Resilience is our ability to bounce back in adversity, it’s that desire to get back up when we fall down, it’s getting back on the horse when we fall off.
Everybody has different levels of resilience and everyone can build resilience in their life. Resilience has four basic legs, these are self-awareness or sense of self-worth, our sense of unique purpose or mission, our desire and ability to create from those two things, and lastly the practices that we have in our life for well-being and happiness.
Self-awareness and self-worth is our understanding of who we are, where we come from, the unique blend of culture, family, education, skills and innate abilities that make up who we are as well as acknowledging the value of these things within us. When we really understand our history and where we come from, we then begin to embrace our true potential.
Mission or purpose comes out of this self awareness. Once we know ourselves, our strengths weaknesses skills, innate abilities, that unique blend that makes up who we are, we begin to have an idea of what the difference is that we can potentially make in the world and how to apply our uniqueness to that difference.
People often get stuck on the idea of creativity, they think of painting or making music and they think they’re just not creative If they don’t do these things or don’t do them well. The truth is that we’re all creating all the time. It might be more appropriate to speak of ourselves as Craftsman rather than creators. Craftsman create something that’s useful in an artful way. We are craftsmen of our lives when we are embracing our purpose and our self-worth and uniqueness. when we come from this space we are proactive rather than reactive to the world.
The last but certainly not least is practices. Practices that build a sense of well-being include but are not limited to eating well, resting, exercising, being part of a community like a networking group for example, our connection and relationship to family, having mindfulness or meditation or prayer practices in your life, keeping a gratitude list on a daily basis, journaling, basically anything that improves our mental spiritual and emotional health that we do regularly.
When we are actively engaged in these four legs of resilience, it is much easier to meet shortfalls in life. When we know who we are, have a sense of the difference we want to make or our purpose, create or craft our lives from that place, and continue to strengthen ourselves with regular practices we become unstoppable.
