Wouldn’t it be great if we never fell over, never got hurt and never got upset??? As nice and idyllic as that sounds, we all know, that it’s not possible, not reality and the crucially fundamental part…..it wouldn’t be good for us.

If we wrap ourselves up in cotton wool to protect ourselves, we stop living life. We also start to weaken ourselves and become fragile. A china teapot when dropped will break and shatter into hundreds if not thousands of tiny pieces, making it not impossible, but extremely hard to put back together. The same can be said for ourselves if we continually try and protect ourselves and avoid, pain, discomfort and difficult situations.

What I’m talking about here is…..resilience. The ability to pick yourself up and carry on. The stuff thats gets you through the pain and discomfort.

We all have the innate capacity to be resilient. We were born with it. It’s about creating the right conditions, mentally, emotionally, physiologically and spiritually.

So, what is resilience I hear you say? And how do we create it? I’m glad you asked those questions as I’m going to answer them now!

We will all have our own contextual definition of resilience, but essentially what we are talking about is the ability to deal with challenges, overcome them, and carry on….until the next one appears.

A side note and some food for thought for you all…..

There is a place where resilience helps you not to see the challenges as problems to overcome, but as opportunities. That is the sweet spot and it’s a powerful, freeing and wonderful place to be…..and with practice and focus it can be achieved by all of us.

There are Five things to look at that will help answer the question “what is resilience and how do we create it?”:

# 1: Mindset -Attitude.

 

Fall seven times and stand up eight.

This ancient Japanese proverb is simple, effective and powerful. This speaks to the psychology and mindset of resilience. The ability to carry on and get back up when times are tough. The positive can do attitude we have when we are resilient.

Every day we are talking to ourselves and sending ourselves a message…….whether we can….or whether we can’t.

When we find ourselves in times of trouble this inner dialogue ramps up and is full of self doubt, criticism and judgement. These thoughts arise as part of our stress response, and were originally designed to protect us and keep us safe from danger. This worked better for us in a world where our threats were the physical threat of an animal, the cold or starvation….which most of us no longer have. We have psychological stressors now; deadlines at work, clients, colleagues, parents, children, politics, economics, the list goes on.

This article may be helpful for you:

https://www.adaptandflow.co.uk/perception-an-underestimated-tool-for-stress/

Talk to yourself – powerfully.

First thing in the morning and last thing at night are great times to plant the seed and re-programme your subconscious mind. These are the times of days where we are in a lower frequency and our brains are more open to absorbing new ideas and change, so this is the time to tell yourself a positive mantra or affirmation.

During the day when stress appears – What are you going to say to yourself in these moments that is simple and easy to remember and will help change your mood and state of mind to a calmer more positive solutions focused one. The stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol are only in our blood for 90 seconds before they desolve. Anything after 90 seconds, is us feeding and prolonging stress. Sit with that for a moment…..

# 2: Emotional Resilience

We are emotional beings, and as you know from your own personal experiences, emotions can be heavy and have a big impact on our wellbeing and general state of mind and being.

When it comes to emotional resilience, acceptance is the first step. We are not looking to run away from our emotions or push them down, as they will only come back to bite us even harder! Also to note, it is healthiest for us to allow emotions to flow – they are energy after all, and energy by nature should flow. Emotional resilience, control and intelligence comes from accepting, processing and responding. You can read this article for a practical guide to emotional wellbeing and resilience.

https://www.adaptandflow.co.uk/an-emotional-workplace/

With practice you can learn to become the master of your emotions. Please give yourself time and space to do so.

# 3: Physiology – Making stress work for us.

Let’s look at the science and physiology of stress & resilience

Localised resilience

When we lift weights, our muscles get stressed, they tear,  we rest and they repair and grow back stronger. This is a great example of how we can use stress to build resilience. The stress and resilience here is localised.

Holistic resilience

Imagine if you could create resilience in every single cell of your body….!

Well, we can. We do this through engaging in hormetic stress.

Hormetic stress is the stress that’s good for us, and it’s the stress that allowed our ancient ancestors to survive and thrive. It is:

Low dose, intermittent, acute stress that stimulates a biomechanical adaptive response.

Part of this response results in our cells repairing and rejuvenating and coming back stronger. How amazing is that??

• Fasting
• Heat exposure
• Cold exposure
• Hypoxia (restriction of oxygen)

These are all forms of hormetic stress and will make you stronger in every cell of your body. You can read more in this article:

https://www.adaptandflow.co.uk/stress-what-its-currently-doing-to-our-bodies-and-what-it-could-do-to-make-us-stronger/

Tapping into the principles of hormetic stress will significantly increase your ability to build and maintain resilience.

# 4: Deepening spiritually to build resilience.

By spirituality, I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about your spirit. The innate you. The child that was born, plays free with abundant energy, is present in the moment, doesn’t overthink and has no fear and laughs freely. Did you know, children laugh 300 to 400 hundred times a day….and adults, we’re talking double figures at best.

Spirituality will be different for all of us.

It could be taking a walk in nature, reading a good book, breathwork, yoga, running, painting, playing or listening to music……anything that helps you connect with the inner you and distance yourself from the overthinking internal chatterbox.

This is your flow, your intuition, your inner strength, intelligence and innate capabilities. Deepening your spirituality, like the others parts to resilience, requires creating the time and space, and consistent practice to build those new neural pathways.

All of the work you do to build mental, emotional, spiritual and physical resilience will be wasted if you don’t make room for this last step…..Rest & Repair….Self Care.

# 5. Rest & Repair

Allow your bodies to repair.

When elite athletes are training, they schedule periods of rest into their schedule as the vital part of the strengthening process. They know that if they train and stress their bodies, they need to allow them to repair. We need to adopt the same process and mindset when we are building our everyday life resilience.

When talking about rest and repair, I think it’s really important we establish the differences between comfort and rest and repair. One is a vital part of our growth process, the other inhibits it.

Comfort is great, isn’t it? A nice warm bath? I duvet to snuggle under? A sofa in front of the fire with a cup of tea / glass of something. We need all these things, they are good for us. But, too much comfort can be bad for us and doesn’t help resilience. If anything, it prevents it.

Gary Brecka a reputed neuroscientist and biohacker has a phrase he lives by:

“The pursuit of comfort leads to the aggressive pursuit of ageing.”

Comfort and Rest & Repair often get mixed up and misunderstood. Going back to my earlier analogy of wrapping ourselves up in cotton wool and the fragility it leads to…..the more we can get used to being uncomfortable the better able we will be to build resilience, have more energy and find more joy in life.

This is where that simple but powerful intention of doing one thing every day that puts you out of your comfort zone will help you build for a happier, healthier and more resilient you.

Comfort is good as part of a balanced lifestyle. Rest and repair is essential to homeostasis, growth and resilience.

Moving Forwards

You might be reading this and feeling inspired and motivated. Or, you might be reading this and feel overwhelmed with one more thing to do when you’re life is hectic and it’s hard to find the time. However you are and feeling, it’s okay. Accept where you are and then you can move forwards at your own pace.

Every day and every week we get curve balls that put us off course. With a few simple but powerful tools in place we can shift energy, rebalance and get back on track…the more we do this, the quicker and smoother that process of resilience becomes….

It might be more healthy and impactful if we start talking about resilience as a process as well as something we build and have.

• It’s training your body and mind.
• Using both sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems for growth.
• It is your response. The world will happen around you, and the one thing you are in control of is….how you respond. This is our true power.
• Start small and build. Identify something to address / focus on to start your process. This could be staying calm in a meeting when you receive negative criticism, or it could be finding your voice when you might of stayed quiet before.

A key reason we fail and lose resilience?

We don’t give ourselves enough time or space……

I am here to help you and your teams become happier, healthier and stronger.

You can check out the workshops and one2one support I offer here:

https://www.adaptandflow.co.uk/pricing/

I hope this has been useful, let me know whether it is, I am open to feedback…it will make me more resilient!

All the love

Damon

xx