining the issue, then consider your options, make a plan and finally act. You will move right away to resolve the situation before it becomes a full blown issue.
Promptly employing your problem solving and resolving skills will help you avoid a major meltdown.
2. Use the past instructively and constructively.
Do you try to forget about all of your prior challenges? Instead, try applying what you have already learned from those experiences to navigate the present or future situations. When you are clearly able to reflect on what you have already been through, of course you will think about some of the mistakes you made in the past. But, you will also be excited about how well you handled those past situations and be able to summon up your courage and employ those same skills again.
The energy required to try to forget something important draws heavily from your present state of resilience and wears it down. Alternatively, focusing your energies on the lessons and skills you have garnered from the past experiences will help build up your resistance.
3. Practice Daily.
Do you work to accomplish something, a goal or a new skill however small, every day? Or do you find yourself watching entire days seemingly drift by while you sit and brood or feel sad or angry?
In order to improve your resilience, you must consider each day as a brand new opportunity to do something positive, even if it’s just one small thing. Perhaps on a day off it might be something as simple as going for a walk or cleaning the living room. Your practice today could entail something like making a step toward beginning your novel or calling a friend you haven’t spoken to in ages.
What you do with your life each day should provide meaning for you.
4. Get a support network.
Do you have plenty of friends and family to call on if you need something? Resilient individuals build up supportive systems of people they can visit, call, talk to and turn to whenever they hit troubled waters.
If you feel like you are all alone in this world, you need to start building your support network today, by setting a goal to make one new friend within the next month.
5. Do you matter?
Do you remember to treat yourself as if you are the most important person in your life? When you take care of your own needs, you will be more resilient when a crisis comes knocking on your door; and it will come knocking.
If your own health and living situations are at the top of your priority list, you will be much better prepared to face any hardship, be it emotional or physical. Taking the time to keep yourself in tip top shape physically and mentally helps build your resilience whenever trying or troubling situations and events occur.
Challenges, transitions and hardships will invariably arise in your life. If you are proactive and confront situations immediately, use the knowledge you have gained from your prior demanding events, build up your support network, you will be well on your way to constructing resilience for the future.
Do one small thing for yourself each day, and before you even realize it, you will be weathering your storms with greater ease.
Thoughts?
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