Future-Proof Your Family, Finances, Career, and Opportunities (Anything that Matters to You)
You need a plan. You need hope. You need resilience. And you need support. Over the next few posts, I will share how to achieve all four.
This is PART THREE: Resilience
If you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention.
Last week in Part Two, we talked about complexity, loss aversion, and believing in your future. It sounds heavy, but it was FULL OF HOPE.
Today is exciting because we are going to talk about resilience. By resilience, I mean the ability to recover from the tough stuff, spring back into shape, return to who you are and what you want, withstand stress, pressure, and uncertainty, and maintain your capacity to carry on.
Hope and resilience are two sides of an optimistic outlook. Researchers have found that resilience correlates strongly with health and longevity, success, interpersonal satisfaction, and happiness. It’s worth it to cultivate more resilience in your life.
Keep Calm and Carry On
If you’ve made it this far, you are already carrying on, so congratulations! Let’s talk more about resilience. Resilience and hope are sources of inner strength that contribute to your development and well-being throughout life; they can also protect against the impact of negative events.
Resilience is the psychological strength that allows some people to adapt, thrive, and return to their baseline faster after adverse experiences. Have you ever heard someone say, “I have a high happiness set point?” That refers to the level of happiness they bounce back to, their BAU life engagement level.
The cool part is that it’s pretty easy to raise the bar. Dealing with change, setbacks, loss, and grief are inevitable. Resilient people are emotionally agile — they don’t ignore bad things or wallow. They have an appropriate emotional response and carry on.
Our kids are learning this technique as “Feel the Wave.” It means not dismissing, minimizing, or running from your emotions but not letting them knock you over or suck you under. You’ve got to roll with it a bit, feel its force, lean and bend, but feel your resistance begin to match the strength of the wave.
Today, I’m going to share two simple things you can do to boost your resilience. First, food, water, and sunshine. Just like a plant.
Be Like a Plant
Stay hydrated. Eat well. Soak up the sunshine.
Being outdoors for even a few minutes each day can dramatically boost your mood. Have you ever noticed how you feel with a bit of color in your cheeks or on your shoulders? Or have you observed how others look when they’ve been in Cubeland for too long? Be sun smart, but soak up that Vitamin D therapy.
Drink your water bottle all day long (and if you aren’t a water drinker, remind yourself that more than 600 million people don’t have access to fresh water — that will do the trick). Eat fresh food, even if it means popping by the store more frequently.
The Plant Method is the simplest way to feel healthier, less fearful, and exude better energy.
Second, remember when we started the Negotiables/Non-Negotiables/Easy Gives list during the Planning Phase? Suppose that list still resonates and your awareness has been growing. Maybe you’ve had some conscious a-has or some back-of-the-brain realizations.
In that case, it might be time to have some conversations to kick off negotiations, reset boundaries, or reshape your rules of engagement.
The benefit of this approach is curating your time and energy so your life is a true reflection of your values and goals. It’s an iterative process, but every step in the right direction creates a ripple effect.
There’s something very compelling about being intentional and seeing your intentions turn into reality.
Talk about inspiring resilience!
