Resiliency and How You Can Bounce Back

What is that special something which allows a person to comeback, bounce back and rebound stronger from setbacks? Propels the runner to push through The Wall Of No More’?

Sitting on a park bench a top a large grassy hill I’m watching this lean middle aged man run up and down this hill in a continuous circuit. I close my eyes for a meditation and after 30 minutes I open my eyes and he is still powering up and down with focus and effortless breathing. After about another 2 mins he stops for a quick stretch and I ask,” What pushes you to keep going and push through.” He says,”I’ve  built up a solid level of fitness so I can rely on that and if my breathing is strong I can continue to push through.”

What resonated with me about his answer was two-fold. First, he had built on the early foundations of his training drawing inner reserves of breath and breathing which allowed him to nurtured his mental/emotional fitness.

If I mention Charles Darwin to most of you, if you know who he was, might think sure, ‘survival of the fittest’ a term he never actually coined but that was taken out of context by a nasty group in Germany in the late 1930s but that’s another story. Darwin’s most powerful quote for me was this; ” It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Resiliency then in its most revealing expression is the ability, the skill, to be able to adapt, adjust, realign into new awareness of a situation new flow through an altered circumstance and condition. So that we, as this process of realignment, not only survive to return to a former state and way of being and doing things but we thrive and rise into visions of new possibilities and challenges.

Philosopher Bern Williams said: “Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.” After my hip replacement in 2011 I needed to call on every available breadth of my inner spirit to not only survive my rehab but to thrive as a more powerful, humble and resilient person. Swimming, exercise, meditation and visualisation, these where my most important tools for improvement. Further, I had all my years of training as an NBL Basketball player to draw from, and those successes to be inspired by. Honouring my past successes was as essential as accessing my inner essence, they worked hand in hand for me.

Humility basically says, I can’t do it all with my will power alone and I’m cool with that. I keep a gratitude journal that I write in every morning and every night and it has for me been another valuable tool in building resiliency. Some days or mornings it feels like I’m writing the same things. But I always start general, being thankful for my breath, my health, my loved ones etc.

So then, resiliency begins first and foremost with our knowing that by existing as a human being we are a spirt of unlimited inner power. And no matter how small, we have all had successes of some degree that we can draw on for inspiration. We also have the power to think, eat and live better, which in turn will increase our energy and vitality levels vastly improving our level of resilience. Heres to knowing that every set back is but a set up for a greater comeback! Here’s to enlarging, enhancing and expanding our resiliency, physically emotionally and spiritually. Cheers to adaptability, flexibility and the unlimited potential of the human spirit.