How to be happy with yourself through resilience!

Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive. ~ Jamais Cascio

First let’s talk about what resilience is, in common terms it s the ability to bounce back, even more than that, it’s the ability to come back even stronger than you were before you got knocked down. To me, resilience, along with a positive attitude are the two most important things to determining your level of happiness.

Positive Attitude

First let’s address the importance of positive attitude. One of the simplest ways to think about the benefits of a positive attitude comes from this simple idea, you can’t control what happens to you, only how you react to it. The fact is, the more positive your attitude the more likely you are to view things in the best light, which in turn is controlling your reaction to the things in your life. The better your attitude, the better things seem, the better things seem the happier you are likely to be. Nice little positive feedback loop.

You can apply this to people as well by thinking about it the way Wayne Dyer expresses it:

Karma

Staying positive helps in so many ways, and it’s so much better than the alternative. It’s not always easy, I get that, especially when the universe seems to have a singular focus on screwing up your life. But keep positive, positivity leads to smiling and a smile can do wonders. However it is exactly when the universe is dumping on you that resilience becomes so important.

Resilience

Resilience has been very much on my mind lately as mine has been put to the test. We all know when we aren’t very resilient, when are emotional reserves are at a low point. It’s that time when a question, one that annoys you, that you’ve been asked a million times results in your snapping at someone instead of the artful deflection you usually employ. Emotional reserves are important, it’s sort of the social glue that keeps society chugging along. We all employ these reserves regularly and this keeps us from being metaphorically at each others throats. But there’s a deeper level of resiliency that I’d like to talk about.

We all get knocked down in small ways every day and then we bounce back, sometimes after a pint of ice cream, but we bounce back. Sometimes however life really smacks us down. Recently, I got hit pretty hard, someone I care about deeply made it clear that they didn’t want me in their life in any significant way. This is someone who I’ve had a relationship of one sort or another for 15 years. It was a horrible blow, the fact is it was enough of an emotional hit in October that it threw me off-balance for the rest of the year. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I really got myself completely back on track. This is the essence of resiliency, no matter how hard you get hit, no matter what, or how long it takes, you get back on your feet.

How to build resilience

The way to build your resilience is to first do the simple things that keep those emotional reserves intact. So as always, back to the basics, get enough sleep, eat right, exercise and make sure you are doing things for yourself that you know make you comfortable and happy. That will work for a lot of the things that you will face but it won’t build additional resilience.

In order to create greater depths of resilience within yourself you have to learn from the current crash. Take the time to consider what part you may have had to play in the situation. Remember and take strength from previous times that you bounced back, remember that you’ve done it before and keep that in mind the next time, draw strength from your past success. Learn and grow always, the better your life gets, the closer you can get to being the person, and living the life you want to live, the stronger and more resilient you will become.

I bounced back my friends, you have too, and no matter what comes at us, we’ll bounce back again. You’re a strong person, you have value and things to get better in time. Keep that in mind and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane