Resiliency! How to be like rubber (not glue)
How optimizing the 'good' stress helps us to preserve and persevere.
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How optimizing the 'good' stress helps us to preserve and persevere.
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Our ability to bounce back from injury or set-back, and to have it bounce off of us without causing harm is critical to managing stress. Resilience is our ability to bounce back and Resiliency makes us harder to impact. We grow more Resilient when regularly exposed to the Good stresses and in overcoming the Bad.
Stress and Resiliency go together like Yin and Yang. While they represent opposite sides of the spectrum, they are intimately intwined and cannot exist without the presence of the other. Resiliency comes from learning to overcome stress. Stress creates the opportunity for growth and change making the individual and the organization more resilient toward future stresses. Like all things, we need proper balance between the two. On the one hand, we don’t want to overstress ourselves and cause harm. On the other hand we must be willing to strive and stretch if we are to learn and grow. |
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If we don’t ‘artificially’ create healthy stressors like going to the gym or eating home-cooked meals, most of us are likely to be out of shape physically and have poor nutrition. If we don't have parties and go to community events, we aren't as happy. If we don't make the most of our work, we become apathetic. If we don't challenge ourselves, we become less resilient. Most people know this, but still fail to make these things priority in their lives.
Why is this so? Truth is we are wired for laziness. Once our basic necessities in life are met our body goes into a conservation mode because it was designed to plan for the next emergency as well as future drought or disease. In these cases, it is important to ‘stock-up’ and build one’s reserves while avoiding over expending oneself. Lazy. Our commerce based culture thrives on this primitive instinct by offering an abundance of quick and easy ‘emergency’ relief in the form of sweets, drugs, and tv to name a few.
It takes great resiliency to be able to avoid this trap. The more you fight it, the stronger you get. The more your fill your life with the good, the less room there is for the bad. As usual, taking the middle road (the one of harmony and balance) leads to a good relationship with stress. The good side of stress motivates (and often requires) us to get stronger, faster, smarter, more flexible and adaptive, as well as more cooperative and strategic.
Why is this so? Truth is we are wired for laziness. Once our basic necessities in life are met our body goes into a conservation mode because it was designed to plan for the next emergency as well as future drought or disease. In these cases, it is important to ‘stock-up’ and build one’s reserves while avoiding over expending oneself. Lazy. Our commerce based culture thrives on this primitive instinct by offering an abundance of quick and easy ‘emergency’ relief in the form of sweets, drugs, and tv to name a few.
It takes great resiliency to be able to avoid this trap. The more you fight it, the stronger you get. The more your fill your life with the good, the less room there is for the bad. As usual, taking the middle road (the one of harmony and balance) leads to a good relationship with stress. The good side of stress motivates (and often requires) us to get stronger, faster, smarter, more flexible and adaptive, as well as more cooperative and strategic.