Building resilience to help us through this tough time
Never has there been more of a need to be resilient in all aspects of our lives. But how do we build this resilience?
There are so many triggers for anxiety today and on top of that there are many more ways to push those triggers at you. It’s no longer simply a case of not watching the ten o’clock news.
Being human is difficult at the best of times but today there seems to be more and more ways of triggering anxiety. From Putin’s latest speech to trying to understand what the Government is going to do next! Then on top of this there are all the normal things that get thrown at us. Sick relatives, job insecurities and your personal finances.
So how do we go about building that resilience that will help us through the tough times?
We know this winter is going to be a tough one. This has prompted me to think more about what I can do to take control of my anxiety to make things just a little easier.
In this post I explore three simple tricks for helping you build resilience. These are inspired by Lucy Hone. It is an emotional story but with a very clear message. Check out her YouTube video. Link at the end of this post. 👇
1. Resilient people understand that bad things happen.
This is not about defeatism but accepting that being human is hard and sometimes things go wrong. This is more about being mentally prepared and seeing these things simply challenges that are to be overcome.
More than anything, you have a choice. You can sink or you can swim. Being resilient is about choosing to swim but being aware that it’s going to be hard and still pressing on.
2. We are able to choose where we give our attention
More and more information is thrown at us these days. We have every piece of human knowledge ever created in our pockets in the form of our mobile phones. Crazy really when you think about it. Great for those debates at dinner parties over whether that actor is 60 or 59 but there is a bigger issue here.
We have gone from watching the ten o’clock news once a day to 24 hr rolling news to now having a live feed in our phones whenever we want to dive in. This is really harmful to our mental health.
Take the war in Ukraine. You can almost get an up to the minute view of who is attacking who and where across the whole front line. There are live maps with graphics showing you troop movement and feeds from satellites showing bombs hitting targets. We now have more information on our phones than the secret service had during most of the wars of the 20th century.
We can almost watch it LIVE on our screens as though it were a film. Except it feels very real and you feel the threat to your safety.
Then on top of this you have retired generals being interviewed who are looking for their 10 mins of fame predicting the next move of each side or for telling how we are all doomed.
It is absolute poison for the mind.
So stop. Just stop getting drawn in. Delete the apps, turn off apple news. Give yourself something productive to do in those moments you feel like picking up your phone to check. (I started this blog!) Do what you need to do to get away from it. Check out my latest post on this subject - link below.
3. Ask what you are doing at a given time is helping you or harming you
One of the best techniques that has worked for me is this one. Ask yourself if what you are doing right now is helping or harming you. It’s about being aware and then taking yourself off to do something constructive that will help you.
Sounds simple, but to achieve this you need to build good habits and this takes time.
This doesn’t mean avoiding all things that make your uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is all part of being human and it is often when we are uncomfortable that we are pushing the boundaries or doing something new. These can be really positive experiences that allow you to achieve things.
It is able asking yourself whether this thing you are doing is good for you.
That’s the difference. For example, giving that presentation at work that really stresses you out…..that a good thing to do. And you know it’s good. You feel amazing afterwards.
Scrolling the news and finding something that stresses you out that you can’t control anyway. Bad! Very bad! And you feel terrible afterwards.
Posts to check out
I’ve recently written a few articles on things we can do to improve our mental health. Check them out here and let me know your thoughts.
YouTube videos that may be of interest
This great video from Lucy Hone was my inspiration for this post.
And the Daily Stoic has some great rules for life that we can all use to improve ourselves.
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Thank you for these reminders! Every time I tell people I don’t watch the news, I’m afraid of being accused of “burying my head in the sand” or abusing my privilege to tune out how others are hurting. But the doom scrolling is hurting me and all of us. Through my world travels I really came to believe humanity is much, much better than what’s portrayed on the news and forming healthy connections, being open minded and generous are much better for me and the world than endlessly watching the news.
This past weekend I took Facebook off of my phone and I know that I'm going to be happy that I did (and I'm trying to use the time I wasted doing that on my phone by focusing on Substack newsletters), but it's going to be an adjustment.