Why Resilience Is The Skill to Master For Lasting Wellness

Introduction

If you feel like everything goes well until it doesn’t, and you constantly feel like you are starting over with your health, this post is for you. Discover how developing resilience can transform your wellness journey forever.
 
Today I want to explore the concept of resilience and present it as a key foundation of holistic wellness. Resilience is the character trait that keeps us moving through obstacles, challenges, and setbacks. It is the very thing that keeps us moving forward rather than constantly starting over. At the risk of sounding dramatic, it is the thing that separates winners from losers. If you feel like you have tried everything, the truth is that you haven’t tried not giving up. 

Why Do I Always Fall Off The Wagon? 

Do any of these questions sound familiar? 

● Why am I always starting over with my health goals? 

● Why do I never make progress, and sabotage myself every time I get close?

● How can I find the motivation to keep going when nothing works for me? 

● Why is it so easy for everyone else? 

What is resilience? 

Resilience is the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulty. In the context of wellness, this can mean trouble maintaining health or health-related behaviors based on changes in our circumstances, environment, mental state, thought patterns, and many other factors. Wellness is a process, not an end state, and it is critical to view resilience as not getting back to where we were or where we are “supposed to be”, but getting back into the process of wellness. It is a dynamic process of acting out health rather than being in the end state of health. It takes getting out of the black-and-white thinking of doing everything perfectly or nothing at all. It means intentionally acting in the best interest of your health – flexibly and adaptively. 

The Body’s Natural Resilience 

When we consider the idea of getting back on track, it can feel like something we have to white knuckle and force ourselves back into, almost like we are fighting against our nature to return to a state of health. I have come to see this as an unhelpful and limiting belief. It is incredibly helpful to appreciate that your body, wherever it may be in this moment, is inherently resilient. That is what our bodies do best. Almost every system within our body works in feedback loops to maintain homeostasis – it is constantly picking up on being slightly out of balance, and that sets off a chain reaction of biological mechanisms that will restore balance, without you having to even be aware of the shift. 

When we honor this intrinsic ability, we start to understand that our body is on our team. It wants a state of health and balance at least as much as we do, and it will work hard for it. When we seek to get back to a state of health and do so in a way that is supportive and gentle, our body will thrive. It wants to be well. With this knowledge that the body will be aligned with our health endeavors, let’s discuss the mental and emotional side of resilience.

The Key Elements of Resilience 

When you are pursuing your health goals from a resilient place, you will be, for the most part, acting out these core principles of resilience: 

The ability to quickly bounce back from setbacks 

When you act out of alignment with your goals, it’s no big deal. You don’t see it as a catastrophic failure, and you get right back to your healthy baseline. There is no wallowing, overreactions, or drastic measures to counteract the setback. 

The ability to adapt your strategy when things can’t be perfect 

Rather than thinking if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m not going to try at all, you think what is the best I can do in this situation? In between all and nothing, there is a wide range of choices that are quite a bit better than nothing. There is generally a creative choice that falls along this spectrum that will keep you moving forward. 

The emotional strength to sit with discomfort 

When facing health setbacks, you are aware of the very strong emotions that come up and you are in control of your reaction to them. You can feel the disappointment of not meeting your goal, the fear of missing out, the frustration of feeling stuck, and the panic of not living in alignment. You can feel these feelings, and see setbacks for what they are, and not act out. When you can sit with discomfort, you do not become a slave to your emotional state. 

The self-compassion to forgive yourself and move on after disappointment

Disappointment is inevitable, but you can choose your response to it. You view self-compassion as a strength rather than a weakness. You can exercise empathy toward the past you who made a decision, and not see it as proof that you are a flawed, hopeless failure. Instead of pouring energy into hating yourself, you pour energy into investing in better decisions. You give yourself the grace and the advice that you would give someone you loved if they were in this situation. 

5 Steps For Improving Resilience 

Resilience Step 1: Lower the bar to success 

If you are not living up to the goals you are setting, then it is too big of a goal. You have to admit that even if you “should” be able to do something, you are not making progress because you haven’t built up to it. Let go of the ideal and let the goal be just a tiny bit better than where you are. You will get to a place of achieving that ideal, but you have to permit yourself to not be there yet. 

Resilience Step 2: Become a promise keeper 

If you have spent years making plans, signing up for programs, starting over Monday, and making resolutions that this time it will be different, you most likely do not have a good track record of promise-keeping. You may keep every promise you make to another person, but you no longer trust yourself to keep promises to you. This is an incredibly painful and hopeless place to be. You become a promise keeper by making small promises, following through, and being proud of your ability to keep them. You build momentum and become someone who can follow through for themselves. 

Resilience Step 3: Celebrate every little win 

As you give yourself permission to lower the bar and keep tiny promises, you have to allow those successes to be worth celebrating. If you are always holding out to reward yourself when you’ve “arrived” at your final goal, you start to see the little wins as never good enough. But when every win is a reason to celebrate, even in small ways, you become powerfully motivated. You start to see yourself as a winner and start to seek out bigger and better ways to succeed. 

Resilience Step 4: Lean on a support system 

Resilient people know and value the people around them because they know that communities are worth much more than the sum of their parts. You don’t see yourself as an outsider whom no one understands and who has to fight for love and acceptance. You are intrinsically worthy and loved and supported. You can ask for help, make mistakes, give back, help others, and see yourself as both valuable and valued. You don’t feel like you have to go it alone or fight to get your needs met. 

Resilience Step 5: Learn in retrospect 

You stop being terrified of failure and start being fascinated by the process of growing. Every decision you make is a success when you see any outcome as an opportunity to learn and grow. Bad outcomes are often even better learning opportunities than good outcomes, so you start to take risks, get outside your safe space, take action, and start becoming a decisive and effective person. You get out of your head, get out of your own way, and start moving forward. 

Check out this article from Greater Good for more resilience strategies.

Questions to Reflect on in Your Journey Toward Resilience 

If you read through the five steps and felt motivated to change, yet unsure of where to start, take a few moments to reflect on the following questions. You can’t tackle all of these right now, but the answer to what is keeping you stuck will probably jump out at you. If you do not feel like you are acting out of resilience:

● Are you imposing so many rules on yourself that you can’t consistently win? 

● Do you have realistic expectations of the time that it will take to see progress? 

● Do you have realistic expectations of the effort required to reach your goals? 

● Have you put in the effort to set up a structured environment that will support your goals?

● Do you have inconsistent habits that rely on willpower or the right circumstances to follow through? 

● Are you considering how your default routines and habits are helping or hindering your progress? 

● Do you have underlying beliefs and identities that are keeping you stuck in certain behaviors? 

● Do you have gentle boundaries that support your goals? 

● Are you setting goals based on what you want, or what you think you should want? 

● Are you blaming other people or circumstances for why you can’t change your life? 

● Do you believe that you can make lasting changes in your life?

Conclusion

Resilience is a mindset, a skill, and a way of moving through life. It is often hard-earned and painfully gained. The beauty of it is that the harder things are for you, the more resilience you can gain from this situation. The compelling stories of the most successful people come from tragedy, heartbreak, and disaster. Whatever you are facing, it can be your excuse, or it can be your backstory. The choice is yours.

I hope this has been helpful to you in your journey as you move away from constantly starting over, and as you start moving forward in your health journey. You don’t need a new plan, a new answer, or a new protocol. Truly, you already know what you need to do. Start where you are, start small, and start showing up for yourself. 

I’d love to hear from you: which question hit home for you, and what are you going to do about it?

Wishing you well,

Meghan