Building Resiliency Is Key to Healthy Living

In my working with individuals and managers I notice how building resilience can be so beneficial to everyone. In this fast-paced crazy world, where change, uncertainty and competition forms a major part of our everyday life – resiliency is a quality we want to cultivate as individuals and in the working environment with our teams and colleagues.

First of all – What is resilience?
Dr. Andrew Weil has an integrative approach to medicine and is well known for sharing knowledge on how to live healthily. Andrew has a great metaphor of where he likens resilience to that of a child’s “knock-down” toy that is heavily weighted at the bottom. We can knock it over and it bounces right back up to the center. We can describe resilience as our capacity to return to some kind of centeredness or balance.

How do we develop resilience?
Resilience can be cultivated. We can continuously develop resilience through practicing habits that support us to better self regulate – to manage ourselves, our thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, our relationships, and the choices and behaviors that we make.

Much of our stress is around goals we want to achieve and we live in a results driven society. We may experience for example fear, anxiety, or overwhelm.

Here is a short exercise that is relevant for everyone and that can help us to learn more about ourselves and to self- regulate.

• Select something important that you would like to accomplish.
• Envision massive success around your goal.
• Sit for a moment and reflect on what you want to do – break this down into bite size pieces that you can create quick-wins.
• Think about who you would like to partner with, who would you want to join you in achieving this goal?
• What would be the very next step?
• Check in for a moment and ask yourself: “How am I feeling?” The mere acknowledgement of our feelings whatever they may be can help us grow our resiliency as we become participatory in our self-care.
• Be aware of the voice in your head commenting. This voice in itself can be a big stress factor. What is your story? Sometimes this voice speaks so softly that we are not consciously aware of its impact. Often an awareness of the voices existence can help us to tune into what it is saying and start to manage it.
• Check out your story. Are your thoughts positive? If you need to turn around your story to one of positive reinforcement. A story that encourages you and assists you to go to the next step. For example – tell yourself: Yes, I can!
• Continue step by step – receiving help on the way as needed.
• Remember to acknowledge yourself as you move forward. Try to continue to make quick-wins as this is in itself encouraging!

I have been away from home training in a global leadership program in Netanya, and this week I am away again for work in Jerusalem. I have certainly been practicing a number of strategies to help me be at my best, including starting my day with mindfulness meditation.

What practices do you have in place that build resiliency? Please do share with me how this exercise above went for you I would love that.