What makes us resilient is a question I often get asked as a resilience coach. There are so many ‘resilience models’ out there, most of which focus only on how we think and completely disregard the nervous system and sometimes even our feelings too. The short answer to what makes us resilient is: being at home in ourselves and living our lives to the fullest. It’s a combination of knowing how you function, why you do things and how to really make the most of who you are and what the world has to offer.
Isn’t resilience in the mind?
No. You can try as hard as you want to become more resilient by focusing only on mindset and thought processes. Maybe trying to develop discipline and motivation and shut out emotions and all the things that might disrupt that. But you’re just creating future problems with this. A, because suppressing emotions isn’t resilient – it’s you trying to have a control that humans can never have (far better to learn to ride the wave of emotion until it passes) – and B because you’re ignoring something that has such a huge impact on resilience by doing this: your body. And by that I mostly mean your nervous system.
The nervous system is fundamental to resilience
If you want to be able to adapt, be flexible, live fully and thrive – both the bounce back and the bounce forward we associate with resilience – you’ll never be able to do this while ignoring your nervous system. I rarely make such blunt statements like that because I believe we’re all unique. But this one really is just a fact. You can make some progress by focusing on the mind side of things – but it will all go to waste if you ignore your nervous system. Why would you want to waste all that effort?
What makes us resilient – change your view of this, change your life
Here’s are a few examples of what I mean by the impact of the nervous system on resilience.
- Something hard happens in your life (a break ups, job loss, rejection etc). All of us will be affected by this. If your nervous system enters the panic zone fight/flight/freeze – and you can’t move yourself out of it again – then you will shut down or be unable to function at all for much longer than is necessary. For some people this looks like entering a permanent state of visible panic. For others it’s dissociating completely.
- You’re doing something challenging (public speaking, dating, a marathon, a new fitness class, networking etc). Fear can become uncontrollable and very disruptive in a situation like this. Making it impossible to get your words out, stop shaking – or even just do the thing at all. What most people don’t know is that you can signal safety through your nervous system and this will create enough release to take action and then perform better (and actually enjoy it too).
- Good things are happening to you, creating a lot of joy. But that’s not an emotion you’re used to (it can actually be hard for us to feel joy as it’s such a big one) so you start to feel unsafe. Your nervous system triggers you to sabotage whatever is causing you joy and you have no tools to navigate this so you are the reason you don’t have much joy in your life. If that sounds harsh this was me for a long time. If that’s you, it doesn’t have to stay like this.
What makes you resilient? Time to find out
If you want to be more resilient, have more capacity for growth, joy, connection, love and live your life to the fullest then it’s time to stop ignoring all the simple tools you can use to do this. None of this is rocket science. Everything I share in coaching is straightforward and accessible for anyone. It’s the kind of thing that, if we’d learned it at school, our lives would be so much easier. We’d be confident, motivated, able to communicate, connected, love, take risks and embrace self-belief. That’s how powerful it really is. But it’s not too late – you can learn it now and enjoy real resilience from here on in.
Ready to find your resilience? Book a free intro call and let’s chat.
