Lessons on Resilience

1. Resilience is the antidote to stress

In the meanwhile, I realised that to heal my elbow I needed to completely rest it for a while, allowing the muscles to release completely. Emotional pain cannot run through tense, worked out muscles. So for a few days I did nothing. I allowed my arm and all the muscles around it to ease completely. On the third day, I was intuitively asked to start strengthening the arm again. As I restarted my exercise regime, I realised how healed I was this time around compared to a week before where I was using force to exercise my arm even when in excruciating pain.

And then it became apparent, resilience is built in this way. Contrary to definition which represents Resilience as our capacity to bounce back, I would stay resilience is the force that gives us the stability and strength, to withstand and maintain our equilibrium through life’s ups and downs. The ups and downs of life which are inevitable to come. It is what prevents stress, burnout, mental breakdowns. It is especially pertinent in these times, where a pandemic has brought with it, so much added pressure on mental health. What is the difference between those of us who are breaking down, and those who are not just managing but maybe even thriving through these challenging circumstances?  The ones that will come out on the other side stronger than before, are the ones that are most resilient.

2. Resilience and super performers

Novak Djokovic, a superb athlete, has kept world domination in his sport longer than any other athlete in history. He has the ability time and time again to come back from being two sets down to win the match in 5 sets. It doesn’t matter how badly he is losing; he will go for a rest room break and come back out, all guns firing. It is never over with him, till the last minute. We’ve laughed at never needing to bother watching his matches, because he will always come back and win.  IN my view, it is this ability that makes him one of the greatest athletes in the world – the ability that allows him to never give up, to not shake up his inner equilibrium, no matter how much stress or pressure  there might be on him, in a given situation.  This is Resilience in action.

3. How do we build resilience?

Resilience is built by experiencing duality time and time again. It means it is built by going through the ups and downs of life, more so the significant traumatic experiences, which one has pulled oneself out of. Each experience adds on just a little more to our resilience bucket. And as the bucket of resilience fills, with it expands our ability to achieve greater and greater milestones. It is resilience that differentiates the achievers from the super achievers, the good from the excellent.

I want to showcase how we build resilience in our physical body to help you understand how to build it in life.

One of the most effective ways for training for a marathon, is something called interval training. In this kind of training, you don’t run the full marathon – instead you choose to run for 30 minutes or 60 minutes. What you do in those 30 minutes in my own person experience is what prepared me most for my longer runs. In this style of training, you have short bursts of full effort, and then a period of full relaxation. Maximum use of muscles followed by complete relaxation of muscles. The yang and yin in perfect balance. This is what makes our muscles the capacity to not get tired in the longer runs.

Resilience too is built in that way. In the river of life, there are periods of intense work or stress, then it is important to give yourself periods of complete relaxation and letting go. You tense and you relax, you stretch and you strengthen. You find the right balance between strength and flexibility the doing and the being, the yang and the yin factors. In perfect balance we are most resilient, and have the maximum capacity not just to achieve our goals, but go way beyond.

I have seen way too many “achievers” unable to relax or let go at all. They cannot stand the thought of taking a day off, or relaxing. They are too tied up in the old paradigm of constantly working hard leading to increasing rates of stress, burnout and mental break downs.

4. The middle way

The middle way, the way of wisdom – is to find the right balance between the doing and being.

Photo Credit –
Alexander Redl
@alexanderredl
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