Building Resilience
Have you ever noticed how when you don’t eat, you get hangry? Or when you’re dehydrated, you get a headache? When you don’t exercise, you get sluggish? When you eat poorly, you get anxious or your stomach hurts? When you don’t sleep enough, you get sick?
When you’re young, you often don’t think about taking care of yourself. You’re spry and resilient. Your body, mind, and spirit can handle most things and generally bounce back from the paces you put it through.
But as you age, that wear and tear starts to build up. All the junk you eat to fuel your body. Not exercising your heart, muscles, and joints. Not scheduling regular checkups with the doctor, dentist, and optometrist. Constantly scrolling social media without engaging your mind in more challenging and productive activities. Neglecting your relationships and going it alone. Drinking and smoking regularly. Not saving and investing your money for the future.
Most of these activities aren’t inherently “bad” on their own or done infrequently, but when you do them regularly or all together, the damage to your well-being compounds over time and leaves you in a vulnerable state physically, mentally, and emotionally. Eventually, one small crisis can take you down and make it really hard to get back up.
Your internal resources are the “reserves” of health you build up through basic healthful habits that enhance your physical, mental, and spiritual capacity to handle life’s challenges. It’s critical for resilience.
To build up your internal resources, you really just have to take it back to the most basic (yet effective) self-care principles—exercise, eat well, sleep enough, practice mindfulness, build strong relationships, and generally build a life in alignment with your core values. Let’s take a deeper look at how the most simple self-care can be the most effective.
Exercise: You probably know exercise is a powerful tool for your physical health. It helps your heart, muscles, bones, immune system, and brain. It helps you get better sleep, reduces stress, and can prevent the development and progression of many chronic diseases. When you exercise regularly and your body is functioning optimally at a baseline level, it is equipped to handle unexpected stress that occurs—anything from a physical injury or illness to a relationship challenge to a job loss.
Diet: Eating whole foods (i.e. fruits, veggies, unprocessed meats, beans, nuts, whole grains, etc.) gives your body the energy and nourishment you need to get through your day. Your body can easily digest whole foods and access all their nutrients, delivering them to the cells and organs that need them to function optimally.
Nature makes food (plants and animals) perfect as they are. Whole foods have an ideal combination of nutrients that give you what you need. Ultraprocessed foods, on the other hand, are often manufactured with random ingredients and lots of chemicals that require your digestive system and organs to work a lot harder than they were designed for to filter out all the “junk” (for lack of a better term).
Even ultraprocessed foods that are “healthy,” such as protein powders, fat free yogurt, or meat substitutes, often aren’t. Most human intervention in the food system is done to save money and optimize production, not to make foods better for us. Isolated macro- or micronutrients (i.e. “high protein,” “low fat,” etc.) often aren’t received as well in our bodies as nutrients coming from whole food sources because our bodies have evolved to process the blend of nutrients nature delivers, not to consume a big gob of protein alone (likely with a bunch of added chemicals).
Choosing foods and ingredients that are nature-made (rather than human-made) gives your body the building blocks it needs to be strong and healthy without requiring the extra effort and energy to digest ultraprocessed foods, thereby leaving greater capacity for you to handle the other aspects of your life.
Sleep: Good sleep is crucial for your body and mind to function properly. It strengthens your immune system, balances hormones, and overall builds your body’s resilience to challenges and stress (among many other benefits). You want to make sure you’re getting enough sleep and that it’s high quality. To get 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep, the first thing to do is carve out that time (duh…but also, are you doing it?). Then you practice sleep hygiene to enhance the quality of those hours. That means setting up a supportive sleep environment, having regular bed and wake times, exercising daily, limiting alcohol, caffeine, and food intake before bed, and limiting screen time before bed. Being well rested gives you the physical and mental capacity to fully experience your life and manage challenges that come your way with ease and strength.
Mindfulness: Mindfulness is being aware of what’s happening in your mind and the outer world as it happens. Your thoughts are your reality, and they’re the only thing you can really control in your life. Your thoughts about any situation create an emotional reaction, which then causes you to react/respond, which creates a new situation that you then have a thought about. You can rarely control the situation, so it’s really crucial that you focus on building the capacity to manage your thoughts about it. When you are mindful, you notice thoughts that arise and choose how to respond rather than reacting impulsively based on your past experiences.
For example, you work a full day and are exhausted by the time you get home. Your brain is telling you to sit on the couch and watch Netflix for the rest of the night. If you’ve built a mindfulness practice, your mindful muscle will help you hear that thought but not immediately give in to it. You can tap into your body to determine if you actually need to sit on the couch all night or if you can go for a walk or grab dinner with friends. Building your mindful muscle is helpful when anything unexpected arises in your life. You can manage your thoughts about it and respond in a way that’s aligned with your core values.
Community: Human beings are meant to live in relationship to other humans. Healthy and meaningful relationships can support us through shared wisdom and resources, accountability, a sense of purpose and belonging, and having someone to lean on, all of which are necessary to not only survive but thrive.
It’s really simple, but not necessarily easy. That is, it doesn’t have to be complicated, but that doesn’t mean it won’t require effort and intention. Maintaining this miraculous body, mind, and spirit you’ve been given is worth the expansive life you get in return. When your body, mind, and spirit are running well, everything is possible.
(This is not meant to be medical advice and is general information about health habits that could benefit most people who are healthy and don’t have health conditions. Consult a doctor before making significant changes to your life.)