When it comes to everything in life, building a strong foundation is vital to a successful outcome. This can be said for relationships, learning a new language, building businesses to personal development. When it comes to our personal development, our mental resources require a foundation of resilience as a building block to living a life of coherence. So what exactly is resilience? Resilience is the ability to prepare for, bounce back and adapt in the face of adversity. As per The HeartMath Institute, there are 4 domains it encompasses: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual resilience. However, I believe an additional one needs to be spoken to – financial resilience. If we aren’t financially resilient it can bleed into the rest of our domains. These five domains equip us with the tools we need to not only withstand life’s challenges but also to grow stronger through them.
1. Physical Resilience
Physical resilience relates to your overall health and well-being. It includes fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle choices that enable you to overcome the physical toll of stress and adversity. When you are physically resilient you have the energy to tackle life’s challenges head-on. As we all know, stress has a direct correlation with our physical bodies. The stronger our bodies are, the more resilient they are to combat the effects of stress.
Personal strategies for enhancing Physical Resilience:
- Exercise: Yoga for your mind and body connection, some aerobic exercise like walking or swimming.
- Diet: Minimize the amount of processed foods you eat, look up a Mediterranean diet if you need inspiration. Also, make sure you are drinking enough water; dehydration is a silent energy drainer.
- Sleep: Ensure you are getting the adequate amount of sleep needed to function well. Without the proper amount of sleep for your body, you simply don’t function as well.
- Stress-Reduction Practices: These can include HeartMath techniques or different activities/strategies that resonate with you.
2. Mental Resilience
Mental resilience, also known as cognitive resilience, involves your ability to adapt to changing circumstances, attention span, ability to focus, capacity to incorporate multiple points of view, maintain a positive mindset, and effectively problem-solve. When you are mentally resilient, you can reframe negative thoughts, set and achieve realistic goals, and stay focused on solutions rather than problems.
Personal strategies for enhancing Mental Resilience:
- Protect Your Energy: Develop a solid support network of friends and family. Minimize time around energy vampires who talk about doing things but never actually take action. This is one of the fastest ways to drain your energy.
- Alone Time: Personal downtime like meditation & journaling or going for a walk. It’s important to be comfortable and alone with your thoughts.
- Cognitive Restructuring: Rewiring your brain using different techniques. Learn how HeartMath techniques can do that in this article.
- Self-Talk: Check in on how you talk to yourself. Are you neglecting your needs, being an a-hole or are you being supportive, kind and patient with yourself? How you treat yourself will be reflected in how others treat you. When you treat yourself like crap, if somebody else came along and treated you a little less crappy you would accept that behavior, but ultimately it’s still crap.
3. Emotional Resilience
Emotional resilience involves the capacity to manage and regulate your emotions effectively. It allows you to remain balanced and composed, despite even the most difficult circumstances. When you are emotionally resilient, you can acknowledge your feelings, express them constructively, and bounce back from setbacks. Generally, you have a positive outlook on life. This domain is vital when it comes to your energy. When you aren’t emotionally resilient, you tend to drain your energy the most compared to the other domains.
Personal strategies for enhancing Mental Resilience:
- Emotional Regulation: Practice asking yourself, “are my emotions managing me, or am I managing my emotions?” This is where HeartMath really shines as it provides techniques to give you a 1-degree separation from your emotions. Better equipping you to respond to situations and not fall into the dreaded vortex of negative emotions when they arise.
- Mindset: Develop a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset (Mindset by Carol Dweck is a great book on this).
- Personal Boundaries: Set clear boundaries. This is vital. Sometimes we tend to outsource our boundary-setting to others. Think ‘just go with the flow attitude’, by doing this you are allowing external stimuli to determine what you are comfortable with. Flip it around, check in with yourself first to see if going with the flow truly lines up with what you want to do. If it does, great; if not, practice voicing that.
- Recharge: Don’t just rely on sleep to recharge. Have activities that help you relax and recharge like making art, reading, spending time in nature or with friends, etc.
4. Spiritual Resilience
Spiritual resilience involves finding meaning, purpose, and inner strength in times of adversity. It’s your commitment to your values or your tolerance of other people’s values and beliefs. The feeling of connectedness to something greater than yourself and how you assign meaning to your hardships.
Personal strategies for enhancing Spiritual Resilience:
- Self-Reflection: Reflect on your beliefs, values and what gives your life meaning. What matters most to you?
- Service: Service to others and acts of kindness (to strangers also, not just your friends).
- Meaning: Finding meaning in adversity (Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl is a must-read if you’re interested more in this) or you can look up logotherapy to understand more.
- Spirituality / Religion: Seek different spiritual modalities/religions or a school of thought that resonates with you and helps you understand a deeper sense of why we are all here. Focus on this when you are facing adversity or uncertainty.
5. Financial Resilience
As you’ll recall, financial resilience is the one that I’ve added as I think it’s just as important. We all have a financial domain in our life and that domain needs to be looked after like any other aspect of our life to maintain a fulfilling life. Financial resilience is our capacity to prepare for, withstand and recover from financial setbacks or financial stressors. This includes having the knowledge and skills to manage money, save for the future, and make informed financial decisions. When you are financially resilient you are better equipped to navigate unexpected expenses, job loss, or economic downturns without experiencing severe financial hardship.
Personal strategies for enhancing financial resilience:
- Seek Help / Guidance: Learn from different financial advisors, there are plenty of them out there. Find one that resonates with you. Dave Ramsey and Ramit Sethi are two that I follow. Money doesn’t have to be evil or overwhelming. Once you understand it, you can make more informed decisions.
- Minimize Debt: This means paying off your credit card each month! You will drown in interest expense otherwise. Avoid making unnecessary desire-based purchases on credit if you can.
- Budget: Create a budget, I know, super annoying and boring, but it’s worth it. If you’re lazy, at least track your monthly net worth to understand how much you’re spending a month.
- Give: Donate 10% of your earnings to a charity or cause you believe in. I’ve been doing this for a while now and it comes back in spades. Not to mention just how much joy you receive in giving.
Last Thoughts
Resilience is a skill. It’s built through experience, and the more we practice being resilient, the more we’ll find ourselves not needing to bounce back from our stressors in life. By flexing this muscle, you are investing in developing your container (capacity) to prepare for these moments. The larger the container, the better ability you have to see things coming from a mile away and stop them in their tracks. These 5 domains are all intertwined and influence one another, ultimately shaping how you show up in your life. In essence, resiliency is about being flexible. By nurturing and strengthening each of these facets, you can better navigate life’s challenges, grow from their experiences, and emerge stronger, more resilient and more coherent.