Resiliency: 7 Tips to Keep Your Balance
- Published on April 28, 2022
Resiliency: 7 Tips to Keep Your Balance
Resiliency is the ability to walk through or bounce back from critical events. Events can be mental, emotional, spiritual, relational, or physical. Events can have a positive or a negative impact. Positive stress is as impactful as negative stress. Both require a resilient heart, mind, and body to contribute to growth and gain.
Let’s talk about the balance of build and maintenance of resilience. Research and common sense tell us we need rest, exercise, mediation and prayer, nutrition, meaningful work, intimate connections, gratitude, forgiveness of others and forgiveness of our own mistakes, spiritual interactions, new learning, concentration, play, creative expression, supportive social relationships, trust and integrity, moral clarity and integrity, personal responsibility, and service. Ancient philosophy tells us the same along with Biblical foundations. There is nothing new about this list.
Why don’t we adhere to it? Four reasons we lose our balance.
1. There are great benefits to the balanced life. When we don’t see the benefits rapidly, we tend to give up short of good results. A certain confidence in our future pervades when we live a full balance. We understand the lean of the universe goes toward the rightly balanced. A recovered meth addict of 14 years put it this way once he began living a balanced existence. “I have as many problems. They just don’t seem to bother me as much anymore.” His resilience factor grew. It took time. It took years. But he persisted until the balance toward resilience shifted.
2. Other people get frustrated with our growth. That’s right, they want us to stay the way we are. They like and love us for who we are not who we are becoming. So, they get in the way. They offer you cookies and cakes when you are working on good nutrition. They offer you guilt about personal time when you take time to exercise and over warn you to not overdo it. That constant pull backward from people for whom we care is exhausting.
3. We forget to walk away from the negatives. That’s right, there is a negative unbalance list that is important alongside the positive balance list. To build and maintain resilience we need to avoid dishonesty, theft, envy, strife, disloyalty, violence, distraught anger, toxic relationships, self-worship, addictions, alcohol and drug abuse and over sexual focus. One oops can wipe out ten attaboys. Don’t discount this list. Aversive actions and involvements impact our resilience.
4. A taste of honey is great. A jar of honey can destroy months of progress. Overindulgence in some good item can blow the balance. Spending two hours a day in exercise, when we are already fit and healthy might be too much. A good item on the list is taking precious time away from other balance items. Dependence on the right pill, nutrient, vitamin, or supplement to magically shift us into right mode can result in ignoring other items needed. It is the balance we need.
The BIG Event
Along with regular items that can throw the balance, we need to handle the BIG Event. Every once in a while, life crashes into our balance with a BIG Event. A good friend or family member dies. The company for which we work shifts direction and leaves us in the street. A car accident shakes our confidence. A trusted leader turns out to be untrustworthy. A disease strikes hard. Any of these taps deep into our resilience resource bank.
How do we handle the drain of the BIG Event?
5. Keep your balance. That’s right. The BIG Event is a good reason to recheck your balance list and ensure you are attending to all the items. It is a good time to do a fearless moral inventory and dispose of any negative impacts. BIG Events come to pass. They don’t come to stay. They come to pass. They drain our storehouse, and the storehouse needs replenished. Use Dr. Amen’s balance list acronym, REMEMBRANCES. Rest, exercise, meditation and prayer, eating right, meaningful work, bonding with others, relaxation, absolution, new learning, concentration, enjoyment, socialization. It’s a good list. If you haven’t studied it, take our course on activating the balance. REMEMBRANCES
6. Lock into the support system. Lean on others. Let others carry some of your weight for you, do your laundry, take the kids for a day or a weekend, fix a few meals, or spend a day of leisure with you. Don’t be so independent when you suffer a BIG Event.
7. Pray with knowledge. Pray is a conversation with the Creator. It is two sided. Good communication happens when both sides are heard. Since you have been involved in mediation and prayer based on Biblical truths, you can dip into what you have heard and pray with guided confidence. One great practice in the face of a big event is to do a five month wisdom walk. Every day take time to read one Psalm and one chapter of Proverbs and one chapter of a gospel plus Acts in order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. You will finish the gospels and Acts before you finish the Psalms. You will read through Proverbs five times. Your balance will be solid. Take notes. Write prayers based on insights you receive.
Summary: Here are four tips on what can negatively affect balance and three on responding to BIG Events. Pick on a day for the next week and check yourself. Then lay out a plan over the next few days to implement changes you need to make. Number 7 done every day is a good one to keep you in motion. It covers emotions, mind, relationships, and motivation. Be resilient.
Phil Larson, SOLUM Director