On building resilience

because life isn't always sunshine and rainbows

The only thing I know for certain about this life is that it will bring you to your knees. You’ll rarely ever see it coming because hypervigilance never prepares you the way you hope it might.

I know this hardly feels like a message of hope, so what do you do? 

Focus on what you can control, which is one, how prepared you are and two, how you respond when a crisis arises. 

We can prepare for hard times ahead by building resilience. Resilience is the capacity to adapt to and recover quickly from difficulties. Our degree of resiliency will affect how we respond to a crisis, the two go hand in hand.

How to build resilience:

1. Keep yourself in fighting form: “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready” this nugget of wisdom comes from Suga Free’s popular rap song, If U Stay Ready circa 1997. Like with everything else in life, taking exceptional care of your mind and body puts you at an advantage. You can think more clearly and have a greater tolerance for stress. When a crisis hits, the first area of your life to take a hit will be your eating, your sleeping and your exercise. This is why it's important you have a strong foundation going in.

2. Build community so you have support to fall back on and friends you can return the favour to. We are not meant to do this life alone, our ancestors knew better with their villages and tribes, where people helped each other, held space, ceremony and took over responsibilities when others were incapacitated. Go back to your roots, we are stronger together, always.

3. Take calculated risks in your day to day, so you have evidence of how you survived hard things and evidence that you can respond and adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Not sure where to start? Here are some beginner friendly ideas: try a new workout class that is out of your comfort zone, interview for a job that you don’t have all the experience for, or ask somebody out who isn’t a sure thing.

4. Believe in something bigger than yourself: gods, universe, mother nature, etcetera. Believing in something will help you reframe the ‘why is this happening to me?’ to ‘what is the lesson here?’

5. See the gift in your struggles and give them meaning: you can take a lesson out of every single negative event. The lesson may be very nuanced or more broad. Maybe you learn how you would respond differently next time or just how tough you really are.

Nature is full of examples of resilience, if you’re paying attention. Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

When you have been dealt a rough hand in life it is easy to collapse or harden.

Resilience isn't callous or cynical. To truly be resilient is to be soft and strong. To see the light amidst the dark, even if you have to squint really really hard sometimes. Don’t confuse resilience for being overly tolerant of adversity and mistreatment. Sometimes people wear resilience as a badge of honour signifying that they have been through so much, but there is a difference between having been through a lot and tolerating a lot of bullshit… be honest with yourself about the difference.

Kayaking Hopewell Rocks in the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick

Life may be tough but YOU are tougher. I’m cheering you on, always! :)

Big hugs,

Syd