When I think about resilience, two things strike me. The first is that most people haven’t heard about it until they need it. That’s to say that people who are going along nicely through life don’t really dwell on how they will deal with challenging times, either because they don’t have a frame of reference because nothing particularly challenging has happened for them, or because they prefer the ostrich head buried in the sand approach.
The second is that people usually realise they are properly “in the shit” when they’ve gone too far down the path to bring it back easily. Sometimes challenging times happen in part out of a situation we create ourselves. What I mean by that is that we make certain choices, such as cancelling plans or not making plans, which make us feel more isolated and that makes the challenging times feel worse as we’ve got less support to share the mental and physical load, and also we can become fixated on our issues and problems and feel very “woe is me” at the same time believing that everyone else is going just fine. Chances are they’re not and if you stopped to ask you’d find that out, but the smaller your world becomes the more miserable it feels.
So what is resilience? Well it’s a toolkit of things that you can do in the long term to stay healthy and happy, with some levers you can also pull in the short term to boost your resilience. One of the most important of these in my experience is the encouragement of others. Often we get so caught up in our own small perspectives that we are scared to get out of our comfort zones and take what we perceive to be risks. Having someone who encourages and believes in you makes a big difference to what you are then willing to do. It’s almost like it gives you permission to be bold, to take the action, to do the thing. When our perspective is narrow and we focus too much on ourselves things can feel too difficult and scary and we talk ourselves out of doing the very things we know deep down will help. So I’d call encouragement a lever that you can use.
Another lever that I recommend is helpful when your resilience is being tested is to find a way to help someone else. It’s usually the last thing you will feel like doing when you’re in the middle of a challenging situation but here is why it’s important. When our resilience is tested and our world shrinks we lose our sense of perspective and often everything can become about that specific situation. Finding someone else who you can make a difference to is a tangible method of widening that perspective. Whether it’s helping a friend with a job application or moving boxes to help them move house; or just carrying someone’s bag for them if it looks heavy, it forges a connection and takes you out of your issues for a little while. A study carried out gave participants some money to spend on what they need wanted to make them happier. In the western world, the participants treated themselves to something but it made little difference to their happiness. In countries like Japan, the participants spent the money on someone else or donated it for example, because they know that the route to happiness is in helping others. Something to think about next time you’re in a challenging spot.
Anyway, whilst we’re on levers to pull, I’m going to throw exercise into the mix. I know I’m as guilty of putting this off when I’m “too busy” as the next person, but when all of the research tells you how good it is for you, when we know how it changes the way we feel, and the fact it makes us more productive afterwards, why wouldn’t we do it! It’s just a reminder that sometimes throwing everything at the problem and keeping your head down and carrying on regardless isn’t always the right approach. After exercising you’ve got blood pumped to all the right places, you’re more energetic, you’re primed and you’ve had some time away for the cogs to whirl a bit and process your issue. Sometimes that’s all you need to get a bit of perspective and come up with a different approach. Whether it’s a swim, a run, a gentle jog, some strength training or some yoga, it doesn’t matter. It’s the doing of it that matters.