10 Factors of Resilient People

Research shows us that there are unique characteristics within those who are more resilient than others. Here are 10 of them. Choose one and work on that, then choose another to work on.

·        Confront your fears - Immersion therapy is a way to slowly introduce yourself to things that scare you. If you don't like talking to a crowd, sit at the front for a few sessions, then have a guest spot of a minute or two at a few sessions. Gradually build up your resilience (fear) by increasing your risk level (time) thus increasing your stamina.

·        Maintain optimism - Optimism and positivity can add 7 years to your life whereas science can only add 3 years. Always look at the bright side, a cliché that actually works.

·        Accepted support - Ask for and accept help readily.

·        Imitate strong people - Look at those around you, identify the strong ones, and then replicate their behaviours.

·        Rely on your inner compass - Call it your ‘gut instinct’, or ‘going with your heart’. Be guided by your intuition because it has evolved over time to help keep you safe.

·        Accept what you can’t change - There is no point fighting a fight that you can never win. The easiest way to deal with something that you cannot change is to embrace it.

·        Concentrate on your health and well-being - Look after yourself, the more that you do this the better off you will be.

·        Find humour in adversity - Rather than concentrate on how bad something is, laugh at it. This re-frames the event which lessens the impact on you. Emergency personnel use ‘black humour’ to deal with their horrific work.

·        Use traumatic experiences to grow - Learn from your mistakes (don't do them again) and keep moving forward.

·        Turn to spiritual practices - An interesting one this, you may not be a practitioner of religion but there is no reason why you can't find some other spiritual process that keeps you centred and focussed. Perhaps even someone or something imagined to confide in.

Depending on which of these you are wanting to focus on, take small steps and make it repetitive. Depending on the habit, it can take up to 80 days to change the habit of a lifetime.

How To Be Resilient 3

The last of the three most important things that you can do to support your well-being is to socialise, to talk with others.

Humans are communicators. Since the beginning of time we have been talking to each other. Before electronics, before the typewriter, before the quill, (those who grew up in the electronic age will be Googling the word 'quill), even before drums, we would talk. 

Our brains were wired to communicate, and because of that it is important for our mental health to talk with others. Women do it very well, that's why they don't have as many 'issues' as men do. They talk about their problems, they share their stories, and they talk about how they feel. (I can see the men cringing already).

Socialising is not sending out messages on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, that's just exercising your fingers. (And I get the irony in sending my message out to you now on LI, FB and Twitter). 

Talking with others has many benefits;

·        Share problems and get answers.

·        Learn manners of your turn, my turn.

·        Clarifies thoughts.

·        Strengthens neural pathways.

·        Delays the onset of dementia.

And you don't always have to talk with other people to benefit from talking. Use self-talk when you want to change a behaviour and think positively.

If we isolate ourselves from the world, there is an increased risk of becoming unwell. Just look at what happens to people in the extreme case of those held in prison isolation.

Bottom line, get out there and talk.

How To Be Resilient 2

The second most important thing that you can do to remain resilient is to get enough sleep to recharge your battery (brain). There is plenty of information on the internet about sleep so I am not going to bang-on for too long about how to get to sleep.

The main things that you can do are; 

·        Make it regular - Go to bed at the same time every night.

·        Exercise - Go for a 30 minute walk at least 2 hours before bedtime.

·        Relax - Use good relaxation techniques, there's plenty to choose from.

·        Shower - Have a hot shower about 30 minutes before bed and as your body cools, it sends a signal to your brain that it is time to rest.

·        Cold and dark - Just like a cave, your bedroom needs to be cool and dark. If your room is too hot, your brain will keep working, your brain must be cool to go to sleep. Closing your eyes doesn't block out the light, use blackout curtains.

·        Avoid electronics - Apart from keeping your brain energised when you use them, computers, tablets and smart phones all emit a strong light in the same spectrum as the sun. Your brain sees this light and starts producing melatonin, it takes about 4 hours for melatonin to kick-in and help you get to sleep. If you use these forms of electronics at 9pm, expect to get to sleep about 1am.

·        Stop your brain - If your brain's wheels are still spinning when your head hits the pillow, think of one thing (your happy place) and only think of that one place. Your brain will want you to think about other things, keep going back to that one thought.

·        Keep cool - Don't have too many blankets on your bed, you will have bad dreams as your brain will be kept in limbo between working on 'stuff' and with going into REM. 

·        Don't panic - The worst thing that you can do is worry about not getting to sleep. You will eventually sleep and you will be able to function the next day. Worrying sets off your fight or flight response which produces adrenalin.

Most of all, make it a habit. Stick with a pattern for one week, if it doesn't work then change one small thing then stick with that for a week. Once you have found what works for you, stick with it and make it a habit

Ways To Be Resilient

Of the three main ways to support personal resilience - sleep, exercise, and socialisation - it is my belief that exercise is the most important one. 

Exercise need not be about sweating hard at the gym every day, although that wouldn't be a bad thing, it's about lifting your heart rate above normal level so that oxygenated blood gets pumped around your body.

Blood carries good and bad stuff. The good stuff is distributed around the body to where it is needed while the bad stuff is filtered out through your body's filters, the kidney, liver, etc. It takes a good 30 minutes for blood in your big toe to circulate through your plumbing system up to your brain and back down again enough times for it to be cleansed.

The exercise must be consecutive not accumulative so don't go adding together the time it took you to walk from home to the bus, from the bus to work, and back again. Your heart rate must remain at a medium to high level for a continuous period.

Don't worry about measuring your heart rate as you walk or weighing yourself at the end of the exercise or any of that other stuff, just get out there and walk. If you feel you can, jogging is even better because this will lift your heart rate even higher and you will begin to burn fat and get rid of the build-up of adrenaline in your system.

The benefits of exercise are endless;

• Controls weight, combats poor health, and lifts energy levels.
• Improves mood, sleep, and sex drive.
• Increases self-confidence, brain power, memory, and relaxation.
• Reduces stress levels, anxiety, and cognitive decline. 
• Taps into the creative parts of your brain. 

Exercise after work to help you solve problems and forget about your day's activities. Ensure you finish 2 hours before bedtime and have hot shower an hour before bed. As your brain cools and the feel-good chemicals produced in your exercise will begin to work you will soon fall asleep.

Do this each workday except Friday and once over the weekend. In just a few weeks you will notice a huge difference. As you become fitter, increase your exercise levels for greater benefits. 

Because your psychology and physiology are linked, if you have mentally draining day exercise your body more. If you have had a physically demanding day then exercise your mind (brain) more.

Lastly, don't overdo it. More exercise does not necessarily correlate to more benefits, particularly if you get injured. 

Resiliency: Who Can It Help?

I was humbled to be asked to co-host a radio show last night, The Nutters Club with Mike King. For those who don't know the show, it is a talk-back show that airs from 11pm on a Sunday night and is for people to phone in and discuss mental health issues.

To be honest, I felt a bit lost at times last night simply because of the desperate situations of some of the callers who are suffering from depression and have fallen so deep into a hole that they cannot find a way up from.

To tell someone that they should get more sleep, they should exercise more, and perhaps get out and socialise, falls on deaf ears. Not because they don't want to listen to what you are saying, they do. It's just because of their personal circumstances and how far down they have fallen. Their brain is unable to focus clearly.

There are many techniques that you can use to support personal resilience, or resiliency if you want to use another term. Like everything, you need to start early and you need to make it a regular habit.   

Resilience strengthening does work, research clearly shows us this, and it works for the majority of people provided they are 1) willing to make it a regular pattern and 2) are in the right situation/circumstances.

I have suffered from depression, albeit I managed to catch it early. I went and got help from a psychologist, I studied lots on why it happens, I implemented resilience strategies, and I escaped from the clutches of the 'black dog'. I patted him on the head rather than curling up beside him. 

Like most of you, I thought that I was indestructible. Guess what, I wasn't. And neither are you. It doesn't always happen to other people and it will happen to you if you don't get the right balance. Your brain will simply shut down if it becomes overloaded just like a computer does when you open too many software programmes. 

Over the next week I am going to share with you some techniques that you can use to manage your well-being. They are researched based and they work. Don't leave it until "later on" to start using them because "later on" comes unexpectedly.