A few years ago, I read two books by Dr. Srikumar Rao – Are You Ready To Succeed and Happiness At Work – and I watched a few of his talks. In one of them, he had mentioned a story that goes something like this:
“Civil engineers’ ability to build a road through a forest, a swamp and a mountain will be measured by how they overcome the obstacles. Will they go around them, go over them, go under them or through them?
“If the mountain is very hard to drill through and the forest is very dense and very difficult to cut through then they might consider doubling their effort. It has no bearing on their emotions.
“This is a metaphor for your life. You are the engineer designing your life. Your job is to build the road to a successful, purposeful, and joyful life.
“The toxic people in your life are like the rocky hard mountains, dense forests and swamps. Getting angry at them is futile. You just have to figure out a way to build the road regardless of the obstacles.”
How are YOU going to do it? That’s when your resilience matters the most. Resilience is your capacity to recover quickly from any hardships and bounce back to your feet.
Just like a Japanese Daruma Doll, you have to bounce back and stand tall no matter how many times you get knocked down.
Of course, it’s very easy to just say that you have to have resilience and bounce back irrespective of what life throws at you. The question is how you can build, or rather, strengthen your resilience.
Here are 6 practical ways to strengthen your resilience and bounce back in life:
1. Work On Your Overall Health & Fitness
Resilience is not just about your mental strength. It’s also about building your physical strength. A strong immune system will play a key role in building your fitness levels and vice versa. If you lead a sedentary life tied to your office desk, it’s going to make you fall sick often.
How You Can Work On Your Health To Bounce Back In Life
Be mindful of what you put in your mouth. Do one thing at a time. When you are eating, just focus on eating. Stop multi-tasking while eating, like watching TV or anything else that can interrupt your eating. Similarly, make time to exercise at least for 15 minutes everyday. Stay focused on that activity and avoid being on the phone talking to someone.
Why This Is Important In Order To Strengthen Your Resilience
What we do unconsciously can lead to psychosomatic diseases. A psychosomatic disorder is a disease which involves both mind (psyche) and body (soma). Some physical diseases are thought to be particularly prone to being made worse by mental factors such as stress and anxiety.
Your health & fitness plays a vital role in strengthening resilience. Be mindful about your eating and physical exercises. What you do unconsciously may impact your overall health and thus your resilience.
2. Work On Your Mental Agility
The second way to strengthen your resilience is by working on your mental agility.
Mental agility is your ability to switch gears in your mind from ‘reacting’ to stress to ‘responding’ to stress. Reacting, after all, is instinctive and emotionally-driven. Responding, however, is a more objective approach.
How You Can Work On Your Mental Agility To Bounce Back In Life
Invest your mental energy wisely. Avoid ruminating about things you can’t control. Stop brooding over the past. Invest your time and energy on finding solutions and making preparations. The more you practice being protective of your mental energy, the easier it will become.
Making a conscious effort to shift your focus will become easy over a period of time. When you direct yourself away from thinking about things you’ve deemed a waste of time, you’ll begin to form new and healthier habits.
Why This Is Important In Order To Strengthen Your Resilience
If you are mentally agile then you will be able to think on your feet, solve problems and be creative at work. Cultivating this ability will aid you in becoming more effective at your job, brainstorm better solutions to your teams’ problems and ultimately be more successful in your career.
Working on your mental agility is an important aspect of your resilience. Your ability to switch your focus from things you’ve deemed a waste of time to more important things shows that. Switching between unproductive activities can drain your mental energy.
3. Work On Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. It is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions as well as the emotions of others.
How You Can Work On Your Emotional Intelligence To Bounce Back In Life
You will make mistakes. This is a fact.
You will encounter difficulties. If you’re feeling upset and angry, that’s totally normal. Beating yourself up for overreacting or getting emotional will only serve to add to any burdens currently plaguing you. Take breaks. Take time off. Learn to understand and manage your emotions. Show compassion for the most important person in your life – you.
Why This Is Important In Order To Strengthen Your Resilience
Being resilient doesn’t mean you need to be poker-faced in the face of adversity and stoic all the time. When knocked down, boxers still need a recovery period, right? It’s the same here.
Your emotional intelligence is what actually keeps you in balance. Being self-aware & regulating your emotions plays a big role in taking control of a challenging situation. Your social skills & self-motivation would aid you reaching out to people in time of need.
4. Work On Your Spiritual Wellness
Spiritual wellness is an evolutionary process of discovering the meaning and purpose of life and includes; seeking truth, thinking of others, loving, serving, harmony with oneself and others, reflecting a positive attitude towards life and having faith. This helps to change the impossible things to possibilities in people’s lives despite the normal ups and downs in life.
How You Can Work On Your Spiritual Wellness To Bounce Back In Life
While managing your time and daily tasks can be hard, it is crucial to devote time to connecting with yourself.
Whether in the morning when you wake up, during your lunch break, or before you go to sleep, take 5 to 10 minutes to meditate each day. Fitting mediation and relaxation into your lifestyle will free your mind and foster a stronger relationship with your own spirit. Also, looking for deeper meanings in your life and analyzing occurring patterns will help you see that you have control over your destiny. Being aware of this can help you achieve a happy and healthy life.
Why This Is Important In Order To Strengthen Your Resilience
Generally, people like to live a life with meaning and purpose. The spiritual element of wellness can be the most personal piece of the puzzle when putting all the pieces together. When these goals are met, it puts harmony in one’s life and the lives of the people they surround themselves with. It also leads to hope, positive outlook, acceptance of failures, forgiveness, self-acceptance, commitment, meaning and purpose.
Spiritual wellness is all about connecting with your inner-self to understand your core values, beliefs and strengths that can put you on track when you are about to derail. It gives you a sense to center yourself and helps you to stay calm and keep going under trying situations.
5. Get Your Life In Balance
Work-life balance is a term used for the idea that you need time for both work and other aspects of life, whether those are family-related or personal interests. At the core of an effective work-life balance, there are two key everyday concepts that are relevant to each of us – daily achievement and enjoyment – that lead to fulfillment.
How You Can Get Your Life In Balance To Bounce Back In Life
Avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket. Find hobbies outside of work that bring you joy. Find a side hustle that fulfills you. Nurture the relationships you have with others outside the office, get out of your comfort zone and explore new things.
Why This Is Important In Order To Strengthen Your Resilience
Having a good work-life balance will help you build resilience at work because it’ll help you see that there’s so much more to life. After all, you can hash out the stress from the day at the gym, or bake your worries away.
Getting your life in balance is very crucial to maintain sanity. You need to find something outside your core work area to unwind yourself. This can aid you in recovery & re-energize yourself. This is very important to build resilience.
6. Build A Strong Support System
The sixth practical way to strengthen your resilience is by building a strong support system. A support system is made up of individuals who love, respect, and care. These are people who are on your side and encourage you. They provide constructive feedback that is genuine and in your best interest. They express empathy, and trust. You can get this sort of support from your close friends and family.
How You Can Build A Support System To Bounce Back In Life
You can consider volunteering for a cause that you relate to, which can strengthen your values. You can take up a sport activity, which is good for your physical and mental health. You can start or become a part of a book club and interact with people who you don’t already know well. You can join professional organizations like Lions, Rotary, Landmark Forum, Freemasons or Toastmasters. These activities provide the opportunity to build new friendships, and will bring you into contact with others who share your interests & aspirations.
Why This Is Important In Order To Strengthen Your Resilience
Those with robust social support networks have better health, longer lives, and report higher well-being. Supportive relationships can also bolster you emotionally when you’re feeling down or overwhelmed. Friends and loved ones will listen to your fears, hopes, and dreams, and make you feel seen and understood. They can help you think through alternatives and solve problems, and they can distract you from your worries and, sometimes, that’s all you really need.
‘No man is an island’ and no one can claim as self-made. Everyone who has made it big in their life has had a strong support system in terms of family, friends & well-wishers. You too will need someone to reach out to for emotional & mental support when your chips are down. This is one the underrated aspects of building resilience.
Summary
Life is tough. We all run into obstacles and hardships. People and circumstances are always going to try to bring you down but if you keep letting that happen, you will never truly be able to live your life. In order to deal with whatever life throws at you, you need to be resilient. You need to bounce back every time you get knocked down. These are 6 practical ways to strengthen your resilience and bounce back in life:
1. Work on your overall health & fitness: In order to build resilience, you need your body to be resilient as well so that your immune system is strong. Be mindful of what you eat and make it a point to get at least 15 minutes of physical activity everyday. This alone will help you avoid many psychosomatic issues.
2. Work on your mental agility: Mental agility is the ability to switch from reacting to stress to responding to it. Learn to switch your focus from irrelevant things to the important things in your life. There’s no point focusing on things in the past or things that you cannot change. Being able to focus on what’s important will make you very effective in certain situations and this can help you strengthen your resilience overall.
3. Work on your emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is your ability to identify and manage your own emotions as well as the emotions of others. You will face situations in your life that will test you emotionally. Learn to care about yourself the way you would care about a loved one. Show yourself some love and don’t beat yourself up over small things.
4. Work on your spiritual wellness: Spiritual wellness is the evolutionary process of discovering the meaning and purpose of life. It’s the ability to truly connect with yourself. Meditating for just 10 minutes a day will help you center yourself. When you know who you are and what your purpose is, you’ll realize that the things external to you that cause disturbance in your life are actually meaningless. This is what will lead you to understand what resilience really is.
5. Get your life in balance: Getting your life in balance means having a work-life balance. Learn to separate the two. We get so involved in work that we forget about everything else. Developing new hobbies and building friendships outside of work will show you how much more there is to life than just work and this will help you strengthen your resilience at work.
6. Building a strong support system: A support system is a group of people that love, support, encourage and care about you. Associating yourself with groups that can serve your interests and aspirations is a great way to build your support system. Your support system will always be ready to pick you back up whenever you’re down, and this makes them your pillar of resilience.
