Word-Of-the-Week #838: Resilent
August 27, 2020 by Susan Clarke
Resilient – recovering readily from adversity, depression, or the like.
How would you rate your capacity to deal with change and continue to develop? How well are you accepting your present situation?
This week’s WOW, “Help yourself stay positive by adopting 5 steps of resilience” features excerpts by Veronica Mitchell who writes Caregiver Advice for the SD Union Tribune. And her thoughts today apply to all of us.
- What is resilient thinking?
Resilience is having the capacity to deal with change and continue to develop. My parents are very resilient people, and they taught their children to build that quality in our lives from an early age.
When my sister and I owned our senior services business, we also were able to witness successful agers using their resilience to practice acceptance of their current situation. These resilient thinkers find ways to adjust their world around their new reality. They move forward with an “adjust as you go” mentality, which gives them the will and fortitude to expand their horizons after trauma and life transitions. At least for me, I want to have that will for living and being content, with a drive to keep making things better.
Here are five steps you can incorporate into your mindset to build resilience in your life at any age. Start building resilience now in your life, and it will be an asset for surviving this global health crisis:
- Practice acceptance of your present moment right now.
- Set your “adjust as you go” mentality for new changes.
- Stay connected socially with video calls, window visits and letter writing during COVID-19.
- Make use of coping skills. Talk with doctors and friends, stay physically well and help others.
- “Grow from transitions,” which means you must find ways to stay involved in your life even after loss and trauma. Continue with projects where you can, and learn a new hobby or skill.
Resilient thinkers are always contemplating their lives and make sure they are moving forward as best they can. This makes them positive, successful agers because they don’t sweat the small stuff and they accept things as they are in their reality. These resilient thinkers change what they can to in order to live their life the best way they can — with grace and humor, and by letting go of things that no longer serve them.
- Perception, self-talk and reality
Sometimes, our perception is quite different from reality, and our negative self-talk can absolutely affect our thinking and performance or behaviors. In the days before COVID-19 when I had paid speaking engagements, many organizations hired me to speak at their conferences, conventions and employee training on the power of positive self-talk and building resilience to manage change.
Living through this pandemic and changing our lives on a dime forces all of us to make the best of situations and try to find the humor and humanity. I know that I must engage my resilience and continue to move forward through this life transition. People who are stressed and tired can sometimes have a distorted perception of the reality of their lives and will focus solely on the problem areas instead of the whole picture.
Positive self-talk is now considered a component of mental health care. There is research supporting the assertion that positive self-talk assists everyone, from elite athletes and CEOs managing their performance, to family caregivers reducing stress. Identifying our internal dialogues and making efforts to change the negative talk into positive talk make for easier living, especially for caregivers.
Learning to practice positive self-talk requires recognizing when you speak negatively about yourself, canceling that thought, then replacing it with a more relevant, positive thought. For example, instead of focusing on failure and stating in my mind that I am a loser, embarrassed that I lost a challenge, I will acknowledge the loss and state that I tried something new and did my best.
This week’s focus on being resilient. Do you have that will for living and being content, with a drive to keep making things better? Are you staying connected socially? Do you practice positive self-talk?
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