Part 2: The Complexity of Resilience – More Than Just Mental Toughness

Resilience Is a Full-Body Experience

Picking up the topic from my last post... (Go here if you want to read part 1) Resilience can be defined as effective adaptation following adverse circumstances or traumatic events. Who doesn’t want and need a bucketload of that in this frenetic world we live in?!

Resilience isn’t just in your head—it can reside in your body, your spirit, your emotions, and your relationships. It’s a whole-life capacity, and the more we nurture it in each area, the more equipped we become to navigate both small setbacks and seismic shifts.

Appropriate Sizing = More Peace

The more we nurture or practice resilience, the better we get at appropriately sizing life’s struggles. This is a worthy practice that can affect our decision-making and change the trajectory of our lives, let alone improve our day-to-day experiences.

More and more study is being done on the concept of Post-traumatic Growth (PTG) as a positive outcome from coming through traumatic experiences – both acute and chronic. Resilience is a key part of PTG, and feeds the growth of hope in not only fully recovering from trauma, but becoming stronger because of it.

[If you would like to read more on this topic of PTG, my good friend Nancy Jernigan, PhD, discusses it in the e-magazine,Contentment, put out by the American Institute of Stress. Here’s the link to the issue containing her article: Post-Traumatic Growth: Finding Hope in Adversity.].

The photo at the top of this post is one of hundreds in my photo files, taken over the 20 years I (we) lived in SW Colorado and had the San Juans as our ‘playground.’ Something significant my husband and I have always had in common is our souls’ need for immersive outdoor experiences. In other words, we want to feed our mind, body, spirit, soul -and all of our senses - when we engage in God’s creation. So you can imagine the innumerable opportunities for that outside our door in SW Colorado!

What does that have to do with resilience? One of the best ways to nurture our resilience is through immersive experiences. Full-body activities that engage the whole person—mind, body, spirit, and soul— are those that are immersive.

Examples of immersive activities: dancing, hiking, deep conversations, yoga or mindful practices, making music, serving others, prayer or meditation.

Psychologists have recognized the multiple dimensions of resilience: emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual. And these aren’t isolated traits—they intersect. A sleepless night can short-circuit your patience. A broken heart can affect your body. And just as importantly, a grateful spirit can lift the weight of a stressful day.

Each Dimension Needs Attention

Along with the different dimensions of resilience, is the effect of each of our unique personality-traits mix on our resilience capacity. As a life coach, I utilize strength assessments with clients desiring to understand and embrace their wiring. It is really the first essential step for designing a plan for your next season, which is usually what brings a potential client to me. Over the twenty years of playing this role, I have observed:

Our wiring, which informs our perspective, has a significant effect on our built-in resilience reservoir. For example, those who lean towards a ‘cup-half-full’ view of life may find it more natural to see a problem or struggle as a possible opportunity to create something new – that’s what resilience looks like. But no matter our natural leaning, we can all build on our resilience with intention and practice, using the inevitable challenges in our daily lives.

The Artist Believes Something New Can Be Made From Broken Pieces

That thought brings me back to the Japanese art form of kintsugi (introduced in part 1 of this series). The artist creating a kintsugi-style piece, must bring into the endeavor the belief that something new – and desirable, functional and beautiful – can be created out of something broken – no longer useful, beautiful or desirable. Inversely, the artist would see opportunity or a new beginning in what others might see as a problem or an ending.

Stay tuned for part 3 in this series on resilience, when I will talk more about how our personality and relationship with risk can affect our resilience capacity.

Meanwhile, I invite you to take a moment to reflect:

Which resilience dimension (emotional, physical, mental or spiritual) needs your attention today?

What is 1 immersive activity you could engage in to nurture your resilience?

Journal it. Tend it. Share it, if you so desire.

*If you contact me, (geriswingle@gmail.com ), I will send you my  Whole-Person Engagement Worksheet for your intentional resilience practice.

*And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me. (geriswingle@gmail.com. We can meet, no matter where you are, over Zoom.) 

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Blessed to play a part ~

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