When healthy habits fall outside the norm, it’s important to build resilience. Being adept at recovering from and coping with difficult situations is beneficial for anyone and everyone. It can be especially important for those of us who must buck a few norms to be healthy.
I’ve been standing out like a sore thumb this week. I’m cleaning out a building in a small town that tends skeptical toward things nontraditional. It’s an environment I understand. I feel the pressure to conform. But rather than taking a pause on my healthy routines when they don’t fit in, I choose to take the stare down I got from a total stranger yesterday.
No matter where you live or work, it takes some fortitude to consistently and gracefully navigate lifestyle choices that seem foreign to family, friends, and co-workers. Developing resilience is key to coping without feeling depleted.
How do you build resilience?
By doing. If I had a nickel for every time I hear someone say, “I can’t” instead of “I’ll try,” I’d be retired and living the high life. Any time you start with I can’t, you won’t. You’ve made up your mind. You never build resilience, or new skill for that matter, by taking yourself out of the game before it starts.
I’m not saying you should do everything that comes along. I’m not planning to run a marathon. And I couldn’t… today. But I believe with the proper training regimen, I can work up to it. Dismissing anything you aren’t comfortable with or capable of right now is a good way to
lessen your ability to pivot when needed.
By getting support. If you feel too embarrassed to meet a challenge on your own, bring a friend. As they say, there’s strength in numbers. Support can look like anything that helps you recognize, build, and rely on your internal strengths and abilities.
By learning. When you try out new ways of navigating the world, you will sometimes feel as though you performed poorly. You can label this failure and stop trying or you can label it Step One toward resilience. Failure is not a permanent state unless you make it one. Review, learn, build, and do it better next time.
By sticking with discomfort. As you advocate for your health choices, you may experience fear, frustration, embarrassment, and rejection. Feelings are just feelings. They will dissipate and morph. Don’t try to avoid every negative feeling. Stick with it for a moment to build tolerance. Let the feeling go. Rinse, repeat.
By bragging. Okay, maybe not exactly bragging, but it’s okay to feel proud of yourself and let someone know. It’s great to keep a written list of every single step you make toward trusting yourself and feeling powerful.
Nothing is too small to note. Put a reminder on your phone, a sticky note on your monitor, a lipstick list on your mirror – or post it publicly if/when you feel comfortable.
So many things are immediately available these days, we tend to be impatient and forget the value of building slowly over time. But resilience isn’t a sink or swim kind of skill. It’s one forged by fire, slowly, in layers.
When you make healthy choices in an uncomfortable environment, you build resilience. When you advocate for yourself against resistance, you build resilience. When you speak up for someone else facing circumstances similar to yours, you build resilience.
And when you need it, resilience will help you overcome a challenge. We can all become more resilient. All it takes is to build resilience is practice.
