Understanding Resilience | Personal #002

The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. This is a developed skill. One of the most important skills in our lives. Understanding resilience, building it, and deploying it in your everyday life helps ensure you're on the path to happiness/success.

Resilience & How It Impacts Our Lives

Life is hard. Incredibly hard. Take one look at 2020 and see how the hits keep on coming. Twists, turns, challenges, loss, uncertainty, stress. When you are impacted by an adverse event, how you adapt and overcome it is in large parts thanks to your skill, resilience.

"Bouncing back" or having the ability to absorb the blow, react, and adapt is how we grow over time. Resilience is developed in tough times. No tougher in my life than the year 2020. This year has created battles that many of us can't afford to fight, battles that burn you out and beat you down. It's only through these battles where our resilience and personal growth can begin to develop.

Developing This Skill & The Benefit It Has on Life

Life does not come with instructions. There is no map. There is no finish line. It is not a race. We are the ones who plan our own adventure. When a life-altering change happens to you it is easy to allow your planned adventure to change course. Everyone will react differently to change/challenge in their lives, it is only those with resilience who stay the course.

Resilience, like most skills, is built over time. In fact, developing this skill will require a lot of emotional distress, challenges, and loss. It is only through these events that you develop this skill. It starts with your mindset and how you break-down these events. The ability to compartmentalize, analyze, absorb information, and react accordingly develops your resilience.

Deploying Resilience In Life

If you've developed resilience over the course of your life it will pay you dividends in your physical, mental, and spiritual health.

• Resilience takes place in our physical lives. Healthy lifestyles reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Physically resilient people can push themselves at the gym, make the right choices in their nutrition, and reduce the toll that negative emotions take on them.
• When you take time to practice mindfulness the battles/challenges are easier to fight. The ability to appreciate life's positive moments helps guide you along and avoid negative outlets like substances and toxic behavior.
• Resilient individuals also develop empathy, allowing them to connect with mutually understanding people. Having this "group" offers you support in your tough moments, and vice versa. Many people find these groups in religious organizations, and community organizations.

TL;DR

Resilience is one of the most important skills in our lives. Understanding it, developing it, and deploying it help guide us through the toughest times in life. Take time to understand your own resilience and how you react to adverse events in life. It will provide dividends in all aspects of your life.